If You Were An Educator You Would Understand aka Another Dumbass Customer Story

So I am at work today and not feeling horribly happy about it. I had gone to bed at 3:30am and woken up about five hours later; to top it off, I was a tad hung over from the previous day's fun. I hate mornings, they are bright, fresh, and full of hope. Thus, people are chipper and happy to be alive...except for me because I am awake and the sun has yet to reach its zenith. Blasted sun. Enough bitching and on with the story.

I am working and I get a phone call. On the other end of the line is a lady who sounds to be in her early to mid-thirties and she has a conundrum. She informs me that she wants a camera that we have in stock and wants to know how many I have. I tell her that we have three of that model in stock and I hear a groan surge across the line. She then tells me that she is a teacher and this camera was to be for her classroom, hence, the school would actually be the ones buying the camera and not herself. I say okay, wondering why I should be giving a damn about any of this when she then asks me if we take purchase orders as a form of payment. I tell her no. She then tells me that my employer isn't really even supporting the school system because basically, we won't cave to her needs and demands. I then tell her that usually when schools do business with us they do so by giving us checks. She then tells me that is going to talk to her administrator and wants to know if I can hold one of the cameras for her. I reply that it was the stores policy to not hold items for customers because of weird goings on in the past. She then lets out another grumble and tries to cut herself out of the conversation. We exchange the normal formalities and I hang up, happy to be rid of the annoying customer.

Five minutes later. I am looking like I am working when my phone rings...again. Same middle-aged teacher on the other end, only she does not recognize my voice. She is trying to sounds sweet and asking if we had a camera in stock that she would like to buy. I play along for a few seconds and tell her that, yes, we do indeed have her camera. Guess what the next thing to come out of her pie hole is? Could I please hold the camera for her until she comes to buy it. You know when you were little and when you wanted something and your parents told you no but you kept begging and going on about it? What did your parents tell you after asking for a second or third or fourth time? "No." At least mine did usually and the constant hounding usually pissed them off and rightly so. Well, when customers do that to me I get ticked. I get really ticked when they try to call back and talk to someone else to see if they will get a different answer than the one that I gave them. Grr.

Anywho, that was about the time that I stopped playing along and told her that we would not hold her precious camera for her and that she had just finished asking me the same question not five minutes earlier. There was a brief flitter of silence on the other end as she was clearly trying to figre out what to say next, knowing that she had been outsmarted and caught in her little game. My guess is that the lady was an elementary educator. A K-6er. People that can spend eight hours each day with thirty or so eight year olds are a different breed from the secondary ed teachers. You can pick a primary ed person out of a crowd instantly. That and usually they are not as good at spotting game playing and deceit as secondary ed people are. So there is still an uneasy silence on the line when she then tells me that there must be some way for me to hold that camera for her. I tell her again, no. I then tell her that about the only shot she has would be if we held it overnight and that she came on got it in the morning. Every once in a while management will do this. The customer then tells me that she was hopign that we would hold it for her for two weeks. TWO WEEKS! I then tell her that they barely like doing the overnight holds that they would never go for a two week long hold. She then proceeds to tell me that my building is full of human beings and surely there must be a way that someone can walk over to the cameras, grab one, and then stash it in a desk for her until she comes to get it. I then tell her that there is a snowball's chance in hell of that happening and then she starts going off about how long it takes to get checks written from administrators of schools. Then she says the gem of the day to me, "If YOU were an educator YOU would understand." Hahaha! As soon as she says this I let her know that I actually have a secondary education teaching certificate in history. Another long silence...very long.

This time she breaks the silence with a grunt and asks me if I could transfer her to someone that might have the authority to bend the rules a little more than I was willing to do for her. I then tell her that I can't transfer from my phone and that she would have to hang up and then call back and ask for administration. She made another disgruntled sound and then told me goodbye. I love customers.