Top Ten Ways NOT To Call The Store [DP Store]

[digitalpress]

I've blogged before about phone calls at the store. I answer every phone call with a sense of trepidation. It is almost as if people who call are the people who DON'T come to the store. I cannot relat...

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[ProgrammingAce]

"Hello, is this Joe? Is your Robotron arcade cab running?"

...
...
...

"Then you'd better go catch it!" *click*

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Have you ever had a day of non-stop prank calls?

We used to literally have WEEKS at a time of non-stop prank calls at Funco.

Come to think of it, do kids even MAKE prank calls any more?

[WiseSalesman]

Have you ever had a day of non-stop prank calls?

We used to literally have WEEKS at a time of non-stop prank calls at Funco.

Come to think of it, do kids even MAKE prank calls any more?

Yes.

And don't ask me how I know.

[Rob2600]

Welcome to retail! Working at a video game store made me hate video games for a few years.


Do you ever get tech support calls?

"How do I install the drivers for this video card I just bought at CompUSA?"

"My PlayStation won't read discs anymore, so I took it apart. Now, I have to put it back together. Which screws go where?"

"I accidentally dropped my Game Boy into a bucket of paint. What do I do?"


I'd also receive nonstop calls like:

"Y'all got Madden?"

"Y'all got Live?"

"Y'all got Residential Evil?"

"Y'all got Deuces in stock?" (I found out a "Deuce" was a PlayStation 2.)


I also dealt with adults who constantly botched the names of game consoles. I've been asked about the Dreamcaster, the Comcast, the Dreamweaver, the Dreammachine, the Dreamcatcher, the Play Boy, the GameBox, etc. I'm not kidding.

They'd also botch the names of games: PokerMan, Poke Man, Residential Evil, Residential Devil, Dino (pronounced "deeno") Crisis, Parasitic Eve, Chiffon Filter, Grand Auto Theft, Crash Bandicot, Dragon Balls, Grand Tourism, etc.


Sometimes I felt like a detective trying to piece together clues and solve a mystery.

"Hi. My son wants football for the GameBox. Do you have that?"

"There's no such thing as the GameBox. There's the GameCube and the Xbox. Which one does he have?"

"I don't know. I'm pretty sure he said the GameBox."

"Okay, let's figure this out. What are some of the other games he has for it? Super Mario? Halo? Metroid? Project Gotham Racing?"

"Um, he has an army game. Oh, and one of those Poke Man games."

"Ah, so he has a GameCube. Great! Now, which football game does he want?"

"The one where you get to play as different teams."


Perhaps the most annoying were the people who'd call up and ask:

"Hi. When does ____ come out?"

"Let me look that up for you. Okay, that will be out on March 5th."

"Really? I just called one of your other locations and the guy there told me it's coming out February 27th."

"That was the old release date. Yesterday, the game was delayed a week. The guy at the other store was must've been reading an outdated printout."

Ugh. Who calls two different stores in a row from the same chain to find out the release date of one game? People make fun of casual gamers, who could be pretty annoying, but the hard core gamers were the worst.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Haha, wow, I thought I was the only person to get asked for "RESIDENTIAL Evil"!!

Though I bet you've never heard this one - once somebody asked me for a copy of

"Residential Elvis"

and a

"Memorial Card"

for Playstation.

[Niku-Sama]

the big chain stores atleat arround here say they cant give prices for trade ins over the phone, which is reasonable, i suggest saying the same thing.

[Richter Belmount]

Yes.

And don't ask me how I know.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SPzFPdJmrlc

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

"Memorial Card"
To honor all of your fallen "lives" of course.

[Push Upstairs]

"You got Mario for Playstation?"

Always a classic.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Yes.

And don't ask me how I know.

Soundboards.

"Who is your daddy and what does he do."

[GarrettCRW]

To honor all of your fallen "lives" of course.

And yet so similar to the name the PC Engine used for its memory card... ;)

[Oobgarm]

When I worked at Funco, to help alleviate the annoyance of prank or stupid phone calls, two people would pick up each of our two phones. While one answered the question, the other would quietly whisper words into the phone. Most common were 'cheeseburger' and 'large fry', though other foodstuffs were used. If it was a prank call, the person doing the talking would say 'man, I'm getting hungry' or something to that effect after a couple of whispers. It made the kids upset when they were having a joke played on them instead.

