There's one unfortunate side of working in customer service that's just unavoidable: customers. Whether you're in retail or the service industry, we all have to deal with jerks from time to time—but none have ever been worse than these actual living nightmares. Put on your best smile and attach that flair, because we're clocking in for these totally awful moments in customer service. Guaranteed they'll make you wanna cringe.
1. I Didn’t Order A #2
I worked nights at McDonald's and was at the drive-thru. I was taking an order for a bunch of wasted girls when I overheard one of the girls say that she seriously needed to poop. Her friends apparently did not care and told her to go outside. So, she stepped out of the car and knelt down in the bushes next to the car.
The bushes were in plain view of the security camera. Everybody inside the place saw her, and it was a full-blown mess. So, I told her through the service window that everyone could see her. The look of sheer horror the girl made through the security feed made everyone burst in laughter including her friends. Poor kid.
2. Keep The Change
I was taking orders pretty late in the evening. It was quiet at that time so I had no customers until one dude came into the store and approached me at the till. He asked, “do you mind if I give you some coins to get a bill off of you?” Our policy is not to exchange money but I thought I'd do him a solid. I assumed it was probably just $10. Nope. I was so wrong.
He then opened his bag that had a massive bag of coins stored in bank counting bags. He stacked up $10 in 2 cent coins and then another stack, and he got about five stacks in when I had to stop him and say I couldn't do that big of an exchange. Well, he was not happy. He took his coins. He calmly put each back one at a time and said, “You've wasted my time. You've embarrassed me terribly. You lied to me. Good for nothing. That's for your trouble."
He left a $10 stack of two-cent coins on the counter and left. We’re not allowed to accept tips, but my manager saw everything and said I could.
3. Couldn’t Be More Obvious
It couldn’t have been more obvious that a guy was trying to return stolen merchandise. He “lost” the receipt, didn’t know when it was purchased and paid with cash so we couldn’t just easily look up the transaction on a credit card. He said he would call his friend to ask if they knew when it was purchased, and then he took out his iPhone and without pressing a button started to talk on it.
I was like...I can clearly see the home screen with no call happening. When he “got off the phone” I got a little bold and in my best retail manager voice said something to the effect of, “Oh, that’s cool! Is that a new update where you can talk to someone without actually calling them?” He left after that.
4. Smile! You’re on Camera
Many many many years ago I worked at a retailer in the UK. A grimy looking family came in and started acting shifty, having over-exaggerated discussions on washing machines, asking ridiculous questions about our returns policy. They bought a reasonably expensive Hotpoint washing machine from us, and wanted to take it with them that day, which we were happy to do.
They paid cash. They took their washing machine, loaded it into the back of their van, and we watched them drive over to the McDonald's on the other side of the trading park. About an hour later they drove back and said that we'd sold them the wrong machine. They'd gotten it home, unwrapped it, and it was the wrong machine. We told them to bring it on in and we'd sort it out.
They went out to their van and brought in a CLEARLY DIFFERENT, DIRTY, OBVIOUSLY SECOND-HAND WASHING MACHINE. Oh, and they didn't want an exchange. Just a refund. With every alarm bell ringing, my boss and I had a quick scan through the security cameras. Sure enough, they had driven to McDonald's, and come straight back. Whilst I was "running the refund through," my boss called law enforcement, who turned up, had a little look in the back of their van where, unsurprisingly, there was a brand new Hotpoint washer, still in its wrap.
They were carted off by law enforcement. Didn't get charged, unfortunately, but it was a definite get out moment. If they'd only been more patient and less greedy and gone home for a few hours first, they probably would've gotten away with it, knowing how much my boss would adhere to the “customer is always right” principle.
5. Wrong Pizza Pie
I was standing at the counter of the pizza place I work at. A lady storms in and slams a pizza down on the counter. "This isn't the pizza I ordered, what are you going to do about?" she asked. I look at the pizza, then at my buddy Nick, then back at her and say, "Nothing." She then goes on a long rant telling how we are going to be fired, how stupid and incompetent we were, then asked why weren't going to do anything? I could barely stifle my laughter at that point.
I told her, "Because that pizza came from the pizza shop across the street." I think she actually managed to shrink in size and slunk out looking so pathetic and beaten I almost felt bad for laughing till tears dripped down my face as she slunk off.
6. How Ruse
One evening, a friend and I were at a nice restaurant when a small, awkward-looking, 50-something dude came in and sat at the next table just a few feet away from us. He was dressed nerd-nice and announced to the waiter that he was meeting someone there for dinner. He then pulled out a small delicately wrapped package.
He placed it across the table. He ordered a drink and waited. After at least 30 minutes, he ordered an appetizer. Another hour went by, and he told the waiter that he wasn't sure about his friend and ordered a large entree. Because he so close, we heard everything he'd said and really started feeling sorry for the guy.
He looked pretty glum and kept glancing over at us, so we eventually made a bit of small talk with him. He was nice enough, but we kept it brief because we didn't really want him glomming on. By then, he had downed several drinks and eaten most of his meal, running up at least a $75 tab. He then went to the men's room.
But first, he’d folded his napkin neatly, placed it on his chair, and left his coaster on top of his half-finished drink—all indications not to clear his table because he was not done. He’d left his small gift sitting on the table. 45 minutes later, the waiter came over and asked us where our nerdy neighbor had gone.
My friend and I'd been talking and hadn't realized that he never came back from the men's room. Our waiter was sure he had bailed on the check, but I defended him. I asked him to give the dude more time, and I walked back to the men's room to check on him. He was nowhere in the restaurant. Another 30 minutes passed by.
It was clear our friend had dined and dashed, but he'd forgotten to take his gift. When I told the waiter he should open it, he said, "As an employee here, I can't do that...but I can't stop another patron from doing so." I'd had more than a few drinks by then and that was all I needed. I grabbed it and ripped it open.
It was a small box full of nothing but crumpled up paper. It was then that it finally dawned on all of us. The guy had fully staged the whole night with nice clothes, an imaginary date, a fake gift, the folded napkin, the coaster-covered drink, sad eyes, and men's room announcement just so he didn’t have to pay! Awful.
We gave our waiter a nice tip and left shaking our heads but smiling.
7. Pizza and Revenge Are Both Served Cold
I was working at a pizza restaurant and this woman for delivery and requests a shortened delivery time. The manager tells her we can't do that. The woman gives up and calls a competing pizza place. She then calls us back and tells us that the other place could do what she wanted. My manager, confused, expresses that he is happy for her.
She calls back again and tells the manager that nobody better vandalize her house because she canceled her order, and if her house gets wrecked she will know it was us. My boss, even more confused, assures her that no one cares enough about her canceled order to seek retribution and that lots of people cancel orders.
Seemingly satisfied, she hangs up and we think that it ends there. We were so wrong. About an hour later, two law enforcement officers show up to talk to the manager. This woman pre-emptively called law enforcement on a pizza restaurant for a hypothetical crime that hasn't happened and wasn't going to happen.
8. Bad Boys Bad Boys What'cha Gonna Do?
I work at an auto parts store. This one guy took some $60 headlights, didn't pay for them, and literally sprinted out the door. We went to look outside to try and get his license plate, just in time to see him speed off, hit a curb, and blow out his tire. I called 9-1-1 and the idiot got arrested and had to have his car towed.
9. Barely A Party
I worked as a server at a fine dining place, and this woman rented out a section of the restaurant to celebrate her husband’s 40th birthday. She came early, and I helped her set up some decorations and a small table for people to put their gifts. She said to expect about 30-40 guests. The couple came in right at seven.
No guests had arrived yet, and I could sense they were disappointed—but this was just the beginning. They sat there talking and looking at the door for the next hour, but nobody came. At 8, the wife came to me looking very sad and apologizing that nobody showed. They waited for another hour, and finally around 9:15, one person arrived without a gift.
Thirty minutes later, two more people showed up also with no gifts. They hung out for about twenty minutes and then left leaving the couple with the bill for their drinks. They weren't the jerks, but man, I'd say their friends definitely were.
10. You Gotta Beat the System
In my first years in the Army, I also worked a part-time job as an optician in the local mall. One day a lady came in with her mother (about age 40 and 60) and they were quite hyper and giggling at each other. I asked if I could help them and they had a prescription for lenses. No problem. She then asks if she can use her existing frames, and I was like "Sure, we can just do lenses."
She proceeds to hand me a pair of extremely cheap sunglasses she got from a dollar store. I told her that there was no way those glasses would stand up to having lenses changed out. She insisted that I "already said she could." I asked her if she was sure, because it was almost guaranteed they would be destroyed in the process. She still insisted.
I pointed out the sign we had up, saying we weren't responsible for damages—it was next to the register—and asked her one last time. She said yes again. Ok, I put them in the hotbox, a box of heated sand you use to loosen up plastic frames to get the lenses out, and they melted into goo pretty much instantly, as expected.
She was over my shoulder watching with these wild eyes, and when I pulled them out after a few seconds she started screaming about how we destroyed her glasses and now we owe her free glasses. Her mom got in on the action at that point and started shouting also about how I did it on purpose. I handed them back to her and said something like "Ma'am, I told you so."
They went into even more hysterics and by this time were attracting glances from passersby at the mall. I just walked into the backroom to the lab guy and was like, dude, you deal with this, I'm done. I then watched as he masterfully over-charged her about $100 for a $20 frame—it was on the display rack for $100, but we had a pile of the same frames in the discount drawer for $20, giving her a "20% discount" in the process.
I was there when she picked them up in about an hour, acting like she won the lottery at my expense because I was so incompetent. I was still young and had no idea the insanity people would go through to save a few dollars and "stick it to the man."
