A terrible customer's favorite phrase is "The customer is always right," but sometimes the customer isn't right, sometimes they're absolutely wrong. These customers decided to put their ignorance on display for these workers and wound up looking like utter fools.
He Was Upset Before He Even Got His Copies
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“I once worked at Kinko’s. One dude was so angry, even as I started helping him. He asked for a bunch of copies, I made them and set them down in front of him. ‘How’s that look?’ I asked.
‘Well, you printed them upside down!’ The guy was edgy. So I turned the stack of pages 180 degrees. The guy said, ‘I don’t like your attitude.’
Some people are determined to be displeased.”
She Called His Cashier A Dirty Word, But Didn’t Like It When The Tables Were Turned
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“I was working in this store as an assistant manager. It was a craft store. Beads, foam blocks, buttons, and stuff. I heard screaming coming from up at the register, so I wandered over to see what fresh nightmare this job has wrought for me today.
I walked up to the counter and this lady was having a fit at one of my cashiers over the fact that the price on her little plastic doodads was coming up 27 cents more on the register than on the sticker.
Normally, if there’s a problem like that, we would just give them the discount and walk it off. No harm, no foul. But foul was pretty much the only word that described this lady’s behavior. So I asked the girl on the register to ring it up for 27 cents less and the lady started to tear into me.
I’m all smiles and yes ma’ams because I know how to play the brown-noser game very well. And as I attempted to brutally murder this woman with kindness, my poor little cashier made the mistake of drawing hostile fire onto herself by having the sheer audacity to present this woman her plastic doodads in a bag, receipt in hand.
The lady reached to grab the bag of doodads and as she did, she looked my cashier in the eye and called her a really nasty name.
Still smiling, I intercepted the bag and receipt. Told the cashier, ‘Take five, I’ll finish up here.’ The lady was seething and wanted to know what else there was to take care of. I canceled out the transaction and chucked her bag of doodads into the restock bin. I threw away the receipt and, still smiling, handed her back her money.
She said, ‘I want my (whatever the little things were) and I want them now.’ Continuing to smile, I simply uttered the same word she called the cashier right back at her.
She went nuclear for a few minutes, but it was the only thing I would say to her from that point until she left the store.
I got fired for that. Apparently, she was someone who worked at the school my manager’s kid went to and started causing problems for him there, so that was the end of me. But the way her eyes seemed to bulge out of her wrinkly old face when she got treated the same way she was treating that cashier is indelibly etched into memory for me. And I think it was totally worth it.”
She Just Would Not Put Down The Phone!
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“Just a few days ago, a woman came through my register. She was buying a cart full of pretty typical family stuff — cereal, baby food, kids’ clothing, etc. She was on her phone the whole time, which is pretty typical for this store for some reason.
Early in the transaction, she just sort of announced to herself/other person on the phone, ‘Crap, I forgot the liners.’ Notice she just said liners. Not any specific product name or hint as to what she meant.
I went through my usual script of, ‘How are you doing today?’ and then, ‘Did you find everything you needed?’ which was met with a look of confusion before she returned to her phone call/slowly unloading her cart.
I scanned all of her items as I made one-sided small talk because I like annoying the people who are on their phones the whole time. As I told her the total, she managed to take the phone away from her ear to ask me, ‘So, did they grab my liners?’
Me: ‘Um, what is it that you needed exactly?’
Her: Sighing, ‘I told you I forgot to grab liners. So did someone get them for me yet? I’m kind of in a hurry.’
Me: ‘Well, ma’am, I wasn’t sure what you meant. Trash bag liners? Feminine products?’ I couldn’t think of another meaning of the word.
Her: Another loud sigh, ‘Baby. Bottle. Liners. I need them. Someone needs to go get them.’
I called the infant department and asked her questions, like the bottle size, if she wants a big/small pack, store brand or name brand, and repeated the info to the employee on the sales floor so he could grab them. All of these questions were, of course, a major inconvenience to her because I’m interrupting her phone call.
The coworker showed up with a package that matched what the customer had told me. She, however, took one look at it and went, ‘This is not the kind I use. I specifically told you drop-in bottle liners, (store brand)!’
I kept smiling and asked the coworker to grab the correct kind with this new knowledge of exactly what she wanted.
Her: ‘No. This is ridiculous. I’m late to pick up my kids.’
She just walked away from my register, leaving all of her items bagged and in the cart (which she left, she didn’t steal anything). And grumbling to her friend on the phone about how incompetent we all were.
All because she couldn’t just tell us what she needed, or actually ask me to have someone grab it, or even remember to pick it up herself during her shopping!”
When They Figured Out Why He Wanted A Return, They Couldn’t Believe It
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“I used to work at Staples in the Midwest. At the time, we had commercials that would show people pressing our signature ‘Easy Button,’ and it would do things for them. Like, printer ink would fall magically into their laps, or their internet would start working blazingly fast. This was obviously both silly advertising, and to make the point that if you shopped at Staples, we would help you with these things to make your life easier.