When it comes to botched names, I have a few:

"Crash Bandycot"
"Super Smash Brothers Me and Lee"
"Satcom", "Scum", "Sockum" (SOCOM)
"Magine Football"
"The Game of Lice" (The Game of Life)
"Mono-Poley" (I'm not kidding)

Nothing tops the way one of the former emloyees wrote "Resident Evil 2" on a pre-order sheet:

"Resadent Evale 2"

[roushimsx]

I had more than one person ask me for a copy of "Jumping Jack Flash". I wasn't sure if they were looking for Jumping Flash or if they really liked Whoopi Goldberg's films from the 80s.

[kaedesdisciple]

"You got Mario for Playstation?"

Always a classic.

You can replace that question mark with a period or exclamation point for even more hilarity. I've seen and heard people argue with the sales staff that they have Mario for the Playstation and/or Xbox.

You want another fun place to work? Try working in a music store (if they still exist) for a while. I worked in a Sam Goody for about a year and had customers come out with some real gems. One of my favorites being, picture it, you're in the middle of about eight 20 ft double sided racks of CD's and someone walks up to you and says...



...wait for it...



"Excuse me, where are the CD's?"


Then you had your customers that would know nothing except for what they think song sounds like, so they would sing it to you in the middle of the store. This was before Google was a know-it-all tool and nobody had smartphones or sidekicks, so you had to rely on your own quick-thinking skills to make the sale. Combine that with some customers that only spoke Spanish and it gets even funnier.

[Sniderman]

Did a year at Babbage's myself.

Customer: "I need Mario for Xbox."

Me: "There are no 'Mario' games for the Xbox. Did you mean Mario for the GameCube?"

Customer: "No, my son has an Xbox and he needs the Mario for it."

Me: "There are no Mario games for the Xbox. All Mario games are pretty much exclusive to Nintendo systems."

Customer (growing impatient, grabs Super Mario Sunshine off the nearby shelf, clearly marked GAMECUBE on the cover) "Here! This is what I want! This will work on the Xbox. My husband said it would!"

Me: "My mistake. Let me get that rung up for you then."

<fast forward to Dec. 26. Customer stomps in and up to the manager>

Customer: "This game doesn't work on my son's Xbox!"

Manager (spies the game and recalls my tale): "Oh, so you're the dumbass. Here. (hands her a refund) We've been waiting for you to return today."


:roll:

[dsullo]

I was in the store on Saturday when Joe kept answering the calls from this one guys who kept asking for the same game over and over. I found it somewhat amusing but Joe was getting slightly annoyed. Still it probably better than having sales people on your back all day like my job!!

[Rob2600]

Haha, wow, I thought I was the only person to get asked for "RESIDENTIAL Evil"!!

Though I bet you've never heard this one - once somebody asked me for a copy of

"Residential Elvis"

and a

"Memorial Card"

for Playstation.

Memorial card...that's funny! Customers would ask us for Residential Evil so often, that we would joke with them and say, "No, we're sold out, but we have the sequel Commercial Evil." Some of them actually took us seriously.

The name botching had gotten so bad in my store that my coworkers and I started making up new names for games before customers had a chance. For a while, we stuck with a beer theme:

40 Drinks
BarCraft
BarCraft: Brewed Wars
Beer Hunter
Rainbow Six-pack

[Press_Start]

Sounds like 95% of the calls I used to get on the phone from where I last worked. If that true, then why don't you yank the phone out and put up for sale!

[Daria]

You want another fun place to work? Try working in a music store

My husband was working for FYE when 50 Cent released his first big album. When customers asked "Hey man, you got 50 cents?" he'd respond "Hell no I'm not giving you any money!". He caught on eventually though. :Þ

[digitalpress]

Oh, trust me I could make a list a mile long (and perhaps someday I will - some of you have already filled in a lot of the blanks!) of people who butcher game titles, systems, accessories, etc. Truth is though, I don't really mind those calls. I figure they're just parents buying the latest thing for the kid or going simply on what they heard and not written down. It's always funny, but it's never irritating.