11. Baby Fever
I worked at McDonald's in 1997 and we had Beanie Babies as Happy Meal toys at one point. It was insane. They literally had to buy a security cage to keep the toys locked down in the back. They were delivered with a security escort. People were ordering "100 Happy Meals with no food" because we couldn't sell the toys by themselves.
One day I heard a commotion up front and found my high school counselor reaching across the counter grabbing one of the owners by the shirt because we were out of the pink flamingo. I'll never forget the look in her eyes. She had to be dragged out. It's scary how easy it can be to work people up into a frenzy.
Flickr, Housing Works Thrift Shops
12. You’re Not Special
I worked at a ski resort when I was younger, fitting boots and sizing skis, etc. My first year I worked at basically the Walmart of rentals, the cheapest option and the biggest store. So the week of Christmas, there are lines out the door every single day. I remember seeing my two-week paycheck after the two weeks around Xmas and I worked 119 hours.
It was absolute insanity. For another reference, the closest town had a permanent residency of fewer than 10,000 people, but during Christmas, it jumped up to 70,000 people trying to enjoy their vacation in the same spot. So, one of these days it’s business as usual, a quarter mile line out the door, non-stop craziness.
I’m at the bench closest to the door helping a lady when this kid walks up to my bench. I asked if I could help him and he said he had reserved rentals online and he wanted to pick them up. I said this is our store name if that’s where you reserved you’ll need to get in the back of the line and we’ll help you as soon as we can.
This 13-year-old kid said something inappropriate in front of the customer I was helping. I told him that quite literally every piece of equipment in our store was reserved, every single person in front of you has a reservation as well and we have to help everyone. He started insulting me personally, saying I was stupid and that he was going to report us to anyone he could because we weren’t letting him skip hundreds of people doing the exact same thing he was doing.
I think what angered him most is that I’m 6’3” tall and big. He was maybe 5’0” tall and 54 kg (120 lbs) so when he called me stupid, I literally laughed in his face. I was at no point threatened by this child, and at first, it was funny. The first lady left, I’m ignoring/laughing at this kid and asking the next person to come up and he starts yelling cuss words at me because I’m not helping him.
Up until this point, my manager had been a complete jerk and I was not a fan of him. But he’d had enough of the Christmas rush as well, and this kid was a perfect person to let off some steam on. I went and got my manager and told him this kid was personally attacking me and yelling cuss words in front of customers, so he walks up to the kid and says, “I’m sorry for the confusion, what’s your name so I can take a look at your reservation?”
And the kid lights up, thinking he finally beat the system and got in front of everyone for throwing a fit. My manager goes and finds his reservation—it’s digital, but I’m pretty sure he printed it off for the added dramatic effect—comes back and says, “ I found it.” He proceeds to rip it in half in front of his face and says, “Don’t ever treat someone that’s trying to help you like that, you are never allowed in our store again, and with every other store in town also being completely 100% booked on equipment, good luck skiing this week.”
I still didn’t like the guy, but I respected him one point more for the rest of the season for standing up for me.
13. Act Your Age
I worked at a call center years ago. I overheard an angry commotion from the headset of the gal next to me. She handled it like a true legend. The yelling continued for what seemed like 30 minutes, but it was probably closer to five. But she was totally unfazed, just reading a magazine while the ranting continued. Finally, I heard my co-worker ask, "Your mother or father home, sweetie? We're not permitted to speak with children." They hung up.
Before the next auto-dial, I said, "Whoa, that was a kid?" She just shrugged, "No, it was some old man."
14. Perfect Response
I managed a cell phone store years ago and there was an entitled older lady who came in and made my full-timer cry. I stepped in and told her that I didn’t need her business and to leave because she had no right to treat people the way she did. The customer escalated the issue to the "office of the president" and I was contacted asking why we were so rude to this customer and what happened.
My only response was to email a section of the "violence in the workplace" training module that states that you do not have to take abuse from customers. Nothing else was ever said about it. Other than another manager who heard about it contacting me to say "Well played, sir".
15. Getting Through To You
I was a shift manager at a McDonald’s in the middle of a mall. A guy came up to the counter with several McDonald’s bags of food then said, “My wife came through your drive-thru, and you messed up the order!” I asked, “are you sure she came through our drive-thru?” He went, “Yes! She told me she went to the drive-thru. When she got home, she realized the order was wrong. Y’all need to give us our money back and give us the proper food,” he requested defiantly.
Confused, I looked around the mall and asked, “Did she drive through Sears or JC Penny to get here?” He finally realized he was in a mall, then grabbed his bags, and left.
16. Standing My Ground
I had a lady who got mad because she’d put her coffee on the roof of her car, and it spilled. So, because she was a regular, she believed she deserved free coffee. We said no. She said she was calling our owner-operator. We just got bought by another corporation so we gave her the store number. I pretended to be a secretary. After an, ahem, acrimonious phone call, she went to drive off. This is where the story goes off the rails.
As she's trying to drive out of the parking lot, her car broke down. She couldn’t afford a tow, and for some reason, the store manager absolutely refused to help her out and call anyone. So, she literally ended up living out of her car in our parking lot for the next two weeks until my manager finally made the call. Crazy times.
17. Guests Of Dishonor
They had a reservation for 12 people. It was the girl's 17th birthday, and she arrived first with her boyfriend. Her dad came a few minutes later. The three of them waited about 45 minutes and decided to just order. They ate and were about to leave when the rest of her family showed up plastered and making a big scene.
They went on about how they weren't hungry and had to show up so nobody would be mad at them for not coming. They were there so they could eat her cake and then just leave. The birthday girl was crying while her dad and boyfriend were trying to console her.
18. Some Secrets Aren't Worth Keeping
I work at a pizza delivery business. I had a guy one day call in and order for delivery. I asked for the address, and they wouldn’t tell me. I kept asking, then the guy told me he didn’t know what the address is. I asked how I was supposed to deliver with no address, and he threw a tantrum and said he’d order from somewhere else. Well, he’s their problem now!
19. Not a Feed Store
I used to work in a luxury perfume shop while at university, and I had more bizarre interactions than I can count. My favorite was an old lady. She came in, wearing a dirty housecoat and slippers, frantically searching in the store. I asked her if I can help, but she said no, and went on with her search. After a while, she came to me and said: "Ok, I give up, and just ask. Do you have horse food?"
I told her politely, we didn't. And she started loudly yelling: "I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT SO MUCH" It took us at least 10 minutes to calm her down. She then filed a complaint and left.
20. The Powers of the Mind
Back when I worked at a hardware store, I had a woman scream and cry at me for using my item scanner on her items because its laser would "make [her] sick" and/or "make [her] sickness worse." Her basket was stacked, and she was effectively asking me to hold the line up for a half-hour to dial in her product codes manually. She also screamed if I made eye contact.
When she left, she told me something to the effect of "I don't want you to get hurt, but if something bad happens to you, it's because I'm thinking about it."
21. Holey Bread
I’d been working at a popular deli chain restaurant for a few years and was working in the back one day when a new trainee came rushing over, absolutely bawling, so I immediately knew something was seriously wrong. I had her stay in the back to calm down and alerted the head manager so we could deal with the situation.
I went to the register and found a petite Korean lady shouting very loudly and demanding the trainee come back and saying she was trying to cheat her out of her money. She also kept shouting what I can only assume were crude insults in Korean. The manager looked at her with a “lol nope” expression and took over the line.
I got the pleasure of dealing with this customer. Somehow, I managed to keep a cool head and told her calmly to explain her problem. She was screaming, yelling, and rambling about how upset she was and said the cashier didn’t give her any change and that the bagels she wanted were too expensive. I redid her transaction.
The entire time I was packing up her bagels, she's still angrily waving her arms around in a fit—until she bumped a customer next to her. He very politely, but also very sternly said, "Excuse me!" She decided to take this opportunity to spit on him. While this was going on, the assistant manager had already made a call to the authorities.
An officer came in while I was finishing slicing this monster-lady's bagels and tried to ask her questions very calmly like what was the problem, what’s her name, things like that. When he asked to see ID, she went ballistic. I couldn't believe my eyes. She shoved him and then spat at him! The whole time he had kept his hands to himself. This, clearly, was the breaking point. The officer grabbed her wrists and started to cuff her.
He was ordering her to put her hands behind her back, and out of nowhere, she let out this howling scream and started trying to fight with the guy. His partner came in and saw the commotion. He immediately jumped in. She went so nuts that he had to tackle her onto the ground. They took her out to their car in cuffs and came back inside to pick up her personal items that were dropped in the fray and asked me if anything else was hers, and I gladly handed them her change and bagels.
22. Sweet Guess
As a former Taco Bell worker, here is the one order I will never forget. A lady at the drive-thru ordered a meal, sat for a second, then asked, “How many Cinnabons come in the dollar two pack?” Oh honey.
23. Let Chill
My family runs a concession trailer at fairs. We serve one item and one item only: Empanadas. As a hint that this is what we sell, we have a huge empanada on our sign and the trailer has a giant 16-bay steam table directly in front of the serving counter. Despite all this, one day, when we were extremely busy and it was hot and we were all soaked in sweat from the steam needed to make the empanadas, a customer came up to the window after standing in line for probably fifteen minutes, saw us with soaked shirts and headbands and steam pouring out of the trailer. He then asked, "What flavors of ice cream do you have?"
24. Self-Destructive
I worked at RadioShack for six months while in college. Pretty much had at least one terrible experience per shift. The one that stands out the most? It was a guy who wanted us to honor the warranty on his iPhone cable. The thing was a mutilated mess. It had clearly stopped working and he had tried to fix it himself by cutting the cable apart and attempting to solder two wires together.