Now, we sold these Easy Buttons as well. They were a novelty item we kept at the cash registers, and when you pressed them, a recorded voice would say, ‘That was easy!’
I guess they were for people who wanted to be the office clown, but didn’t want to bother with pesky things like having a sense of humor, or a regard for their coworkers sanity, as the buttons were very loud and people pressed them constantly in the stores, so I can only imagine what happened in an office environment with these tiny mouthpieces of nightmares present.
Anyway, I was up front by the register when a small man who didn’t speak very much English came in and approached the cashier with a bag to return an item. The man was growing increasingly agitated, and the poor cashier seemed to be getting flustered and looked to be near tears as well. I couldn’t really tell what was being said (again, there was a bit of a language barrier), so I phoned the manager’s office and told him to come up front as there seemed to be a problem. I approached the cashier and the man, and my boss followed from his office soon afterward.
The man asked my boss if he’s the manager. Boss said, ‘Yes.’ The man then went on a pretty intense and angry rant and began shoving an easy button at us. Now, this was a long time ago, and I couldn’t understand everything this gentleman said, but from what I could gather his complaint was this: the Easy Button he had purchased DID NOT work the way the commercial led him to believe it would. He’d used it and noticed no appreciable difference in his internet speed, and we should be prosecuted for false advertising.
My manager, who was more or less speaking through a facepalm at this point, apologized and explained to the guy that it was just a novelty, and he was sorry for the miscommunication, full refund.
Eventually, the man left and my boss, who looked like he just wanted to go home and take a bath with a toaster at that point, just shook his head. I told him he should have just strung the guy along and told him it was defective, and we would replace it with one that worked, and that he should go home and check his computer’s settings, but he said that would only create more problems later. Missed opportunity, if you ask me.”
They Didn’t Realize Something Might Be Off About The Cake Until Their Daughter Got Sick Too
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“I worked at a store that sells ice cream cakes. A woman came in with half a cake; we thought it’d be melted. Nope. Much more concerning: her son had a piece yesterday and got ill. They didn’t make the connection until the daughter ate a piece that morning and also became ill. To say the least, my manager was freaking out. If there was some kind of food poisoning going on, the whole store could be shut down, and it would be a huge mess.
She passed me the cake and told me to check and see who made it so we could call it in. I opened up the case, took a look at it, and it took every bit of control I could muster to not laugh in front of the customer.
The cake was a Valentine’s Day cake, and it was September. My manager had to explain to the woman that half-eaten ice cream cakes don’t hold for a half a year, and the woman kept insisting we test it.”
Their Jaw Dropped When The Woman Pulled Out Her Wallet
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“I worked retail as an assistant manager for a few years while in college. I had a woman come in and proceed to tell me she had a return. She said she needed to return her wallet because the purse that matched it had broke, so she had no use for it now.
I smiled and asked where the return was. She then showed me the wallet she was using and started pulling her money, license, etc. out of it. This wallet looked beat up and broken in. It looked like what you would figure an old wallet would look. I stood there for a minute contemplating if this woman was for real.
Turns out, she was! I told her, ‘Ma’am, I cannot take back a used wallet because you bought a matching purse and it broke.’
She went on a tirade from there, ‘Your other store took the purse back and I had used it. I want my money! I want to talk to your manager!’
He came over and looked at it, then told her, ‘No!’
She spent another 20 minutes getting the district manager’s number. She went on yelling about how we were racist and if she was white, we would have returned it. We were both minorities, might I add. We didn’t return it because it was used and abused. It had her money, license, credit cards, and kid’s photo in it, for Pete’s sake! No, I am not returning the wallet you walked in using. Oh, without the receipt might I also add!
Retail never ceased to amaze me!”
He Caused His Own Misfortune, But Still Wanted To Take It Out On The Poor Waiter
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“I was serving a large table at a small restaurant. I was running out the food and had three plates in my hand. One was resting on a linen covering my arm because it was a hot dish. I walked up to the table and was setting the first dish down when a guest decided to grab the hot dish off my arm. He immediately burned his hands and dropped the dish all over the table. He freaked out and started yelling at me for not warning him it was hot. He demanded to see my manager, who happened to be the owner as well. My owner talked to the guy and bought his dinner for him, but he kept yelling that he was embarrassed and wanted everyone’s dinner paid for and me to be fired. At this point, his friends told him to calm down and started telling him it was his own fault and to stop embarrassing everyone. He finally shut up, and they continued the meal.
I split up everyone’s tabs and ran the cards. This guy walked up to me with his booklet, opened it up to show me that he’d tipped me a penny and said, ‘I tipped you 1 cent because you were terrible. How does that feel?’ I was kind of shocked that he could be so mean, but I responded by saying that I absolutely didn’t care and tried to walk away from him. He then tried to punch me. Luckily, he missed. The rest of his group saw this, ran over and grabbed him, and he started screaming at me. Then we called the cops and he was escorted out of the building. Weird day at work, but the video footage showed him grabbing the plate and throwing a punch.”
