Another round of seemingly unbelievable moments from a week in the life of the Unknown Parts Counter Guy. What, you don’t have this stuff happening at your office job? Jump on the counter, you literally never know what is going to walk through the door from one minute to the next –
1. Small, young family brings in a Scion xA that looks like it’s seen better days. Dad brings in two kids with him: a 10-ish year old boy who acts older, and a 2-3 year old who seems all sorts of rambunctious. Dad asks me to pull codes off the rolling lunchbox, and I oblige. A few minutes later we learn that Cylinder 2 is bitching and that he should start the usual “plug, coil, injector” response for a late-model misfire. As I’m teaching Dad about what cylinder layout is so that he can get to work in the morning, the older kid mutters, “Oh, great…not this again.”
Junior has walked to the north end of the front of the building. There is a busy fast-food joint right in sight, and our store sits right on an arterial street, so there is no shortage of traffic. And apparently, the night was warm enough that Junior felt it’d be an ideal time to air out. Everything below the waist was on the concrete, and he looked so damn happy about it too. Dad about choked on his gum, while the older brother rushed over, trying to cover things up as the drive-thru crowd got the show they never saw coming. It was all I could do to get Dad’s attention long enough to point out where #2 was located quickly, haul ass back into the store, and lock myself in the manager’s office so nobody (ok, everybody) could hear me laugh like an idiot.
Oh, and where was Mom during all of this? Phone. Candy Crush. Go figure.
2. We have a new driver. Her daughter is friends with one of the girls that works at one of our company’s locations across town. For the last few days, there has been a pattern: Daughter will link up with friend, then come to my store and both of them will proceed to annoy the ever-living shit out of all of us for about an hour. Two days ago the friend went on a tangent about how our door chime was “cute”. I’m anti-cute. Cute means it’s f*cking annoying, overrated and simply exists in this dimension so that women will go, “Awwwww!” What would I agree is cute? Baby puppies and kitties…ok, yeah, pretty much baby anything is cute. Door chime? SERIOUSLY? I hear this and I flip my lid then tell her that nothing in our store is cute. Not even her. That goes over well.
Next day, I walk in for an afternoon shift and sure enough, there the two best friends are…and the annoying one is holding a puppy. I admit that the pup is cute, remind her she isn’t. This causes her to switch gears and become super-cali-fragilistic-expial-go-F-yourself-annoying. She takes the puppy and holds it, facing me, while she makes whimpering noises. I’m not certain if she was squeezing the dog too hard, or if the pup wasn’t feeling well, or what, but right as she started the third whimpering noise, the pup proceeded straight to Code Brown. It was like someone loaded a 12-gauge with chocolate pudding. She’s just standing there, still holding the dog as she had before, but with a genuinely shocked expression. Everyone else, customer, worker, whatever, looks stunned. The dog, at least, looks relieved. For the next couple of seconds, as everyone is absorbing what just happened, all my brain can come up with is, “Don’t laugh. Don’t do it. Just don’t.”
The dog barks happily. And I hit the ground, laughing so damn hard that not only do I tear up, but I hyperventilate. Gooood boy…
3. We all know some automotive acronyms…Keep it, asshole (KIA), Found on road dead (Ford), Honestly, Officer, not done accelerating! (Honda), etc. I learned that one of my newer co-workers cannot spell “Pontiac” without reciting the version that is liable to get his ass kicked. I’m finishing up with a customer and trying to watch this guy. Nothing against him, just making sure he is getting the hang of things. He’s dealing with one of our bigger spenders, a guy who does repairs for the neighborhood, it seems. New guy asks what kind of car, big spender says, “Grand Prix”. New guy starts reciting, quietly, to himself, “Poor…old…” I intervene before the customer jack-slaps him into next week. I then spent a bit of time showing him that the computer program can automatically fill-in the name, and that he doesn’t need to write out “Pontiac” every time he needs something for one. Disaster averted….kid saved from his own ignorance.
Poor Old NUTTER Thinks It’s A Cadillac. What’s wrong with that?
Nothing. But that ain’t the original saying.
I managed an auto parts store in a past life. I was telling one of my college professors about the odd traffic that comes in from time to time. The professor is visiting one afternoon and nothing was happening. As he was about to leave, a young man came in and asked if we carried a black plastic jesus for a white 67 GTO. A long staring match ensued since I was thinking this was a set up. After not getting any feeling that the guy was joking, I told him we did not carry that item. (I was tempted to tell him just sold the last one though) I referred him to jc whitney……
I’ll relate one that happened to me a couple weeks ago.
So a really old, old, squinty-looking guy with a giant beard comes in and asks for a driver’s side wiper blade for a 2002 Protege. Cheapest possible. I grab it, bill him out, he looks through a flyer for five minutes, then stares at the wiper blade for a solid 2 minutes, then declares that I’ve given him the wrong wiper, his is shorter. I pointed out that the catalogue says that’s the correct size, but we can certainly swap it if he likes. He can go out and compare the size.
He gets all grumbly, then wanders out to the parking lot and proceeds to try and match up this wiper blade with the driver’s side wiper blade on my 1996 Honda Civic, which is parked next to his car. The Protege is a Mazda, my Civic is a Honda. The Protege is a 4 door with a wing on the trunk, my Honda is a hatchback with 2 doors. The back seat of his Protege is filled to the brim with what looks like garbage and old clothing. My Civic has pretty dark tint, so he wouldn’t be able to see the back seat anyway. His car is 6 years newer than mine (though incredibly rotten, with the exhaust falling off.)
In fairness, they’re both silver, I guess.
He messes with it for a good three-four minutes then throws his hands in the air and walks back in, angrily approaching me and raving that the wiper blade is too damn big. I then point out that he was trying to change the wiper blade on my car, not his.
He looks dumbfounded, squints REALLY hard out the front door, perhaps in hopes that my car will morph into a Mazda Protege and prove me wrong. He then squints at me for a good solid minute without saying a word, then storms out. Then spends another 5 minutes messing with his car until finally breaking the old blade off of it, and putting his on. Shockingly, it’s the correct size.
Do you think perhaps if he can’t see how long his wiper blade is, or even which car is his, he maybe shouldn’t be driving on public roads?
I think that if he was messing with my car, that it’d take all of about two seconds for that wiper blade to be wrapped around his throat. I don’t take too kindly to customers messing with my car at work.
You’ve gotta tell me…Did the dog-girl come back the next day??? Or does she have no shame?
I once had a customer incident that was a combination of parts 1 and 2 of your post.
The kid got away in the store, dropped them, and then dropped a steaming pile in the accessories aisle! Dad just says “Sorry about that”, grabs the kid, and takes off, without even considering to offer to clean it up. That was around the time when I started looking for a new job.
@Dutch: Hasn’t returned yet. “Yet” being the keyword…I think she’ll appear again.
@Tony: That made my day! What kind of asshole doesn’t at least offer to help clean up the mess that the kid made?! I’m waiting for it to happen to me, actually…
The fear of all mothers, a child who has an adversion to wearing clothes.
you wanna finish the Pontiac line for me? I don’t think I’ve heard that one
Poor Old ………??
Poor Old “African-American” Thinks It’s A Cadillac