We calmly explained that we couldn’t process a claim for an item that was willfully destroyed, and he starts screaming in our faces about how “RadioShack is a scam!” and “I’m going to sue all of you!” And then he tries to WHIP my coworker—a five-foot-tall non-threatening woman—with the cable! She managed to turn her head and catch the wire with her hand before it caught her in the face. Myself and another employee chased him out of the store and called law enforcement but nothing came of it. RadioShack shoppers were the worst.
25. Fool Me Once
I worked at a pawnshop for a couple of years. We had a customer pawn a chainsaw, which turned up stolen and was confiscated by law enforcement, which causes the store to lose money and police to be aware that he is a known thief. He came back something close to three months later to pawn something else. I didn't recognize him right away.
I asked him if he had pawned anything before and he said yes, so I asked his last name and entered it into our computer system, which promptly said STOLEN. First I thought, "Really? You came back here?" I gave my boss—it's literally a two-person store—our not very frequently used signal to discreetly call law enforcement.
Meanwhile, I started acting like I was working on his loan and stalled a bit. Just a couple of minutes later, a couple of cop cars pulled up and officers quietly walked in and he immediately gave up. I didn't really have to say anything to him. The handcuffs spoke for themselves.
26. Food Fight
I was 18 years old and worked at a local grocery store in the produce department. Beyond regular duties, we made fruit trays on weekends, nothing fancy, just a variety of cut-up fruit in large red bowls. Dude comes in after 10:00 PM—we close at 11—and asks for a tray with specific fruits. I tell him we, unfortunately, don't make custom trays.
The 16-year-old dude who is also on shift with me overhears and tells him it's slower tonight so he can do it for him. He says "Ok good," no gratitude displayed at all. This co-worker of mine is legit always extra kind to customers, it's admirable. 20 minutes later my coworker comes out of the back room and presents it to this customer.
He immediately starts screaming at him about how bad it looks. He yells things like "That looks like absolute trash! Are you an idiot!?" I run over to see what the problem is. The fruit tray looks absolutely standard but this guy isn't having it. He smashes it on the ground and keeps screaming about how we are stupid and how we have wasted his time.
I snap. I tell him to "get the heck out.” He postures up. Keep in mind this guy is like in his 40s, ready to fight some teenagers over a fruit tray. Numerous other employees run over and yell for him to get out. He says, "I'll be back for all of you idiots," and runs toward and out the sliding doors. All this is on camera luckily so management calls the cops regarding his actions and that last threat. They ended up arresting him later on because apparently he also had some warrants. Hope the fruit was worth it, jerk.
27. Too Hot to Handle
I was working as an assistant general manager at a fast-casual restaurant. Some 40-something woman starts going off on my cashier. I round the corner from the desk to see her dump soup all over our front end cooler and knock a bunch of stuff on the ground. I tell my cook to call 9-1-1, say there is a woman causing a disturbance and breaking stuff, the address is next to the phone.
I walk up and stand behind the counter and put on my happiest manager face, so overly happy that it drove the woman even more into a fit. So raging cyclone Karen starts to knock stuff off the counter, throws two IBC root beers on the ground, and starts yelling at another guest who tried to come over and defuse the situation. I hold out for another few minutes before two officers run in.
She has been screaming for a refund for 10 minutes at this point and breaking stuff. The officers walk in, I point at her and say "Get her out of my restaurant." She was detained. Apparently, her soup was too hot. Thanks for the headache, Karen. I comped sevens meals of other guests, had to work a double because my cashier was in a state, and had to deal with the officers and their paperwork. Screw food service. So glad I'm out.
28. Wrong Lane
A guy came to our drive-thru. I opened the window and asked, "Sir, how can I help you?" Calmly, he replied, “I’m outta checks.” I said, “...Not sure I follow you.” “I’m out of checks,” he said again but sounded more impatient this time. "Yes, I heard you, but I don't know what you want me to do. You can use cash or card?" The dude gave me a weird look then said, "Oh, this ain't the bank," and peeled out from the window. I work at Burger King.
29. Not a Word
I was working at a coffee shop, we had a customer come in one day and tell us in a very awkward and stilted manner that he would like to become a regular, but that he wanted a wordless transaction. He would come every day at the same time and get the same drink, and he wanted us to ring him up and give him the drink without anyone speaking to him.
It was definitely weird, but we did it for him, passing the info along to the other staff as a kind of tribal knowledge, and he did come every weekday and buy his latte, without speaking to or looking at anyone. It worked very well...until one horrible day. I was working with a new girl and I had stepped into the back room to get something, and I suddenly heard him screaming out front.
The new girl had said, "Hi, what can I get you?" and he responded by screaming in her face, "What the heck is wrong with you? I told you people not to talk to me!" and storming out. We never saw him again.
30. You're the Worst
I was a supervisor at a call center for a major online retailer who was involved in a data breach a few years ago. As usual, we required all of our customers to change their passwords. I had to take over a call from a lady who was absolutely refusing to change her password. I tried to explain as nicely as possible and she kept me on the phone for an hour insulting me and screaming about how wrong this was.
Ultimately she told me that I, personally, was worse than a dictator and that making her change her password was an offense worse than hurting a bunch of people. No joke. I am not exaggerating at all.
31. Face Journey
A woman came in and wanted a morning-after pill. While my co-worker was getting it, she told me about the activities which made the pill necessary, with focus on the guy's unmentionables—it had been a disappointment, and apparently why she decided she didn't want the guy's children after all. Since she didn't speak the language very well this was mostly done with gestures and facial expressions, but I, unfortunately, got the gist.
32. Bad Things Happen to Bad People
I was working the window at McDonald's late at night. Guy orders and pulls up to the window. I'm cooking and handling the window, so I wasn't there when the customer pulled up. When I walked up to the window, I didn't see the jerk with trash in his lap. I open the window to take his payment and he throws a bag of trash at me. I take a step back, bothered that I just got trash thrown at me, and I watch his car speed off.
I'm upset, but there's nothing I can do. A couple of seconds later, I hear a small bang of metal on metal. I walk to the lobby and look out the windows. The jerk slammed into a law enforcement officer's cruiser who was about to loop around and use the drive thru himself. Of course, I also went to tell the officer what just happened inside.
33. The Last Straw
I was working as a department store's mobile rep, I'm helping this old man with his phone—yes, he's asking very basic questions about his iPhone but he had an appointment and was very polite. We were setting up his phone too. This Karen is waiting behind us with her kids running around for about 15 minutes, and again he has an appointment and I told her it might be awhile.
She has been making comments under her breath the entire time and setting a terrible example for her kids about respecting your elders. Then, the old gentleman said he needed to run to his car and get his SIM card and that he'd be back in 10 minutes. I then proceeded to help the lady while he was away but she required help involving me making a call that I knew was going to be too long so I said she had to wait until I'm done or come back later.
When the old man returned, she made a comment so disturbing it made my blood run cold. She said something about how she was "surprised he didn't fall down in the parking lot,” implying that he should have. I just got fed up with Karen at this point and I called AP on her and said she was causing a disturbance. Sure, I didn't help her and she undoubtedly left me a bad review, but I couldn’t care less. I just feel bad for her kids and that such jerk actually exists.
34. Saved by the Bill
This guy came in and without even glancing at any merchandise, comes to the register. He hands me five $20 bills and asks for one $100 bill. As unusual as it was, I obliged. After I verified all his $20 bills were legit, I pulled a single $100 bill from my till. This is the part that saved me—I held the $100 bill up to the light just like we were trained to do every time we handle a $100 bill.
Only $100 bills and not any other denomination. He took the $100 in one hand, turned away from me, turned back and showed me a $10 bill, and claimed he was short $90. Without even thinking, I pointed to the door and told him he could leave or I would be calling law enforcement. He conceded and left without another word. The thing that saved me is that $100 bills are the only ones we look through at a light. The cameras saw me do that and I knew I had him dead to rights.
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35. Glad To Help
I worked at a local brewery a few years ago. One day, a man came in and put two big growlers down on the counter. I was scanning the bottles, and I made the usual small talk, "How's your night going?" The man took a deep breath, looked me in the eyes, and dropped the mic. He said, in this numb voice, "Well, I just walked in on my 14-year-old son naked and video chatting a middle-aged man.”
He finished, “…so it could be a lot better." I didn't quite know what to say, so I told him, "Oh, that's not good...enjoy your drinks."
36. Butternut Squashed
I worked at a small roadside produce shop. My boss had a few different stalls, so I was often left to run the stall by myself. I remember this lady walked up and asked me, "Do you have any tomatoes?" I shook my head and said, "Sorry, we don't." She got weirdly upset and whined, "But the place down the street has them!" So, I said to her, "Then go there."
37. Need To Cool Down
I worked at a Dairy Queen. One day, a frustrated lady came in holding her bag. She whipped out a receipt and, without giving me any context, said, “There’s supposed to be a Baja Blast.” I told her, “Ma’am, this receipt is for Taco Bell.” She quickly said, “My bad,” and sped out.
38. Seeing Is Believing
This happened at Wendy's. I once had a woman come through the drive-thru and try to order macaroni and cheese. I politely informed her that we didn’t have that. She insisted we did. I told her we definitely did not. She got angry and yelled that yes, we did. I said to her, "Ma'am, I have been working here for three years. We have never had macaroni and cheese. It’s not something we serve. Would you like to order something else?"
She swore and said, "Yes, you do! I can see it on the menu board! It’s right there right in front of me on the menu!" I told her I wasn’t sure what she was looking at but we definitely didn’t have mac and cheese. I told her that if it really did say mac and cheese on our menu board then that meant someone vandalized it. She disagreed and said that it was definitely part of the menu board, and it’s real and, we did have it, and she wasn’t leaving until she got her mac and cheese. It was almost ten minutes of this back and forth.
