Customer service. We’ve all heard the phrase “the customer is always right.” If you’ve worked in customer service, you may be apt to disagree. If you’ve ever tried your best to get even an inkling of good customer service from a disinterested teen or someone with a chip on their shoulder, you may take the opposing position. Either way, we’re all human and prone to mistakes—but honestly, even that old maxim can’t excuse these absolutely outrageous customer service fails. Even if you’ve already been involved in a customer service horror story of your own, these tales, told from the point of view of the customer, the clerk, and the server will leave you absolutely stunned.
1. Nothing Gets Between Him and His Calvins
A customer took a dump in one оf my fitting rooms and then wiped hіs butt with a $125 Polo Ralph Lauren shirt. Nothing more needs to be said.
2. Have Fun Eating That
When I worked at Sam's Club, during the madness one Saturday morning, we caught a woman stuffing the inside of her pants with frozen lobster tail. She would unpackage them and throw the trash in a stack of tires that were on display.
3. In the Dumps
I was a manager at GameStop. On a busy day, a kid pooped on our floor because his mom didn't want to leave and have to stand in line again.
4. Early Dismissals Come in Twos
I was fired a week before Black Friday because I told a very elderly lady she shouldn't come in that day for her own safety. She said she was afraid of getting hurt, and I agreed and let her know that we would have other great sales during the rest of the holidays. Little did I know, my HR rep was listening in around the corner. She said that I wasn't driving sales and she'd have to report the situation to the manager.
I got the ax a week later.
5. Wild Child
When I worked at Walt Disney World in the early 1990s, my roommate worked at the Contemporary. They had a family request a specific room layout, and the only one left was on the concierge floor, normally reserved for business guests and off-limits to kids. Concierge has a special lounge area with couches and chairs.
The dad was sitting in the lounge reading a paper, and his daughter was jumping around the room, couch to chair to couch. The girl at the concierge desk went over and asked him to please ask his daughter not to jump on the furniture, because she might fall and get hurt.
He flips out on her, yelling, "Who do you think you are, telling me how to raise my kid!" As he's screaming at the concierge, the little girl misses a couch, falls, and lands on the $18,000 cut-glass The Little Mermaid coffee table, breaking it. The guy grabs the crying child by the arm, says, "I TOLD you not to jump around like that!" and walks away.
6. Taking the Initiative to Be a Jerk
I left a negative review on a website after buying a product and had an employee angrily call me in the morning to let me know how upset he was about a bad review. It was very uncomfortable.
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7. When One Door Closes…
I went to ask a public bus driver a quick question because I was lost. He told me the bus was out of service and slammed the doors on me.
8. Justice Served
I was a dishwasher at a local, family-owned restaurant throughout high school. Part of my job was to occasionally go out to our patio area and take in the bus bucket of dishes that was out there. One night, as I was getting the bucket, I saw a lady eating a salad. She was almost done, and I was about to leave until I saw her look around, reach to the ground, pick up a live bug, and place it in her salad.
At this point, I stop what I'm doing and watch her call over a waitress, point to the bug, and demand her meal for free. I promptly went inside and informed my manager, who was about to comp her the meal. The manager then goes outside, tells the lady that an employee saw what she did. The woman firmly denied it, but was blushing and stammering the entire time. She ended up not getting her meal comped and even left a huge tip.
9. Watch Your Own Kids
Basically, I was working the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college at a science museum in South Florida. That day I was an operator for the Mars Rover ride. It's morning and we have a few families and couple of summer camps running around ages 7-12, and so I was pretty busy stopping the ride to tell the kids to sit down and stop hitting each other—the ride had a monitor so I could see inside.
It starts to quiet down as one of the camps goes to lunch so there are not so many people, but since I'm running the only ride in the museum and kids are still flocking to me constantly. So I'm running the ride and this family of six (mom, dad, aunt or something, teenager, older kid and little kid) come up and wait in line. The little kid is going crazy running around.
NONE of the adults do anything to stop him, and I don't cause I'm busy watching the monitor since the little monsters on board have already gotten up and switched seats mid-ride twice. I was on the in ride intercom telling them to sit down when I hear a howl-scream from the line area. The little kid had run into the metal chain (at neck level) that we kept separating the loading area and the line area, and had fallen backward.
The mom marches up to me and starts screaming about how I wasn't paying attention and I let her kid get hurt. I stand there like a dummy ‘cause I can't believe she’s actually mad at me. She makes me get my supervisor to get me fired. I'm right there and she’s telling the supervisor what an incompetent worker I am and that I have no business working around children.
My supervisor, who is awesome, says very calmly, "Miss, this is a museum, not a babysitting service. You need to keep watch of your children, not the ride operator." The lady and her family of goons storms out. She called the city for poor safety but the city only told us we had to change the chain separator to plastic or rubber. The maintenance guy did it the next day.
He looked at me and said, "You know things are going downhill when you have to idiot proof a museum." Did I mention it was my third day on the job?
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10. Pedal to the Petty Theft
Back in my poor college days when I worked at Walmart, we had a fight break out over a bike. Fists were thrown and there was some blood. Eventually, one guy got ahold of it and managed to get away from the crowd, and he rode the bike out of the store to flee his pursuers (without paying).
11. Let It Go, Get Ahead
Last year on Black Friday a woman who pooped herself in Best Buy and still waited to check out. Needless to say, they let her cut the line.
12. Top Pocket
I worked in the gaming department of an amusement park. I was working a game near our water park and a very large woman paid me with money she fished out of the top of her bathing suit.
13. A Dry-Run on Savings
Worked security at Target for 5+ years. For being a store in the rougher part of town, I don't have too many horror stories. The funniest one I like to tell is a couple years ago, I was there early doing crowd control. I would always talk to people in line, try to keep them entertained while they waited in the cold. The first couple in line had been there for about 13 or 14 hours.
So we open the store, and we have deals on all sorts of electronics, toys, etc. They get in line and have a shopping cart full of towels that we had on sale for $2. That’s it. Just towels. They were first in line outside and waited over half a day for $2 towels. When I left after my 12-hour shift, we still had shelves full of these towels, along with tons more in the stockroom.
14. Gobble Gobble
Having owned a grocery store for many years I've had some great and some really insane customers. The one that sticks out the most was a lady around Christmas time. She bought a frozen turkey from me and left happy as could be! A few days later she comes storming back into my store, she proceeded to throw this bag of turkey at me and starts tearing me apart for the subpar turkey.
"This turkey was so terrible I couldn't cut it, and when I did it tasted awful," this went on for a while, "I had my whole family there for dinner and this turkey ruined the entire meal" blah blah blah... As I took the turkey out of the bag to check, I noticed that she had managed to cook the thing in the plastic wrap that all frozen turkeys come in.
Even after pointing this out to her, I was still the bad guy. I couldn't win... after that, we referred to her as the turkey Nazi!
15. Can’t Write This Injury off
Walmart story time. A couple years ago when a sale started, there was a surge of people trying to get their stuff. One lady got knocked down and her pen went straight into her neck, thankfully missing the jugular. The messed up part is no one tried to help, they just walked over her to get their crummy deal items. An associate who saw it happen had to stand over top of her to protect her from getting trampled.
When the ambulance crew arrived, they had to literally shove people out of the way because no one would move. People suck.
16. The Cookie (and Cash) Thief
So I worked for Mrs. Fields Cookies in my local mall during Christmas season back when I was in high school. Our manager got called to a store in a different city because a manager had very severely hurt themselves melting chocolate for their chocolate dipped cookies. I end up having to work for the majority of the day with an equally lazy buddy of mine slinging cookies and taking orders for cookie cakes while the mall was packed.
Around 4 in the afternoon (and about $1,600 in sales) a gentleman in a button-down Mrs. Fields Cookies Shirt comes to our counter, telling us he had to do a midday drop for us for whatever money we had taken in in the day. I let him in the back. He tinkers for a second on the computer and ends up taking our deposits. So now it’s an hour before closing time. My boss is now back to our location to help us close.
He starts going through our paperwork and money and realizes we are about $1,600 short. I explain to him that Mr. Soandso came down to our location to do a midday drop since he didn't work. He told me Mr. Soandso doesn't exist and calls the corporate office. It turned out this guy had gone to over a dozen Mrs. Fields in the area and robbed over 10k worth of money.
They never figured out who it was. I ended up being fired over it with my buddy. We stole a giant cookie cake as compensation. Worth it.
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17. Pay Foe
After getting a box of roof tiles shipped to me instead of the guitar amplifier I ordered on eBay, I called PayPal and let them know what happened, this was the convo: Me: "So I got scammed, instead of an amp I received a box of roof tiles. I refused the shipment and sent it back. I can supply pictures" PayPal Rep: "Well technically the item was delivered."
