Here's a website which chronicles such stories.

And here's more tales from retail.

I've worked in retail far too long and I must confess, I've also been an intentionally "stupid" customer on a few rare occasions. A pet-peeve of mine is when a store is too lazy to open both doors for a double-door entrance. If they want to make a point of having a one-door policy, they should at least put a sign up telling customers not to use the door that is locked.

So, in the case of these merchants, if the door is locked and it's the first door i try, I'll give it a healthy, vigorous shake as if the door is stuck. I guess getting older, I don't care if I'm being an ass.

Anyway, it was at a specific store that I did this, that upon entering and talking to the employee at the desk, I complained that the door was locked. She simply explained that since they have 2 doors, they didn't see any reason to unlock both. (I guess left-handed people aren't worth unlocking a door for.) I replied that I hope i remember which one is locked on my way out. She didn't say anything until I was leaving as she then politely reminded me to not forget that the door was only open on the one side. I would have shook my cane at her, but I'm not that old, yet.

drmike:
"*sigh* Usually no. One of the forums I used to help out on, it was something like 90% never returned when we had threads like this. They either didn't come back or they forgot about their original thread and started a new one. "

This. You can almost always tell by the quality of the question of how much they really care and/or their sincerity.

On-topic:
I had a women calling in from a some corporate company years ago from NZ or UK, don't remember. As we had a contract on literally everything, from lines, SaaS, materials, services on the spot et al., (that's reversed insourcing or outsourcing when we call local tech company?) she just dumped the best way one could ask; "Can u fix my computer it doesn't work".

First I needed to asses the situation before I called local tech or line company, or if it was on our servers....

In short, I had to actually go over several questions and minutes later (she was actually quite vague), she had to go. I said ok, let me call you up the morning after. That happens. I just went to the next in line.

The day after I called but I didn't got an answer, at first. A little later she finally took the phone and was all hyped up and laughing by something one college apparently had said in the lunch. Finally I popped the question and asked if she could go at the back of the computer and check if the network cable was in. She couldn't (by unknown reasons), so she got a colleague to help her out. I, by now, was a little edgy because I wanted to move on to another costumer, because I, or rather we, sat there waited until he came.

He didn't know what an rj45 or commonly known as an ethernet cable plug were, so I had to explain that too, so he had to look carefully. And yes, it was the cable.

My experience is that the maids or cleaners have a tendency to roam around with their mops or vacuum-cleaner like some hyperactive dragon on speed, and don't realize that they can snap out cables. That happens a lot.

Was this the most productive or the best way? Probably not xD

Laughing my ass of here :D But you should be happy he refunded. I am quite sure you would have received further phonecalls from him every few minutes. Maybe next time Dell should label their laptops calling them "IKEA edition" :)

That I can confirm from an old job. When the cleaner went through there twice a week, you could make bets what wouldn't work the next day. Network, keyboard, screen, even the power cables, which usually really stuck...

Also they were told to leave out desks alone. Still, almost half of the time the next morning everything was tidy... and I wouldn't find my notes where I left off...

You take notes? :D

Notes... workflow and UI design scribbles... TODO lists... naughty little doodles...

- Can you make a measurement on my sample?
- Sure, what kind of a sample you have in mind?
(a long description follows)
- Uh, ok, it's kinda complicated but I can do it for about x$.
- Great, when can I expect the results?
- When can you send me the sample?
- Uh, I can't send it too you, it's too precious and I still need it.
- ...

I'm boring? P

"At night up here, do they cage the bears?"

REAL QUESTION! XD

At Thanksgiving, a pharmacist was telling just such a story...
Some guy called asking for a thermometer that doesn't read temperature.
When she asked him to be more specific, it would just be "You know, a thermometer which doesn't measure temperature".
She suggested any number of things, even going so far as to ask if he was looking for something like a weather station that they had sold before.
But each suggestion got the same basic response, "You have to know what I'm talking about. A thermometer which doesn't read temperature." Eventually the guy just hung up.

This happens to me actually a lot as I float between companies where needed and I come to a lot of messy desks.

I just stack everything neat in a pile on the left of the desk and leave a mention in the notes that I leave for the person I was covering.

I still get emails and calls the next day asking where I put something.

why? you looking for a date?

I've kept a pretty good relationship with the OEM I sued to work for, after a bit of a hiccup several years back. The hiccup is no big deal, but anyway... Economy went slow from 2009-2011, as we know, and the machinery biz really took a nosedive. They ended up laying off virtually all of their techs, and the one manager with any sort of tech support experience left around 2012. At that point they had nobody with any sort of experience. All of us contractors then started getting a lot of calls from them. Work is good.

They have some guys now, got a few years behind them but they don't know much about the older machines like us contractors do. One tech in particular calls me 3-5 times each week, to the point that I now answer his calls with "Daily check-in!" To which he responds, "How you doin', Princess?" hahaha.

But nearly every cycle fault problem, I have to ask the same things:
- what's it doing?
- all the time, or intermittent?
- does this other thing work?
- what have they tried?
- did you get the machine status from the software?

And the answer is almost always "Not sure."

<sigh> Even if I wasn't asked to help out, they'd still need that info from the customer. So ASK them for it.