All the while, she was holding up the drive-thru line. I finally got the manager to come and deal with it. Even with my manager there, this lady absolutely refused to accept that we did not have mac and cheese. She also refused to order anything else and she wouldn’t move her car until we gave her the mac and cheese that we didn’t have. It was such a mess, but it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot.
We had a line of cars wrapped around the building now, and everyone was annoyed. It’d been half an hour, and the line had not moved. The manager told her that if she didn’t leave, he'd have to call someone. Then she screamed at him, still going on about how she could clearly see mac and cheese on our menu board right in front of her. I decided enough was enough. I exited the building to go see the board.
I walked along the outside to the drive-thru order screen where this woman's car was. I asked her to please show me on the menu where it said the words "macaroni and cheese" anywhere. She pointed and confidently said, "right there," with all the conviction of someone who’s absolutely sure of themselves and being right. I looked to where she was pointing. I saw it. I sighed heavily as a bit more of me lost some hope for humanity.
I composed myself and told her as politely as possible that, “Ma’am, that is a picture of the orange slices that come with the kid’s meal. We do not serve mac and cheese. Please drive away." She was confused. Then she looked at the menu board again. The realization finally dawned on her, and she drove off without another word. I went back inside and screamed in the walk-in freezer for ten minutes.
39. Check This!
A guest refused to have his wife check her coat. Our venue doesn't allow guests to have their coat in the hall because of fire safety reasons. He got up to the point of furiously shouting while his wife was trying to tell him it wasn't a big deal. He only let up after we told him we were within our rights to deny him entry and would be able to call 9-1-1.
Our coat check service is free, by the way.
40. Not Nice!
I work in customer service for a hiking association and we had a lady come in, complaining about one of our staffed cabins. It got to the point where we had to call said cabin and inform them. I started the phone call with: "I'm here with a nice lady..." and she proceeded to yell out: "I AM NOT NICE" Thanks for stating the obvious.
41. Up to the State
A customer tried to argue with me over the price of California Refund Value (how much extra bottled and canned drinks cost, money that is refunded when they're recycled). I told her that the state controls how much CRV costs, not the store. She then goes on about how the grocery store across the street charges less for CRV and so I asked her, “Did you buy a 24 pack of water?” She replies, “No.”
I explained to her that the state charges 5 cents per bottle. 24 bottles makes $1.20. And since she’s buying (2) 24 packs, that totals to $2.40 for CRV. She waves me off annoyingly and hands me the money to pay. When I gave her, her change, she picks out a penny and says, “No I don’t want this one. Give me a cleaner one.” So, I took the penny from her, reached down to my till, and then handed her the same penny back. She didn’t notice.
42. Take a Gamble
When I worked at McDonald’s during my senior year of high school, a man in a wheelchair demanded that I sell him a lottery ticket. He was obviously not all there and so I decided to just roll with it. Suddenly like a switch, he flipped out on me. He yelled at me saying he works closely with law enforcement and that if I was a lady of the evening, he would report me and have me taken away.
This lasted for a good 10 minutes when finally, one of my shift managers decided to step in and help me. The man ends up buying one hamburger, but he sat in the lobby for the rest of my shift, so two more hours. So many customers complained about his smell and when my managers tried to kick him out, he started swatting the air, yelling profanities. We called 9-1-1 and an hour later they showed up to wheel the man out. I never saw the man after that, hope he’s doing okay.
43. Entertainment of What Kind?
I worked for an online banking help desk and this 18-year-old lad phoned up saying he had seen a transaction for £7 to allpay.net and because he didn't recognize it, he decided the bank were robbing him of £7 and that I was in on it and I was a "thieving little jerk." Then he gets his dad on the phone who stuck up for his piece of work son, saying I was a pathetic jerk for taking £7 off an 18-year-old boy, even though it was a debit card transaction and I simply worked in the department which helped people use online banking.
But anyway, I phoned our debit card services to see if they could give any more information, and boy could they. I then had the pleasure of relaying back to this little jerk's equally jerky father the following: "Hi sir, thanks for holding. I've checked with our debit card services team and I now understand why your son would not have recognized the payee 'allpay.net'. That's a deliberately vague term used for discretion when the customer has subscribed to online adult entertainment. That's what it was for. Your son has been paying for online adult entertainment. Would you like to pop him back on the phone so I can tell him it's a payment for his adult entertainment, or will you pass on the information?"
The father just muttered that the issue did not require any further investigation, thanked me for looking into it, and hung up.
44. Don't Steal My Sub-shine
I've worked at several restaurants. However, about a year ago, this is how a conversation went with this lady. I asked her what I could get her, she just said a sub. We have 12 different kinds. When I asked for more details, she pointed at my boss and said: “He knows which one.” He didn’t recognize her, but just went along with it and prepared to make her an Italian sub.
He asked what size bread. This caused more problems. She asked, “What is a sized bread?” Yikes. She just kept saying “I don't know…I just want a sub!! Is that hard?" At this point I was getting pretty angry, and so was my boss. I don't know if she was being weird? Under stress? Under the influence of something else? I don't know…she was getting pretty upset clearly.
That’s when my boss made a fatal mistake. He asked her whether she wanted white or whole wheat bread. She lost it. She seriously said, "What kind of question is that? It's a freaking SUB, ok?" At this point, if I were the boss, I would have told her to please leave, don't talk like that to me, but my boss kept on asking her to the point she said, "Just make MY sub! The biggest one!!"
He makes her sub on white bread, default way we make it, and she says it's for here. She gets the super sub, which is our biggest sub, and she goes, "This was on wheat bread! Why is it on white?" Then she throws the tray with the sub on it back on the counter by the cashier and goes, "I'm not eating this freaking thing! This isn't MY SUB like you made it before!"
My boss says: "Ma'am, how am I supposed to know what you had for lunch at my restaurant a month ago? I have hundreds of orders a day, and you expect me to remember yours?" She told us and raged, "I hope somebody comes in and hurts all of you, you freaking jerks," and stormed out. We never saw her again. ever. THAT was the most messed up thing that ever happened to me working with the public.
45. Public Bath
When I worked at Starbucks, I was cleaning the restrooms and I went to open the door to one of them. I didn’t usually knock at that point because there are locks on the door and what weirdo doesn’t lock the door when they go to the bathroom in public. I swung it open and was astounded. The door opened into what looked like a situation where someone puts way too much soap in the washing machine, there’s was soap and bubbles floating around everywhere and a naked woman who just stared at me.
She was probably homeless and washing herself, but the amount of soap and bubbles in there turned the situation from looking like real life into a messed-up dream.
46. I Got Your Number
When I was a delivery driver in college, I was taking an order over the phone. The woman said she wanted to pay with a card. When I asked her for her card number, she just totally lost it. She started to literally scream at me at the top of her lungs over the phone, accuse me of being a thief, saying she “knew who I was” and I how I was a “bad guy.” For clarity, I have no idea who this idiot was.
Eventually, she just hung up and we canceled the order. All of this because I asked for her card number when she was trying to pay over the phone with her card. I have no idea how this woman thinks credit cards work or how she was able to function in the world at all.
47. Rorschach Test
One time this woman came into the place where I was working. Behind me on the wall were some abstract black and white photos that were not showing anything special. One was maybe just showing a really blurred female face although it's more my interpretation of the shape rather than the source image, the others were just "artsy" stains.
She was normal at first, then she noticed the photos and started to get really upset. She asked me what the heck that was and why would we put something like that up. Then she went on to say the images were depicting these terrible things, apparently, the face one she saw as some beaten up victim and the stains looked like terrible events to her. She went on and on about it, they really traumatized her.
48. Spare a Chip
I have a million, but the one that stuck out to me as the most was this weird guy who never spoke all and would always come in late at night. One night about an hour after we closed, I was getting ready to leave when I start walking towards the alarm and there's the dude standing in the middle of the aisle staring me dead in the eyes. I froze for a good 10 seconds then asked him if he was OK and that we were closed.
In response, he frowned, pulled up his shirt, and rubbed his belly. I repeated that we had closed, walked over to him, and started to walk him towards the entrance. When he realized what I was doing he turned and ran deeper into the store. I was debating calling 9-1-1, but I had been there for 11 hours already and didn't want to spend another hour dealing with them, so I decided to follow him and try again.
I caught up for him in the bulk candy/nuts section. He was standing staring at banana chips. I told him we were closed, and he started to wail on making some high-pitched whining sound. I broke and gave him some banana chips. He smiled and was passive enough for me to walk him to the door. When we got through the first set of doors I spun around and locked them, when I turned around, he was inches away from me and gave me a big hug.
Shocked and weirded out, I sorta just stood there, then he pulled his face right into my face, whispered, "You big good," and gave me a peck on the cheek. I took a step back into the door, he ran his wet fingers through my beard and skipped out into the darkness.
49. Crossing the Line
I had a lady cuss me out when I worked as a customer service manager for a big retail store. She then went on to tell me how my mom didn’t raise me right and should have done better. My mom passed away a few weeks previously, so I then told her: "Thanks ma’am, but she did a great job and recently passed. Now leave, or I'll call law enforcement on you for criminally trespassing."
50. Common Sense
A guy was smoking right next to the gas pumps. As a 16-year-old, it felt weird to tell a man three times my age that if he wanted to kill himself that would be okay, but don't take my customers and me with him.
