A response to How stupid they are (long post)

After reading this post and the responses with it I just had to say a few words. I have worked in the parts department here at the local CaseIH dealer for a little over 10 months now. When I started out there were a few instructional things from the other two parts guys but the general consensus was that you'll have to catch on to most of the stuff as you go and that is pretty much true. In our case we have three parts guys and that's it so there is no room for an apprenticeship deal where a guy gets to work in a less "up front" type of position until he gets things straight. Add to that the fact that these computer systems are so screwed up sometimes that even when you know better, your parts lookup says otherwise. Well, let me ask you this. If that happens and the puter is all you have then what do you do? In my case I get the phone and start bending the ear of my case rep. Now, in the case of these newbie parts guys they may not think of that. Their main priority at that point is to get the overly angry customer that is yelling at them away from the counter. So that is why they don't go much further.

I heard one person mention the "stupid customer" syndrome that I see an awful lot but no one went in too much on that. I've had a few people actually get mad at me when they come in and say I need such and such part for a massey ferguson tractor or a case disk, etc. They have no idea what model they have, have no part with them; just a picture in their mind. My first thought is to tell them to come back when they grow a brain but I don't. Instead I spend a good deal of time trying to read their mind and figure out what they are needing. I do all that, go out of my way to help them and then they still get mad at me for either not having the part in stock, taking so long to get it, or for getting the wrong part when I had to guess in the first place. That makes this job a little less than satisfying at times. Then I have the people who will come in with a parts book, point to a part, tell me to order it, and then get mad when the part's wrong because they pointed to the wrong part. Then there is the fact that our store carries some 42 different lines of parts and equipment. It is not too easy to know everything about every model within those 42 lines. Needless to say I could go on and on about this stuff. When a customer comes in he needs a single part for his one piece of equipment. He has probably had this piece of equipment for several years and has seen inside it umpteen number of times. He has probably handled that particular part a dozen or so times as well. He knows his machine. He then goes into the parts store with this mindset and expects the guys at the counter to automatically be in his shoes. I'm sorry but that just isn't going to happen and doesn't. You may have something that even a seasoned parts guy has never even touched in his life. I spent my young life growing up on Deere tractors and now work for CaseIH so it's been a growing experience even though I have worked around that stuff a lot.

So please, if you are going to one of these places bring your patience along with you, help the kid out if he doesn't understand. Don't treat this kid like he's stupid. Chances are he's already been treated that way at least half a dozen times already that day. All you do is make him feel belittled which only fosters two things: an "I don't care attitude" or a desire to quit and do a job where he's treated like a human being and not a punching bag. It doesn't lead this kid to want to do better and learn because no matter what he tries to learn, the next customer just brings in an oddball part that he hasn't seen. So the cycle goes on.

I get tired of being treated like I'm stupid. I graduated from college with a b.s. in meteorology but took this low paying job because I love farming, wanted to preserve my grandparents farm, and wanted to take care of my folks. I get treated like I'm stupid by friends and family as it is and don't need impatient and unconcerned customers giving me crap just because of some stupid part.

I apologize if I've set any fires with this post but this routine just gets old after a while. We're here to serve you and go out of our way a lot of times when we don't have to and we still get this. God bless.

--old fashioned farmer

What's really annoying is not so much the lack of knowlege, as we all started out uneducated, but the lack of any modicum of common sense or the willingness to make an effort to search if the first answer on the computer screen doesn't make sense. Its like some of the people behind the counter couldn't think their way out of a paper bag if the computer didn't tell them how.

I can get past someone who takes a little extra time to find what I need because they're not familiar with it, but people who either can't or won't make some effort and apply a little common sense drive me banannas.

Keith

The good guys are the ones who admit what they know, aren't afraid to research and hustle a bit to learn what they don't know, and generally go the extra mile for a customer. I'm not going to give a guy a hard time if he's working for me, but I won't be too happy if he's just plain lazy or uninterested in looking up something I need that he doesn't know about. As far as I'm concerned, the quality of the parts person doesn't depend on age very much... or what's between their legs either. It's about attitude, and I wouldn't be surprised if o.f.f went a long way as a parts man.

Rod

But with farm equipment, you usually get everything from the guy with his riding mower on up to folks with hundreds or thousands of acres he's tilling [or, these days, NO-tilling]; you've got dozens of models of dozens of implements and machines and attachments...and that's not even counting all the variations on the TRACTORS yet.

The days of the guy who could find your part for your Cub-A-B-C-H-M by asking if it was a mag or a distributor, or the tall or the short oil filter, are LONG gone. But the days of the customer who doesn't know what model his vehicle is, or what engine it has ["it's the BIG one"...how many times have you heard THAT reply?], or who calls his 1996 F-150 a 1976, and then wonders why the dumba$$ parts man can't figure out what he MEANT instead of what he said...THOSE days, sad to say, will probably always be with us.

And I could talk all day about the TOXIC customer, the one guy you'll never please no matter what you do, and the one guy you can't get rid of because nobody else within 50 miles will deal with him, and who badmouths your business to everyone who'll listen...but I'll save that for another day, when the soapbox isn't so busy.

Blame corporate GREED that has put decent operations out of business, and replaced them with, as another poster said, McParts places, with a high turnover of underpaid kids, with little chance for advancement.

There's not much incentive for a bright kid to want to work there, or as the other poster said, to study parts books "on their own time".

Everyone should spend some time working in a parts department it may enlighten them.

And as a veteran behind the parts counter (enemy lines)I have the same problems as everyone else when I have to go somewhere other than where I work to buy stuff. I also realize that it's the management that is the source of this problem as they don't want to hire enough help and pay enough to keep the good ones.

Even bad boys are just as good as they can be

Irv