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Best use of a cell phone I've seen this year.

2009-12-16 12:23:01

So I'm in line at the customer service desk of my local grocery store. Four

people ahead of me in line, and one person working the desk. And it seems that

this woman has to answer 6 phone calls for every customer in person that she

serves in person. After 8 phone calls (and her dealing with a little old lady

who wants to return half a banana! WTF?!) the guy in front of me pulls out his

cell phone and starts fiddling with it.

Then he makes a call and the customer service desk phone rings (again). She

stops what she's doing and picks up the phone:

Her: Metro, Customer service.

Him: From a customer service point of view, doesn't it make sense to serve the

people who have actually made the damned effort to come into the f*ing store.

Then he waves at her and hangs up.

She ignores the phone ringing after that.

It makes me want to get a cell phone just so I can do this.

Story:

I was at the airport in line attempting to get tickets for a flight out of

town. I had just ended a business trip early with two of my co-workers and felt

like making it home ASAP. So the line was like 30 people deep and we know we

are in trouble. My buddy pulled out his laptop in an attempt to purchase the

tickets online so we can skip to the machine and get them pritned. I grab my

cell phone and call the airport for the same thing. I get us 3 tickets outta

there. Right after I hung up the attendant told the line that the last tickets

on such n such flight have been sold. We walk up to the front to claim our

tickets. Needless to say we got some dirty looks. Hey it pays to be one step

ahead!

I love it. I did a similar thing at a hotel. She gave me a 245 rate at 2am for

one night! I asked her to give me a better deal since most likely she would not

sell the room anyway. "No sir. There are no better rates available". I went

online and got the room for 125 . Her look was priceless. Thank you, internet.

I grew up in Bermuda, and shortly after college continued my summer job of

working as a tour boat captain (a delightful life). One drunken night my cell

phone broke and I desperately needed a phone for work. So the next day i went

into town and said that I wanted the cheapest phone possible - it should make

and receive calls. So she brought me a phone and gave me the bill - $5... I

asked why so cheap - they apparently had 40 of these things in the back, they

were ancient shitty samsungs flip-phones from 6 years ago, and absolutely

no-one wanted them. So after confirming that I could get roughly 40 new phones

at $5 a pop, and seeing on her face that she understood where this was going, I

told her that I would be back very shortly. The next few months resulted in

some hilarious situations... My phone was now, in my eyes, disposable. I would

finish a phone call amidst a group of people and then snap my phone in half and

throw it over my shoulder. Walk up to a girl, give her my phone and say, "don't

worry, I'll call you..." before walking away. The absolute best was receiving a

call out at sea, while giving snorkeling safety instructions to about 50

tourists on the deck of the boat, screaming into the phone, "NEVER EVER CALL ME

AT WORK EVER AGAIN!" and then heaving the phone as far as i could into the

ocean before calmly returning to my safety discussion.