You should always listen to the customer, even if they're wrong. But these workers will never forget some of the most facepalm-worthy complaints these customers had.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
The Customer Is Always Right
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“I was a manager at a retail pharmacy. I had a customer complain and file a report that we didn’t carry Walmart brand items.
I thought they were maybe confused, pointed out they were in a CVS (which looks NOTHING like a Walmart, but whatever). But he kept arguing that the customer is always right and we should carry Great Value items.”
One Size Does Not Fit All
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“While working at Advance Auto, I had a customer come in demanding a set of brake pads. I asked what he drove, and he replied ‘Doesn’t matter; brake pads are brake pads.’ I informed him that brake pads vary by vehicle. I was then asked if I was stupid and told to stop trying to rip him off.
Being the helpful human I am, I obliged his request. I walked down the aisle containing hundreds of different brake pads, selected a random box, and sold random pads to the customer.
Two hours later, he attempted to return them stating they didn’t fit. I refused the return, saying, ‘I cannot return used items’ because they were covered in oil.
Idiots.”
“Pineapples Are Orange!”
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“I worked at an Italian restaurant as a waitress for a short time as the customers sucked. This lady ordered a Hawaiian pizza and pitched a fit saying how we got her order wrong. I asked her what was wrong with it and she said it wasn’t a Hawaiian Pizza and the toppings were wrong. I looked at it, and it had diced tomatoes, pineapples, and ham, which was what the menu stated. Upon showing her this, she said, ‘What are you talking about? These are yellow! Pineapples are orange!’
Confused, I got my manager, and he tried explaining that pineapples were yellow and not orange. But if she didn’t like it, she could order something else free of charge.
She got mad and said no and that she wanted the Hawaiian pizza with the right pineapples. She started explaining what they looked like, which sounded a lot like oranges. I said ‘Wait, do you mean ORANGES?’ as she completely described oranges. She said ‘NO, PINEAPPLES!’ At this point, I took out my phone, Googled oranges and pineapples, and showed her. She pointed at the oranges and yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘YES, THOSE, I WANT THOSE!’ My manager told her that we did not have those and she could either pick something else or eat her pizza. She left.”
Um… I Don’t Think It Works That Way
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“For the Sea Lion and Otter show at Sea World, we have handicapped ramps located on the left and right sides of the stadium. No strollers are allowed in the stadiums and guests are asked to park them in designated areas. If your baby is sleeping, we allow the parent to use the handicapped section until disabled guests arrive.
We asked this one woman to use one of the ramps. She declined and took her stroller into the stadium. Seeing as how a car drives through the stadium during the show, my job was to make sure that a path would be unobstructed.
I walked up to the woman and asked her politely, ‘Excuse me, a car will be driving through this part of the show, and we need to have this area clear. Could you please take your stroller out of the stadium?’
‘My baby is sleeping,’ she barked.
‘Well, we allow sleeping babies to use the handicapped sections.’
She cut me off with, ‘I’m not putting my baby next to dumb people to catch their stupid diseases to end up dumb.’
I was not expecting such a stupid answer. I ended up saying, ‘That’s fine, I’ll call security, and they will move it for you.’
She moved the stroller.”
No Internet, No Website
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“After I launched my company’s new website, one of our clients emailed me to complain that you couldn’t use the website if you didn’t have internet access.
First, I’m pretty sure everything on the internet doesn’t work without the internet. Also, what did he want me to do about it? Print all 900 pages and leave it on his front porch like a phone book? And if he doesn’t have internet access, how did he email me?”
“YOU NEED TO CHANGE THAT”
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“I was in the return line at Target and I heard a lady complaining to customer service about the color of the boxes in her 3 pack of Kleenex brand tissue. She was saying ‘I don’t want 3 different colors. I want all purple! Why don’t you package them in all one color? YOU NEED TO CHANGE THAT.’ She kept going on and on about it, no matter how many different ways the Target employee tried to explain to her that he, nor Target, is in charge of how Kleenex packages their products.”
No Way To Make This Woman Happy
“A few years ago my company was sued because a customer spilled a printer cartridge refill kit all over his carpet and wanted us to cover the cost of new carpeting.
The case went nowhere, however, from that point onward refill kits contained a warning that ink will permanently stain surfaces.
Once while working at Starbucks a woman ordered an iced latte and threw it on the floor because it wasn’t slushy. We remade her drink, this time giving her a Frapp (since she wanted the slushy one) which got thrown on the floor because it was ‘too cold’.”
A Not So Marry Christmas
“I worked at a Target store in the early ’90s. Middle of summer and we had an elderly gentleman bring in what looked to be a small Christmas tree, maybe 2 feet tall. The root ball area was wrapped in a filthy burlap sack, covered in dank earth and mold. He was very angry that this tree we had sold him around Christmas time was not growing and he wanted his money back. He was serious as a heart attack, and as you probably have guessed, it was artificial. My manager just stared at the guy dumbfounded for a few seconds trying to figure out what to do, and just quietly told the customer service cashier to give him his money back.”