I don't mind the "tech support" type calls, either. I always try to be helpful, thinking maybe misguidedly that this will result in a happy future (or current, who can tell) customer. Only when I'm not getting through or it's busy in the store or I'm being asked more questions than seems "fair" do I get a little abrupt with the party on the other side of the line.

[otoko]

"hey, Joe is it?.. yes... Do you have any Laystation 2/3rds in stock?"

[TonyTheTiger]

Have you ever had a day of non-stop prank calls?

We used to literally have WEEKS at a time of non-stop prank calls at Funco.

Come to think of it, do kids even MAKE prank calls any more?

I remember while I was working at Blockbuster we had this same guy prank call us extensively. At one point he freaked out one of the girls working there because he started describing what she was doing while on the phone. The thing is, this guy used to like calling people "gay" a lot and so I started pretending that I was actually looking to date him. The calls stopped after that.

One prank call was awesome though. This guy called up late one night asking about Elvis movies, all the while doing a spot on Elvis impersonation. I was laughing pretty hard during that conversation.

But, yeah, we used to get almost every single one of those "annoying" calls. Me: "Blockbuster Video." Them: "Is this Blockbuster?" Me: "No, this is Shop Rite." Them: "Then why did you say Blockbuster Video?" Me: "..."


When I worked at Funco, to help alleviate the annoyance of prank or stupid phone calls, two people would pick up each of our two phones. While one answered the question, the other would quietly whisper words into the phone. Most common were 'cheeseburger' and 'large fry', though other foodstuffs were used. If it was a prank call, the person doing the talking would say 'man, I'm getting hungry' or something to that effect after a couple of whispers. It made the kids upset when they were having a joke played on them instead.

We used to do something similar but even to people who were making serious phone calls. One person would answer the phone and after the person asked the question a completely different person (preferably of the opposite gender) would answer it. Then when they would ask what was going on the first person would act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. We got quite a few laughs from that.



"Residential Elvis"

for Playstation.

Stop making me want to play games that don't exist!

[otaku]

I'm about to setup an answering machine to tell people we don't have any wii's I'm so sick of those phone calls

[dave2236]

You forgot Final Fantasy 7 phone calls. I swear 10 a day asking for FF7.

I also get "MY PS2 NO Work no more, whats wrong with it?"


I also get "You fix X-boxes?" yes., "I have the 3 red rings"... no we can't fix that you have to send it in. "why?" because Microsoft has a 3 year warranty "can't you open it and fix it?" I can open it and void the warranty and not fix it because I don't have the parts to fix it. Then EVERYONE asks how much will that cost?


I had the guy last week that was looking at nintendo games and asked me if I had Stadium Events and I said "yes" so I told him $2000 for the cart.(not believing me he called me a liar and I bet him $10 I have one on my desk in back) So I walked in back grabbed Stadium Events from the drawer in my desk and showed it to him. He asked if he could hold it and I said NO. He then left and didn't pay me my $10, but its ok next time he trades in stuff I'll take $10 off the total.

[dave2236]

I'm about to setup an answering machine to tell people we don't have any wii's I'm so sick of those phone calls

God at Christmas I answered the phone "Video Game Kingdom, we do not have wii's in stock how can I help you.

[Rob2600]

Oh, trust me I could make a list a mile long (and perhaps someday I will - some of you have already filled in a lot of the blanks!) of people who butcher game titles, systems, accessories, etc. Truth is though, I don't really mind those calls. I figure they're just parents buying the latest thing for the kid or going simply on what they heard and not written down. It's always funny, but it's never irritating.

Sometimes it was parents, but usually it was teenagers and adults who were buying the games for themselves. "Y'all got that Chiffon Filter and Metal Gear Subsidiary? My dogs told me they're supposed to be hella tight and whatnot."

[evil_genius]

Every time I go into GameStop I ask them if they have any Wii's just to fuck with them, followed by the question, what days do you usually get them in? Like I'm getting the inside scoop by asking a question noone else thought to ask.