51. No Catch
At Panera, a guest called from their car with a chorus in the background giving orders for pickup. First order was simple, but the next order was something we didn’t carry; it had salmon. Some regional Paneras did have or have had salmon, but we were not one of them. So I politely said, “Sorry, but salmon is not an item we carry.”
Just as I was about to suggest an alternative for the customer, the person on the other end of the phone cut me off and started getting really aggressive, "Yes, you do! You do!" they screamed. But we don't. We just don't. Then I'm like, "Hey, maybe you're thinking of another chain. We are very similar to..." and then I listed off some other places.
But, again, they cut me off screaming, “I know you have the salmon! I just ate it the other day!” And, by now, I was just being honest with them and said, "Hey man, I don't really need this attitude. We don't have salmon. I can't make the dish for you. You got us confused with something else." Then there was this very long, ominous silence.
Finally, someone who wasn’t the person who had been yelling about salmon, said, “Wait, this isn't *insert some totally not Panera sounding place that I don't remember here*?" I went, "No,” and then immediately everyone in the car started yelling at each other, and then I hung up. Customer service is the absolute worst.
52. Wrong Store
When I worked at Home Depot, a customer tried to return a door that had been installed in their house for 20 years. Literally 20 years. I was only four years older than their door back then. I was floored by the situation. They had the receipt, but the receipt showed they bought it at some mom and pop store. That store had since gone out of business, and the customer argued, "Well, I'm gonna buy the new door here! This place has enough money to refund me and I have the receipt!"
He kept screaming that he had the receipt and did not understand why that receipt being from another store made his point invalid.
53. Unreasonable Request
I worked at a Buck-A-Book. I was the only employee there at the time as my manager was asleep in the back office, and nothing would wake him up. I was in a cast and on crutches from having broken my ankle and so I was sitting behind the counter. I wasn't even supposed to be back at work for another week, but my manager had whined about being alone and forced me back.
It was pouring buckets of rain that day. A woman came in and bought 100 books—some hardcover—for her school. She demanded that I carry all these books out to her car for her. Our two-wheeler was in the back room with my sleeping manager and banging on the door for 15 minutes failed to bring him out. I explained that I couldn't help her with the books because of my cast.
She threw a fit and demanded that since she spent $100 that I close the store and carry each and every box out to her car in the pouring rain by myself on crutches. I may have said more than just get out.
54. Have It Your Way
Back in high school, I worked at Wendy's. Despite this, I had one guy try to order McNuggets over the speaker. When I asked what size of chicken nugget he wanted, he got all defensive when I didn’t call them McNuggets. Then he said, “Fine, fine, fine, I'll get a Whopper.” So, I went, “...uh, a Dave's Double? Or Baconator?” The dude just started screaming at me as he zoomed off into the sunset.
55. Fizzed Out
In high school, I worked at the concession stand at a movie theater. This guy ordered a popcorn and large diet Pepsi. He came back to the counter 10 minutes later complaining that his soda was carbonated. I explained to him that all of our sodas were carbonated, and he asked me if we had a microwave, which we did have.
So, he wanted me to go into the back and microwave his soda. He wanted it warm but not too warm. I went to the back and had to pour the soda into two different cups because the original wouldn't fit into the microwave. It was truly a bizarre experience.
56. Not Seeing Clearly
So, I work in optical sales, this is about the strangest customer my manager and I had ever dealt with. So, I walk in to work, and my manager is working with a patient, and there is another one seated at another desk waiting to be helped. I clock in and introduce myself to the man: "Hi there, how can I help you today?" He points at my manager and says "Actually, she was helping me."
"Oh okay," I turn to my manager, "Manager, would you like for me to pull up his insurance so that you can just run him through real quick when you're available?" She replies, "Yes, absolutely. Sir, she is just going to pull up your insurance, and then I'll help you." I turn back and smile at him, and ask, "So, what's your DOB so I can look you up?"
Here's where things start to go downhill. The guy leans in, inches away from my face, and whispers "Can you not take no for an answer?" So, I just went away and just stood up and went in the back until he left. Fast forward three weeks and this guy ordered his glasses with my manager and has received them. He loved them, according to her. He calls the store and gets me. "Yeah, so I bought these glasses, and I think I want to upgrade to transitions. How much would that cost?"
I say, "Oh no problem sir, what's your DOB so I can look your profile up?" He asks, "Is the manager available?" I said, "No sir, just me today." He replied: "I think I'd like to talk to the manager, she (AND I QUOTE) sounds nicer than you on the phone." Click. He hung up on me. Anyway, he eventually gets a hold of her and orders the transitional lenses. Loves them, according to her. I thought that was the end, but I was so, so wrong.
Fast forward another three weeks. He calls in and gets the manager on the line. Immediately starts telling her about how he doesn't like the glasses and wants to return. She's tired of his shenanigans, so she just says that's fine, and he can bring them back whenever he feels like it. He then says, "Excuse me, I paid for the glasses over the phone, why can't I return over the phone?" He's sounding very upset at this point.
My manager just looks confused, "Sir... You still have the glasses, moreover, I couldn't process a return over the phone if I wanted to. Our system literally will not allow it." He says, "Well this is just ridiculous. What if I just mail you the glasses then?!" She replies, "Sir, we still can't process a card return over the phone." He goes: "Okay, then what if I mail you my card?!" She replies: "E-excuse me...? Mail us your credit card? Really?"
He finally goes: "No, my debit card!" At this point, my manager was just floored by this guy and finally broke character. "So, you want...to mail us...your debit card?" He yells: "YES, DARN IT!" She told him: "Sir, I'm sorry, but that's the worst idea you've ever had" and hung up.
57. Bit Of A DIY
Back when I was in fast food, I had someone who wanted me to remove all the sesame seeds from the top of a bun. The answer was no.
58. Like Father Like Son
This kid had two Xbox games in his pants when I was working at Blockbuster. I saw him tugging at them because they were sliding down his pant leg and confronted him. He took them to his dad, who I didn’t even realize was in the store. Dad decides to reward the wannabe thief by renting them, except they already owed over $100 in late fees because of Xbox games they’d never returned.
He proceeds to lose his mind, yelling and screaming at me. My manager gets pissed and tells him to get out for saying some pretty insane stuff to a 16-year-old girl. The dude says he’s just going to go to the other Blockbuster. We flagged his account and called the other store to warn them. He showed up there about 10 minutes later, the kid tried to steal games AGAIN, and this time that store manager called the cops. It was pretty awesome, even though my heart was racing pretty fast when an adult man was leaning across the counter to tell me what a b-word I was.
59. No Shoes, No Service
I broke a large light bulb on the floor near the door, and as I was cleaning a customer comes in barefoot. "Sorry sir, I just broke some glass in here how about telling me what you need or coming back in a minute with shoes?" He says, "I don't care, you workers are all huge pansies these days, I worked in a nail factory barefoot blah blah,” as he continues to walk closer.
I said, "Did you really just override my request and expect to be served?" Insert more disrespect. Cue register lock. I come around, hold the door open to leave, and I told him to get out.
60. Cold as Ice
I used to work in a small public library. There was an older business owner that came in for a weekly club/lunch meeting. These meetings were in a back-meeting room that I had no control over. He came into the library a couple of times furious at me because his chair was too cold. He informed me that for the rest of the winter I needed to sit in his chair before he got there, so his chair would be warm for him!
61. Here for the Game
I was a page at NBC Studios in Burbank in the early 2000s and part of our job was working the gift shop and ticket counter for the Tonight Show. Two guys come in and say "We're here for the Lakers game." I was like "Uh... I'm sorry, that game isn't here, it's over at the Staples Center." One of them just gives me a look and says "It's NBC, right?" I proceed to explain to him that while NBC is airing the Lakers game, we don't shoot it at the studio, and we take our cameras and crew and shoot it at the Staples Center where the Lakers play.
The one guy turns around and scribbles on a piece of paper and hands it to me. It says "Two Lakers tickets for [Insert Random Name]" and he says like, "What about this, huh?" Thankfully my supervisor jumped in and said "Oh, you'll have to come back Thursday morning, we'll see you then, okay?" and that seemed to placate them and they left. My supervisor tells me this happened quite often and when you tell them to come back, they rarely do.
62. Secret Agent Man
I used to work at McDonald's. A very well-dressed and well-groomed man asked for a cheeseburger without onions and we gave him one. He came back up a moment later, ranting about how the person who made his burger was trying to hurt him. I started to take it back to the grill area to be remade but noticed that there weren't actually any onions on it. I gently mentioned that I didn't see any onions, but could he point out anything on the burger that he didn't like and I would get him a new one.
He snaps up to his full height and announces, "OF COURSE THERE AREN'T ANYMORE." I hadn't taken the burger out of his sight. He told me in detail how the CIA was after him because of his top-secret research. They had operatives all over the city to compromise his food and they had probably just switched it back when I wasn't looking. He certainly didn't blame me for the onions.
I got him a new burger, and every time he came in after that, he waited for me specifically because he knew I wasn't a plant.
63. Grown-up Needs to Grow up
I was counting my till and a customer waiting in line for the other register started laughing and saying random numbers rapid fire to mess up my count. She succeeded. This was like a mid-40s lady. I sighed and looked at her and said, "What are we, 5 years old?" and then took my till around the corner to start again. It was seriously rage inducing. Like, why would you do that? It's just being a total jerk. No redeeming humor value at all.
64. Oldest Trick in the Book
Today is March 2, 2019. I work at a restaurant. I had a customer come in today with a bill from November 26, 2018, demanding a refund because her pizza was not good.
65. Thrown Out Uncle Phil Style
I worked at a BBQ restaurant for my first job. We had a take out area where the customer can watch you cut the meat and pack the side dishes. The girl at the register rang up a quart of potato salad when the customer asked for pasta salad, so I pack potato salad. When the customer received his order he looked through it and flipped out when he saw potato salad and started screaming at me, go figure.