Being Too Efficient At Your Job
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“I once had a customer complain about me because I answered emails too fast. You see, because he got responses within just a couple of minutes every time he’d ask for tech support, he assumed it was a chat session. Even though he was, you know, emailing us, and each ticket sent an autoresponse indicating ‘Thanks for your email, you’ll get a response in 1 business day or less, our hours are X to Y,’ etc. When we left for the day after sending a response to one of his messages, he was incensed, because he felt I abandoned our ‘chat session.’
When I indicated that this was an email thread and not chat, and we can only respond during our office hours, he said I was maliciously misleading him into thinking we were chatting by intentionally responding to him too quickly (not sure why, I guess out of some perverse pleasure), and therefore we hurt his business and owed him damages when we didn’t immediately respond at any time.
Fortunately, my company isn’t pants-on-head stupid about this kind of thing, so I didn’t have to worry about it.”
She Dug Herself A Bigger Hole
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“I have a few good stories, but I think the one that takes the cake involves this old lady who claimed that there was a hole in a bag of dog food and that she should get a discount for it. She would come in all the time making these accusations, but today the cashier wasn’t having it. He looked at the bag for awhile and didn’t find any hole. The old lady then had someone from the office come up to find the hole, but they didn’t see anything either, and they couldn’t give her a discount.
Then, she snapped.
She took the bag, ripped a giant hole in it, and spilled the bag onto the belt. ‘NOW THERE’S A HOLE!’ she screamed, and took her cart full of groceries and left the store without paying. Somebody in the office ran after her, with 911 on the phone since she was, after all, shoplifting an entire cart of groceries. We couldn’t lay a hand on her, but she got her car loaded up and pulled away only to be pulled over one street over. She was arrested and banned from the store.”
You Get What You Ask For
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“We had a customer try to get me fired because I wouldn’t provide him an installer and a software key for a software version we no longer supported. Plus, it wouldn’t work with either his operating system or his hardware. It was so old that the whole software line had been discontinued for years.
I repeatedly explained that we didn’t even have a way to generate keys for that anymore and it simply would not do what he was wanting.
Keep in mind, this product was less than $30 new, and that was a long time ago, before dollar apps and tons of inexpensive software anywhere. He also said that he had bought the product second-hand and didn’t have a key to begin with. He just had an old box, not even a disc.
He screamed at me, called back and got someone else, and lied about what I’d said, said I’d sworn at him and abused him, called me every bad name in the book, and demanded that I be fired. He wanted the software, or he’d sue us and defame us online.
It finally got to the company owner, who was also the head developer. He agreed to go back and generate a serial number for the guy and send him an old installer. As the owner was doing this, he repeatedly explained that it wouldn’t work on his system, but we were doing this to appease him. The whole time, the guy was going, ‘It’s about principle, I paid for it, I want it! I demand I have it!’
The customer stayed on the line, then started to freak out because – as we had promised – it didn’t work. The owner said, ‘That’s what I told you would happen.’
The guy demanded to know how the company would compensate him for this injustice and waste of his time. He demanded that we MAKE it work no matter the cost, just for him, and the owner said, ‘You got what you asked for, a product that we told you from the first the start wouldn’t work for you. It is too old to work on your new system, but we spent our time getting it to you anyway because you insisted you have it. Now you do. That’s all we are doing. Goodbye.'”
Someone Needs To Go Back To Math Class
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“I used to work at a retail store as a manager at an outlet mall. As this was not the way I saw my life working out at the time, I had to struggle to show up every day. When we got busy, all managers had to assist on the registers. One day during a rather large rush, I started ringing customers out. One lady had a 10% coupon and wanted to use it, keep in mind her total was $10 before the coupon was applied. I then gave her the total of $9. She then began to argue with me that she should only be getting $0.10 off of her total. After what seemed like 15 minutes of her ranting and raving, I grabbed the money and coupon out of her hand rang her up at $9. I gave her the change and told her to have a nice day. I couldn’t believe a customer was trying to INCORRECTLY pay more!”
The Hotel Can’t Play God
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“I was holidaying in Kenya in the late nineties and saw a middle-aged couple complaining loudly about something to the hotel rep. Suddenly the rep just burst out laughing. The couple was complaining that they had been incredibly disappointed by their Safari and were demanding a refund. They had come all this way, spent all this money, and they hadn’t seen a single tiger.”
Remember The Title And Author Before You Go Into This Bookstore
“I work at a bookstore and get this all the time.
Customer: ‘Hi, could you find a book for me?’
Me: ‘Sure! Can you tell me the name or author?’
Customer: ‘Well, I don’t remember the name or author, but I know it’s fiction.’
Me: ‘Well, sorry, but there are a lot of books in fiction, but I can take you to that section so you can look around.’
Cue customer flipping his/her lid.”
