When a customer throws a temper tantrum, it's up to the retail worker to choose how best to solve the situation. Unfortunately, these customers had the grossest reactions possible to being told 'no', so it was up to the workers to obtain some petty yet satisfying revenge. Content has been edited for clarity.
What Is He Doing In The Corner?
“So this happened to my now ex-wife, Sarah, back about fifteen years ago, when we were still together. This is absolutely the worst retail horror story that I have ever heard, so you’ll be able to judge it for yourself. At the time, Sarah was a manager at the local Blockbuster video store in Pennsylvania. It was almost 11 p.m. on a weekday night, with the store scheduled to close at either 11 or midnight. A woman comes in with a four year old little boy, and as soon as she entered the store, she came to the counter and asked my wife if her little boy could use the restroom. Now the first thing that popped into my head was questioning why was this woman dragging a small child to the video store well past his bedtime? Be that as it may, Sarah explained that Blockbuster had a corporate policy that only employees could use the restrooms. It turned out a year or so before, a customer at a store elsewhere in the U.S. asked to use the bathroom, then hung himself in there, thus the establishing of this corporate policy. The woman had this explained to her, and was told that she could use the restroom in the pizza place next door without any problem, but she was in a hurry and with a huff, walked off to find a video. Why not just go to the pizza place, that would have been so much easier!
Several minutes went by, when another customer came up to the checkout area and let my wife knowing there was a little boy going to the bathroom in a corner at the back of the store. Horrified, she went to the back of the store, only to find this woman holding the boy’s hand and encouraging him, while he had his pants around his ankles and was taking a dump on the floor! All Sarah could think to say was, ‘What are you doing?!’ to the mother, who replied with this chilling statement. ‘I’m teaching him what to do when you get bad customer service, and people are rude by not letting you use their bathroom.’
Flabbergasted, Sarah walked back to the front of the store to call the police, but by the time they arrived, the woman had gotten into her car and driven away. I always wondered how much therapy that little boy needed in later years, with a mother like that!”
He Got What He Deserved At The Border
“A lifetime ago, I worked at a Borders book store. I was promoted up to the Shift Lead position, which basically meant that I could act as a ‘manager’ if one of them was required, and if there was nobody else around. I was also nineteen at the time, a total punk hippy type back then. I had some very long and box-dyed hair, I wore only band t-shirts, cut-off shorts, and some combat boots. This particular day, we were in the middle of a very busy day. I believe it was Mother’s Day or some similar occasion, with a pretty long line of customers who needed to check out, so I was doing my best to help out wherever I could on the registers. I typically ran the coffee bar, but the bookstore part of this location really needed me. This one guy in a three piece fancy suit came up to the counter, slapped down about $150 worth of books, and gave me a nasty glare. This man had such a bad attitude. He was loudly complaining about how long the line was, how long it took him to find all of his books, and how much everything ended up costing him. He was pretty vulgar as well, swearing profusely during this insane monologue. He paid with a written check, and I tried to run it through our online system. It came back on the screen with a ‘do not accept’ alert. When I brought this up, the customer is screaming at me, swearing me out, and he demanded to see the manager right away. The fifty or so people behind this guy are all just glaring at him in disbelief.
I smiled at this nasty customer as pleasantly as I could and told him how it would just be a minute. I held the check in my hand and began to scrutinize it, while slowly making a 360 degree turn. When I was again facing this customer, I told him, ‘Well, I talked it over with the manager, and we are going to have to deny your check.’
I smiled at this angry customer, while he began to swear at me. But that was when the other customers in line started clapping and cheering for me, drowning out the sound of this customer. He turned beet-red and literally ran away towards the door. He left his books on the counter, apparently being too mortified to buy the books anymore. It was so lovely to witness.”
