dumb stale jokes customers always make

"can I get you anything else?"

"WINNING LOTTO NUMBERS"

"Here's your tip - find another job!"

[item is missing a price tag]
"I guess it's free, then!"

"here's your bills"

"if mine's bigger, give him my bill!"

"how was your meal?"

"oh I HATED IT" (points to empty dish)

[bald guy at the barber shop]

'Can you take a little off the top?'

how would you like your steak?

'So rare that it's still kicking!"

would you like pie or cake?

"Yes!"

"above all, however, i'm one crazy customer :D :D :D :D so get ready for some madnessssss!!!!! ;-)

(that last sentence was parody)"

[points to very drunk customer]

"Whatever she had - make mine a double!"

(I've used this one myself, with a self-satisfied chortle, looking around to see if anyone heard and then repeating it)

[points to fake orgasming customer]

“Have you any food allergies?”

“Yes, small portions.”

[item is missing a price tag]
"I guess it's free, then!"

The cousin of
(item won't scan)
"I guess it's free, then!"

"Here's your tip - find another job!"

This feels like it crosses the line from dumb joke into explicit contempt for the worker.

I can never help myself, when someone asks “do you have a piece of ID?”, from feigning enthusiastic pride and saying “I have a WHOLE one!” as I bring out my driver’s licence.

I’m so sorry to everyone involved.

This is probably not a perfect fit for this thread but as I was mentioning to my dad not long ago, when we were having breakfast … sometimes I really do wonder at the need people have to insert dumb jokes (or any jokes) into every life scenario. I know life is hard and we have to laugh, etc etc, but, man.

It’s probably just an aspect of humanity. It’s mostly a good thing! But sometimes …

And then if you are *not* prone to make these jokes, the impression is left that you’re “uptight”.

I do it myself to some extent but the danger is you end up as Colin Hunt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwDoMqyWxw

sometimes I really do wonder at the need people have to insert dumb jokes (or any jokes) into every life scenario

My dad is the worst for this, and to me it's the hallmark of someone who has never worked in a customer-facing job in their life. They just don't understand that there's a flow, and if you disturb the flow with some unexpected remark, it better be for a good reason, not just to be a hilarious old man who could be joking or could be complaining, it's impossible to tell.

Luckily my dad is a good tipper and getting too old and deaf to interact with service staff very much anymore (which just makes it worse when he does come out with one of his HILARIOUS remarks, because good customer service staff are programmed to be extra nice to geezers), but the clenching I have to go through whenever we order in a restaurant or he goes to pay a bill, especially if it's busy.

Whenever the airline ticket agent asks me if I have any spare lithium batteries in the bag I’m checking, I have to physically restrain myself from asking, “why, do you need to borrow one?”

Gotta admit, the lithium battery gag got me

I had one come up to me at Best Buy once (HORRIBLE job btw), and tap me on the shoulder, and say "hey. hey. got a joke for you. why did Snoop Dogg have an umbrella? Because of the DRIZZLE.". when I didn't laugh, he told it again. I forgot. always mock laugh or they tell it again.

“Maybe if I tell the joke again, I’ll break through and this stranger and I will be homies 4 life”

it's the hallmark of someone who has never worked in a customer-facing job in their life.

This is OTM. Customers (most of them) don't understand how working retail is like inhabiting a piece of ambient music: you drift, occasionally eddy, until time to clock out. You don't want to be interrupted with banalities unless you help a customer with a book, article of clothing, etc.

idk, i work customer-facing jobs and i usually enjoy the dumb jokes. it helps me lighten up a bit.

a humorless customer is much more likely to ruin my day

maybe it's because i'm corny & other corny people make me feel safe

"how was your meal?"

"oh I HATED IT" (points to empty dish)

This is so dumb, I almost want to make a personal challenge to use it

*raises hand* guilty

“sometimes I really do wonder at the need people have to insert dumb jokes (or any jokes) into every life scenario”

Yes, I’m quoting myself as I think about this more

There is something to be said for small talk - even just the faintest of small talk, the most fleeting - in retail situations to dispel the sense that everyone in the transition isn’t a humanoid robot. So: is humor just the mode that most people reach for to accomplish this?

I preferred the bad joke customers to the racist and misogynist ones, but I was never meant to be in restaurants and retail. they never jibed w/ my personality, so the joeks usually just made me eyeroll.

once I got into what I do now, it was a better fit. though for the 1.5 years I took calls in the call center, I heard a lot of these, but....they couldn't see me, so I could react however I wanted.

If the cashier talks to me, I'll talk back. (This happens way more now than it did where I used to live. People love a friendly chat here.) But otherwise it's here's the stuff I want, here's my money, see ya.