Unbeknownst to all of us the owner of the store heard the commotion and was on the other side of the swing door behind me, which had a small window. The angry customer decided to throw a quart of potato salad at me, which I ducked to avoid. It splattered against the window on the swing door as the owner was looking out of it. He burst through the door—he is 6'4” tall and very built—grabbed this scrawny dude by his shirt collar and he had straight fear in his eyes.
My boss literally threw him out the door. Went back to the register to ask the girl what his total was, grabbed the cash, and tossed it out the door at the angry customer as he was collecting himself off the ground. It was an awesome scene.
66. Unnatural Frequencies
When I worked in a thrift store, it was protocol for the production workers to write a number with a red dry erase marker on all of the electronics, to indicate the date they went out on the floor. This would help determine which items to get off of the shelves if they had been sitting there too long and weren't selling. It was also our policy that electronic items were final sale because people would buy them and break them or remove parts, and then try to return them.
A woman came in one morning trying to return a small flat-screen TV. I explained to her that all electronics were final sale and showed that it was indicated on her receipt. I was feeling generous that day since she was polite and considered returning it anyway if it wasn't working, so I asked her the reason. I couldn’t believe her answer. She pointed out the little red dry erase number and said "I need to return this because it has the mark of the beast on it."
I was taken aback and asked her to explain further. She explained that she took the tv home and when she plugged it in the TV displayed static and a low-frequency sound that hypnotized her and her children. She said that Satan was trying to communicate with her through the TV. I didn't know what to say, so I just explained to her that the dry erase is just the date and showed her that it rubs right off with my thumb. The number was not 666, by the way.
I broke policy and allowed her to exchange it for something else, all while having no idea how to react to what she just told me. You bet as soon as she left I went and plugged that TV in to see what happened—and of course it was normal.
67. Great Way to Start the Day
I was a supervisor in a store where people could trade in goods for other second-hand stuff. One guy stands out and I had a lot of imbeciles I dealt with over my seven years there. This guy had previously bought a phone from us and came back demanding we give him his money back or a new phone as the one we sold him had a crack.
As it's secondhand we may have missed the hairline crack during our testing, no biggie, so we swapped it. Thought that was the end. About a month later he's the first customer of the day, and he is cussing us out because his phone isn't working. He has a warranty so we take the phone, open up the casing, and what do we see.
The phone is water damaged. 100% not how we would have sold it since that is the first thing checked during a test. We tell him his warranty is void. Him and his wife freak out and start shouting, saying they'll stay there all day and tell others to not shop with us. I'm like, you're wasting your time, at least I'm paid to be here.
Obviously, he doesn't like that but he also slips up by saying: "If I had known it was water damaged don't you think I would have pulled the sticker off so you guys wouldn't notice?" The guy straight up confirms he's a fraud! He keeps demanding his money back. At this point I call security, tell them what's up. They come in and say he has to leave.
He's like, this is a public place. I decide to chime in and state this is private property, he's banned, and he can get out forever. The guy won't leave when security demands, so they get on the radio to the cops as the guy is now technically trespassing. His wife screeches at him, and they both hightail it out. All before I'd had my morning tea.
68. New Secret Menu!
I worked at a Chipotle for four years and got some strange requests. But the best was when someone ordered soup. Here's the thing: Chipotle doesn’t have soup. I promptly reminded her this was a Chipotle, but she insisted we could do it. So, we made her soup! It was the grossest concoction of beans, salsa, and sour cream. She was stoked.
69. Explain It Again
I worked at McDonald’s. We would always get people that would ask for a Whopper either seriously or trying to be funny. We’d always give the exhausted response, "Sorry ma'am, we don't sell Whoppers. We have the Big Mac." Usually, we’d get an, "oh, right. Okay, one of those.” It was fine—until one day, when the most annoying man on the face of the Earth came to our drive-thru.
He asked for a large Whopper meal and got the instant response, “Sorry sir, we don't sell Whoppers here. We have Big Macs or Quarter Pounders or McChickens." He replied, "No, I don't want that. I want a Whopper." I explained, “My apologies, sir, we don't sell those. This is a McDonalds. The closest equivalent to a Whopper is the Big Mac.”
“If you want an actual Whopper burger, you need to go to Burger King." He just angrily swore and gave me his order again. I said, “Okay, sir, I can't give you a Whopper meal here, but I can get a Big Mac Meal for you. The Big Mac is the closest equivalent we have, but it is not a Whopper. Are you happy enough with that?"
He went, "Yes! was that so hard?!" We gave him a large Big Mac meal, and sure enough, ten minutes later, he was back through the drive-thru screaming into the speaker that he hadn't gotten his Whopper burger.
70. Gonna Get This Bread
I work in a bakery; I don't normally serve customers unless it gets really busy. Once had a woman start ranting about how the government is putting something in flour to make it addictive so people get fat from it and somehow easier to control them. She then started pointing out all of our products that were dangerous because of how you could, "seriously hurt yourself" if you bought them.
Then decided to buy a pizza roll because "she's allowed those because they're completely safe from the government."
71. The Customer Isn't Always Right
I once worked at a pizza place and some dude came in and wanted a pizza with every one of our toppings. We had like 12-15 different toppings, and there was no way they were going to properly fit on a medium. We told him he could do it, what the price was, and that it wasn't going to cook properly because pizzas aren't designed to cook with that much stuff on them. He said fine.
So we cooked it and it was all messed up, and we gave it to him. A few minutes later he comes back and said "Yeah, I messed up. Can I just get a meat-lovers?" Paid for both, probably threw the first one away. Sadly, it was the only time I've really ever talked to someone like that who admitted to being the problem.
72. Bag Lady
A customer bought one item and I asked her if she wanted a bag. She screamed, "I was hoping you wouldn't ask that stupid question! Is there some rule that people who look like me don't want bags?!?!" and I still did not know whether she wanted a bag or not, so I awkwardly put her item down in front of her. She threw it into a bag and huffed away.
73. When All Hope Seems Lost
I had been a third key for a hated but national video game store chain for almost two years. It was coming up to the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and the back stock of the last generation of systems was getting quite large company-wide, so a sale was being run on the systems. In addition, a free second pre-owned controller was being included. The district manager had decided—and mandated—that it was a good idea to put stacks of boxes of live systems out on the floor to show the sale was going on.
A gentleman had come in and was poking around the store. I greeted him to acknowledge that he was noticed and I was ready to help him. Immediately, he started acting suspiciously by testing the doors of cabinets, checking accessories if they were indeed locked, and he pushed an empty display box for the Xbox One with his foot to see if there was anything in it. Another gentleman had come in and asked for a PlayStation 3 and a handful of games.
I turned my back to grab the games out of the drawers behind the POS and when I turned back around about 45 seconds later I noticed that a stack of Xbox 360s had suddenly gotten one shorter and had cut tape where the system used to be. Being the only person in the store relatively later in the evening I noticed the suspicious guy from before had disappeared. Bowing my head in defeat that I wasn't able to protect my product from theft and that I would be hearing about it the next day from my manager, I headed towards the storeroom to grab a system for the paying customer when I was suddenly greeted by the sound of squeaking Styrofoam against cardboard from behind a display shelf full of Nintendo Wii games.
As I turned to my right, I witness the sketchball of a man on his knees with a black Xbox 360 stuffed halfway in his backpack. Completely bewildered as to why this idiot hadn't just dipped out of the store after grabbing the system, I finally remembered that this idiot was trying to steal my stuff. I walked over to him and said, "What in the heck are you doing?"
Suddenly, the man turned up and looked at me like a dog pooping on the floor and getting caught. He decided to tell me, "It said it had two controllers so I was just making sure that it was in the box." With a dumbfounded look on my face, I pointed to the door and said "GET OUT OF MY STORE" and watched as the scumbag pulled the Xbox out of his backpack and sprinted out of the store before I had a chance to call security.
74. Clap Back
I was a supervisor at a popular coffee chain that had a rule that employees were not to be in the store alone. So, for example, when opening you had to wait for your second barista outside and then enter together. This was to prevent theft, but anyway, that meant we couldn’t put out our patio furniture until our third came in.
A customer began demanding I set up the patio, to which I advised him of the above. When I continued to refuse, he said, “let me speak to your supervisor” and I said, “I am the supervisor.” Obviously now super pissed, he says, “You’ll never get ahead if you don’t break the rules every so often,” to which I responded, “Well, I certainly didn’t get promoted by breaking all the rules, now you can order and stop harassing me, or you can leave.” He promptly stormed out.
75. Straight to the Point
This guy comes in with a coupon for a free iPod. The fine print says: "Guaranteed and payable by Bill Gates." I asked why Bill Gates would guarantee an Apple product. The guy left.
76. Father (Doesn’t) Know Best
I worked at a building materials store. It was business to business, so not much retail I guess. This guy comes in with his son, wants to buy a $2,000 air tool. I pretty quickly recognize he’s going to attempt check/card fraud. Not a big deal, we get two to three a week for the same thing. But this guy wasn’t very good at it. He hands me a crap looking card.
I test the chip and doesn’t work. I can key in the numbers and process the sale if I want. So I know for sure now its fraud but I never accuse them, so I ask for cash. Most fraudsters can read my face and understand I know what they’re doing. Usually, they say they will go to the bank real quick and then they get lost. This guy starts getting aggressive.
I’m fed up so I look at his son. I ask him what his name is. John. Then I say, “John, when you grow up you don’t want to be stealing stuff like your daddy. And sucking at it, too.” Hoo boy.