[Gentlegamer]

Every time I go into GameStop I ask them if they have any Wii's just to fuck with them, followed by the question, what days do you usually get them in? Like I'm getting the inside scoop by asking a question noone else thought to ask.You sir are certainly an evil genius!

[TonyTheTiger]

Someone with a lot of free time should go into a Gamestop and ask if they have any Wiis. Then when the employee says no they should go sit in a lawn chair outside and say "I'll wait."

[murdoc rose]

I had more than one person ask me for a copy of "Jumping Jack Flash". I wasn't sure if they were looking for Jumping Flash or if they really liked Whoopi Goldberg's films from the 80s.

thats a petter framton, rolling stones, and guns and roses song

[Greg2600]

You V'gamers had it easy. I worked in a baseball card store for years, the clientele was much nuttier, and often scuzzier. Did you have to put up with annoying losers who would sit there for hours combing through the 1 cent box? These were 40 year old men. Did you have people calling asking for a specific card? A specific game, not that hard to find, a specific card? Ha ha! The prank calls were endless. Although one time my friends and I pranked some woman named Titsworth, how could we not? The phone calls got so annoying, by the time I had finally finished working there, I dreaded phones ringing. In fact, I get annoyed to this day at work when phones ring. I'm scarred for life.

[Rev. Link]

I worked at a video rental store for about a year. I got the same mangling of titles and such, but there were other worse things. One thing that really got under my skin was the people that couldn't understand the difference between widescreen and fullscreen. Most people actually thought that the black bars in widescreen were covering part of the picture up! I had people tell me, after I tried to explain it to them, "I don't care about that, I want to see the whole picture, I want fullscreen!" :rolleyes:

But the worst were the folks who didn't return movies. I had to call them every week and remind them they had movies out. So many of those calls were answered by a computer telling me the line was disconnected. The ones I actually got through to were usually pretty mean, yelling at me that they returned them. Of course, they were usually lying. We always checked the store over real good before making those calls.

[TonyTheTiger]

Most people actually thought that the black bars in widescreen were covering part of the picture up! I had people tell me, after I tried to explain it to them, "I don't care about that, I want to see the whole picture, I want fullscreen!"

Be careful with the generalizations. Sometimes (happens a lot with animation) that's actually the case. Don't mind me, though. Just an animation buff wanting to cause trouble.

[scooterb23]

OK, my story, not VG-related, but I feel your pain.

"Hey! Do you have the issue of X-Men where Wolverine beat up that one guy"

"Sir, I have about 5 long boxes of X-Men and Wolverine comics, you'll have to be more specific"

"You know, the big guy...the one Wolverine beat up"

"I'm sorry, there's just too many issues like that"

"Well, when are you open Saturday?"

And I gave him the hours.

Sure enough, Saturday, as I drove up. The guy is waiting for me, he comes in and spends the entire day...plus a half-hour (yeah, he kept me open about half an hour past my closing, but this was just too good...plus I think he read through about 100 comics trying to find the one) trying to find the specific issue he was wanting. He never got up, never said anything, nothing. Until he finally jumped up and screamed "THERE IT IS!!!!!" and he ran to the register, slapped the $2 cover price on the counter and ran out of the store, never to be seen again.

Turns out is was actually an issue of the Hulk he was looking for, not X-Men or Wolverine. He left happy, and I left with a great story...and $2 extra in the till.

[InsaneDavid]

Best botched game name story I have comes from my many years with Target Corporation. Back in 2000 when I was an Electronics Lead, a friend of mine from high school who I hired (not because of that, I ran into him during his orientation and pulled him to Camera/Sound) was closing in early December. An older couple came in with a list of games their grandson had scribbled out that he wanted for Christmas. After about twenty minutes of trying to figure out what the strange list of chicken scratches meant, it finally fell into place...

"Boot Crandydad"

ROFL

Still cracks me up to this day, of course he wanted Crash Bandicoot but the garbled name became such an inside joke among us that my friend that was working that night was instantly labeled "Boot" to this day.

[winniethepujols]

Welcome to retail! Working at a video game store made me hate video games for a few years.


Do you ever get tech support calls?

"How do I install the drivers for this video card I just bought at CompUSA?"

"My PlayStation won't read discs anymore, so I took it apart. Now, I have to put it back together. Which screws go where?"