At times I get paranoid that I'm seen as a shitty customer in restaurants because although I tip well, I'm kinda unresponsive to solicitations from the server.
"How's everything over here?"
"Mmgph" [brusque nod, no eye contact]

Not that I ever made jokes like this often, but realizing that retail/service-industry workers hear these same jokes all the time has made me less likely to do so.

My three years at an indie bookstore were among the happiest in my life, the best and worst paying work experience too. The customers were often terrific. But when hungover or just In a Mood those joeks grated.

now, I didn't mind having actual chats w/ customers. in Best Buy I worked in media (music, DVDs, video games), and sometimes people would talk about stuff I was into or we'd get into informal convos and I'd have fun conversing but I"d get in trouble because I'd be talking to them for 15 minutes and ignoring other customers.

When my friend got a check after a meal, he would always look at it and say, "what'd we do, break a window"?

"Working hard or hardly working?"

I have been the "it was terrible!" guy before and can't rule out doing it again in the future, so I'm very easygoing and play along with customers who drag it out at the bar. I usually say "ah damn*, we'll do better next time."

*or "dang" depending on my read of the customer

in my experience the people who make these dumb stale jokes are nearly always a) men; b) the type of people to complain, expect special service and 1-2-1 attention even when there are 20 people in the shop; c) the type of people who give 4 out of 5 stars on the customer feedback survey that ruins the team's chance of a bonus payment, because they say "nobody is perfect" no matter how satisfactory the service actually is

group c are disgusting savages.

also, even if you are the nicest customer with the most interesting experiences and fascinating conversation, I guarantee you that the assistant has PLENTY of work that needs done before the close of business, and the faster they can get that done the more likely they are to get to leave on time and not spend an hour travelling back home in peak traffic. They will always be itching to get away from your "jokes" so they can get that shelf filled or count that till so they don't miss their bus.

Sometimes you know you’re dealing with a blowhard who gets off on having a captive audience, or like the sort of prick who tell women on the street to smile

Often tho I would get a sense that ppl were using stock lines because they weren’t that comfortable with the transaction & needed a script

Think mostly it’s in the middle of those, it’s just grease for the interaction no different than other pleasantries which could also be called stale but are really just currency (speaking of currency an example in the uk is this thing of calling small change “shrapnel” which is mainly just a widespread jocular bit of slang and isn’t really annoying but there’s the occasional person who will say it in an obnoxious overbearing way like it’s the most hilarious thing ever — but again it’s often used to defuse the awkwardness of paying with a load of small change)

Even the Colin hunt sketch is surprisingly nuanced in its portrayal, he’s unbearable but there is a sense he knows how he comes across & is not comfortable in his skin or the setting

That said I will still try to disappear into a hole in the earth when I have dinner with my father and he asks for “la cuenta… y dos gendarmes”

xp Group C are the worst but businesses know these people will always exist and have unreasonable demands so it's a ready-made excuse to get out of paying staff any service-based incentive. I've worked in customer-facing jobs most of my life, and I'm really good at it tbh, but there is no magical solution to eg the customer who gets stung by a bee outside your shop and marks you down for that

I hate dumb metrics like that. I remember being a waiter at Chevy's Fresh Mex and we'd get 'secret shopped'. it was awful, because you'd get dinged for menial shit, or on extremely busy short-staffed nights when you couldn't provide the attentiveness you wanted to.

I was able to figure out when I had secret shoppers because they had to order drinks at the bar and evaluate the bartender, then would move to the restaurant after barely taking a few sips of their drink, on nights where we didn't have a wait.

I got two $100 bonuses because I knew i had shoppers and did everything I knew they were looking for and it fortunately was a slow night each time. my friend, otoh, got one during a nightmare shift, got a bad eval, and got fired immediately. then we all got laid off not even a year later.

That is rubbish. I was in the privileged position of working a paid job in a charity bookshop for a while, and apart from the occasional "why won't you give me discount on these books, I thought you were supposed to be a charity" arseholes, most people were so lovely. It was very pleasant to be able to say to customers who were fumbling to make change "take your time, this isn't the Spar. People can wait their turn". I mean, we were only ever busy at lunchtimes. And even then, busy was relative. And years ago when I worked in a record store, it was well understood that there was no such thing as time-wasting conversations with customers. Any chat you had was building a valuable relationship.
But I've also worked the till on Christmas Eve when there's nothing to do but scan and bag, scan and bag, and any extraneous chat or rhythm-busting joke would have been poorly received, not just by me, but by the snaking queue of last-minute shoppers too.

the scott seiss tiktok compilation about this whole deal is a thing of beauty and 100% accurate.

Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?

Bobby: I want you to hold it between your knees.

IME it's the server at a restaurant who sees your empty plate and says "I see you hated it, huh?".

when I saw the movie blow at the theater, the man buying the ticket in front of me (kind of a San Joaquin delta version of Dennis Hopper iirc) slammed down his cash and said “gimme 10 kilos of blow! Bwahahahah!”