This Customer Wanted Everything EXCEPT These Specific Items
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“The first job I had as a teenager was making hot dogs. A guy once came in and asked for ‘one with everything,’ which could have meant two things: ketchup, mustard, pickle relish, the northern style; OR the local southern ‘everything’ which included mustard, chili and onions, and sometimes coleslaw.
I asked him to specify what he considered ‘everything.’ He gave me a hard look and repeated, ‘Everything!’
So I started listing: ‘Ketchup?’
‘Oh no, not ketchup.’
‘Mustard?’
‘No, no, I’m allergic to mustard. Everything else.’
I stared at him. Allergic?
He yelled at me, calling me an idiot, and told me just to make him a hot dog.
I did, but I wanted to throw it in his face. Maybe he wanted to sue the store if he got sick because WE didn’t specify our toppings to him, I don’t know.”
The Great Steak Debate
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“‘Excuse me, this steak is overcooked.’
‘Well, yes. Yes, It is. You ordered your steak ‘Extra Well Done’.’
‘Yah, but, it doesn’t have any juices coming out of it.’
‘Yes, that is what happens when you overcook a steak.’
‘No it’s not, it should be cooked and juicy!’
‘Regardless, you ate the whole steak. There is only a small amount left.’
‘Yah, I want one to go. For free.’
‘How would you like that one cooked then?’
‘Extra well done. Don’t you listen?’
Sigh.”
She Couldn’t See What A Crystal Clear Job He Did
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“I replaced a window in a lady’s filthy house. After I was finished and almost ready to drive off, she yelled over the balcony, asking if I was going to put a new window in for her.
I thought she was kidding; she was not.
I went back in with her, tapped on the new clean glass. She went silent as I looked at the dirty black and brown stained windows around. The only clean and clear window was the new one I just installed.”
Too In Touch With Nature
“I ran a campsite in a beautiful forest in the French countryside last year. We got an email from a Dutch family that said they were disappointed that the rain dripped off the tree branches and onto their tent. What?”
Her Unique Perfume Test Caused A Dramatic Scene
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“When I was working in a beauty store, I went to see a woman who was distraught over perfume choices. I started asking her questions to help her find a perfume that fit her personal preferences. I showed her the first choice, and she grabbed the bottle out of my hands, sprayed it on her hand, and licked it. According to her, it was how she knew if the perfume was ‘the one.’ Weird, but I let her do her thing.
After the third smell and taste, she went hysteric calling me incompetent, a liar and a slave to the system, and asked for my manager. I tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t listen. Finally, security came over to show her out. I later learned that the same customer filed a complaint against the store, and wanted ‘monetary compensation,’ but multiple customers saw the whole thing, so her claim was dropped.”
“I Want The High-Speed Internet”
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“Actual conversation.
Me: ‘Hi, I’m [my name] from Verizon, I’m here to install your DSL.’
Customer: ‘I didn’t order DSL, I ordered the High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘Yeah, that’s what Verizon calls DSL.’
Customer: ‘But I don’t want DSL, I want High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘They’re the same thing.’
Customer: ‘No! DSL is too slow. I want the High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘High-Speed Internet is Verizon’s name for DSL.’
Customer: ‘But I don’t want DSL, I want High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘DSL is the High-Speed Internet.’
Customer: ‘No! I want the High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘FIOS?’
Customer: ‘Yes!’
Me: ‘There is no FIOS in this area.’
Customer: ‘Yes there is, they told me I could have the High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘Once again, ‘High-Speed Internet’ is Verizon’s name for DSL. It is not FIOS. There is no FIOS within 40 miles. You cannot have FIOS; you can have DSL.’
Customer: ‘But I ordered the High-Speed Internet.’
Me: ‘Have a nice day.'”
He Had To Let This Lady Know Who Was Really In Charge
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“When I used to work at PacSun, you needed a key to get into the dressing rooms in the back. It was around the holidays, so we were busy. A woman with her boyfriend and kids were in the store for 20 minutes before they decided to try on the clothes. There was only a sales rep and myself working at the time, and I was ringing out customers.
I was minding my own business when I heard somebody whistling at me. Naturally, I turned back, slightly irritated that someone was whistling to get my attention. The girl decided to do that knee bent pose, hand on the hip and snapping at me. ‘Uh, boy, open the dressing room now!’
I told her as calmly as I could but that she needed to wait a minute, I was with a customer finishing up a sale. The girl FREAKED out demanding that I open the door and then, get this, watch her kids while she was in the dressing room along with the boyfriend trying on clothes.
I calmly lost my mind, walked over, grabbed the clothes from her hands, grabbed his clothes and told them quietly, ‘If you don’t walk out of my store right now, I am calling security. I am not your ‘boy’ or a dog. Get out now.’
The witch told me to get my manager.
‘Woman, I AM the manager. Get out of my store!’
They cowered down and left, but not before they knocked over a stack of clothes in the front.”