Me: "It was a box of roof tiles, not an amp." PayPal Rep: "The ball is in your court. We showed something shipped out" ** PayPal rep hung up on me ** I was so angry. Called Citibank, which was the credit card company I used through PayPal. Told them the situation, they instantly refunded me my money. Told me that even if they had shipped out the amp, but it was the wrong color—they would still refund me and try to get their money back from the seller.
AWESOME customer service. Bottom line: PayPal are jerks. Citibank are good peeps.
18. Round and Round It Goes
I worked at an amusement park in the kiddie ride section one summer when I was 16 years old. I was working these little motorcycles that basically just go around in a circle like a merry-go-round. Well, the seat belt was a chain that you would latch into itself. Anyways, this kid starts crying ‘cause he wants to get off so I let him off, go around and check all the other chains again (like we were drilled in training to do) and proceed to start the ride.
Well, some dummy decides he wants to unlatch his chain, and then his (I would have to assume) 50-pound head causes him to just tip right off the bike. Well, his parents start screaming at me. And I mean SCREAMING at me...the kid wasn't even crying or anything, and I ended up being told I had to take drug tests and fill out all these reports and stuff so I said screw it.
Not because of the tests, rather the hassle of suspension and all that stuff. So I go in the next day, quit, and just walk in and play in the park all day in uniform.
19. Have Your Pancake And Eat It Too
I had a customer demand her meal comped because her pancakes were "too round". Seriously.
20. Fight to Play
I was a GameStop worker when the Wii came out. The second we unlocked the doors, there was a riot. People were fighting one-another, swearing, crying, just about everything. People were so desperate, when people managed to get one, somebody would throw the other person to the ground and buy it.
21. Never Too Old to Be a Threat
I was working at Target in the electronics department. Guitar Hero 3 was the hot item. The doors open...and in pours a tidal wave of jerks charging my area. An hour or two goes by, and I'm slowly starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I go to get a GH3 from the stockroom to give to a nice couple. I smile, go to hand it over, they reach out to receive it and...SNATCH!
An old lady starts to grab on and yank it out of my hands. Being a strong young man, I decided to give her the psychical equivalent of a "screw off" and shake her loose. Old lady immediately seizes the opportunity with her newly emptied hands and punches me right in the throat. I instinctively put a hand to my neck as she fled back into the sea of people with her newly-acquired GH3, never to be seen again...I learned a lesson that day, never EVER underestimate the elderly.
Got Jackie Chan'ed in the gobbler for holding out on an old lady.
22. Lunch Rush
It's lunchtime at Burger King. Things are extremely busy because of the dollar deal with the frappes and smoothies. So this lady starts with: "I know that you’re busy but I have been waiting for five minutes," very rudely to me. I was in an already bad mood, but just said sorry. She then yells at me that she I can't talk to her like that because she's a customer.
So I give her what she orders, hoping she shuts up. No, she complains that the ice melted because she waited so long. So I went and asked if I should replace it, mostly because I don't want to do a thing for this horrible woman. Turns out I had to. But I couldn't help but mumble that I can't believe I had to do this for this awful lady. I give her the drink.
She leaves saying that she's a nurse and she wouldn't ever treat her patients like this. She also says something about choosing this profession, and she’s never coming again... I hope. I don't feel bad about being rude to her.
23. Flawless Logic
When I was a server, I once had someone come in, order a meal, not eat it, then want it for free, "because I'm not hungry."
24. Bait and Switch
Worked at Best Buy, and was training a new girl on ringing people up. She scans his cordless phone he brought up. It's $39.99 but he says it's $24.99. I ask him to show me where he got it and he shows me. There are two phones with similar boxes right next to each other and I show him that and the spot where he took one from the wrong spot.
He says he got it from the other spot. I show him that they are both fully stocked except the one spot from where he got his. He starts talking about how we were all trying to scam him and that it was the classic bait and switch. I didn't have time for the BS so I tell him if he doesn't want it, don't get it. I could care less.
He goes to get rung up again and starts yelling at the girl and he's calling her names and making her cry. He calls her an idiot so I told him at least that idiot knows how to read and could grab a phone from the right spot. He gets my manager and he politely agrees with me that this customer is in fact, an idiot.
TL;DR: Idiot who can't read gets mad that he grabbed the wrong item and tries to make a girl cry and unexpectedly receives the same insults he was hurling at a poor girl.
25. Sucker Punch
I was working at a Walmart. I was assigned to be one of the employees who would cut open the plastic on the pallets that contained our merchandise, which were all on the floor. Basically, as I readied box cutter, I got shoved by a customer and I fell right on it and sliced my hand open. After getting through that and patching it up, I came out on the floor and promptly got punched in the face when I picked up a DVD on the ground. A customer apparently wanted it.
26. Not the Doctor’s Orders
I worked at Walmart for 4 years. I've seen a woman hit another woman in the chest with those toddler car boxes you drive in. A woman who got hit was a few weeks post-op from open heart surgery. Lots of blood. Right In front of me. No idea what happened to the woman who hit her. I do think she got the toy car, purchased it, and left.
27. One Pizza Too Many
Restaurant manager here. Customer orders two large to-go pizzas. Returns to the shop with one of the pizzas three days later, stating that two pizzas was just too much food and wanted to get a refund for the one she couldn't eat because it is taking up too much space in the fridge. Love it!
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28. Is That Savings in Your Pocket or Are You Happy To See Me?
Ex-Best Buy here. Four Black Fridays at the highest grossing store that day in the company gets you a few wild tales. This one is quick: a guy tried to shove a Panasonic Blu-ray player into the front of his jeans. He was a rather large man, but dude it’s a Blu-ray player, seriously.
29. Get Your Act Together
When I ordered two kebabs with cheese for me and a friend in a crowded place. I was given one and I passed it to a friend and I haven't gotten mine so I was patiently waiting. After some 10 minutes, I finally asked where is my kebab and the lady was pissed off because she noted that it was already given away and for sure I'm trying to cheat and get one for free.
Lady, it's not my fault your establishment doesn't give out a number with your order and you don't keep track who takes what. So annoying.
30. Ticket to Ride
Carnival ride operator stories: The Zipper: Mother tells her rugrats to collect the change under the ride while the ride is operating. Besides the danger, that's my tips, darn it! The Double Octopus: Kids standing on the fence shaking it back and forth, forcing me to shut down the ride and chase them off, over and over, while the parents browsed at Shop-O-Crap.
The Hammerhead and others: Being blamed for making people throw up or held responsible for others getting thrown up on. Ferris Wheel: Kid ran right into the ride, around the step and under the wheel while it was running. Lucky not to have died. Later, cops came because the dad wanted to make trouble over his own stupidity until we shamed him into going away.
ALL: You are given abuse for everything from lost change to lost tickets to lost lunches. People expect you to police their line. Women get upset when you don't flirt with them—some men too!
31. That’s What You Call Karma
I went to a bar after a college football game with some friends. I'm 21, but I don't drink too often, so I offered to be the designated driver for the night. So we show up to the bar, we get in, we are having a good time just hanging around and singing karaoke, and then I go up to the bar asking just for a Diet Coke. The bartender pours my drink and then turns around and asks for my ID.
I handed him the same ID I gave the bouncer and have previously given him when I have ordered drinks, and he immediately tells me to leave (with my ID in his hand). I told him I was the DD and he just yelled at me, so the whole bar could hear, "This is a fake ID and if you don't leave voluntarily, then I will make sure you leave." I've got terrible anxiety and just left, all of my friends were just confused, and I left my ID there because the bartender demanded $100 for my ID back.
Of course, a cop was waiting right outside the bar where I parked and pulled me over since he saw me just walk out and drunk driving after games is a big problem at the school. I told the cop that the bartender took my real ID but I gave him my name, social and a government identification from my job. The cop could tell I was sober and my government ID is a lot more legit than a license, so he ran my name and it came back I was 21.
The cop marched into the bar and demanded my ID was relinquished immediately, much to the bartender’s surprise. One of my friends caught him saying I needed to pay him for my "fake ID," and in his drunken stupor told the police officer and showed the video. The bartender was immediately arrested on the spot. So having a lousy bartender led to his arrest... And now that he doesn't work there I don't get carded there anymore.
32. Old Con
Not too horrific, but I once had a guy try to work the ten-pound note con on me. This is when you pay for a cheap item with a tenner, look put out by all the change and ask if you can give additional change to turn it back into a note. At the point where the teller has both a ten-pound note and a whole bunch of change in their hands you then ask if they can exchange it for a twenty.
It's a dumb con. I politely refused the customer. He couldn't kick up too much of a fuss since he was a thief, so he just slunk off. I imagine you need to work that one a lot to get any results.
