Soapbox Soliloquies

Step back…Life’s funny!

Hutu GPS July 3, 2008

Filed under: Rants, what on earth? — barefootelegance @ 11:07 pm
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Overheard in the back kitchen at a pizza joint:

“Dude, I’m pretty sure that throwing a cell phone into a 500-degree pizza oven voids the warranty!”

I’m pretty sure that guy’d be right. Someone should tell that to the customer who came in just the other day.

The man had purchased a GPS unit from our store a little while back. He didn’t have the receipt, but he’d purchased an extended store warranty that covered the product for a year. The deal was that we would replace the item if it were to break within that year, or, if we no longer carried the item, a similar item would be substituted.

The man complained of problems with unit; namely, it had “randomly” changed the interface language to some unknown language which he couldn’t read. He wanted a new unit so he could start fresh. The associate looked at it to see whether she could figure out how to change it back to English-quite a task, since she couldn’t read a word of the menus. She showed it to another associate, who also couldn’t read it. I checked to see whether I could recognise the language, and at first glance it looked like Portugese, having both cedillas on some c’s and ~ (these things whatever they’re called) above vowels. But it wasn’t Portugese, since it didn’t bear enough resemblance to Spanish. During this whole process, my coworker who had originally tried to fix the device was talking to the man, who insisted that he get a new GPS unit on the grounds that this one was “broken”. My coworker explained that his changing the language to one he didn’t speak was not covered by the warranty.

Eventually, a couple of associates and rather a bit of a headache later, the device was back in English from what it had been before (which one associate thought might have been slang French-huh?) and the customer left with it, not quite satisfied.

Lesson learned: never put your GPS device into Hutu…the warranty doesn’t cover that.

 

Fire Alarms and Soda July 3, 2008

Filed under: Rants — barefootelegance @ 4:06 pm
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So today I was at work, and a man came in, asking to see the manager. I called a manager up, and he explained to us that he was here to repair the fire sprinkler system, which had broken by accident during inspection this morning. He went to the back and fixed it. But here’s the kicker:

No one warned us that the fire alarm would go off while the system repressurised.

Therefore, we were totally unprepared when it did go off, continuously, for what felt like an hour, but was probably 10-15 minutes.

Several customers asked me whether the alarm was for real, to which we replied that it was being tested, which it was, to make sure the system was back up. After a few minutes, one manager announced that it was only a test over the PA system.

All this led me to a conclusion:

I don’t like it when fire alarms go off continuously. It hurts one’s head and threatens one’s hearing.

All this happened after a customer managed to explode a soda can by accident…right in front of the service desk.

My theory is: put that guy on the ceiling. If he smells smoke, let him explode more soda.

Problem solved.

I can help the next customer right here.