I wish it was a prank call..

but somehow I think this lady was serious.

had a phone call tonight at the ol' parts haus that just blew my mind.

Me - "Thanks for calling Generic Auto Parts, Larry speaking."

Female customer - " Hi, my husband said my car needs oil."

Me - " Ok"

Female - " Uh, do I need special oil or can I just put in like cooking oil or something"

Me - "Uh... "

Female - " Also, he said I need to change the air in my tires."

Me - " You need to change your tires?"

Female - "No, the air, something about switching from Summer air to winter air?"

Me - " Ma'am.. uh, I think he's joking with you"

Female - " About which part, the oil or the air in the tires?"

Me - "Um, you should probably ask him, Have a nice day."

When I worked for Broadband Provider X I had repeated calls about people thinking the little red light on the front of the cable box meant we were watching them. One person thought we assassinated her sister. Another thought we bought all the carrot juice in the store because we knew she liked it. Another bought a porn DVD and thought the girls were doing what he told them to. This concerned him that they would have to do this and he wanted to know where they were so he could help them.

That last guy sounds like a stand up porn enthusiast.

I do't know of many people who stand up while watching porn

when I worked at the bike shop, we constantly had people who wanted to see the bikes made of carpet fibers

I've heard this same stuff as well. Usually women calling asking for ridiculous items such as blinker fluid, muffler bearings, etc. Pretty obvious that their significant other was screwing with them. It's hard not to laugh when I get those kind of calls, but I usually expose the fraudulent requests the nicest way possible. The calls usually end with "Imma kill that SOB" lol

My wife, when she was 16, seized the engine in her car. The mechanic asked her if she changed her oil, to which she replied "is that something the nice man does when he puts in the gas?" (They still had a full service station in their small town). LOL. She hasn't made that mistake again.

Ignorance is curable. Don't mock the people without a clue, give them a clue and a smile.

If nothing else, you'll get more business form them.

rebelgtp wrote: When I worked for Broadband Provider X I had repeated calls about people thinking the little red light on the front of the cable box meant we were watching them. One person thought we assassinated her sister. Another thought we bought all the carrot juice in the store because we knew she liked it. Another bought a porn DVD and thought the girls were doing what he told them to. This concerned him that they would have to do this and he wanted to know where they were so he could help them.

Oh yeah some people get paranoid about communications technology, there's even a name for it (can't remember it). Bin Laden had it, funny enough that's what gave away his location.

I've done the air thing to someone before. She was complaining how the TPMS thing in her A3 kept flashing. She said she checked the pressures and they were fine. I proceeded to ask her if she'd changed the air in her tires. My "reasoning" was that she'd bought the car in March, and the Audi dealer likely had winter air still in all the cars on the lot. With the warmer temps, the winter air wouldn't expand as much and would cause the tires to become low, and trigger the sensor. She was thankful for the information, and per her total care package at Audi, she was just going to take it there and have it changed. Her boyfriend (who is a friend of mine) was sitting right there, along with 4-5 other car friends, while i'm spinning this yarn. No one could keep a straight face. I often wonder if she ever did take it to Audi- because i'm pretty sure I made some service advisors day with that one.

I would have gone along with the old lady's requests and asked if she wants to get some winterized headlight fluid as well

And I would have told porno guy "Yeah they're doing everything you want! Get into it! WOOO!"

The worst husband/wife calls have to be the relay calls. Apparently the husband has the wife call for parts she has no idea about, so the whole conversation is them yelling at each other.

Wife: I need a bumper for a Dodge

Me: What kind of dodge?

Wife: (yelling, with her hand over the phone) WHAT KIND OF DODGE IS IT?

Drunk redneck in the background: IT'S A TRUCK!

Wife: It's a truck.

Me: What year?

Wife: (yelling, with her hand over the phone) WHAT YEAR IS IT?

Drunk redneck in the background: 1996!

Wife: 1996

Me: Full size or Dakota?

etc., etc., etc.

WHY CAN'T THE berkeleyING IDIOT THAT KNOWS WHAT HE'S LOOKING FOR JUST GET ON THE PHONE!!!!!

In reply to 16vCorey:

This x elevnty! That crap gets old quick.

Also, I know us parts guys deal with a lot of morons, but my brother is a police dispatcher. Our calls are petty compared to the ones he has to deal with. I dont know how he keeps his sanity over there.

I like it when I work A/V over at Harrahs..... phone rings "It's too loud in pit 4" And we reply with "give us a minute"

All we do is wait for the song to change.. Some are recorded a bit "hot". Inevitably we call back "thank you"

16vCorey wrote: WHY CAN'T THE berkeleyING IDIOT THAT KNOWS WHAT HE'S LOOKING FOR JUST GET ON THE PHONE!!!!!

The idiot that knows what he's doing?

Some questions and answers are one and the same...

In reply to rebelgtp:

I used to get people who really thought people were trying to hack them and constantly monitored their firewall for IP addresses they didn't know (how they "knew" every IP address that connected to their computer I'll never know.)

People losing their passwords to porn sites and calling us to recover it.

People calling when the power was out complaining that they couldn't dial in and getting mad at me after I told them the power was out in the area. Then trying to reason they should be able to dial in because the phone still worked.

Then there was the guy that I told would catch a case of airborne lead poisoning if he was outside my office.

The0retical wrote: Then there was the guy that I told would catch a case of airborne lead poisoning if he was outside my office.

Took me a second there... lol.

The0retical wrote: In reply to rebelgtp: I used to get people who really thought people were trying to hack them and constantly monitored their firewall for IP addresses they didn't know (how they "knew" every IP address that connected to their computer I'll never know.) People losing their passwords to porn sites and calling us to recover it. People calling when the power was out complaining that they couldn't dial in and getting mad at me after I told them the power was out in the area. Then trying to reason they should be able to dial in because the phone still worked. Then there was the guy that I told would catch a case of airborne lead poisoning if he was outside my office.

Actually you'd be surprised how many sweeps and stuff you'll pick up if you have a real firewall that can log that sort of thing. Just part of being on the internet really, and the reason why you have a firewall.

I just wish the ISP's would actually filter packets that are not routable and packets with originating addresses that don't match where they actually originated from (i.e. spoofed addresses/packets). That would cut down on a lot of nonsense, increase available bandwidth and make it more secure.

Instead they want to watch for the amount of bandwidth you use and punish you for going over a certain limit and then throttling you. Requiring a 30-minute router/modem reset to get back to the bandwidth you're paying them for.

In reply to e_pie:

Sorry wasn't real specific there. I meant that they know which are ads being routed from a foreign server, which IPs are traffic from the route you took to the site you're now browsing, which are from the IM client, and which are from the E36 M3head bored IT guy on the other end of the phone who wrote down your MAC address the last time you called then looked up the IP and is now using ping -t to induce a freakout where you call the FBI.

I keep calling bobzilla asking if he ships to canada.......

When I was working the register decades ago, a lady asked me if we accepted cash from New Mexico. We were in Texas.

To be honest, when she asked about the cooking oil, I about lost it. I very easily could have gone along with it, but I couldn't do it.

I bet he got an earful from her after she got off the phone though.

yamaha wrote: I keep calling bobzilla asking if he ships to canada.......

OOH OOH OOH, I want to prank bobzilla and ask if he ships to Canada too You should give us all his number and we can rotate on the hour