33. Self-Delusion Is out of Fashion
My store was running a promotion where you buy one novelty t-shirt and get another half off. Novelty meaning characters, phrases, things of that sort. NOT t-shirts with band names. A woman comes up to me asking me to help her pick an even number of band tees for the sale. I kindly told her it was novelty tees only and explained what that meant.
She insisted I was wrong, and I told her she could check at the register if she didn't believe me. Instead, the woman gathers a bunch of band tees and tells my manager at the register I told her it was rock tees, not novelty, despite the signs all over the store saying novelty. She wanted the sale honored because the "idiot new employee messed up."
My manager knew I didn't say that and refused. The woman threw all of her stuff around, screamed, and stormed out. Whatever. Screw her, right? When I took my lunch break, she hunted me down in the food court, threatening to punch me in the face for telling my manager I wasn't responsible for the mix-up, "ruining her sale" AKA foiling her plan to screw over my store.
She chased me all the way back to my store screaming with her fists up. I hid in the back for the rest of my shift. I never even got to eat lunch.
34. Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out
Several years ago while working at an Italian restaurant a man came in and ordered a particular brand of Scotch. the waitress told him that she wasn't sure if we had that particular Scotch, but she would check. She also asked him if there was anything else he would like in the event that we did not have what he ordered. He said that he would like for her to go find the nearest rafter and hang herself if we didn't have it. This couple left the restaurant a few minutes later because they thought we were being rude.
35. Not Worth the Denim
I worked in the clothes department at Walmart. For like 2 straight hours before a sale began, people hovered over the pallets. The alarm went off and the swarm just went insane. There were two women in particular on opposite sides, tossing clothes back and forth to each other. Idk what their system was because half the stuff they were just catching and tossing aside.
But this little teenager (I mean like petite tiny girl) intercepted a pair of jeans being tossed, and the women went freaking INSANE and elbowed her in the face. Instant blood, and the little girl was so shocked she just stood there shaking and crying. The woman acted like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I pulled her out of the crowd and started to walk her to get her cleaned up when the sheriff appeared out of nowhere.
The best part was she was his kid, and the woman was arrested on the spot. Hahaha. She had to post bail AND pay full price for her ugly Levis.
36. Veggie Tales
I work in a garden store. A few weeks ago, a guy comes in and asks for cucumbers. I lead him to the vegetable section and pull out a tray of English cukes. Guy yells "Those aren't cucumbers! Those are pickles!" and flips the tray up in my face and storms out.
37. A Retail Emergency
We had a lady call the police on our store because we sold out of a TV. I really wish I was lying...they came too.
38. Bras and Bullets
I work at the largest lingerie retailer in the country. We had a security guard last night for the beginning of Black Friday. A southern belle mother decided she didn't want to wait in a 50-person deep line and she would cut. Our security guard asked her multiple times to step to the back of the line or leave. She proceeded to ream him with every curse word in the book, and ended by threatening him with a gun she had in her bag. This will be my last holiday in retail.
39. No Price (or Act) Is Too Low
I saw an elderly woman steal an ice cream maker out of a man in a wheelchair's electric-handicapped cart. He got a security guard, and she flat out denied it, saying the man was using his handicap to embarrass her. I lost a little faith in humanity in that moment. I followed her and took stuff out of her cart and put it back on the shelves and put random embarrassing items in their place.
40. Bumper Bowling
I used to work in a bowling alley. Our policy with the bumper rails or gutter guards, whatever you want to call them, was that they were generally for kids seven and under, but we could bend the rule if the kid was having lots of issues and we could be sure that they wouldn't throw so hard as to break them. Unfortunately, we didn't have the kind that went up and down electronically, or this could have all been avoided.
Anyway, this woman comes in with her nine-year-old son and asks me to put up the rails for him. I tell her our policy, and that he should try out a few frames to see how he does without them before I put them up. Halfway through explaining this, this woman starts shrieking at me that it's a dumb policy, and she wants to see my manager, and there's a grown man playing on a lane with bumpers (with his four-year-old son), but her kid couldn't have them.
This went on for a good ten minutes of her yelling at me and my manager, all while this little boy is standing there crying. So we end up getting her calmed down and on a lane. Five minutes later, she comes up yelling that her son sucks at bowling and needs the rails. So my manager reaches into the cash drawer, slaps her money on the counter and tells her that she's no longer welcome at that bowling center. And she leaves, bawling son in tow.
41. I’m Gonna Hurl
I once had a family come in while a child who couldn't eat solid food. They brought a blender with them. They ordered him a chicken basket with fries. They put it in the blender and made a shake. I started to gag—I have a very easy gag reflex. The called my manager over for making fun of them. I wasn't making fun, I was just grossed out by the chicken fry shake and had to throw up.
42. Pick a Movie
Not so much a horror story as just absurdly ridiculous. Husband and wife come in to see a movie at my work. They're 30 minutes early. We have three auditoriums. They go into the wrong one for 40 minutes. They come out and get mad at us because they read the sign wrong. We remind them that they haven't missed any of their movie yet, so they go into their movie for 45 minutes.
They come out and tell us that they decided it was boring and they want to go into the 3D movie we have playing downstairs. My manager lets them after arguing them into paying at least the $2 3D surcharge. They come out after an hour and a half and tell us it was boring and they want a full refund. My manager tells them no. They flip out, and we tell them to leave.
They storm out, the wife says "I'm never coming here again. I'm only going to see movies at (theater around the corner)!" The kicker is that (theater around the corner) is the same company as us, with the same bank account (not a corporate chain, just 2 theaters). I replied, "Please do!" An hour later, the husband came back and said: "my wife left my jacket in the movie."
I said "Well that means it could be literally anywhere in here," and told him to come back tomorrow and we'll check the lost & found.
43. Wait, What Kind Of Cattle Farm?
A couple years ago I had a lady that was irate because her extra well-done steak was tough. She swore up and down that the more you cook a steak the more tender it gets because "I grew up on a cattle farm." The one redeeming quality about the experience is that the lady she was with apologized and left me $25 for the way I handled the situation.
I had to get out of the service industry because people become almost fiendish when they realize they can get away with being a complete jerk and get free food because of it. It's as if the industry sustains this type of behavior by rewarding it; enough to make me sick and pretty much lose my faith in humanity for a long time.
44. The Kids Can’t Wait
Last year, a woman yelled at me for taking too much time to finish her transaction, that her kids were in the car and she didn't want CPS to take them. Okay then!
45. Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out
Had a woman shouting over the entire restaurant over how my BBQ chicken wings were garbage after she ate all 12 of them, leaving nothing but the bones. She also commented on the bad smell of the sauce—it's full of blue cheese you idiot, what did you expect? She also didn't like my pasta carbonara that her date was eating. He gestured it was good but didn't want to add to the scene.
Luckily there were only four other customers present. She was a semi-regular, claimed to know the owner and what not. That made it all the more fun when she was demanding a discount, the waiters refused to take her money and she was perma-banned from the restaurant.
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46. Not Too Young to Get Caught
I worked at Best Buy. A husband/wife combo used their daughter to steal some video games. The wife would go to the bathroom with their infant, the husband would slide games into the diaper bag, and then send their 3 or 4-year-old daughter to the bathroom with the diaper bag so she could crack open the cases and take the games. We didn't catch them that day, but I remember when we saw them come in weeks later and called the cops in advance.
Just waited them out, they did their thing, and when she tried to leave, the cops were waiting. The daughter's scream as her parents were being arrested made my blood run cold. How do you use your kids like that?
47. Latte Explosion
I once had a customer try to throw their coffee at me. I had accidentally made a woman a latte with regular milk rather than soy. It was my fault and I apologized profusely. I told her I would make her another drink. This wasn't good enough for the woman. Like a crazed banshee, she shrieked, "I need soy!" and threw the latte at me. The lid stayed on and totally missed me.
Instead exploded on impact and got all over the counters, cabinets, and floor. The bright side is that the owner was in attendance. He made quick work of throwing that banshee out, despite protests that she didn't get her coffee.
48. Classic John
This one guy, we'll call him John, was a regular at a restaurant I worked at. He would always ask for recommendations and no matter what you suggested, John would tell you he had that last week and it sucked. He would take up as much time as possible no matter how busy the restaurant was.
He had a wife who would jokingly tell him to knock it off but she would laugh so it would just encourage him to be a jerk. Then after bringing the food to them, he would ask me to box it up so they could take it home. They would occasionally leave a tip.
Years later, I was a brand new nurse and my coworker had a tray of food thrown at her by a patient. John was the patient.