(To sales assistant in department store):

“Would you show me your underwear?”

Everyone always has a good laugh at that

This is on a par with the classic motor show "do you come with the car" gag. A gag that was old when The Simpsons made fun of it. "Can you pee in this jug", "not from this distance", or alternatively "yes, I can".

I have met, and worked with, this kind of person. The kind of person who insisted on constantly making terrible, unfunny jokes that weren't even jokes. "Unfunny word combinations". This particular person had a habit of saying "cor blimey guvnor!" and "I'm in a right old two-and-eight!" and "this is mental!" etc, literally those exact phrases, actually in real life. This person was almost exactly like the aforementioned Colin Hunt, but real! Actually real, in real life. It was bizarre and horrible because this person was in their fifties and appeared to be completely un-self-aware. She was like a horrible ghost images of myself in the worst possible Christmas of all time. There but for the grace of God.

They tended to make an unfunny joke and then immediately laugh at their own joke - their attitude was that if you didn't laugh as well, you were obviously a humourless bore and not a team player. I think it's about control; about being in control of the social situation, not with guile but with brute force. Basically a form of bullying.

In my time I have worked in (a) the media (b) the MOD (c) the NHS - among others - and this person was the absolute worst co-worker I have ever experienced. Not the most unpleasant, but the worst, because the other unpleasant co-workers were at least competent at their jobs. This person was unfunny and incompetent.

I remember once making a genuinely witty remark - humour me, let's assume that I am self-aware and can at least detect humour, I am on Ilxor after all - and this co-worker paused and looked left and right at her co-workers with an air of panic, as if she didn't understand the concept of humour and was waiting for someone to tell her how to react. She was a vacuum, an empty shell of a person, an utterly humourless wind-up clown mimicking the surface appearance of humour. I am still drunk as I write this.

Comma, a grotesque, dispiriting parody of humanity. A mechanical punch-tape personality. And this was real, actually real, in real life. It was dispiriting because I was often left wondering if it was me. What if I was Colin Hunt? What if I am less funny than I think I am? But I'm sufficiently professional to put on a faceless mask in an office situation. And when I look back at my old, informal writing, it's often stilted and over-written, but not embarrassingly bad. There's evidence of intelligence.

Was she mentally ill, and we were the bullies? I refuse to believe that a mentally ill person could be so consistently bad in exactly the most destructive way. That takes talent. Like Frank Spencer. He had talent. Lord of Chaos. Lord of misrule. He was a punk before the punks. He gave the wrong time! He obliterated the fuck out of traffic lines. He was Frank-talcular. A runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb. Frank Spencer. He dressed like Throbbing Gristle and was even more subversive, because he was in our homes, in our lives, in our hearts, I can still write HTML while drunk. I can still do that.

"I went to the barbers the other day, I said 'can I have my hair cut round the back'", and he said "what's wrong with this room". Thank you, Ted Chippington. But that's not what this thread is about.

No. No. The dialogue is "how do you want me to cut it", "in silence", which is witty but obnoxious. And yet it's true. It's hard enough having a conversation with someone when you can see their lips moving. It's incredibly difficult when they're standing behind you, snipping away at your hair, and you're trying to keep your arms still so that the customers don't think you're masturbating under the poncho. Is it a poncho? Is that what they call it? Cape. It's called a cape. A hairdressing cape. God, I hate having my hair cut.

And so when COVID happened I bought an electric hair clipper, and it has now been three years since I went to a hairdresser! Three years. Those clippers have paid for themselves. COVID didn't have many positive effects on the world but it did push me onto a new track. "But what if you die alone at home" - how is the local hairdresser going to help? They don't check on me. They don't even know I exist. They only care about my hair. It's the hair they want, not me. Just the hair.

But isn't that true of us all? It's not us. It's what we have. That's what people care about. What we have, and what we can get them. I have hair. I can get you hair. That is why hairy men have friends, because of the hair. Hand finds hand. Hand finds hand.

No. No. The dialogue is "how do you want me to cut it", "in silence", which is witty but obnoxious

Apparently Enoch Powell was responsible for that line.

Lol this is great:
Frank Spencer. He dressed like Throbbing Gristle

"Step together step together point.
And.
United...."

I'm a bit disappointed that the book I tried to order through the library on Emotional Labour seems to have disappeared. Heard about the subject in terms of forced smiles on airline hostesses in a PSychsoc talk in University about 20 years ago. Meant to find out more and just got around to checking the library catalogue last year.
But i think the subject matter overlaps heavily with what's being talked about in this thread. What I had heard about the airline hostesses was forced smile lead to one's own emotio9ns becoming distanced in therms of the hostess or other person in similar role. Wanted to see what an academic work thought of the subject. Hostess thing I think was a late 60s academic study.
But interchange with customers' unfunny jokes where one is forced to respond positively also seems like something that may have detrimental effect one one's stability, like.,

“ I think it's about control; about being in control of the social situation, not with guile but with brute force. Basically a form of bullying.”