Keeping The Shoe Monster At Bay
“Okay, so this happened a few months back. I am still pretty proud of it, even though I probably shouldn’t be. I work in retail, mainly for the shoe department of my store. One day, I was going through the shoe aisles, picking up discarded boxes, sizing shoes, and trying to keep things organized. I got to the girl’s shoe aisle, and I almsot started crying because of that mess. There were shoes literally thrown up and down the aisle. And these were random individual shoes too, with no matches as far as I could see. There was this one woman at the end of the aisle, and as I was turning the corner, I saw her throw one of those shoes down the aisle towards me. I now knew exactly who this culprit was! This woman spots me and shamelessly asks me fo them. I have to wade through this massive mess of shoes that she created to even get to her, there were easily twenty random shoes just thrown on the ground every which way. We just don’t do that at my store!
She wants a pair of shoes, but she can’t seem to find the one in the exact size she needs. She’s rude through the entire interaction, and I decided that I was going to be pretty nasty right back to her. I told her that I would help her, but that I needed to pick up this awful mess that someone had made, before I was able to do that, in order to actually find the shoes she was looking for. So I get to work on picking everything up and taking my sweet time doing it, too. She was getting super impatient and even more whiny (if that was possible), and she finally decided she would actually help me. She started putting things away where they actually went, and we were able to clean up the mess in a reasonably quick time.
Finally, we finished. I told her that unfortunately through all of that, I wasn’t able to find the shoes that she needed, so she would have to go to another store if she wanted them. She was so insanely mad, it was beyond glorious. She definitely knew what I had done, but she didn’t say anything. We have security cameras, so if she would have complained, I would have just shown my manager what she had done, because surely the camera had caught it. She left, cussing the entire store out the whole way. I felt a lot better after that.”
This Customer Deserved Going Through That Personal Nightmare!
“I have only had one single customer that I directly went out of my way to exact revenge on. For context, I work in this very large hardware store that puts together very large customer deliveries. One of my work mates has some sort of learning disorder, which thankfully doesn’t prevent him from doing his job, He has a heart of gold and works harder than anyone I have ever known. Unfortunately, we had this one absolute monster come into our work to place an order. he definitely crossed a line, and we needed to call security on him for whatever reason. We try to be passive and non-confrontational as a staff, so when a security call does come in, it means that someone is actually in trouble. When I came over to see what the trouble was, I realized that I had left this particular work mate with this particular customer, and this employee was sobbing. This poor guy was practically bawling his eyes out. I was confused over th ewhole thing, but I quickly walk over to comfort him and figure out what had happened. When my employee couldn’t use our point of sales system properly, this customer started berated him and called him some nasty names. I don’t feel particularly inclined to share all of what he was telling this poor employee.
Naturally, I completely flipped out over this. That was such a horrific thing to tell my employee! I refuse to complete this sale, and I tell this customer to leave the store immediately! My manager has to walk. over eventually when this customer won’t leave in time! My manager, being an epically terrible person, tells me to put through the sale anyway, since apparently it was still worth a lot to the store. So I had to begrudgingly go forward with the sale. The payment clears, and it is worth thousands and thousands of dollars, but there was one specific way I knew I could get back at this nasty customer.
To get your money back, you woud have to phsycially return the items at your own cost. You would also have to wait for the items to be delivered first by our supplier and third party delivery company after paying for them. My department and store managers do not care whatsoever about anything really, so it was up to me as supervisor to determine when these deliveries were to be made. It was also up to me to schedule any necessary delays in a shipping order. I wanted to avenge my employee, so i knew jsut what to do here. Usually our delivery will take one week at most. I set up this particular delivery to take a month. Then for the next five and ahalf months, I call up our supplier and our delivery company and ask them to delay the order for another month. The best part of all of this is that my name is on this customer’s order sumamry, so if he has any questions about this, he has to be referred to me. If i wasn’t working that day or able to get to the phone, then nobiody else could make any final deicisions with this transaction. This cutomer has to deal with me every singkle time he wants to make a complaint, and it is so delightful to listen to his frustration.”
Adult Baby Wrecks The Store
“Before I quit the corporate rat rodeo (which is what I like to cal the working world) to become a full-time writer, I served my time working night shifts as a pharmacist for my local CVS. One evening, this customer came in with a prescription for Tussionex cough syrup, which (at that time) had no generic counterpart. The co-pay for this medicine was $75 for a little pint bottle. Don’t worry, I verified that the prescription was legitimate before I filed it, I do have professional standards!