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49. All Choked up
I worked at Old Navy in college. We would usually have several items on one table, but only one would be on sale. It was clear though, it would be like t-shirts, skirts, and sweaters and the sign would say "T-shirts $5." One guy got super mad that everything on the table wasn't on sale and started flipping out about false advertising. We wore lanyards, and he grabbed my manager's lanyard and started choking her.
We were all ready to call the police, but she was a pretty tough older woman and got him to stop (and made him feel like a major loser).
50. Playing Sick for the Savings
My first day working for Best Buy was on Black Friday 8 years ago. I was controlling part of the line since I had zero training to do anything else. I had a lady saying she was going to faint. She kept saying, "Please just let me pay so I can get to a doctor." I knew she was lying and called my manager over so he could talk to her. He said, "Ma'am, they told me you were in need of medical assistance, I've got an ambulance on the way."
She freaked out, yelling at my manager about the line being too long and how it was his fault she was feeling sick. She looked at me and said, "This is all your fault you little witch, if you would have just let me cut the line, we'd be out of this mess.” I couldn't help but smile. My manager told her to leave, and said if she didn’t, he would call the cops. She tried to stay, until a random cop came in to check out the crowd.
She left so quick. He never called for an ambulance in the first place. If we really needed one, there were a few EMTs waiting for a call in their truck outside the store.
51. Kill ‘Em With Kindness
At CVS when I was working the registers, this unhappy and rough looking guy came in, he fit the typical biker stereotype, leather jacket covered in patches (there was a confederate patch back there), long hair, bandana, etc...He kinda scowled at me as he entered and walked past as if I wronged him in some manner. I immediately felt that this guy was bad news.
He comes back really quick from the aisle with a can of soup. At my job, we had to ask if they had their membership card, so I asked him and he said "Not for your type I don't", while looking me over. At first, I didn't quite understand why he said that and was a bit shocked, to be honest, I'm brown, so I'm assuming he wasn't too keen on my race.
I figured I should just kill this guy with kindness and that's exactly what I did. First I noticed that the item he was buying was cheaper if he had got a different quantity, so without saying a word, I ran into the aisle and got the right product, I scanned my courtesy card since he didn't want to show me his and explained that the item I retrieved was much cheaper.
He paid his amount and simply said "Thanks a lot" and walked out.
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52. Adult Life
I work at a school. Technically, it's a kind of customer service because I have to watch college students do horribly because they don't study and then, when they receive a poor score on something, get their parents (yes, in a four-year university) to send you an email asking what they can do better/why they scored low. It's a university, people; I don't care who your parents are or what they think about your work ethic. Grow up.
53. Welcome to the Thunderdome
The old lady wanted a cancer pink-ribbon fabric, and the woman she ultimately tackled had called ahead and ordered a bulk amount of it, because she works for a cancer organization and makes blankets for cancer patients. The woman was wheeling a cart in the store with several large bolts of the fabric in it (which she had special ordered, and we put it in the cart for her, so she could continue shopping.)
Old lady sees that this woman has "ALL the bolts" and it isn't right that she's hogging the entire stock of that particular print. The woman explains the situation and that she in fact special ordered these, and that the reason she was coming in to purchase them is that they were on major promotion at 60% off. The old lady continues to yell at the poor woman.
The woman very calmly keeps trying to reassure her that she is not taking any of the store stock, and that she makes blankets for dying women with breast cancer. She is a very sweet store regular who pays out of pocket for all the blankets, and so my store held the fabric for her, when she would come in and purchase them with her coupon. Old lady doesn't give a darn. Whips out mace and tackles the woman.
Old lady gets kicked out of the store. She would come in once every couple of months, give me the stink eye, and then rebelliously write down recipes from the home and food magazines so she wouldn't have to buy them. Then she'd scurry out and come back in a few months.
54. The Imperfect Crime
One time a girl who had black hair with pink tips found a hair in her food. None of our servers, or kitchen staff, had black hair with pink tips. The hair that she found, however, was black with a pink tip. Needless to say, she did not get a discount.
55. Fur Is (Almost) Murder
I'm dating myself here. When I was in college, I worked at a toy store, and it was the year of the Furbies. They were really hard to get, and our site only got 10 of them. We were instructed to pass out numbers rather than the actual toys to the first 9 in line. I was the lucky one to pass out numbers. When we opened our doors, it was pretty organized because we had set up lines and it was also a high-end neighborhood.
I gave the first person their number and then all of a sudden, I am tackled from behind. This woman slammed into me and knocked me to the floor and ripped the tickets out of my hand, breaking two fingers. All for freaking numbers. How dumb was she? The store refused to give her a Furby for her numbers, and was trying to detain her until the cops showed up, but she decked our manager and walked out.
56. Not Ready to Pound Down
Around 10 years ago, I worked for Best Buy. The year that the PS2 came out, I was in charge of issuing the systems to customers with vouchers (the ones who stayed all night camping out). The customers would approach me, and I kept 2 systems in my arms at a time and would go from the stock room to the floor in order to give out each system.
On one trip out of the stockroom, a gentleman (early 40s) approached me and proceeded to (try to) yank a system out of my hands and run with it. As an aside, I'm no small fellow. As the [im]mature gentleman attempted the grab and go, I simply tightened my grip and calmly said, "Your ticket first, sir." He rebutted with, "I don't have a ticket, and I don't need one; I seen this thing first, so it's mine."
After a brief explanation of the voucher system, the man and his wife only seemed more angered that I refused to surrender the PS2. To really convince me to give him the system, the gentleman then proceeded to say, "Okay, well I guess I'll have to whip your butt for it." Perhaps of my own naivety, or the adrenaline, I responded, "Sounds great, let me clock out first, and I'll meet you outside shortly."
A little taken back by my response, the gentleman started to profusely apologize and even teared up, giving me some sob story over why he deserved it. Of course, I didn't surrender the system. Needless to say, this was one of the reasons I did not hang around BB for much longer. Sheer stupidity. A grown man trying to fight a 19-year-old who made $8.00/hr for a video game system. Brilliant.
57. Too Much Mess
This isn't specific to one customer. Not long after college, I spent about nine months working in the bulk foods department at the local location of a big retailer here in the Midwest. If you're not familiar with bulk foods, it's basically a bunch of plastic bins with little scoopers, and the bins contain a variety of products like candy, nuts, dog food, etc.
People come through and scoop some of whatever they need into a plastic bag, and then go on their merry way. I found out first hand just how lazy, and messy people could be. I'd regularly have to go out and sweep the area because of all of the crap that was on the floor. I started working there in September or October.
Halloween gave me my first taste of a holiday in retail, and because we sold so much candy, that particular holiday made for a difficult introduction to how crazy it could be. So anyway, I made it through Halloween, and then Christmas, but then came Easter. By that time, I'd grown very tired of the job. One can only take so much of bulk foods work.
Maybe it was just bad luck, maybe people were conspiring against me, I don't know, but the week leading up to Easter was insane. To make matters worse, as the holiday got closer and closer, it became more and more difficult to actually do my job because the area was so crowded. There would be so many people in the bulk foods area that getting my flat cart full of fresh product out there was extremely challenging.
The day before Easter I was nearing the point of no longer giving a care. To this day, 15 or so years later, I can still recall how much my patience was tested. Normally I am about as laid back and stress-free as one can be, but when you're dealing with a bunch of anxious, pushy, impatient slobs who would just as soon elbow you in the face in order to get their stuff before you, it's difficult not to get at least somewhat angry.
So, as the minutes passed that day, the decision was slowly set in stone. I'd had enough. I waited until my area was a total disaster. Candy and nuts and all sorts of other crap on the floor, hardly any plastic bags left on the rolls, and many of the bins empty or low on stock. I calmly went back to the employee only storage area for bulk foods, took off my work vest, dropped it on my cart, and walked out. That was a great feeling.
58. Game of Telephone
I worked in a call center for a short time taking credit card applications for a major credit card company. Toward the end of my shift, I get a call from a gentleman, and he is a little abrupt. He is difficult all the way through the call, and it takes about 25 minutes to get the application done when an average call of this type takes about 10-12. He doesn't get the instant approval over the phone that he was hoping for, so he completely loses his mind.
He starts yelling to me about how I lied to him, how I scammed him, and so on, not letting me get more than a few words in at a time. This goes on for another 25 minutes, at which point, I can't deal with it anymore and have a supervisor come to deal with him. He then proceeds to yell at her for another 25 minutes, before he finally tires himself out and hangs up. Just another fun day on the phones!
59. Who Needs Fighting Games at This Point?
Years ago, I got hired as seasonal help for Toys R Us. It was before they redesigned the stores into their current mess and everything was in long aisles. I got stuck in aisle one, which was board games on one side and the big glass case of video games on the other. This was the year that Super Nintendo came out, so we had one behind the glass with a controller outside, so you could try out Super Mario Land.
