Friday, May 25, 2007

Dumb shit customers part 2: A lesson in pro-nouns

When I say, "you swipe your debit card with the stripe towards you." What does that mean? Apparently, it means that everyone (by everyone, I mean 85% of the customers. . . .approximately) swipes the card with the stripe facing me. It's my fault really, I told them "stripe towards you" and they did just that. Sometimes they even reply "I swipe it with the stripe towards you?" That makes less sense. You understood correctly, the first two uses of the pro-noun 'you' but not the third? You got it right that 'you' are swiping 'your' card but when I use 'you' for the third time you get it all fucked up? Some people even suggest that I had it wrong. They'll say, "oh, stripe towards me. Why didn't you say that?". Well, because if I had said "stripe towards me" that would be incorrect because the stripe is suppose to face. . . . oh fuck my head hurts.

Back to basics. The pro-nouns in the English language are:
I or Me
You
Her
Him
One
Who
Us or We
Them
And if you are from the south in the US, or on the Sopranos, there is also Yous

Today we will focus on 'Me' and 'You'. When someone uses the pro-noun 'me' they are referring to themselves. 'Me' always refers to the speaker. When someone uses the pro-noun 'you', they are referring to the person or people to whom they are speaking. 'You' never refers to the person speaking.

So, when I say swipe your card with the stripe towards you, think "okay, I swipe my card with the stripe towards me." And yes, it is different everywhere you go but I do not get paid enough to give a shit.

- Detective Blinky

This has been a public service announcement from Detective Blinky. Detective Blinky wishes to let everyone know how dumb they are when they are purchasing items at the cashier. This has to be the dumbest part of the day for most people because people can't actually be this dumb all of the time. Detective Blinky use to believe that people couldn't be this dumb period, but most customers have proven that to be wrong.

PS - the views expressed in this commentary do not reflect the views or opinions of Detective Blinky's employer or anyone else. Detective Blinky also wishes to apologize for have made you dumber from having read this. Detective Blinky can't believe anyone reads this.

Detective Blinky can be reached at: detective_blinky@yahoo.ca

Thursday, May 17, 2007

The Dumb Shit Customers Say: Part 1

I like how optimistic 'part 1' sounds in the title. It makes it seem like everyday isn't an endless stream of customers suffering from verbal diarrhea but that there are just a select few stories that are worth telling. Truth is the blog, not just this post, could be titled "The Dumb Shit Customers Say" but that would leave out the important fact that I have a vision problem and that is an important part of the context. Especially for this first story.

I will set the premise by saying that I am visually impaired. I have been accused of being politically correct by using this term, well you could call me visually retarded if you want but it wouldn't quite describe my disability. See, when I say I am blind people often say "no you are not", and they are right because I am not blind like Stevie Wonder is or Ray Charles was, I am more like Mr. Magoo. I can see but not very much and not very well. It becomes painfully obvious when I try to read something. So I am not being politically correct, I am being actually correct by saying that I am visually impaired. Don't feel bad for me, everyone has a disability of some sort. Some people are bad with directions, some are bad with math, some have this disability where they think they are eye doctors when they see a stranger reading a newspaper with his nose in a diner at breakfast. That last group has a real hard time minding their own fucking business too. So these are my stories to point out to people how they are being dumb since they like to point out to me that I don't see well. You know, just in case I forgot.

Dumb shit part 1: "Challenged"

I need to begin this story by stating that to this day that I, along with the computer cash register at work and my calculator, believe that $40.00 given to the cashier for a purchase of $39.24 produces $0.76 in change. However, when I handed the customer her seventy-six cents she insisted that I owed her $1.24 change. Okay, maybe she didn't realize what she gave me or what her total was, so I repeated "you're total is $39.24 and you gave me $40.00 even." She explained that yes I was correct there but she believed that this would somehow produce $1.24 in change. I then showed her my screen that had detailed evidence that in fact 40 less 39.24 is 0.76 and her receipt backed up this claim.

By now my head was beginning to hurt, the kind of hurt that you know is slaughtering brain cells. I handed her a calculator and asked her if she would like to do the math herself. Now, I didn't know that this particular calculator was a little old and some of the LCD screen was not showing up, like the part of the 7 that would otherwise make it look like a 1. I quickly learned this when the lady exclaimed as if in victory "See you were wrong, it's 16 cents that you owe me!" At this point we had spent 15 minutes determining that I hadn't ripped her off for 48 cents but that I had given her 60 cents too much! My mental vocabulary had been reduced to just one word: Fuck. I tried to think, all I came up with was fuck. In a work setting fuck is a word you can't say, especially to the customer, so I went mute and let my supervisor take over. The supervisor finally convinced her to take that 76 cents and that it was her correct change. The lady's explanation for the whole mess was this: "Well, I couldn't just take what he was saying, you know he's 'challenged'." I made sure to tell her that I was sorry for the whole mix up and that she was to have a 'nice day' (if a salesperson ever tells you this they are really telling you to go get fucked. Great day, nice night are okay but 'nice day' specifically means go fuck yourself or something similar.) If I wasn't worried about losing my job and possibly a good reference from my current employer I would have said: "Challenged by what? The number one contender? What am I the heavy weight champion of the world? I'll challenge you to go a day without saying something retarded. Fuck, you're dumb."

The best part about all of this is that I work in a book store. I won't say which book store or where, except that it's named after the sections in a book. I always thought that people who read are smart. I guess that's not so, they're just as dumb as the rest of us and they say some dumb shit.

- Detective Blinky

The views and opinions expressed by Detective Blinky do not necessarily reflect those of anyone else in the world, including his employer. Though after careful study 40 minus 39.24 really is 0.76. It is also important to note that Detective Blinky works in Ottawa where the Canadian Government is the largest employer and obviously math is not the Government's strong suit but hey, what is?