2004-01-04 - 7:55 p.m. Plus tax Why is it that people feel the need to yell at workers at the store? I have been on both sides. I have been the person answering questions for angry customers while I rack up a gargantuan 5.25 an hour. I have been the guy with �Billy� on his name tag who stares off into space as you try and ram into my head that it�s unfair that your chicken is pink or that your sizzler isn�t exactly �sizzling�. I have been at stores and tried to return a video game and been told that I can�t return it. I have been steaming mad at the fact that I purchased a game that doesn�t work but you think that I copied it, and thus will not take it back. But I don�t yell. I understand that it�s not �Petey� the 16 year old burnout�s policy. It�s the company�s policy. I know that �Billy� didn�t cook my steak. Heroin McDruggie in the kitchen did. But people yell. Today at �CoTmpUSA� (so I don�t get googled) I was submitting my system and the guy behind me. (He�s behind me!!!) started yelling at the guy helping ME. He started screaming: �My stereo won�t work. It makes a buzzing sound. I have been waiting for 5 minutes!� and so on. I turn around expecting to see a man holding computer speakers. Nope. He�s holding a boom box. I felt like saying that this was �ComTpUSA� not �Boomies Discount Boomers.� But that wasn�t my place. It was �Luke�s� Luke was the guy helping me. Luke was given in this life with a smaller head than most people. It seemed his head just never grew right. His ear however, we allowed to grow at a normal place, thus making �luke� a direct target for insulting jokes such as �Dumbo� and �Floppy Rabbit Ear Head Face Man� His acme or prepubescent goatee weren�t helping his case either. Luke was a man to whom you gave pity, not anger. But the Boom Box manic also demanded pity, and thus gave Luke the only thing he could give. Angry. Wild, inaccurate anger. Luke, much to my surprise, was fairly socially adjusted and did not have what most would expect to be a horrifically unadjusted voice. He simply told the man that his store, which was a computer store, did not sell boom boxes, and did not repair boom boxes. Luke suggested Tweeter. A store named after a small speaker in the mans boom box which he was waving crazily in the air as if it were some sort of pagan idol. I would have suggested Staples, just to see this tribal imbecile try and get the manager there to sell him a paper shredder in exchange for the boom box. The crazed man, which at this point I was pushed aside for, had only one response to the suggestion that Luke made. �Well if you don�t repair them, can you throw them away?� This was said in a remarkably serious tone. Luke, like a good employee, replied with a coy, �Yes� to which the speakman placed his aforementioned boom box on the counter and stormed out the �in� since it was closer and much more difficult to exit. Luke, apologetically, asked to be excused for a moment as he took the boom box and placed it somewhere in the back where the employees would later skirmish over or perhaps actually dispose of this machine. I, however, was much less pleased than both Luke and the man with the boom box as I was both cut, and informed that my problem was much more serious and would take much more time to solve. I also got the �cleaning� which they offer, which I imagine will be similar to �blowing on the Nintendo game.� For said cleaning and �free installation� I was charged 19.95. Plus tax. I�m lucky I didn�t go to Tweeter; they probably would have sold me a deluxe mega surround sound boom box. Plus �suggested� cleaning. Plus tax. Plus �Marty McFly Insurance� | |||||||||||