I'm up on a ladder getting more copies of Crocodile Dentist down to restock the lower shelves, and hear some yelling. I look down, and two kids are shoving each other in front of the SNES. They start swinging at each other and the parents intervene, only to start fighting themselves. I slide down the ladder and my manager rushes over to try and stop things from getting worse.
One of the parents had a bat in his cart, and hits the other guy square in the back, knocking him into the display cabinet, shattering the glass, and cutting him up really good. The guy with the bat realizes what he did and grabs his kids and tries to make a run for the door. Management was trying to block him from leaving as they went, and got the cop who was outside directing traffic.
The police came in and wrestled this guy to the ground while his kids watched. He resisted and got a serious beatdown in the middle of the store. The other guy who went through the glass was cut up and bleeding really bad. He ended up losing an eye over the whole thing. After this was all over, we had to lock up the SNES, and you could only try it out if management opened the case for you.
The other really messed up part of this whole thing was that people were taking toys out of the cart of the cut-up guy's cart as EMTs worked on him and his kid sat there crying. One woman even tried to take the blood-splattered demo SNES out of the broken case to try to buy for her kid.
60. Didn’t Snooze, Still Lose
I was a cart pusher at a Walmart. In this particular year, Walmart offered a plasma TV at an extremely low price and it was the hottest deal of the year. A man showed up the Tuesday before the big sale with a tent, ice coolers, generator, TV, and everything he needed to brave the three nights he would be staying over. He continuously talked about being first in line and how he was going to get the plasma TV and how he was hosting the next Super Bowl party so this was just going to be the best thing ever.
Come around Thursday night, I showed up to my shift and he was still there in a jolly mood, thankful he was about to be able to go home and sleep in his own bed. The news came, and he did a short interview and explained what he was waiting for, how he was able to get the time off (he was a truck driver) and was overall excited over the whole ordeal and prided himself for toughing out the cold.
The line for the entrance wrapped around the whole front of the door and about another 300 yards or so past the store, with thousands of people waiting to get in. At 5:00 am, the doors opened and the man goes straight to the plasma TVs to see that they were all gone. What happened? The garden center at the Walmart opened up about 10 seconds before the front doors, and those that came the night before scooped up all 15 plasma TVs.
This guy who had been there since Tuesday afternoon was dumbfounded and argued with management, but was stonewalled and told there was nothing that can be done.
61. Bad Attitude
I haven't had any extreme stories like most people. I do, however, have the few crazies that come into where I work often. I had a lady who yelled at my manager and I for over ten minutes because she read a sign wrong. She thought because a sweater was on the same table as some skirts that it was $10 (the sign said "skirts for $10"). The price tag never even said it was $10.
I just apologized and listened to her yell at us, but my manager didn't care. She basically had a "I don't give a hoot, you're wrong" attitude towards the woman. I have customers who try to use someone else's credit card a lot. Our policy is if it rings up credit, I have to check their ID and name on the card. If it doesn't match up, I can't use it unless the person is with them.
This has resulted in me being called various insults, having clothes thrown at me, and pretty much everyone storming out of the store diva-style. My favorite being "bite me" simply because I don't see how it's an insult.
62. Does Not Compute
Working at a sit-down chain Mexican restaurant, I had a customer present me with a Taco Bell coupon expecting my manager to honor it. I politely told the customer that Taco Bell was not even 2 minutes down the road and that we were in no way affiliated. Apparently, that response provoked this guy’s brain to fold in on itself and in a fit of rage he screamed for a manager and yelled that “This is America!”
63. Cut out for Competition
I was working at a GameStop in 2010 on Black Friday. I saw a kid pull a plastic knife from the food court on another kid. I almost passed out laughing.
64. Giving the Boot
I bought my fiancée some Michael Kors boots she wanted from Macy's last Christmas. They ended up being about a half size too small, I kept the receipt, and we went back to the mall to just try and swap them for a larger size. I explained the situation to one of the people at the customer service desk, and she immediately got hostile with me, saying, "So you just want a free pair of boots..?" and "It's just a half size too small...if she can't fit in boots that are a half size too small, are you sure you even know what size she needs?"
What I thought would take 10 minutes ended up taking almost an hour. It was beyond ridiculous.
65. To Be Discontinued
I worked at a cosmetic store on Christmas Eve. Had a customer ask me about a line of baby products that were long discontinued, probably two years earlier. I tell her, “Sorry, that line's been discontinued.” She loses her mind and starts yelling at me in this packed store on Christmas, about how can that be possible and all this stuff. Ho ho ho.
66. Food Fight
I was working at a sit-down chain restaurant when a group of teenagers fresh out of the last day of high school came in to celebrate. They even brought a cake with them, which isn't a big deal, except we don't allow that because we serve cake. One of the more level-headed ones talked to a manager and we decided to let it slide, even giving them extra plates.
All is going well until one of them pulls a flask out of his jacket and starts spiking everyone's drinks. Illegal (21 to drink in the good ole' USA), yes, but whatever. I thought If I let it slide I might get a better tip. Fast forward to about an hour later, when the cake is being cut up. These kids are borderline drunk now and one of them gets the bright idea to smush his cake into his friend's face.
This starts an all-out riot at the table, with drunk 18-year-olds throwing cake, half-eaten burgers, cups of Dr. Pepper and mysterious alcohols, and even silverware at each other. Our managers came out, but the policy is to not touch patrons at all (lawsuits), so we had to wait for the cops to come. They did eventually and took the lot of them away.
Since it was my table and servers bussed their own there, I was stuck with the job of cleaning up the remains. The cake was ground into the carpet, and the stains are still there. I spent maybe three hours making that section presentable again. The worst part was, since the kids were arrested, they didn't pay. I got no tip, registered $0 sales (manager comps don’t reflect in your total) for five hours of my shift, and later found out that one of the children's parents was suing the restaurant for not keeping a better eye on her ADULT son. Nothing came of it, but still.
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67. Hot Tea
I used to work in a very trendy teahouse in the cultural/arts/LGBTQ/bar scene part of my town. This was all well and good, but unfortunately, the unique nature of the cafe combined with this weird draw we had on teenagers led to a lot of people coming in from the wealthier conservative side of town—presumably coming for bars or hearing about it from their kids.
One day, this man came in wanting our silver needle white tea, iced. I asked if he wanted it sweetened rather hesitantly, as sweetening a white tea, especially to the degree he said he wanted, meant you pretty much lost all flavor. All of it. I warned him and he insisted, so naturally, I obliged. We brewed teas as they were ordered, so there was generally a five-minute wait.
Two minutes in he starts pestering us, we explain ourselves and he starts drumming on the counter. His drinks go out: two for one guy—yes he seemed to be drinking both. He tastes both, pushes his way past the line to me at the register, and yelled that it tasted like water. I began trying to explain that white tea is subtle and offering to make a less-sweetened one when he uncaps the cups and quite literally threw two teas onto me.
Two girls seated near the register promptly ran out and my equally terrified coworker rushed to refund him (against policy) while he shouted at us for being terrible at our job, etc., etc. At closing, we got in trouble for refunding him.
68. This Place Sounds Like a Dump
A restaurant dumped about two cups of soya sauce on/in a new leather purse. Completely destroyed it, never offered me anything to compensate, they didn't even cover my bill for the evening.
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69. Someone’s Gonna Get a Pizza My Mind Over This
Oh, this makes me irritated. Last year myself, my wife, brother and his fiancé, and my sister and her boyfriend went out to a pizza place in Salem, MA. We all ordered and then they deliver them to your table. Everyone's pizzas came except my wife and I. We're waiting for like 10 minutes until we notice people after us were getting food.
Finally, I go up there and they get all defensive and say they delivered it. I say, "No, you didn't" Finally, they fess up that another customer had raised his hand and taken our pizza. They then just sat there looking at me like "OH WELL? LOL" Had to argue with the manager to actually get the pizza I ordered. She tried to make us take other pizzas instead that were already made (and not what we ordered). The place lost my business for life.
70. Stickler for the Rules
I work at a Blockbuster and a few days ago I had a customer call in and ask for me to hold a copy of The Grey. At the time we didn't have any copies of the movie in the store and that they were all rented. The man sighed and began mumbling and grunting. He asked if I could check the dropbox for him, which I had already done. I told him I would double check but that the best time to call is right when we open, yadda yadda, blah blah.
He then began to call me names and that other employees held movies for him and that I "must be a reeeeal stickler for the rules" and he hung up on me. I'm assuming he thought that I wouldn't have held the movie for him if we had gotten a copy in—I would have. I wish I had the quick wit to snap back that, yeah, I was a stickler for the rules of life that say that if I don't have possession of something, I cannot set it aside for you.
