Topic: "I'd like Super Mario for the Xbox, please." o_0

[JonLeung]

"I'd like Super Mario for the Xbox, please."

Yeah, I stole the link from GoNintendo.  (EDIT: shoot, I didn't see that there was a Funhouse topic about this!  Sorry!  >_<')

I can understand that we probably get a big laugh from such a given (to us gamers) that Mario would not be on a non-Nintendo system (excluding, of course, Hotel Mario for the CD-i, but non-gamers wouldn't remember that anyway) and that some people can be extremely dumb, but man, this woman looking for a Mario game and downright refusing to even look at the Nintendo section is really stupid.

I don't need to recount my bad experience with Blockbuster Video not stocking Mario Superstar Baseball ("How can you NOT have a Mario game for a Nintendo console???") so maybe Mario's not the name he once was (shame, shame, shame) but even so, many non-gamers, especially anyone old enough to be a mother to three or four children, including an eleven-year-old, should still know of Mario and even if they somehow don't, I don't see any reason to go all anti-Nintendo when looking for one of his games. My guess is that she probably thought "Nintendo" and "Game Boy/handheld" were synonymous, or that she confused Xbox and GameCube, or that her son played a Mario game emulated on a friend's modded Xbox and thought it was buyable, but still...sheesh, calm down, lady. When everyone's telling you you're wrong, you probably are!

I don't know how scary this woman really was, but if I was that guy, I might have grabbed some of the Mario GameCube games while she was browsing the Xbox 360 section to present to her what she might have wanted. Of course, someone that irrational or anti-Nintendo might not be able to comprehend such things.    

[Ian Sane]

I remember way way back in 2000 my brother's friend was absolutely certain that Perfect Dark was going to be ported to the Playstation.  That was very annoying.

I have never worked in retail but if I ever did I figure I wouldn't last long.  I have a natural urge to respond sarcastically to examples of extreme stupidity so the second I encountered a really dumb customer who fails to grasp how reality works I would likely piss that person off enough to get fired.

[JonLeung]

Ian, the Perfect Dark one is pretty stupid, but I think that's more forgiveable than the woman who didn't understand that Mario was a Nintendo franchise.

Not to defend your friend's stupidity (since he was clearly wrong) but in retrospect we can see that Rare wasn't going to stick with Nintendo forever, plus, Perfect Dark was a new franchise (heavily based in the GoldenEye engine doesn't really count), and shooters seemed more fit for the demographic that PlayStation owners supposedly are rather than the N64 (ignoring GoldenEye here I'm not sure about, though).

On the other hand, a woman who has three or four children, including one that's supposedly 11 years old, must certainly be old enough to have lived through the 1980s and 1990s, in which time Nintendo was synonymous with video gaming and Super Mario, being the chief Nintendo mascot for all that time (and still is), was and is synonymous with Nintendo.  With all the Mario spin-offs, it should still be hard to ignore or be mistaken about, when Mario's bright red and blue are lavishly visible all over the Nintendo sections.

Then she could've lived under a rock all that time, but hopefully she simply misheard her son (though why she didn't call him to reconfirm since she had a cell phone, I'm not sure, and the person who wrote that noted that as well) and that the son does know where Mario belongs, otherwise we already could have a generation of people who don't understand where Super Mario's home is.  Her refusal to even look at the section where the employee, manager, and employees at another store were all telling her repeatedly to check out is the kicker - there's "not-knowing-the-obvious-facts" stupid, and then there's "not-listening-to-what-everybody-is-telling-you" stupid, and she's both.

While working at Playdium a few years back, I encounted many-a-stupid person, at every position I worked at there, but I was mostly a front admissions cashier and then a supervisor, both of which had to deal with many not-too-bright people.  I expect that not everyone "gets it", which is fine, but I get peeved when someone who "doesn't get it" doesn't even try to.  Maybe the "listening" part of their brain breaks down under the slightest bit of frustration, or the other explanation, which is quite sad, is that some people are willingly choosing to be ignorant.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I already responded to this thread in the Funhouse, but I've worked retail at some point in my life and honestly I've run into a customer or two that just didn't have a clue(non of them were as bad as that lady), so I feel the guys pain.

But in response to Ian, I found that a little empathetic but witty sarcasm has gone a long way in getting a customer to not only listen to me but not verbally attack me either. It really all just depends on your experience with dealing with people. If you play that sarcasm correctly, you can sometimes poke fun at someone and basically call them stupid but at the same time they will feel you are on their side and understand where they are coming from.

[KDR_11k]

There's already a thread about it in the Funhouse.

[Ghisy]

Wow, people are dumb! o_O

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Bodes well for the growing, younger Xbox crowd.