Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Customers, sheesh

As everyone who's ever worked in a store knows, it'd be the perfect job if it wasn't for all the customers. ;-) But sometimes they can really brighten your day, too. Sometimes fun things happen. Well, at least you gotta take it like a fun thing. Otherwise you'd have to kick someone to get over teh stupid.

So, a couple of guys come in the store the other day. They were, I want to say 50+. I'm not going to say where they work, but let's just say that if I were to mention it, nine out of ten Norwegians - at least - reading this would know the company. I ask them what they're looking for and they tell me that they've had some hassle from the health and safety people, and apparently they have to replace some things now for some reason. They need safety shoes for when they do inspections, can I help with that? Yes indeed, I sure can. At first I thought they only needed shoes - they were real talkers, these guys :-) - they told me about this and that and the other, we had a nice conversation. The funniest part was when they said that they'd been told by this inspector guy that they should go online and buy their shoes and the other stuff. (We have an online store option and this company are registered there, of course.) Buy shoes on the internet??! What the dang hell is that about?? No sir, that ain't gonna happen. No way, no how. They were funny. :-D

And here comes the really funny part. I found them some good shoes, and then they needed some other things too. Like helmets. Apparently now they had to replace their helmets too. There's no end to what these safety people are demanding. OK, so I asked the guy who said this - the other one was looking at gloves - how old his helmet was, the one that he had now. Oh, let's see ... he got that probably in 1990.

1990.

WTF are people thinking??? If this guy had actually ended up in some accident and that helmet had needed to take a hit, it would have broken apart into a million tiny pieces and his head would have busted open instead. It was nineteen years old. Jesus H Christ on a crutch. The other guy had a much newer one, though, it was only from 1996. Yeah, color me impressed. o_O

I sold them a couple of the new Solaris helmets from Peltor, which actually tell you when they need to be replaced, if that's before their three year life span is over anyway. They seemed to think that three years wasn't much to brag about, but here's hoping that the gadget freak in them will make them keep an eye on the sensor anyway. Here's hoping. :-D

5 comments:

Paz said...

LOL 1990 helmet. funny the people take shortcuts with their safety.

Leisha Camden said...

Yeah, I know, it's pretty unbelievable sometimes. Like when I get people complaining about the price of safety shoes ... yet they're willing to pay twice that for some fancy brand name dress shoes AND will only wear those a fraction of the time that they'll wear their safety shoes. I always tell people that in almost all cases you won't need your safety equipment, but if you find yourself in the situation that you do need it, then it's a case of either being prepared already or it just being too late. You can hurt yourself seriously and it can get very expensive. Sometimes people just don't think ahead. Or don't want to, even.

Paz said...

In Ireland most jobs require safety gear, you can loose your job if you dont wear it.

Leisha Camden said...

Yeah, here too. But you know how people are - rules apply to everyone else, but not to me, because I'm such a special case ... >:-(

Findabair said...

Wow o_O Guess they have been spared from experiencing or seeing accidents since 1990. Hope for their sakes that it continues like that.

Reminds me of when I was working customer service at SmartClub, and a woman came to exchange a speaker she had bought thinking it was a radio O_O