Give Me The Training

Had quite the customer come into work today.
Which it's rather annoying to have to deal with a difficult customer first thing at the start of your shift.
It makes the whole day...that much harder.

Today we had a couple come into the store who were interested in buying a training class.
But not for them. 
No the woman stated it was gonna be a gift. 
For like a wedding?

Where the happy couple was gonna be getting a puppy sometime soon.
And the customer wanted to buy a training class to give to the couple so that they could train their puppy once they get it.

However.

There is a slight problem with this plan.
You can't just buy a nebulous training class and say "Oh sometime in the future I will come get dog training from you."
No.
You have to pick a specific date that you're starting the class. 
Because the dog trainer only does specific types of classes during specific days.
It's not like you can say "Hey I bought a class six months ago and want to start next week on tuesday!"
Nope. There's set days to start specific classes. And specific classes only begin a few times a month.
(As you meet up once a week on a specific day at a specific time for an hour for six weeks to learn training from the dog trainer) 
And having the students put down what day they're starting their 6 week training course helps the dog trainer knows exactly how many students they'll be training in the class and can prepare accordingly.

The customer didn't seem to understand that though.
They didn't get why we couldn't just sell them a training class.

And I'm pretty sure they were purposely trying to misunderstand the situation.
Because i'm pretty sure we were rather clear on the situation. That they needed to have a specific date in mind to sign up for. 

Because the customer later admitted that they had worked for the company in our ops department like 4 years ago.
So they should have known that we have to have specific dates.
Then again, if you don't work IN the store it's highly doubtful that they knew that you had to have specific dates.
And if they did....they forgot that little tidbit.

No the only thing the customer could focus on was "Training used to be big with you guys."
Which yes. For a while the main focus in the store has been to sign people up for dog training classes.

However.
The customer forgot one little itsy bitsy tiny detail.

We're. In. The. Middle. Of. A. Pan. Dem. Ic. 

Which means our usual method of doing things has changed.
With that is dog training itself.

It used to be that anyone working in the store could sign up a customer for classes.

But.
Because we have to social distance for the safety of customers.
That means we can't have as many students in a class as we used to.
Which means classes fill up far faster than before.

So it's switched to the Dog Trainer being the ONLY one allowed to sign people up for classes.
As they have record of who and where and how many people are in each class.
And therefore know when they have room and don't.

So we've resorted to giving customers slips of paper if the dog trainer isn't in to fill out so our trainer can contact them later about signing up for a class.

This information was also told to the customer.
But they didn't seem to want to understand that.

And they were getting rather belligerent.
Which is even more irritating because like, lady, you worked for the company. Don't get all pissy at us for following policy.
But they were like "Do you have a manager on duty?"
Because dealing with me and another coworker wasn't doing it for them apparently.
And like lady...if you worked for us...you know that we have a manager on duty. We can't run the store without a manager present. A manager is ALWAYS present here.

Luckily.
Our Dog Trainer had come into the store in the meantime.
So we were able to just pass the crazy customer over to them.
And have them work it out.

To where the customer could purchase their class, but like also have clarification that they were being signed up to start this class on a specific day. And if they needed to reschedule then they would need to have the recipient of the training package call and reschedule. 

*exhales*
Yah. Definintely didn't like the customer.
Especially their willful misunderstanding and ignorance that policies can change over time and that things had to shift during a pandemic. 

*shakes head*

Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi