Customer service jobs have their ups and downs - a major pitfall is having to deal with rude/entitled customers. Well, these employees had enough of the mistreatment and put those pricks in their place. Content has been edited for clarity.
Phone Problems Part One
“This guy and his family came in and wanted to switch their phones from their current carrier to one we had in our store. We did the conversion but the account went into the wife’s name. He wanted a Galaxy Note but we didn’t have any. He settled on a Galaxy S III (three). His phone had to be the first to be activated because ‘he had to be somewhere’ and gave everyone a hard time about how long it took. He got his phone and, once activated, he left. My team activated the rest of the phones and, since they all got store gift cards with the purchase of their phones, the phones were rang up on the same ticket, each gift card applied and the remainder left over was on one card, given to the wife.
I was on shift when he came in again, ticked off. He was ranting at me about how they were rung up. I told him if he had a problem with how they were rung up, bring me the receipt and the boxes, and that way everyone would get a gift card with a balance. I was told to forget it, if we couldn’t do it right the first time he didn’t want us doing it a second time. I had hoped it was the last I’d ever see of him.
We got a call from another store, he traded in the Galaxy S III for a Galaxy Note at the other store and refused to get a case for it or screen protection and had signed off on the documentation stating that if the phone were to incur any damage, it would be ineligible for a return. I went to that store to get a copy of the documentation so that we could put it with the documents we had to keep on file.
A couple of weeks later, he was in our store.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I accidentally dropped my phone a day or so ago and the screen cracked, is there anything that can be done?’
I said, ‘Nope. Once you purchase the phone and you refuse to put protective covers on them, we can’t help you. It’s in the documents that you have to sign.’
He nodded and left but something told me he’d be back so I checked the date. He was about a week from his 30-day mark. Past the 30 days, there was nothing we could do, he would have to go through the carrier.
The final day of his 30 day period had come, I talked to the boss and everyone else, no one had seen him.
Even my boss was saying, ‘Let that prick come in, I’ll kick him out. I’m not letting him return that phone.’
We had 30 minutes until closing and there he was. He demanded a return or he was returning all the phones.”
Phone Problems Part Two
I said, ‘I’m not touching that phone. I told you that a week ago. Here are the papers YOU signed not once but TWICE. Also, you can’t shut down anything because it’s in your wife’s name and yes, I can completely deny you just like that.’
He yelled, screamed, and did everything, even swung his cane at us. I called the district office and they told me to return the phone. Basically, the district office undermined me, my boss, and my entire crew. As the process went on, he came up with even more ridiculous demands and they caved every time. I pulled more documents and decided since I was going to be there past closing because of this colossal prick, I was going to irritate him.
I told him, ‘Just so we are clear this time, and since this is a one-time thing, just to show you there is absolutely no recourse after I close tonight, I am reading every syllable of this paperwork to you.’
He protested and I told him that he had a choice; Listen or leave with his cracked screen and go have someone else fix it.
I read every syllable and emphasized some of it by reading it three times. I finally asked him if he wanted a case and screen protection for his phone.
He said these words to me, ‘I don’t need any of that junk.’
I snapped at the top of my voice, ‘REALLY BECAUSE THE FACTS SPEAK OTHERWISE!’
He still refused and I made him sign those documents stating he refused to do so at the time of purchase. Then he demanded I transfer all of his information from one phone to the other. Never mind these are Android phones. Never mind that I already showed him everything was there, he didn’t believe it until I swapped it again.
Then when it was done, he got ticked off that there were two of everything.
He said, ‘You’re the one that insisted he does it, Dad, Let’s go!’
I took a deep breath. We closed at eight pm, it was now ten-thirty. I started stapling the paperwork together, bagging up his stuff, and then took the busted phone into the back while he continued to scream. When I emerged, I opened the door and ushered them out. He looked confused when I locked the door. I went to the back and clocked out. I saw him standing outside the door looking in as I slipped out the back, making sure the code was set and the door had actually locked.
To this day, I have no idea how long he stood there. I wasn’t fired over it either. ‘
McPricks
“I was on the front counter by myself, when this group of guys all around their mid- 20’s came. I could straight away tell that they were going to be a test on my patience. Instead of talking to each other, they seemed to prefer to half-shout, with the odd swear word thrown in for good measure. One of the guys leaned halfway across the counter to read my name badge, and then kept unnecessarily saying my name throughout his order. His friends all seemed to find this hilarious.
Furthermore, nearly all the items they ordered were customized somehow. When I asked them to find a table and sit down as their order would take a while, they started kicking up a fuss. I explained that whilst the restaurant was quiet, the drive-thru was still fairly busy, and custom orders had to be cooked from scratch which can take a fair few minutes.
One of the guys leered at me, commenting that they would all go and sit down if I fooled around with them.
I snapped and loudly informed them that they had no right to speak to me that way.
I was fuming, and what made it worse was that they all laughed.
One said, ‘Oooh! No need to get your panties in a twist.’
Meanwhile, the store manager came out of his office. He walked up to me, and put his hand on my shoulder, leading me away from the counter asking if I was OK.
‘No, I’m not serving them!’ I replied ‘They can’t speak to me like that. They’ve been jagoffs this whole time, and one of them asked me to sleep with them! They—’
My manager turned around and yelled, ‘You said what?!’
The next thing I know, my 40-something-year-old manager had jumped over the counter and started chasing these guys out of the restaurant and down the street. All the while shouting that they couldn’t speak to his staff that way and that he was going to freaking kill them.
He returned five minutes later, rang the police, gave them a description of the guys, and got them banned from the premises. He then offered me some free food and told me to take the rest of the evening off.”
“Listen, You Stupid Rat”
“In college, I worked at the front desk of a large hotel on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. At least half of our guests worked for the government, receiving the government-negotiated rate.
It was seven am and I had been at the front desk for about 30 minutes, still a bit sleepy. The lobby was full of business travelers and regular guests. This woman, who was so angry, rushed to where I was prepping the morning’s arrivals, check-outs, and completing housekeeping reports. She threw her suitcase down and slammed a piece of paper on the counter right in front of me. She pounded her other angry little clawed fist on the counter.
She spitted: ‘What is this? You freaking cheated me, you scum! What the freak is this rate?! You better fix this now!’
The lobby went silent. Everyone was utterly captivated by this woman screaming at me.
I was just sort of stunned, as it was fairly rare that a guest screamed for any reason. I shouldn’t have dealt with her. But I did. I pulled her bill toward me, and I noticed she had been staying at the government rate. The rate was definitely slightly higher than usual; but just as we’d been informed earlier in the week, the government rate had gone up slightly. This was not a rate we set at the hotel, nor could we adjust; and I explained this to her as calmly as possible.
I said as I pointed to the rate on the bill, ‘I’m not sure if your booking agent informed you, but the government rate went up to $0.37 per night since you made your reservation. That’s a negotiated rate between the government and the hotel – it’s nothing I can adjust here, unfortunately. You might need to inform your travel management desk that the rate has changed. Would you like to leave the bill on the credit card on file?’
She continued to spew invective at me: ‘Listen, you stupid rat. You’re gonna ‘tappity tap’ with your fat fingers, and change this rate, and give me a new receipt while I sit here and make sure you do it. So do it, you ugly loser, working a trash job! You should be kissing my rear-end!’
She went on, in a similar vein, questioning my legitimacy, my weight, and my perceived lack of education. I should have just walked away and got a manager, but I was just gobsmacked.
And to add, there was a lobby of frequent guests, all of whom I quite liked and highly respected, who witnessed this horrible tirade. I never said a word during her obscene rant. When she finally stopped for breath the third time, I took a buck seventy from my drawer, slapped it on the counter, pointed at the doors.
I said, ‘Here’s the difference. Now get the heck out of my hotel, you miserable hag.’
She just gasped and became purple-faced, as the entire lobby broke into applause. She grasped the money in her mean little claw, grabbed her luggage, shot off a final, weak, ‘Forget you, scum’, and stomped her little cloven hooves on her way out.
She later called the hotel general manager and gave him an earful. She also called our corporate offices. Unbeknownst to her (or me), several of the regular guests in the lobby wrote letters to the hotel general manager, and to the main corporate management team in support of me and what I’d endured. By the time she complained, they’d already heard all about it.
I still received a reprimand, but it was worth it.”
“I Hope Your Easter Sucks!”
“It was a slow time of the day and there was a couple at my register who had never been there before. I was answering their questions and explaining about the menu as a regular customer came up behind them. He was annoyed at having to wait; he was looking at his watch, huffing, and mumbling ‘Jesus Christ’ under his breath while I was tending to my current customers. Then he started mouthing off to them.
He said, ‘How long does it take to order a freakin hamburger?!’
They looked uncomfortable. I was ticked off. I took my time with the new customers and did my best to make them as comfortable as I possibly could while the rude knucklehead behind them berated them.
They paid and went to find a table while I walked off. I left the rude guy at the register to wait. I could see his family already sitting at a table looking very uncomfortable and I felt horrible for them having to deal with this man. He was never nice but I had never seen him this angry and rude before.
My walking off ticked him off more. I looked at him and told him that there was absolutely no need to be such a prick to my other customers. I also told him he could take his rude behavior somewhere else because there was no way in heck I was going to take his order. My manager didn’t say a word.
This guy started yelling at me. Actually screaming for me to take his order. I looked at my manager and he was trying not to smirk. I let him scream for a minute or so and then asked him if he was finished. He kept going so I let him scream. At one point, I asked him if the looney bin knew he was missing yet.
