Plastic?

I had a customer call the store today.
Stating that over Labor Day Weekend they had bought a tank because it was on sale, but also a Canister Filter.
But the customer had an issue.
In that the canister filter they'd purchased...wasn't working. 

So after asking what Brand they'd purchased, I wandered over to that aisle just to see if I could figure out what was going on by looking at the box and listening to the customer describe the issue.

The issue being that the water wasn't flowing through the hoses properly. There was no siphoning effect, in their words, like bubbles were coming out of the outtake...but nothing really was working with the intake.

So I listed off a bunch of potential reasons.
To which the customer denied or confirmed that they had or hadn't done things.
And they even stated that they'd had a family member, who used to work for a different pet store come over to try and get it to work and they couldn't get it to work.

So finally it was suggested that the customer bring in the canister filter and we would look at it in the store and see if we could get it to work, and if we couldn't we would exchange the filter out and give the customer a new canister filter instead. 

Well...to my knowledge the customer didn't ever end up coming in.

Because they called again a little bit later with a question.

You see. Canister filters come with multiple components in them to give you more stages of filtration for your water.
There's various types of pads you can use, and a few different substrates like loose carbon and biomax and ammonia stuff that you can use. Though usually the substrate is packaged in plastic to keep it from spilling all over before it's used.

In any case.
The customer called again and prefaced the conversation by saying that "No where in the directions does it tell me to do this, but I don't see how it will actually filter if I don't"

Before asking me if they needed to remove the plastic that the substrate was in.

*exhales*
The answer to that is a Big. YES. 

But apparently, because it wasn't explicitly stated in the directions of how to set up the tank...the customer just assumed you would place the plastic baggy filled with the substrate in the appropriate spot and it would work fine. 
*shakes head*
I'm not sure where the common sense went there.....

Because like...the substrate can't do the filtering if it's sealed up in plastic.

And like....there are very few things...honestly I can't think of any instances...where if a thing comes wrapped in plastic...you don't take the plastic off.... 

In any case.
I'm assuming that once the customer got the plastic off his differing substrates---after he had me open up a canister filter in the store to confirm that the plastic wrapped things within definitely needed to be removed (which they did)---but I'm assuming they got the canister to start working properly because there was no plastic blocking the flow of water anymore.

*fingers crossed* That that's the case. 

But still....
It's still odd that they got so upset over the fact that it wasn't explicitly stated in the directions to remove the plastic packaging. *shakes head* 

-Sarnic Dirchi