I heard the other pharmacy technician tell the customer the co-pay, and that under no circumstances could we take the bottle back after it left the store. I heard the customer agree, and he quickly left. A couple hours later, he came back with his wife (who had probably thrown a fit beforehand) and demanded that we take it back. He completely ignore that rule we told him earlier! I stepped in, informing him of not only our corporate policy, but the state and federal law which would set me up on charges if I dispensed this medicine to someone else. I then reminded him of his conversation with the technician not too long ago. I apologized for the high cost, told him that CVS does not set his insurance’s co-pay, and then apologized again at the inconvenience.
He reared back like a quarterback, and then he threw the heavy glass bottle at my head. I saw it coming and swerved a little to the right, just in time. The bottle hit the carpet and only rolled away instead of breaking, which made him even more furious at us. So he held out his arms to either side of his self, and he went down the length of the store, pushing every single item on the shelves onto the floor. It was beyond immature. The people working at the front of the store weren’t very amused at this guy either. They tried getting him banned, were they rebuffed by corporate for whatever reason. Then a couple of weeks later, the very same customer came back, as if nothing had ever happened! I just let it roll off my back and never brought it up, and I am pretty sure that he knew he had gone over the line, because he never gave me a problem after that.”
Don’t Mess With The Computer Nerd
“I worked at this computer service shop in our local mall, and I would mostly cover our check-in window. I was one of the go-to tech people in the store, so most of the customers would work with me. Almost all of my work tasks involved some warranty work for a customer’s old computer. I heard out front door open, and someone was standing at the entrance with this massive seventeen inch computer monitor. Apparently it wasn’t working properly. I take him to my work station, and I pull up the customer’s account with the store. Apparently, this monitor was well past its warranty expiration date. I explained to the customer that we don’t fix and replace monitors if they are out of their warranty date, so there wasn’t anything I could do for him, unless he wanted to buy a totally new monitor. He told me that was fine, and that I could just it out then. I tried to tell him that we don’t have any recycling in the store, so he simply took back his monitor and walked out the door. I watched him throw the entire monitor in a nearby mall garbage can. I knew exactly what to do afterwards. I called up the mall security and gave them this person’s information, since I had his name, address, and phone number up on my computer. The mall billed him for this violent disposal, I wonder if he ever paid it? it was absolutely petty, but I didn’t get paid enough to deal with such an angry person!”
At Long Last He Learned His Lesson
“I was working as a retail sales representative for Comcast. Naturally, I got to deal with so many upset customers. One day, this guy and his wife come in requesting to switch service to her name, so they can get better pricing. I look up the location, and they have been switching back and forth who’s name was on the account for the past six years to keep their costs down. Not a problem. As a representative, I’m not allowed to explicitly tell customers to do this, but if they ask about it, I can’t deny them that this hack actually works pretty well. So I go over the procedure with him. In order to do the switch, the old account has to be closed clean. That means that the equipment needs to be returned and the final balance paid for. Normally, I’ll let the equipment fee slide, as long as they return it within a week, but the final bill needs to be paid before the switch. There could be no exceptions.
This man throws the biggest fit. The bill is about $200, but he is disputing half of it. He exclaimed, ‘I’ll pay you $100, and thats it!’ Yeah, no, this is not a negotiation. $200 or no switch, you can dispute the transaction later. I explain to him that this is our policy for account switches, and if I do what he’s asking, I’ll get in a lot of trouble. I outright tell him that, ‘You’re asking me to do something that would get me fired.’
He doesn’t care one bit, and he keeps insisting that I take the $100. Finally, after fifteen agonizing minutes of wasting my time, this guy gives up. He yells at me, ‘Fine! I’ll call in and put the account under my son’s name Robert!’
The exact moment that he and his wife leave, I type up a note on his account. It states, ‘Customer wants new account in son Robert’s name. He refuses to pay the final bill. Do not restart service until his bill is paid in full and his equipment is returned.’