After a couple more minutes, I asked him if he was ready to calm down now and he did a bit. He was running out of steam but still wanted me to take his order. I told him to leave and to please not consider coming back. He finally turned and screamed at his own family to get the heck out of this lousy restaurant.
And since it was Easter, I said, ‘I hope your Easter sucks, prick!'”
“She Was Very Proficient In Name-Calling”
“About five to six years ago, I used to work as a cashier at a grocery market chain. There was this rather short Vietnamese woman who came in every other week. She was very rude, she wouldn’t talk she would yell, and she was very proficient in name-calling. I could deal with her once every two weeks.
However, this particular week we were having a sale on Coke cans. To game the system, she made two trips inside, once with her own club card and once with someone else’s. She always came through self-check-out, and I didn’t care she was taking advantage of the club card system, I just didn’t want to be yelled at.
So, at the end of her transaction, she had about eight plastic bags full of items in her cart, six boxes of soda cans, and a stack full of coupons. The self-checkout rep has to manually insert the coupons and as I was doing this she was screaming at me to go faster, how she was very busy today and didn’t have time for this.
Then, and I remember this very clearly, I had a stack of coupons that went through and a stack of coupons that didn’t work. The protocol is to match the item in the bag to the item on the coupon. I started looking through her bags (admittedly I should have asked first, but I had such a migraine at this point it hadn’t crossed my mind) and she started screaming, cursing, and calling me things.
Finally, after about 15 minutes of this entire ordeal, I looked at her and said something along the lines of ‘I’m a human freaking being, you can’t treat people like this.’
She looked confused like that was the first time she’d ever heard me say anything. Then I dumped everything out of her plastic bags, tore the paid-for stickers off of her cans of soda, canceled the transaction, and pushed her cart to an express checkout line. She was yelling at me the entire time. I guess it’s all state of mind though because that yelling felt more like music.
She complained to the manager 10 minutes later as she angrily gestured toward me across the front end. The manager walked right to me after the conversation, but then just passed me by and told me to keep up the good work. I never found out if that was sarcasm, and I never found out what the woman said about me.”
“I Want My Refund Now!” Part One
“Once upon a time, I was the assistant box office manager for a wonderful theater in Philadelphia. One summer, a musical touring company was renting our space. One Sunday matinee, the air conditioner stopped working, about twenty minutes before curtain. We had a full house, and our house and stage managers were scrambling to fix the problem quickly. I was stuck in the box office, separated from the main space, so I only found out about the problem secondhand a few minutes before she came up.
Woman: ‘This heat is intolerable! I demand a refund!’
Me: ‘I’m sorry for the trouble with our air conditioners. I’m sure this will be resolved soon.’
Woman: ‘That is unacceptable! I want my refund NOW!’
Me: ‘I’m sorry for your frustration, but there is no way to even consider a refund unless the performance is postponed or canceled. Since I haven’t heard any updates about the situation in the last ten minutes, I can authorize an exchange of your tickets to another date, complimentary in this case-‘
Woman: ‘NO! I came all the way from Suburban Sprawl to be here! I demand a refund now. Where is your manager?’
Me: ‘Actually, Ma’am, I am the manager, and I cannot access your tickets for anything other than an exchange at this time. Normally I would not be able to, but I am willing to make an exception since this is an obviously unfortunate situation.’
She grumbled and stormed outside. Then after a while, she returned to the box office.
Woman: ‘I’ve gone across the street and had two cokes and it’s still sweltering in here! I want my refund!’
Me: ‘Hello again! I’m sorry, but the performance is still expected to go on as scheduled, so as I said before-‘
Woman: ‘This is intolerable! I will take this up with your manager tomorrow, and then with my credit card company!’
She stormed off.
The show started five minutes late, but with working air conditioning. I decided to try one more time at being nice and to call the woman to notify her.
Me: ‘Hello, this is Crystal from the box office. The show has started as expected. I am still willing to offer you an exchange for your ticket, however since the performance has started, there will be no refunds.’
Woman (shouted): ‘I AM ALREADY ON THE TRAIN HOME AND WILL BE CALLING YOUR MANAGER MONDAY TO GET MY REFUND. YOUR THEATER SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF HOW THEY TREAT THEIR CUSTOMERS!’ Then she hung up.
And of course, that week my manager was on vacation, so I was the manager the rest of the week. On Monday, I opened the office at 10 am, and the moment I switched the phones on, guess who was on the line?”
“I Want My Refund Now!” Part Two
“Me: ‘Hello, theater box offic-‘
Woman: ‘I need to speak to a manager! Yesterday, this horribly, rude girl refused to refund my ticket! I cannot sit in a hot room for hours on end. Blah, blah, blah. I demand a refund.’
