Today, I was teaching a customer how to operate the photo kiosk, and she apologized for being so stupid, and posited that it must drive me nuts dealing with stupid people, like her, all day long. Firstly, if helping my customers drove me to insanity, I would have had to choose between a career change and the madhouse long ago. Secondly, only a small portion of my day is actually spent assisting customers to place their orders. Producing the orders, order pickups, shipping and receiving vendor orders, cleaning, maintenance, and other tasks all take time too. Even if my job was primary manning the service counter, only a small portion of my customers need help in placing an order, so the annoyance factor is often negligible. Finally, I did not find her to be nearly as dunderheaded as she considered herself. Her questions were reasonable for someone using certain features of the equipment for the first time. Not everything the programmers included in the newest kiosk update is intuitive for everybody.
I get someone like her, making some comment like that nearly once a week. In some cases there is a certain amount of stuidity... or at least carelessness or inattention involved that required my intervention, but as often as not my customers confuse ignorance with stupidity.
Ignorance, unless willful, is a far sight different from stupidity, which would indicate to me an inability or unwillingness to either understand or retain a significant portion of information provided. Not knowing something is not an indicator that someone is stupid. Being unable or unwilling to learn something, might.
If you come in and have new questions for me every time you visit, I am unlikely to think you witless. If you come in often and ask the very same questions each and every time, you will be treated kindly and well served, but in the silence of my heart I may judge you to be simple.
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