71. Fright Night Fight Night
I used to work at a haunted house. I worked both ends of the venue when it was slow. I would sell tickets and then jump into costume to scare. I was pretty good at my job. Family of three going through, pretty basic stuff. The father is jumpy but looks like he is having a good time, the mother and daughter are terrified.
I take advantage of one of my favorite spots towards the end to give them a good finishing scare. I jump out, yell, and then the daughter turns 180 degrees and runs face first into a wall. I take off my mask and radio my buddy to turn the lights all the way on. She is bleeding pretty bad but I can't tell if her nose is broken.
I escort them out to the lobby, grab the first aid kit, paper towels, instant ice pack, and a cold bottle of water. I start to apologize, but before I can finish the father goes all crazy on me. Starts off just yelling and poking me in the chest. Then it escalates to "WHY IS THAT WALL THERE" and shoving. The whole time his wife and daughter are telling him to calm down and that she is fine.
Being me, I laugh when he asked why a wall was there and he got really handsy. Backed off, told him if she was fine they could leave. "No buddy, I'm gonna kick your butt." I clocked out then and there and walked out to the parking lot. Still dressed as Jason Voorhees. Nothing ended up happening except him yelling at me more.
Oh, and some guy in the parking lot yelled "AWW GUYS, THIS DUDE ABOUT TO FIGHT JASON!"
72. Seriously, Guys??
I drove down to Louisiana to request a duplicate car title. You have to be physically present to do this. I also needed to have a letter from Chase releasing me from a lien on my car. I went to the local branch. They wouldn't just type something up on the computer. That sort of power is apparently not granted to a mere bank manager... you know, he's only in charge of a huge vault full of cash.
No, the letter had to come from an office in Texas. I explained to Chase that they were forcing me to have to come back to the state a second time (a seven hour drive). They offered to overnight the letter to the branch. That way, I'd merely have to stay an extra day. Fine, but the letter never came. When I got home at about 3 AM—having waited around all day for that letter—the letter was sitting on my door in a FedEx envelope. Morons.
73. Water Volume
I had a customer say that I had placed her water glass too loudly on her table. The worst part? She was vocal enough about it that she actually ended up getting free food.
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74. They’ve Got You Numbered
I went to What-a-Burger and my friend and I each got our numbers and went to sit down. They brought my friend’s food and took my number. When I asked for my food several minutes later I was berated and accused of trying to get a free meal. I calmly tried to explain what happened and the manager was having none of it. So I took my full large drink and dropped in on the ground right in front of the register and left.
75. World’s Worst Man
I work at a McDonalds in Australia. A few Fridays ago there was probably the most inconceivable act I’ve ever witnessed by a customer. A lady and her elderly mother came through the drive-thru. They had to wait for fresh food and so we asked them to park to the side. They decided, while parked, to get dessert as well, so the lady came inside to order.
When she was served, she also received her order from before. Another customer waiting on food thought that she had just come into the restaurant and got her food before he did when he'd been waiting (approx. 8 min) so he gets angry. This guy abuses everybody in the store. Customer, crew, manager, and this lady. She tries to leave, so the guy goes out to her car, opens the door, pulls her elderly mother from the passenger seat and beats her.
He beat an elderly woman. Because he had to wait 8 minutes. For McDonald’s. What really got me is that he could have destroyed her quality of life, for the rest of her life. From what I could gather she was quite fragile. It makes me angry to think she might never fully recover from something like that.
76. The Price of Rum Cake
I used to work at a place where one half was a bakery and the other half was a cafe/restaurant. My job was basically to chill behind the pastry counter and get cookies, cakes, pastries, or bread for people. One day this really old lady came in, like she was ancient, and she approaches me by the pastry counter and asks how much a baba rum costs.
So I told her that it was $2.50 and she starts screaming at me "LIAR!" It really took me by surprise, and then as soon as she had flipped out she returned to normal and started asking me the prices of other things we had. Every time I told her the price she would start freaking out and say that I was lying to her, but then other times she'd gently say "Oh wow! It's only that much? What a great deal!"
So she ends up back by the baba rum and asks how much it is. I tell her what I told her before, $2.50. This time she's like "Okay, I'll take it!" So I'm putting it in a box for her (and by this time my manager had kind of been drawn out of her office because of all the yelling and is just standing by) and the lady goes, "CUT IT! I WANT YOU TO CUT IT!" so I asked her if there was a specific way she wanted me to cut it and she responds "YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING CRACK-PIPE WOMAN, GO BACK TO SCHOOL!"
Mind you this was a summer job so I was just like... what? But yeah, my manager decided to intervene then and tell the lady she had to calm down and she couldn't treat the employees like crap and that if she wanted to stay she would have to relax. Thankfully, the lady decided to go to the other half of the place, the cafe section, and she began bothering those poor waitresses about her coffee.
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77. Toddlers in Corsets
So many. I think one of the worst was this one lady that was mad her eight-year-old didn't look right in the costumes in her Old West photos. I was working with a customer at the time, and she just rushed into the booth and started dressing them. When I finally got to her and told her the corset wouldn't fit her child at all she said, "Well you weren't here to help were you?"
I told her it was because I was still working with the person before her and everyone deserves the time they pay for to make sure it's done right. She continued to be rude, and just plain awful throughout the whole process so I ignored her completely and just focused on making it fun for the kids. In the end she was so awful that her brother who was paying for the photos tipped me about 10 bucks on a 20 dollar photo.
There are a lot worse ones like the lady who hated Mexicans but goes to Mexican restaurants—seriously, why. It was implied that she told a group of small children she would drown them in the waterfall. She wouldn't talk to me because I was brown, even though she was paying. Or the woman whose kid threw a tantrum because he couldn't get purple cotton candy.
She walked up to me like "Why can't he have a purple one?!" and I pointed at the display box and said, "Because ma'am, all I have is pink and blue right now." Then there are the people who think their caricatures look fat. I have at least two years’ worth of daily rage. I have given up on most people now and just expect them to be awful.
78. Listening Goes a Long Way
I bought a Nook tablet not long after they came out. These cables looked like micro USB cables but contained 2 extra wires that made it so that regular micro USB cables couldn't charge the tablet. Nook sold these cables for $20/each, and they were so poorly made that they quickly fell apart. I went through 20 in the first year alone; granted most of them were given to me free while my warranty was valid.
After my warranty ran out, I went to buy another cord, as mine had once again torn up. None of the nearby Barnes & Noble stores had any. The website didn't have any. I contacted customer service to see about purchasing one from them. They get my account info and Nook serial number, then tell me they can't send me one because my warranty ran out.
I explain that I'm not trying to get a free one, I want to purchase one. The agent kept repeating that he couldn't send me a free one. No matter how many times I said I didn't want a free one, I wanted to buy one, he would repeat himself. I asked if they had any for sale, thinking they might be out and he just wasn't explaining properly.
Yes, they had them for sale, but he couldn't send me a free one. 30 minutes of arguing back and forth like this. I never did get it through his head that I wanted to buy one.
79. New Shoes
For my internship I worked at an internet store for six months, maintaining the website but also maintaining stock and eventually also packaging and making sure stuff get send to the mail. Since our boss worked in a physical store 20km away we would stay in touch over Skype or call each other when I or my colleague had problems.
After six months, I finished my internship, but I worked there every summer on my own when the only employee went on a holiday. This was one of these summers. A pair of football shoes came back because after the person ordered them one of the rubber pins on the bottom broke off. So it was an FG shoe (Firm ground) which was only qualified to play on real grass, and if you played on anything else with it then the warranty would instantly be lost.
So we could see (there are certain signs which are 100% accurate) that this specific shoe had been used on fake grass, so instantly, he lost his warranty with Adidas. As a sign of goodwill, my boss and I decided to send him a new pair of shoes. However, we would warn him that he should not use these shoes on fake grass because the next pair we wouldn't replace.
So, I called him up to tell him the result of his complaint about his shoes. As I tell him we will send him a new pair, I also give him the warning to only use them on real grass. Expecting him to be glad he gets a new pair, I didn't see his reaction coming as he goes completely CRAZY, saying I accused him of lying, being a total jerk, and that he never played on fake grass with his shoes.
In the meanwhile, I am completely thrown back on the phone because this wasn't what I was expecting from someone who just got a new pair of shoes free of charge. So I calmly try to explain to him that it is just a tip from us trying to be customer friendly and that I am not accusing him of anything. He ended up raging for about 15-20 minutes until I said, “I am sorry but I not wasting any second of my time at this, we will send you a new pair of shoes and hope you have a pleasant experience from them. Goodbye, sir.”