"I accidentally dropped my Game Boy into a bucket of paint. What do I do?"


I'd also receive nonstop calls like:

"Y'all got Madden?"

"Y'all got Live?"

"Y'all got Residential Evil?"

"Y'all got Deuces in stock?" (I found out a "Deuce" was a PlayStation 2.)


I also dealt with adults who constantly botched the names of game consoles. I've been asked about the Dreamcaster, the Comcast, the Dreamweaver, the Dreammachine, the Dreamcatcher, the Play Boy, the GameBox, etc. I'm not kidding.

They'd also botch the names of games: PokerMan, Poke Man, Residential Evil, Residential Devil, Dino (pronounced "deeno") Crisis, Parasitic Eve, Chiffon Filter, Grand Auto Theft, Crash Bandicot, Dragon Balls, Grand Tourism, etc.


Sometimes I felt like a detective trying to piece together clues and solve a mystery.

"Hi. My son wants football for the GameBox. Do you have that?"

"There's no such thing as the GameBox. There's the GameCube and the Xbox. Which one does he have?"

"I don't know. I'm pretty sure he said the GameBox."

"Okay, let's figure this out. What are some of the other games he has for it? Super Mario? Halo? Metroid? Project Gotham Racing?"

"Um, he has an army game. Oh, and one of those Poke Man games."

"Ah, so he has a GameCube. Great! Now, which football game does he want?"

"The one where you get to play as different teams."


Perhaps the most annoying were the people who'd call up and ask:

"Hi. When does ____ come out?"

"Let me look that up for you. Okay, that will be out on March 5th."

"Really? I just called one of your other locations and the guy there told me it's coming out February 27th."

"That was the old release date. Yesterday, the game was delayed a week. The guy at the other store was must've been reading an outdated printout."

Ugh. Who calls two different stores in a row from the same chain to find out the release date of one game? People make fun of casual gamers, who could be pretty annoying, but the hard core gamers were the worst.

:above me:

OH MY GOD! I have never laughed that hard at a post before in my life. It was seriously like a minute of non-stop laughter. I was giggling like a little girl -- my roommate and his girlfriend must think I'm crazy.

[Soviet Conscript]

I remember while I was working at Blockbuster we had this same guy prank call us extensively. At one point he freaked out one of the girls working there because he started describing what she was doing while on the phone. The thing is, this guy used to like calling people "gay" a lot and so I started pretending that I was actually looking to date him. The calls stopped after that.


yhea, i used to work at a video rental place up untill 2 weeks ago when it got shut down. at one point we were getting alot of prank calls from some kids asking for porno's and then giveing us some fairly graphic titles. they sounded to be about 13 or so. they would call pretty much every day at one point.

we also had one customer that would ask if we sold our movie posters. at first we were nice and just gave him any we didn't use. then he started calling EVERY day and asking if we had any posters to give him as well as come in and ask. he even did this even after our manager told him to pretty much go to hell amd leave us alone. sometimes we would just hang up on him when we heard it was his voice. he would also call and ask us to tell him every movie in our previously used movies bin. i told him one day there were simply to many movies and i had to wait on customers in store. he promptly called me lazy and hung up on me.

we also had a ticketmaster. maybe once a year we would get somone asking
"you guys got a Ticket-Tron"

once i was in a fairly jovial mood when a guy came in and asked this, so i told him

"No, we overthrew Ticket-Tron in a bloody revolution some years ago, we now serve Ticket Master. Hes just as cruel but his service charge is slightly lower"

[Soviet Conscript]

I worked at a video rental store for about a year. I got the same mangling of titles and such, but there were other worse things. One thing that really got under my skin was the people that couldn't understand the difference between widescreen and fullscreen. Most people actually thought that the black bars in widescreen were covering part of the picture up! I had people tell me, after I tried to explain it to them, "I don't care about that, I want to see the whole picture, I want fullscreen!" :rolleyes:

But the worst were the folks who didn't return movies. I had to call them every week and remind them they had movies out. So many of those calls were answered by a computer telling me the line was disconnected. The ones I actually got through to were usually pretty mean, yelling at me that they returned them. Of course, they were usually lying. We always checked the store over real good before making those calls.

its a loseing battle man. i tried for a LONG time to convince people that they wern't loseing any picture in widescreen....its a loseing battle...

widescreen TV's just made it worse because then they thought they needed a special TV to watch widescreen.

we also lost a boatload of $$ on movies/games not getting returned. near the end when people starting finding out we were closeing we lost alot of games to that.