77. Remember Me?
I sold a guy a phone years ago when I worked for a wireless carrier. Spent an hour getting all his information transferred and set up his new phone. He comes in the next day with a shattered screen. Apparently, he didn’t remember that I was the rep who helped him and preceded to tell me that is how it looked when he left the store. Needless to say, the phone was not replaced.
78. Too Little, Too Late
A guy asks me for a shoe and I go to the back to grab it, but we don’t have the size he’s looking for. I tell him there’s only one size left and it’s the display shoe—half a size smaller—that he’s holding in his hand. I ask him if he wants it, he says no and thanks me for my help. I nod, give him space, and walk to the register to help others.
As I was working the register my co-worker is helping a couple and brings out that shoe—I don’t know this. When I’m done at the register the guy comes up to me a few minutes later and says he does want the shoe. So, I go to the back and check but it’s not there—it’s with the couple. I walk out to tell him that someone else is trying it on and if he wants it he’s gotta wait to see if the couple will take them or not.
The couple decides they want the shoe but the guy won’t give up the display shoe he’s holding on to. They start arguing back and forth over a shoe that’s been sitting there for months! My manager comes to resolve it and get both sides. This is where the original guy says that he had told me he wanted them from the start. Told my manager he was lying and we told him to leave and that he was leaving without anything. He left angry, saying he’d call corporate. Gotta love retail!
79. Nothing You Want
A customer came in to the Pizza Hut mall kiosk where I worked and asked, "You don't have tables?” I said, “Nope.” So, they said, “Okay, I'll just have the general chicken then.” I reminded them that this was a Pizza Hut. Their response was baffling. They just sighed and went, “Fine, just a few egg rolls then.” I asked, “How about a pizza?” "Why would I order pizza at a Chinese restaurant?" You're right. That would be dumb.
80. Poor Craftmanship
I worked at Dunkin Donuts. One day, a customer came through the drive thru and complained to us that the drive-thru was built in a way that made it hard to drive through. She started yelling at my co-workers, so I just stopped what I was doing and told her, “Ma’am we cannot change the construction of the building. We're just here to make sandwiches and serve donuts."
81. Talking to a Man
So, context. I was the only straight male with a clearly masculine voice at my job out of only six employees including the manager. I was relatively new. The girls apparently were being harassed by an anonymous caller for YEARS. Turnover at our job was low so all the girls had been there for a while. The anonymous caller would try to talk dirty with the girls specifically asking for them to engage in specific dirty acts with him. When they got angry and insulted him, he just enjoyed it.
Girls tried to hang up at first apparently, but eventually got bored and messed with him. By the time I got there, however, it wasn’t fun to mess with him, and they just wanted it to stop. So, one day he calls and tries to dirty talk the girl who answered. One of my coworkers visibly upset says “stop freaking calling, you creep”. Then I ask what’s up and she explains who the dirty caller guy is. I wander the store doing my usual rounds of cleaning and he just keeps calling.
So, I tell her to let me answer the next time he calls. When I say in my deeper clearly masculine voice, “Thank you for calling ————-“ he hangs up. He tries again and keeps hanging up. Then I realize it. He doesn't want to talk to a man. He only enjoys dirty talking women. Knowing this is a golden opportunity I seize it. He calls again and I put on the softest, most feminine voice I have.
I then basically go along with whatever he says. Whatever dirty requests he has. After a short exchange, he basically says, this is really doing it for him. And I say in my regular deep masculine voice “You’re talking to a MAN” and the dude literally shrieks. “WHAAAAAAT”. And I hang up on him. He calls back ENRAGED. “YOU LYING JERK, I KNOW WHERE YOU WORK I'M GOING TO END YOU.”
I told him, “Yeah, yeah, go clean yourself up and come over here, wimp.” He obviously didn’t. And he never called back. I had freed my store from the dirty caller.
82. Sorry, Wrong Number
I worked at Chick-fil-a, and the number of people who would ask for McNuggets was astronomical. We also had a breakfast menu only available from 6-10 AM. After our lunch rush was over, I was managing the drive-thru. One man came to the drive-thru and asked to get a #2. It was slow, so he definitely got what he ordered.
Two minutes later, he came back through and told us he ordered a #2 but did not get the correct sandwich. I instructed him to pull around, and we would give him the right sandwich free of charge. I took the sandwich, checked that it was the right one before handing it out, and handed it out. End of story, right? Wrong.
Two minutes later, he came inside and was irate because he had come through the drive-thru twice now and both times received the wrong sandwich. I said that I’d personally checked it and that he received the correct sandwich and even pointed at the #2 on the menu board. Angrily, he looked at me and pointed at the menu.
As though I had done something wrong, he yelled, "No! I want that number 2," pointing to the breakfast board. It was 2 in the afternoon.
83. We Don’t Provide That Service
This woman, probably in her 50's, came to the front counter. I said my greeting script of, "Welcome to McDonald's, how can I help you?" She straight-faced stared into my soul asked me a question I wish I could forget. Hand to God, she outright asked if I would sleep with her. I was astounded at the confidence and sheer bluntness about her request as well as at how inappropriate it was.
I stammered out something about me being 16 and that's not allowed. She then got all sad and started on about a divorce, and she was having a rough time with it. I managed to chime in with, "How about a tasty burger for some comfort food?" And then she ordered one. I never saw her again after that incident, thankfully.
84. Routine Mistake
I managed a Del Taco during my teenager years. We had this older man come in and drive straight through the speaker to our window. At said window, he looked at me until I came over, started ordering Starbucks, then midway through realized that he was at a Del Taco. He turned bright red, muttered angrily, and drove off. But that's not the craziest part. This happened with the exact same guy once a month, every month, for two years.
85. The OTHER Phone Company
I worked in a T-Mobile store. A lady comes in screaming about how she bought a phone the previous day, didn't buy insurance, and dropped it in a pool. She was demanding I give her a new phone for free. But, she wasn't even our customer. She was a Verizon customer. She screamed at me for about 10 minutes demanding I call our manager. She then started yelling at other customers about how awful we were, so we called the cops.
86. Clean Up Crew
I worked for Taco Bell, and a woman ordered three of those taco twelve boxes, and, of course, she wanted sauce. So, I gave her one of those small bags that had four generous fistfuls of each of the sauces. The bag was packed because I did not want any sass from this woman. She came back ten minutes later with her food.
She dumped the bag out in front of me and pointed to one of the sauce packets that was a little crusty since sometimes they pop. She gave me a lecture about how unsanitary we were. Then she asked me why we didn’t take the time to wipe off each individual packet before distributing them. I gestured to the sauce packets.
“Well, we sell a lot of food. If this is how many sauces we gave just to you, imagine how much we go through a day. There just wouldn't be time," I explained. She still huffed at me and asked me to clean the dirty packet. Since I was her sauce slave and I needed to keep my job, I did.
87. Not So Fast
I worked at a small-town Dunkin Donuts just off the highway. We get a lot of out-of-staters coming through. They’d ask for Starbucks items and sometimes the Aroma Joe's rush drinks too. Once, I had a mom that came asking for some sandwich that turned out to be from the Sonic drive-ins. Those don't really exist where I'm from. The three of us working were super confused by what she meant because we'd never heard of it before.
She asked to speak to our manager. We told her the truth; the manager had gone home for the night, but the assistant manager was in at six the next morning. She demanded to speak to a manager right then and there and told us we needed to call her and put her on over the drive-thru speaker. Both went right to voicemail.
We said we couldn't reach them, and she screamed, "This is the worst Sonic I’ve ever been to!” At this point, our jaws just drop. Like what just happened. My co-worker literally asked what a Sonic was. Not to annoy her or be funny or anything but because she literally did not know what a Sonic was. The woman freaked out even more.
She yelled, “I will go to corporate, and I will have this location shut down! I knew a Sonic up here wouldn’t be any good!” We said, "Ma'am, this is a Dunkin Donuts. What is a Sonic?" There was a pause, and then she said, "I'm so embarrassed." Then it sounded like she was starting to whimper a bit before she drove off.
88. Silver Platter
While I was working at McDonald’s, every single day at the exact same time, this old guy would come in and order his food. He came so often that most people knew that he wanted a special order – overcook the life out of the patty. It started up right when he walked in. That was the easy bit. The problem was the guy was forgetful and always asked for a plate.
Actually, he would demand a ceramic plate to eat on every time he was there. That’s when we would explain to him that this was a McDonald’s and we didn’t have plates. He’d usually be okay with it. But sometimes he'd rant and rave. One day, I watched the guy have an absolute fit. One of my co-workers stepped outside the breakroom with a plate of food that she’d brought from home.
When he saw that, he screamed, “I knew you scoundrels had plates!” We just could not convince him otherwise ever thereafter. The moral of the story: Keep it in the breakroom.
89. Hear No Evil
I worked at Burger King when I was a teenager. We’re short-staffed one day, and the girl on the drive-thru was on break, so our manager stepped in to cover her. He was pretty old and didn't have the best hearing, so most customers were pulling around to the window to talk to him as he was struggling to hear the orders.
One guy got to the window and yelled, "I want a large Big Mac meal with a Coke please! Is that so hard?!" My manager very calmly said, "My apologies, sir, that won't be difficult." He leaned out the window and then proceeded to give this jerk a taste of his own medicine. He pointed down the road, "There's a McDonald's about three miles in that direction. They'll be able to help you.” He finished with, “Have a nice day, sir." Then he just closed the window and walked around the corner out of sight. I laughed so hard!