80. Assault With a Deadly Appliance
My father works in a big store here in Italy, and he was at the return desk for a few years. A guy once showed up and wanted to give back a coffee machine well past the return period, so obviously, my dad said no. After a few minutes of arguing, this man raised the coffee machine and threw it at my dad, who miraculously avoided it.
He called the security and dude was arrested. It seemed just a "normal" aggression by a stupid customer but it was later discovered that he had a criminal record for assault and HAD A LOADED GUN IN HIS POCKET during the fight. My dad still gets shivers when he tells the story.
81. Cheese-less Cheeseburger
When I used to work at McDonald's some lady came in and ordered a cheeseburger without cheese. So being the person I am I just put it in a hamburger wrapper and gave it to the front. Well, she came back like five minutes later and all hell broke loose. She was yelling at the poor girl who gave her the sandwich and the girl was new. So I went up to help and asked what was the matter.
This is what she said, "I ordered a cheeseburger without cheese you gave me a hamburger I want what I ordered right now and I want to speak to your manager." So I told her I was the manager. She proceeded to call me a liar even though I had a name tag that said shift manager on it. But I told her I would fix it. I took the burger and put it in a cheeseburger wrapper and gave it back to her she looked at it. Then at me and I'm pretty sure she had the realization of what a cheeseburger without cheese is. She then just walked away without thanking me or anything. Also, I had to send the girl home, since she was crying.
82. This One’s a Little Cheesy
Ordered two medium pizzas from Dominoes. When I get there (~6:50 PM), the employee tells me they messed up and accidentally made one of my pizzas a large and that I would have to wait 20 minutes for them to make a new one. A few minutes later this same employee starts saying, "See y’all tomorrow" to other employees and walks out with a large pizza.
I eventually got both of my pizzas, one of which was cold. I have never gone back since. I contacted their customer service department and they didn't even respond to my complaint. Never plan on going back. I hope paying your employees nothing was worth losing a customer for life.
83. Bad Son
A man and his mother always used to come into the café I used to work in, and he always was a bit strange, but a nice guy, and he'd talk with everyone, myself included, when he came in. One time, though, he came in with his mother, and his mother asked him to buy her a cup of tea because she'd left her money at home.
He kept saying “No, no, I don't want to, I don't want to.” His mother was being perfectly reasonable, and she asked him politely again, at which point he took the bag he was holding and flung it across the room, almost hitting a baby. The owner told him to leave and he did, but just as he was going out the door, he turned around again and began yelling incomprehensible things at the owner and hit him in the face.
The owner pushed him away, and with such force that he actually fell back onto his mother. THEN they left.
84. If the Shoe Fits...
I'm a cake decorator. We recently had a customer pick up her cake which had a printed picture of a high heel shoe that she sent us, on top. She goes "what the %&^* is this" and starts flipping out. Banging on tables, screaming at the top of her lungs in front of other customers, trying to fight the owner, threatening to come back with a gun. We had to call the cops.
Turns out, she had wanted a life-like edible version of the shoe, not a printed picture. So all this, because when she ordered the cake she did not know the difference between 2D and 3D.
They wanted something like this?
85. Repairing Ain't Easy
Worked at Sprint, at the time was a repair tech. Here's a few: One woman came in to fix her big ass Nextel brick (the HUGE ones from 2008ish), I open it up and it was nearly rusted through. Let her know it wasn't covered, as her rotten toddler ran through the store knocking EVERYTHING off the shelves. She got mad, threw the phone as me as I was walking away and... hit her child square in the face.
One guy comes in, hands me a phone, says it "just stopped working". I take out the battery and piss just POURS out of the phone. He admits he dropped it in a urinal while drunk. Guy could have been honest and let me put on gloves, I had him tossed from the store.
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New Yorker
86. “Service” Could Mean Anything, Really
Took my lawn mower to Sears for repair. I hadn't bought it there, but they had a sign that said: "We fix all models." A couple days later they call to tell me it's ready for pickup. I go in to find out that they hadn't fixed it; they'd sent it to their repair center, who'd sent it back saying they don't have parts for this model so they didn't bother with it.
Sears: "That'll be $29.95" Me: "For what?" Sears: "Oh, that's a service charge." Me: "Okay then, what service did you provide?" Sears: "It's a standard diagnostic fee." Me: "Okay, what's the diagnosis?" Round and round we go with this for twenty minutes until I get a manager. Similarly, round and round with him until I wear him down and get my lawnmower back, still broken, but no charge.
87. The Flip Side
Back in high school, I did seasonal work at a catalog company answering phones for people placing orders. One night, I was on a pretty bare-bones, late-night, skeleton crew, and about halfway through my shift I got a call from some guy. He starts by trying to chat with me, to which I give him only the most basic small-talk while trying to get down to what he wants to order.
But he keeps rambling on, something about his daughter at college or something, so I eventually stop him after about five minutes of story time. Tell him, "Look are you trying to place an order or not? I'd love to chat all day, but I'm busy (I really wasn't)." He apologizes and almost starts to order, but then starts going off on another tangent. Come on, pal. Hang up.
He calls back, gets me again, so I just hang up on him immediately. He got me another two times before he eventually got the guy next to me.
88. It's Called the Wii, Not the Me...
I worked at Target's electronics section in 2010 when Wiis were all the craze. Right before Christmas time, people would come in RIGHT when we opened, buy our whole stock and sell them online for double what they paid. This obviously prevented families from the ability to go to Target and just buy a Wii, so we made a rule that one person could buy 2 Wiis per day.
A man came in smiling like he won the lottery and said: "I'm buying all the Wiis you can give me." There was a long line of people behind him that looked outraged. I said, "Sir, the limit per customer is two Wiis." Him "No...I got here first, so I'm going to buy what I asked for." Me: "Sir, I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I can only sell you two." Him: "Oh you're sorry? No, what you are is deaf because I already told you two times. Call your manager. NOW."
So our manager asked him to leave and he was yelling he was going to file a BBB report. I wanted to dive the counter and beat his greedy butt, but...you know...its illegal and stuff.
Elle.com This guy was like an aspiring Monopoly Man
89. Mr. Grumpy
I once worked at Kinko's, long ago. One dude was so angry, even as I started helping him. He asked for a bunch of copies, I made them and set them down in front of him. "How's that look?" I asked. "Well, you printed them upside down!" Guy was edgy. So I turned the stack of pages 180 degrees. The guy says: "… I don't like your attitude." Some people are determined to be displeased.
90. Mrs. Smartypants
I worked at a bookstore. We sold used and new books. This lady kept insisting that we were trying to scam her by labeling used books as new. She methodically unshelfed two dozen or so books and brought them up to the counter, to argue one-by-one that they were actually used, not new. None of the books were used. We tried showing her that some were published literally three days ago, but she wasn't buying it.
I explained that the publisher chose to print the book on off-white pages with uneven page sizes, but she wasn't buying it. I said that the dust jacket just got dinged in shipment, it happens a lot, best I can do is 10% off, but she wasn't buying it. She'd do this nine or ten times, over the course of a month. She would come in, pick out about twenty books, bring them all up and argue that each and every one of them was used, and we were scamming people.
She'd involve other customers in the charade, get loud, and threaten to file complaints with the Better Business Bureau. Eventually, someone would have to give her a coupon or discount to get her to shut up so we could check out the rest of the customers and she'd leave. This persisted for the better part of a month, each time the ownership group declined to kick her out.
Problem was, she was actually spending some money, even if she only paid 80% of what everyone else did, we still were making money. Then she made a new hire cry. The assistant manager was late back from lunch, and discounts have to be approved by a manager. So she was holding up the line for ten minutes, calling the poor checkout girl all sorts of nasty things, questioning her intelligence.
I was never so happy to kick someone out and tell them they're trespassing if they come back. Lady was a massive pain, thought she was smarter and knew more about books than every single one of us.
Good e-Reader Who gets that angry at a book store?
91. What a Comeback!
Went into an office supply store to buy a new desk, as my new keyboard was too big for the tray. An assistant asked me what I was looking for, and I explained the issue, that I needed a desk with a wide tray because my keyboard was too big. Her response was to fold her arms and say: "Time for a new keyboard, mate." I was, frankly, floored. I'd just been verbally challenged by a shop assistant.
I just shook my head and left, and on the way out I told a manager to go ask her why she just cost her employer a customer. He grumbled something about "Not again..." and started storming over as I went out the door.
92. Watch Where You’re Going
I went to Sonic for lunch one day, and my boss asked me to get her a Route 44 blue coconut slush. The girl that brought the stuff to my car was on roller skates. She hit a rock, and the giant cup of blue came flying into my open window. She laughed her ass off and apologized while I got out to let it drip off of me instead of even more getting onto the tan interior of my new car.
