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?"

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...
...

"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."

[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