A lot of OTM here but Ashley in particular.

I really enjoyed those posts Ashley, took me on a journey.

Reading all this makes me so glad I worked back-of-the-house

it being acceptable to wear a mask has really improved my experience at work in that I no longer have to fake smile at customers or show any kind of emotion.

When my friend got a check after a meal, he would always look at it and say, "what'd we do, break a window"?

― This machine bores fascism (PBKR), Friday, April 7, 2023 10:42 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry, I think this is really funny and might steal it

Just had an epiphany about myself: any time I make a jokes to a server - and it's usually in response to one of their jokes, so I can convince myself it is a sort of repartee - I think that what I am subconsciously trying to do is telegraph to them that I am not an Irate Difficult Customer and that unless they expose their genitals or openly spit onto my plate I will be leaving a generous tip, because I have waited tables and know the deal. In general I am uncomfortable being served, so if I'm overly friendly or (god forbid) effusive to a server, I think it's my way of tacitly letting them know they don't need to worry about me or be obsequious. I tend to double down on this behavior and overcompensate when I am dining with people who might be mistaken, due to their nature or their speech or their resting bitchface, for being rude.

Sometimes I wish I could stomach the kind of food that is available at buffets because I find these interactions while dining out terribly awkward even at the best of times. I winced many times reading this (very funny) thread

just saw a friend post this and it def belongs here

"Does anyone know why they committed the Easter Bunny to the insane asylum?

Because he was a total basket case!"

This was the book taht had been on the irish library system but appears to have been lost or not returned or whatver
https://www.routledge.com/Emotional-Labor-in-the-21st-Century-Diverse-Perspectives-on-Emotion-Regulation/Grandey-Diefendorff-Rupp/p/book/9781138115910
Sounds like it would overlap with the thread here definitely and probably give a better picture of things in general.

Emotional Labour appears to have picked up a new meaning since this was put out so may have that meaning eclipsing the one I understood.
Hoping i get a chance to read something like this anyway. Have had that air hostess thing in the back of my mind ever since taht Psychsoc talk. I think the book about te study was in te library at the University and i at least held it there, don't think I actually read it but I was probably reading a load of things at the same time anyway.

Not the same topic but:

There is a cashier at my usual grocery store who, whenever you buy beer, asks "are you old enough to enjoy this beverage?" Then he chuckles and says, "I didn't ask if you're old enough to _buy_ it, just if you're old enough to _enjoy_ it. Heh heh."

The first time, I gave an accommodating half-laugh. The second time, I smiled patiently. Nowadays, I try to go to another line if I'm buying alcohol. I've spent my share of time behind cash registers myself, and I sympathize with him for trying to make the transactions a little less monotonous, but there are limits.

my dad pulled one of these on an asshole customer when he managed Radio Shack.

dad held grudges and he had a hot temper, but he wasn't stupid - he knew he couldn't be 'that guy' as a manager. But sometimes people would get to him and he'd be a wise-ass.

so it was this asshole customer who kept returning the same product over and over, which wasn't the problem so much as the hyper-aggressive threatening way in which he kept doing it, with lots of attitude, insults, etc.

So after finally seeming to be ok with the product, he tries to return it months after the return period expired, and dad, already disliking the guy, wasn't going to make an exception. so after yelling and threatening to go above dad's head, he asks "Can I see your phone? I'm done talking to you."

dad says "sure" and slides the touchtone phone towards him. as the man grabbed the receiver, dad asked "what do you think you're doing?"

the guy said "I literally just asked if I could use your phone and you said yes"

dad responded: "no, you asked if you could SEE my phone. I said you could see it. I didn't say you could use it." and grabbed it back

dude stormed out and never came back

i reminded him of this the other day and he smiled

Lol

a mail carrier-specific one: "hope you didn't bring me any bills!"

well I did, so now what

the mail carrier was never seen again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0pa53YAsI

I had a shopping delivery from Morrisons. I knew from the delivery text that Samson was delivering my order. He didn't bring the shopping box by box to my doorstep as is the method usually, he carried the lot in one go, struggling with all the carrier bags and some of them were splitting open. It was a really awkward and cumbersome load to do in one go and a bottle of wine almost hit the concrete, but he just didn't want to fuck about did this lad. I resisted the urge to make some lame comment about his name. There is an old part of me who previously would have made a *humorous* comment in this situation and it was twitching a bit. Now I know better!