90. Number One On My List
I work in an electronics store and I don’t even have to think twice about which guy was my least favorite customer of all time. One guy comes in, hands me a phone, and says it "just stopped working" out of the blue. I take out the battery, and pee starts just pouring out of the phone. He then admits that he dropped it in a urinal recently while drunk. If this jerk had been honest about the situation, I could have put on gloves before handling his phone. I had him tossed from the store immediately.
91. Whatever The Cost
I was the manager on an overnight shift at a burger place. People who’d been drinking were always trying to order pizza and other dumb stuff. One time, a dude insisted he wanted a pizza, so I said alright, but it would be $100 dollars and take like an hour. He was like cool, came around, and gave me $100 at the window.
There was four of us there, so I told the dude to park and sent a worker to the grocery store across the parking lot to buy a frozen one. They brought it back, and we cooked it in our oven and brought it out to the dude, who by this point had fallen fast asleep in his car. The four of us just split the other 95 bucks that he had given us.
92. Not All Changes Come Easy
I used to work in an Old Navy store for quite a few years back in the day. We weren't particularly known for our thorough loss prevention and security capabilities, so some customers had gotten quite comfortable with openly stealing things in front of employees whenever they wanted to. Eventually, loss prevention got turned over to new management and was subsequently kicked into overdrive.
They had squads of people who would team up in our stores to attempt to catch a few people in the act of shoplifting and bust them publicly. The purpose of this was so that the word would spread that there was a new sheriff in town and, as a result, we'd hopefully see a few less shoplifters from then on. They were running this operation at a store in a low-income area, when suddenly a mild-mannered lady in her mid-50s came in and started shoving random things into her purse with little regard for her surroundings.
There were literally a bunch of shoes and tops visibly hanging halfway out of her purse as she walked around the store. When she tried to leave, loss prevention stopped her at the door and informed her that they had notified the police and that she needed to remain there until they arrived. She immediately said "But I have to go to the bathroom!" and as they tried to tell her that this was not an option, she started to scream "HERE I GO!" and pooped in her pants.
With no other option at this point, they escorted her to the nearest bathroom. After all, it was a single room without any windows, so she had no chance of escaping from it if they let her go in and finish her business in peace. They figured that this would be an opportunity for her to clean herself up, and felt that it would also probably be best for the police’s sake if they could avoid having to spend time soaking their squad car in bleach after taking her in it.
Shortly after the police arrived on scene, they realized that she had been in the room for a while and was not responding to questions. She also would not unlock the door despite multiple requests from the officers. Finally, management opened the door with a key and found the woman covered in her own feces, which she had also rubbed all over the walls, ceiling, and floor. Thankfully, I did not have to clean up the mess for once! And I definitely don’t envy whoever did have to. People are honestly nuts. I've got a million stories, but few can beat this one.
93. Wii Make the Rules in This Store
Back in 2010, I worked at Target in the electronics department when Wiis were all the rage. Right before Christmas time, we were having some trouble with a group of customers who would arrive early in the morning right when we were opening, buy our whole stock of Wii systems, and then sell them online for double what they paid in our store.
This obviously made it impossible for regular families to be able to come to Target and just buy a Wii, so we made a rule that each individual person could only buy two Wiis per day. Shortly after the implementation of this new rule, a man came into the store smiling as if he had just won the lottery, apparently assuming that he was the first person to have ever come up with this clever get rich quick scheme.
He said, "I want to buy all the Wiis you can give me." There was a long line of people behind him who looked outraged. I said "Sir, the limit per customer is two Wiis." The customer replied, "No, I got here first, so I’m going to buy what I asked for." I said, "Sir, I’m very sorry that you feel that way, but the store policy says that I am only allowed to sell you two."
He replied "Oh, you’re sorry? No, I think what you are is deaf, because I already told you what I want two times. Call your manager. NOW." Our manager came out and asked him to leave. He started to yell at us and said he was going to file a Better Business Bureau report. I wanted to dive over the counter and beat his greedy-you know-what; but, you know, it’s illegal and stuff.
94. The Town Fryer
I worked at a fast food place for a while, and we had this one regular customer who would ALWAYS find something to complain about. Her favorite issue to complain about was the fact that, no matter what, our fries were NEVER fresh enough for her liking. Whenever we saw her coming in, we'd drop a fresh batch of them into the fryer just so that we wouldn't have to hear her complain about them.
She'd order, and we'd give her a package of fries directly from the fryer. Somehow, she would still tell us that they weren't fresh. What in the world? My manager would then apologize, take the fries from her, walk out of view, and bring back the same exact container to her a few seconds later. The lady would then say "these are perfect!" and move on with her day.
95. Spamming His Inbox
I work overnight stock at Walmart. One night, I'm stocking the Spam section and this big guy walks up to me. By big, I really mean big! I'm talking 300 to 400 pounds big. I continued minding my own business and putting things on the shelves when he started to speak. "Excuse me, sir. I am so, so sorry that you have to see this," he said.
And then he just...pauses. Confused and concerned on equal levels, I stand up and turn around to look at him, wondering what, exactly, he plans on doing. After staring at me for a good 20 seconds or so, he reaches over and grabs a ton of Spam. More containers of Spam than I ever thought anybody should ever need in their lifetime, let alone in one shopping trip.
With his cart fully loaded with Spam, he turns around and walks away, leaving a huge empty spot on the shelves that I had been filling up consistently for the last several minutes. I manage to get out a quick, "Have a nice day" before he escaped around the corner. It was certainly an experience...
96. Demanding the Stolen Goods
As I was walking in for my shift, there was a car stopped right in front of the doors. Next thing I know, I'm walking up on a guy carrying about ten pairs of shoes out of their boxes as he's running out of the store at full speed and basically Superman jumped into the car. They sped off and the sales associates were all kinda staring at each other going "What just happened?"
Later on that night, dude came back wearing a pair of the shoes he stole and his hoodie still had one of our security tags on it, so he set off the alarm when he walked in. They followed him around for a bit. Eventually he made a run for the door and a loss prevention associate grabbed the hoodie on his way out, hoodie came off and dude kept running into the parking lot. We were almost at closing time anyway so they locked the doors behind him.
THEN, this mad man came back to beat on our glass doors to demand "his" hoodie back. He'd also inadvertently lost one shoe and he needed that back as well. We obviously refused and HE called the cops. They were very amused with the situation when they got there. I don't think he went to jail though.
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97. No Interest in Small Talk
I had a customer come in and compliment me on my cheerful smile and demeanor. I thanked him, but his next reply was so devastating I nearly burst into tears on the spot. He told me that I was only happy and smiling because I wasn't old enough yet to realize that life is nothing but pain, suffering, and waiting to die. That definitely brightened up my day!
98. 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.
99. Back of the Line
When I was 19 I worked as a manager at a Dollar Tree. The first of every month was always the most hectic because of food stamps which, unfortunately for us, not a great day because there were only three employees inside the store including myself. Lines are building up when a woman and her 20-something daughter come to the line with over 60 items.
When the total comes up and she uses WIC, she cannot remember her PIN. Happens, I get it. I told her we’ll have to move it over to an empty cash register to clear my conveyor so that we don’t hold anyone up—four or more people in each of our two lines now. She complied—Woo!—and I continued ringing up customers.
She takes five steps from me and calls friends/family to find out what the password is and after slightly less than five minutes says she knows it now. I say ‘Awesome!’ At this point, she starts moving my customer’s items back while she cuts off every customer to place all of her items back on the belt. Every customer is like “What the heck?!”
I stop her and tell her that she needs to get to the back of the line and she pulls out the “Let me speak to your manager” at a screech that could be heard from the city over. I calmly say “No problem,” bend down, turn around, pop my head back up, and say “How can I help you?” Every customer starts laughing, including her daughter, and she starts cursing at me like the Wicked Witch of the West.
This was the point when I told her to leave the store to which she just went to the other line and I told the employee not to ring her up. She blew up in anger and left the store with her daughter apologizing to everyone.
100. Unluckily, He’s a Family Guy
Not awkward for me, but I was the reason for it. I served for a couple of years and worked multiple restaurants in that time frame. I worked at a Denny’s, nightshift—best and worst job for many reasons. Anyway, there was a regular that came in often, drunk as a skunk and nasty as hell. He tipped really well but was so nasty to us girls.
It never phased me, so I served him often. He offered many, many times to pay for "extra service" and tried to get me to leave with him often. Of course, I never did but a couple of months later, I’m working at a new place, a little more high-end. I work mornings there, and this was a Sunday morning church rush.
Guess who was sat in my section? My nasty regular from my last job with his entire family. His wife, kids, parents, the whole group, fresh outta church. The look on this man’s face when I walked up and said hello. He was red as a firetruck, and I made it worse by asking if he remembered me. He left me a HUGE tip, probably because I didn't bring up his nasty mouth and grabby hands from his late drunken nights.
101. Goes Without Saying
I had a customer threaten to call the cops because I wouldn't give them 50% off on a CHARITY bear on Boxing Day. 100% of the proceeds from these teddy bears went to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and they were only $15. The store had a 50% off everything sale for Boxing Day, but it didn't include the CHARITY bears. I add capitals because it's a charity bear...its purpose is right in the name!
I basically just kept saying "Ma'am, it's a charity bear," because I didn't know how else to explain that the point of the bear was to raise money...that seemed...obvious. People in line were starting to get really upset with her and she just started to freak right out and was starting to dial 9-1-1. My boss, so upset—she lost a son early in life to cancer so the Make-A-Wish Foundation was important to her—just gave her a bear and told her to never come back.
A bunch of familiar customers of ours were so upset they pitched in the $15 without us even saying anything, which was super kind of them. It was a restoration of faith in humanity, but what a nightmare for no reason. Especially on Boxing Day!
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