[Trade-N-Games]

I love calls at my store. the best ones are for very hard to find games or good ones that I have in stock and the phone call starts out with " I have called 20 stores now and your the last one, Do you have Mario kart for N64--Me, Yes I do and its $20-- customer, Thats a rip Gamecrazy sells it for $5." I guess after they called 10 Gamecrazy stores and all were out they still think they will get it for $5, I pay at least $10 for it every time.
Its like they go on a quest and then never buy what they are looking for and then start a new quest.

[The Shawn]

We have a hat store at the local mall in Bangor called "Lids" where a bunch of white dude wannabee black dudes work. I go in once in a while and say "Yo, man you got any Baseball hats? or all you sell is Lids?" Guess you'd have to be there to get the full extent of the humor...

[NinjaJoey23]

"Hi Joe, this is Joey. I was wondering if you had Generic Title 1 or 2?"

"Well, let me check... *rummaging about* Yes, we do."

"Great. What kind of shipping rates do you have to Atlanta?"

[MarioMania]

This has made my day... Good Thread Joe

[Rev. Link]

Here's a doozy from my days at the rental store.

A kid came in one day with his girlfriend. They both looked to be high school age, maybe just out. Anyway, they went to our meager game section and started looking at PS2 games. The girl picked up something Pac-Man related, Pac-Man World or Namco Museum or something like that, don't remember exactly. Anyway, she showed it to the guy and said, "Ooh, Pac-Man!"

This made me smile a bit inside, seeing somebody appreciate a classic like that. Then the guy said, "Put that down! The whole reason they made PS2 is so no one would ever have to play Pac-Man again!"

I died a little inside...

[rolenta]

My favorite from when I used to work retail was when someone would come up to me and ask "Do you know what I'm looking for?"

[MachineGex]

OK, my story, not VG-related, but I feel your pain.

"Hey! Do you have the issue of X-Men where Wolverine beat up that one guy"

"Sir, I have about 5 long boxes of X-Men and Wolverine comics, you'll have to be more specific"

"You know, the big guy...the one Wolverine beat up"

"I'm sorry, there's just too many issues like that"

"Well, when are you open Saturday?"

And I gave him the hours.

Sure enough, Saturday, as I drove up. The guy is waiting for me, he comes in and spends the entire day...plus a half-hour (yeah, he kept me open about half an hour past my closing, but this was just too good...plus I think he read through about 100 comics trying to find the one) trying to find the specific issue he was wanting. He never got up, never said anything, nothing. Until he finally jumped up and screamed "THERE IT IS!!!!!" and he ran to the register, slapped the $2 cover price on the counter and ran out of the store, never to be seen again.

Turns out is was actually an issue of the Hulk he was looking for, not X-Men or Wolverine. He left happy, and I left with a great story...and $2 extra in the till.

I hope to god you are not talking about Hulk issue 181. But if the cover price was $2, it coulda been issue 340 or 357. (nope, I just check all the issues and the cover is 25 cents to $1.25) Bet it was the re-print issue of Hulk and Wolverine(re-prints 180-181), that had a $2 cover. So glad I figured it out ;)

[boatofcar]

Here's a doozy from my days at the rental store.

A kid came in one day with his girlfriend. They both looked to be high school age, maybe just out. Anyway, they went to our meager game section and started looking at PS2 games. The girl picked up something Pac-Man related, Pac-Man World or Namco Museum or something like that, don't remember exactly. Anyway, she showed it to the guy and said, "Ooh, Pac-Man!"

This made me smile a bit inside, seeing somebody appreciate a classic like that. Then the guy said, "Put that down! The whole reason they made PS2 is so no one would ever have to play Pac-Man again!"

I died a little inside...

At least he wasn't one of those people that automatically like anything retro just because it's hip now. I appreciate his honesty :)