I was feeling a bit nostalgic, so I figured I’d throw in a few stories about when I worked in auto parts. Some are from Advance. Some are from AutoZone. It’s all the same to me. Most of my customers were the same (they followed me when I left Advance and went to AutoZone), so it’s really quite familiar. Don't read these stories to think I gave horrible customer service - 98 percent of the time I did. (Otherwise my customers wouldn't have followed me.) But there are just those who rub you the wrong way, and make you do things you wouldn't normally do. Most of the stories below fit that category.
--
We had this one commercial customer, and he was awful. Once, at Advance, he ordered a $40 set of spark plug wires, we sent them down, just to have them “returned” half an hour later. I knew the wires he “returned” were taken off the car, and not defective parts I sent down, but being that he spent a ton of money in the store, they just let it slide. He did crap like that all the time. I hated it. He was such a jerk.
Anyway, one day at the other store, it was time to go get the weekly check for all the parts we sent down that week, that he didn’t return. It was a slow day, it was me and a manager and one customer in the store. The manager told me to go get the check from BlahBlahBlah (name has been change to protect the not-so-innocent). I laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m not holding my breath. He’ll find some way not to pay me.” My manager smiled, he knew BlahBlahBlah’s tricks – most commonly someone not being there to cut the check.
So, the next day my store manager confronts me. Apparently the ONE customer in the store was one of BlahBlahBlah’s friends and he told him what I said. (I call Shennanigans. BlahBlahBlah has no friends. But I digress.) So, BlahBlahBlah called up and was appalled anyone would talk like that about him and he was going to pull his business from the store, yada yada yada. What’s funny is, God love the manager I was working with when it happened, he took the blame for it. Said he said it. My store manager and I both knew otherwise. All I got was written up, but still, it was kind of crappy anyway.
--
Ahh, my favorite AutoZone story ever. This is classic, “So, what are they going to do, fire me?” I gave my two-week notice before this conversation took place, so I didn’t really give a damn anymore.
Me: “Thank you for calling AutoZone, this is Trysh, how can I help you?” (Mistake – used my name. Dammit. Luckily this doesn’t come back to bite me later.)
Idiot customer: “Hi, uh, I need a battery.”
Me: “For what?”
Idiot customer: “For my car.”
Me: “No duh, what kind of car?”
Idiot customer: “Do you work there?”
Me: “No, I just randomly pick up the phones when I’m here.” (Which, in all truth, isn’t a complete lie, because when I’d go back up there after I quit, I would, in fact, answer the phones if they were busy.)
Idiot customer: “I’d like to speak to a manager.”
Me: “I am a manager.” (This was not a lie.)
Idiot customer: “You’re not very professional, are you?”
Me: “Yeah, but I got what you need, don’t I?”
The rest of the conversation was short, but I got her a price on her battery – never expected to see her. Little did I know, she did, actually come in to get the battery. Thank God I was not the one to help her when she did, I’m sure she would have smacked me.
--
One of my first days at Advance, I had a customer reach across the counter and grab my boob. I recoiled and he goes, “I just wanted to see if they were real.”
I smiled and said, “You could have asked, I would have told you.”
This guy was such a pompous prick. The one time I helped him before that, he said I couldn’t help him because I was a girl. Guess what? He ended up being one of my better customers. Just goes to show, you let a man fondle your boobs for a second, you can have a functional relationship.
--
One of my favorite phone calls, that I got quite frequently was the following:
"My car won't start, what's wrong with it?"
Normally we'd be sympathetic and you know, hint that we needed more information. This time, though, I just wasn't feeling the sympathy, so I said, "Well, it could be one of about three thousand reasons, would you like me to start listing them?"
The guy goes, "Yeah."
"Well, your battery could be dead, your alternator could be dead which therefore drained the battery, your starter could be bad, you could have water in your tank ... do you want me to continue?"
He goes, "No, I got the point." I don't remember if we ever figured out his problem. Don't really care.
--
Never, never, never piss me off. Period.
One of the managers at Advance was a guy about my age (actually, think he was a year younger, but that’s not important), and our store manager was the coolest guy in the world. Second best manager I’ve ever had (behind my first manager at Lexmark). Anyway… there was this other guy, Ron, who just grated our nerves sometimes. He really never meant harm, but he was older and set in his ways, and sometimes I think, hated the youth in the store.
We had these palettes in the back that we’d send on our weekly trucks with our returns and cores and all. But we always had to shrinkwrap them before they went on the truck, or else they’d be all over the place. I realized the shrinkwrap could be a lot of fun – particularly to shrinkwrap one’s car. I told Ron I was going to do it to his precious Cavalier convertible. He laughed it off.
God love my store manager, he was in on the whole thing. He made sure Ron, me, himself, and the younger assistant manager were all scheduled. He put Ron in the back of the store pricing batteries. My manager ran the cash register so we could go outside and shrinkwrap the car. He was laughing his butt off the whole time we were doing it, he was even miming directions through the window to make sure we did a good job. People passing in the parking lot were cracking up.
Little did we know our district manager was showing up for a surprise visit that day. He walks in right after we finished. First words out of his mouth were, “Ron, what happened to your car?”
Ron jumps up and goes, “What do you mean,” before darting out the door.
He took it all in stride, thank God, because with the DM there, it could have been a disaster for all of us involved.
No comments:
Post a Comment