This guy must have been tortured over waiting for this new service. A few days later, he came back to see me, and it was like his tail was between his legs. He brought with him a bunch of old, heavy DVR devices, and he paid his bill in full in order to restart his service.”
The Pettiest Reason To Throw A Tantrum
“A couple of decades ago, I had a job that included training our clients in the use of our product that they had purchased for their corporate offices. On one such training week, I flew to New York City to face a new set of ‘students’ with our third largest customer. But on the weekend before, I had slipped down a hill and ended up fracturing my leg. Although it was a minor injury, it hurt like crazy when I was on my feet for too long, despite wearing a walking cast. But on that Sunday morning, I did the whole airport thing, pulling my suitcase and briefcase behind me. I knew everything would take longer because of the limp and the pain. On Monday morning, I walked the four blocks from my hotel to the client’s office, and then I stood for an entire day of training. I occasionally leaned on the table, or I perched on a chair when I could. But by the end of the day, I was in a whole lot of pain. So I took a cab back to my hotel instead of walking, and I vowed I would do that for the remaining four days.
Upon returning to my home office, I did as we were supposed to do. I itemized all my expenses, including the cab fare. It wasn’t even that much money, but I am a rule follower after all. The client was furious that I had had the nerve to bill them for this added taxi expense, since they were not the ones to cause my injury. I actually had not even expected that my billing department would bill the client, so I was not only surprised at that, but also at all the vitriol from the client. He said some pretty awful things to me, all for a few measly bucks! The cab ride was pretty cheap to be honest! I offered to pay the cab fare myself, and that somehow further insulted him. I then let my higher-ups deal with it, but said that I would no longer train that particular client.
There are just some people who go through life aiming to be unhappy, and they attempt to drag others along with them on that unhappy, miserable ride.”
Never Do This With A Cashier
“So I work in retail. Whenever a customer puts the cash on the counter instead of in my outstretched hand, it drives me crazy. It is awkward and I promise I keep my hands clean, so what is the big deal? When this happens, I make sure that I put the customer’s change onto the counter as far away from them as possible. I then stare them down while they are trying to awkwardly retrieve it. I have been written up for doing this before, but I have checked our employee handbook, and I’m not breaking any particular rules! I’m just teaching some rude people to have some manners! Now if these customers were germaphobes, that would be another thing entirely. But these people are especially snobby brats, who think that they are better because they don’t work in retail. You can definitely tell the difference by how they act and talk around you. I feel zero remorse doing it, and it is the little bit of daily petty revenge that puts a smile on my face. Spite is a pretty great motivator.”
An Epic Gothic Revenge
“Way back in high school, I worked at a local grocery store. I worked as a cashier, would organize our stock, and would collect carts. I did a little bit of everything at this place. I was also heavily involved in the punk and metal scene at the time, so I dressed accordingly. I had on combat boots, plaid pants, band shirts, a dyed mohawk, and I had huge gauges in my ears. One day, I was out collecting carts, and this obnoxious preteen kid was walking into the store with his mom. As he passed me by, he pointed and laughed at me, calling me some derogatory names under his breath. Naturally, I flipped him the bird, which switched his sheepish smile into a look of pure fear.
I finished getting the carts moved together and started stocking one of the aisles. That was when I heard my name called on the intercom to come bag this customer’s groceries. I went up to the front of the store, and guess who it is? That’s right, it was the gross preteen and his mom. I proceeded to bag the groceries and muster up the most evil look I could while doing it. I proceeded to give the death glare to this kid, who was doing his best not to look at me, even though he can obviously see me in his peripheral vision.
I walked the cart out to this lady’s car and started loading groceries in the very back. I ran out of room, so she told me to put the rest in the back seat, next to her son. I open the door, and he has a look of absolute terror on his face. So as I’m putting groceries next to him, I rolled my eyes back so the whites are exposed. I started gnashing and grinding my teeth like I was a ravenous cannibal, and he started to cry and sob. His mother never saw any of this and was very kind to me. She even gave me a few bucks for helping her with the groceries. I hope he learned his lesson.”