She left, came back with a wad of napkins and a handful of "10 cents off" cardboard circles and tossed them in my car. As I was trying to wrap my brain around what was happening, my friend called me and said her baby had just been born prematurely and she wanted me to go straight to the hospital. I got there and stopped in a bathroom to try to scrub blue dye off of my arms, face, and neck.
I wasn't very successful, but my friend and her husband had a good laugh after a stressful day, so that was a plus. When I got home, my husband saw that the inside of my car had been dyed blue and had a layer of sugary crust. He strongly suggested that I call the manager and ask if they would have my car cleaned. I called, and the manager told me to go see him the next day.
When I showed up, he said he could have one of his employees vacuum out my car, and handed me a card with "half off drinks for life" scribbled on it. I chalked it all up to "Sonic freaking sucks", and planned to let everyone I knew use that card for the rest of my life. First trip there, my husband handed the drive-thru guy the card, and he confiscated it and said it was only good for that one time.
At that point, I was pretty angry. I emailed corporate, the owner of that Sonic called me pretty quickly and claimed that it was his "idiot son" who gave me the card and that there is no such thing as a lifetime discount. I told him I didn't care about a discount and that I just wanted them to clean my car. I ended up with 10 free combo meals and a car interior that still attracts more dirt in certain spots no matter how much I clean it.
93. Patience in an Emergency
Well before last week I would've said Comcast but now I'm going to say the front office at my therapist's clinic. I didn't get to go see her for almost a year because I was extraordinarily sick, moved, and injured myself while moving to the point that I had surgery. I called to make an appointment and they said that since it had been over a year they had dropped me as a patient.
Ok. So do I fill out new patient paperwork again? Well, she's not accepting new patients right now. Ok, so can I see a different therapist because I'm seriously having some problems—they've got like 20 of them in the same clinic. Well, since you're established with her and you have a rapport built up with her we don't want to switch you to a new therapist.
You could try calling back next month, but just so you know she's booking four to six months out. At this point I get angry and say, "Ok so I'm calling you guys because I'm having major issues. What if I was having suicidal thoughts? Are you going to tell a person with suicidal thoughts that they can't see a different therapist since theirs is booked till May?"
And that's when she hung up on me. I called back and said, "Hey, I think we got disconnected" and she hung up on me again. So yeah, a mental health clinic that hangs up on people that have a history of suicidal tendencies and are asking for help gets my vote.
94. Temper Tantrum
This was actually very recently. There was this little ramen shop in Chinatown that I loved. Finally decided to take my boyfriend there. Started out fine. I order curry udon. The guy repeats it back to me, I confirm. Done deal. I get my food. It's curry ramen. Having worked in the food service industry, I don't get all upset, I just flag down the waiter & let him know politely that I got the wrong order.
He was fine with it, a few minutes later he brings out my curry udon. I was happy. Until...five minutes later the manager AKA the guy I ordered from—YES, THE GUY WHO REPEATED MY ORDER BACK TO ME—comes, literally yelling at me saying, waving a receipt in my face saying how I ordered ramen and I got ramen, blah blah. I tell him no, I ordered udon. He argued with me.
Thing is, I don't understand why he was yelling & arguing. They cost the same thing, so it's not like I was trying to scam them. He had zero reason to treat me that way & yell at me in front of the whole dining room. I used to speak very highly of that place & recommend my friends there all the time. Nope. They just lost a customer for life.
95. Real Smooth
I waitressed in high school. This happened when I was 16 or 17. A guy came in to eat with his family—a little girl and his pregnant wife. They were really, really friendly and at first, I thought it was a great table. The wife went to the bathroom and the guy asked for the check.
On the check, he wrote his phone number in the tip area along with "Call me, baby". I ran his card, waited until his wife came back, and brought over the guy's card and his receipt. I handed the receipt to the pregnant woman and told her something was wrong with the tip. She got SUPER upset and I got in a lot of trouble with my managers for stirring the pot.
In retrospect, I probably didn't handle that the best way, but at the same time I was furious that some guy would come to eat with HIS PREGNANT WIFE—they were both wearing wedding bands, acting couple-y, 99% positive they were married, pretty much 100% confirmed when I gave the wife the receipt with the guy's "tip" on it—and try to hit on a girl half his age. If he's pulling that stuff so brazenly, god knows what else he's doing behind his wife's back.
96. Parting Gifts
I worked for Best Buy for 6 years. Everyone knows about the lines that you stand in outside on Black Friday. Part of the process is once you get into the store, you stand in another line to buy your products. Our manger thought he was particularly smart winding the line through our appliance department. Mind you, there is usually 1,500+ people in the building at 6 AM (with a line still outside).
Well, we get a complaint from one of our patrons. After checking the dryers, we find a nice turd in one. Good size, solid consistency, just sitting there. A lady who did not want to lose her spot opened the dryer and pooped right there in front of everyone. I decided that day even though I may want stuff, I will never poop in front of an entire crowd of people for a $799 50" plasma TV.
97. Bullies Can’t Play With Us
I've thrown one punch in my life. It was on Black Friday. So it was the year the 360 came out. I was standing in line to get some external hard drive next to the video games. And there was this 11ish-year-old kid with a woman in her 60s. He was waiting for his 360 bundle. Woman before him had "gotten the last one," sighs all around.
Then he says, "Nope, one more" and begins the motion of handing it to the kid, and this guy comes out of nowhere and pushed the older woman and the kid. The kid hit his face on the edge of a video game rack, you know the one with the metal and plastic dividers. At 19 years old I don't know what came over me, but I instantly swung for the dude’s head and caught him right in the temple, sending him into a Keurig tower in the middle of the isle.
Everyone froze, including me. Guy had dropped the 360 and got up and walked away. I slid it with my foot to the kid and he didn't say anything either. Best part was, as I still wanted the hard drive, and I turned to get back in the end of the line. At the same time the rep in charge of handing out the other items such as the hard drive asked who was next. The first two people in line just pointed at me, causing me to skip about 5 spots in line.
98. I Wonder Why They Closed
Back when Circuit City was a thing, my sister gave me a $20 gift card for my birthday. I went to pick out a microphone, picked one off the shelf that it said was $15, and went to check out. I handed the cashier my gift card before the transaction, but when he scanned the microphone, it came up for $25 instead of $15. It turned out that it had simply been placed in the wrong area, so I asked him to hang on to my gift card and that I would go pick out a different one.
When I came back, he claimed that he never took my gift card. I saw the freaking thing sitting right in his trash can, and even when my dad got pissed and called for a manager, the manager refused to believe that the gift card sitting in the trash can was mine and said they had no way of checking it. My sister ended up stopping payment on the gift card (she had paid with a credit card, thankfully), called up Circuit City corporate, and complained. We never got it resolved, but then, Circuit City went belly-up the next year, so screw 'em anyway.
100. Bad Burger
I’ve posted these before, but gosh darn it, they're still relevant. I worked at a crummy not-chain burger shop off of a highway in high school. A lot of the customers were horrible, and so was the owner/manager. A man comes in and orders a burger. He pays and walks out of the store. He always has some scam going, and constantly tries to con food out of us.
He has money but just loves stealing/scamming. He lets it sit in the hot table for like a half hour, and comes back. "I DIDN'T ORDER IT WITH MAYO, I'M ALLERGIC TO MAYO." He throws the now-rock-hard burger in my face so hard it gives me a black eye. My boss chases him out of the store trying to beat the snot out of him.
He showed up a few days later and tried to pull another scam then freaked out on us. Ad Infinitum. He was a source of lots of laughs and head-scratching moments. Dude did NOT give up. A woman comes in from one of the nearby motels. She orders a strawberry shake and takes it into the bathroom. She's in there for like a half hour.
We don't see her leave, but someone screams, and we check the bathroom. it's COVERED in strawberry shake and blood. Even the ceiling. I clock out and leave. Jerk bosses and their jerk wife cleans it all. Weird disgusting guy comes in and rants about boobs and porn and other disgusting stuff constantly. I mean like REALLY obscene stuff in front of senior citizens and four-year-old kids.
It's like a freaking sketch comedy setup. Makes all the other customers angry. You can never call him out. He always orders like $90 of our nasty food. Always talks about how hot his wife and daughter are in a really gross way. One day he comes in with his family, and his wife looks like a model, so do his daughter and son, and they're all nicely dressed.
And of course, they all laugh and play along with his nasty stuff. There's way, way more. I could go on forever. Fights broke out in the lobby a few times, another weird woman stole the tip jar that had like $4 in it and actually ran off Zoidberg-style making weird noises, etc.
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