This went on for thirteen minutes.
Me: ‘Hello. I am the same woman you spoke to yesterday. As I stated previously, I am the manager on duty and as I also stated yesterday, there are no refunds for a missed performance. If you look at your actual ticket it does actually state that there are no refunds, but since you are still upset I am offering you for one last time the opportunity to exchange your ticket for another performance-‘
Woman: ‘I do not want another ticket! I want my refund! I want to speak to YOUR manager or I will dispute this with my credit card company!’
Since no one was in the office but me, she eventually hung up. Afterward, I sent an email to the Managing Director of the theater explaining the situation and asking for his advice. He replied that the company renting our space determined if they wanted to give a refund or not. He agreed with me but sent my message to the company asking them to advise us.
They took a week to respond. Yet, the woman called back every day. We had the same conversation every time; she would rant about ‘that horrible girl who worked Sunday,’ and I would remind her that it was still me and advised her that the company renting our space was making their determination as to whether or not they would be able to accommodate her.
Fast forward to Friday, my Managing Director came to visit me at the box office. The company finally told us ‘take care of it as we felt necessary.’ I told him we shouldn’t do a refund and he agreed.
He said, ‘If she needs to ramble at someone, you can send her to me and I’ll deal with it, but seriously? We just can’t reward that kind of behavior.’
I nodded. Then after he left, I made the call.
Woman: ‘Hello?’
Me: Hello! This is Crystal from the box office. I just spoke to our Managing Director as he was heading off-site, but the company has advised us that they will not be authorizing your refund. So I suppose you should follow up with your credit card company.’
Woman (shocked): ‘But what?!? No! I demand a refund! You can’t do this to me!’
Me: ‘Oh, I’m not doing anything to you, Ma’am. I’m advising you that the company that is renting our space determines exceptions to our policies and has not granted you a refund. So you should call your credit card company now!’
Woman: ‘No! You need to give me my refund!’
Me (smiling): ‘We’re not doing it, so no. But I can look up your credit card company’s customer service number for you if you like!’
Woman (fuming): ‘No! But-! You have to-‘
Me (grinning like the Devil): ‘I don’t have to do anything, Ma’am! I offered you accommodations above and beyond what we would normally do in this situation, and you shut down my assistance at every opportunity, just because it wasn’t what you wanted. So nope! I’m sorry you aren’t getting what you wanted today, but since I didn’t want to waste my week listening to an over-entitled lady rant about what she is absolutely not going to get from my company, I guess neither of us is getting what we want this week.’
There was no response.
Me: ‘I’ll assume you already have your credit card company’s phone number, so I’ll just say good day.’
Still no response.
Me: ‘Take care!’
Then I hung up on her.”
“Forget You! Gimme My Pretzels!”
“My first job was at this place called the Pretzel Factory. One day, my second manager was on the register. I was baking pretzels as usual. This woman and her husband walked into the store. She asked for some pretzels, but she wasn’t real specific about which ones she wanted. She kept pointing across the counter and saying ‘that one, that one’. Both my manager and I literally pointed at every pretzel on that board, but she apparently didn’t want any of them.
She just kept going, ‘No, THAT one!’
We both kept our cool but she was seriously irritating us. Her husband said nothing.
Then she snapped. She came behind the counter and said, ‘I told y’all I wanted THIS ONE, now ya’ll gimme THIS ONE!’
My manager was freaked out, and I was trying to stay calm. Still, her husband said nothing to stop her behavior or attempt to calm her down in any way.
I said, ‘Ma’am, you can’t be back here.’
She yelled, ‘Forget you! Gimme my pretzels!’
I said, ‘Ma’am, I will get you your pretzels, but you have to get out from behind the counter-‘
She yelled, ‘I ain’t doin’ nothing! You just better gimme my pretzels!’ Then she jabbed her finger in my face.
I said, ‘Please get out from behind the counter.’
She continued to shout.
My manager said, ‘Get out from behind the counter.’
That didn’t stop her, but now my manager was basically up against the wall, hoping she wouldn’t have to defend herself.
I snapped.
I yelled, ‘Lady! Get out from behind the freakin counter!’
Then the husband spoke up, ‘Hey, boy!’
I yelled, ‘Forget you, you didn’t say anything while she was behind the counter cursing me out, you prick! Get out from behind the counter!’
My manager said, ‘Oh my, Alex, just calm down!’
At some point, the husband finally started to pull her away because I was visibly shaking from the rage and adrenaline coursing through my veins.
I don’t remember if they ever got their pretzels or not. I only remember that they finally left.
My manager was like, ‘Alex, you can’t be snapping at people like that.’
I said, ‘No, your back was up against the wall. I don’t care who it is, man or woman, I’ll snap at them if they think they’re gonna come into MY store and threaten MY coworkers!'”