When He Couldn’t Get His Refund, He Took It Out On The Cake And Cashier
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“I used to work in a patisserie (we specialized in wedding cakes), and this guy ordered a Noah’s Ark cake and prepaid for it. My boss made these cute little fondant animals going into an ark on the sides of the baby blue cake. The customer came to pick it up, and as soon as he looked at the cake, his nose scrunched up and he frowned. He said, ‘This cake looks absolutely horrible, I demand a refund!’
I called my boss several times, but no answer and I told the gentleman that I could hold onto the cake until my boss was free and would call him back personally. He started yelling at me (a minimum wage cashier) and demanded his refund. I told him I wasn’t able to because of my position and tried calling my boss again.
He continued yelling. I asked him to calm down or I would have to ask him to leave. He yelled back at me one more time, ‘I want my EFFING refund!’ To which I told him, again, I couldn’t do. His response was to open the cake box, remove the cake, and throw it at me. I ducked, it hit the wall, and I told him that he wouldn’t get his refund back, and if he didn’t leave, I would call the cops.
The next day, he called the patisserie and demanded to talk to my boss. She told him that since he threw the cake at her employee and because he wouldn’t just relax and let her call him back, he wouldn’t get his cake and was permanently banned from the establishment.”
She Kept Describing The Same Bed, But The One He Showed Her Wasn’t It
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“I work in furniture sales. I once had a customer try to buy a bed she saw online, but she did not remember its name or code. I asked her to describe the bed to me, and she gave me a great description of a bed that we stock. When I got her to the floor model, she told me that it was the wrong bed, so I had her give another description, which matched that bed perfectly.
We went back and forth for a while with her perfectly describing the product right in front of her, and me asking once again if she was sure that this thing that looked, felt, sounded, and tasted like what she was describing was not what she wanted. Eventually, she said she would go to get her daughter who knew how to look it up on our website, even though I had let her use our in-store computer to look it up herself and was told I was still wrong.
About five minutes later, a new woman approached me and said, ‘My mom was over here earlier and you were right, could you please help us order that bed?’ I guess she was too embarrassed to come back to me herself.”
When He Came Back From Lunch, There Was An Angry Gentleman Waiting For Him
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“I work at a fuel depot in a small town in Australia and our focus is on delivering to local farms. We do run fuel on the forecourt, but we don’t keep usual service station hours.
I had just returned from my scheduled one-hour lunch break, to find a gentleman on the forecourt waiting to fuel up with LPG, of which we are the only supplier in town.
After filling up and coming up to pay, he proceeds to ask, ‘What kind of fuel station closes for lunch!?’
After explaining that I am required by law to close for lunch, he launches into a tirade, ‘That’s nonsense! There’s no such law about fuel stations closing for lunch!’ and begins to call me a lazy prick and a liar. After a few minutes of me staring deadpan, he finally finishes complaining.
I politely, but not calmly, explain that Australia’s laws, and more specifically, my award agreement, which specifies that I can work five hours before taking a mandatory lunch break, and that any issues with my working hours need to be raised with my manager, and that I would give him my manager’s number if he would like to follow it up.
The bloke ended up leaving, and the next day my manager called to ask what had happened. I explained everything, and my manager then told me this gentleman claimed he had been ignored, and then verbally abused when he had requested service. My manager had already checked the security camera footage and seen what had happened, and just wanted to confirm.
I hate that guy though.”
Since The First Two Chairs Wouldn’t Work, They Tried A Different Tactic
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“I was a furniture delivery guy in college. A woman ordered this high back red leather chair.
We delivered it and she complained about the grain in the leather. We explained that leather is a natural product and bears irregularities. If she wanted uniformity, she should buy vinyl. She got insulted and informed us in no uncertain terms that she was well off and would only buy genuine leather.
We took the chair back to the store and exchanged it for the other one we had: a floor model. We brought that one out and she did the same thing, pointing out things in the grain that she disliked.
We took it back to the store and asked the owner what to do. By then, the chair was actually no longer made, so he told us to bring the first chair again.
We delivered those same two chairs seven times. She never caught on and eventually decided she really liked the ‘seventh’ chair. Which was, of course, the one she originally hated.”
The Price Of Cabbage Really Threw Him For A Loop
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“While working at the store that was created in the very depths of Satan, Wal-Mart, I was pulled from my regular spot in apparel to the registers when they were having a huge wave of people. Having worked registers two or three times, I was pretty used to it and was only a little challenged with remembering the fruit/vegetable codes and such. So anyway, I opened a lane and up walked a very wide, very tall man with a cart overflowing with food. Cool, whatever. I asked how he is and began ringing up his items. All was well and we were about $350 into his transaction when the stupid cabbage reached me. It didn’t have a sticker and I didn’t remember the code, so I quickly checked the chart by the register for the code, typed it in, the scale weighed the infant-sized cabbage and calculated the price, all was well.
I went to bag the cabbage when I heard, ‘That’s not how much that is.’ I double checked to make sure it wasn’t rung up multiple times and explained that it costs X amount per whatever weight. ‘Cabbage is poor man’s food, it shouldn’t be that much. I’m not paying that much for cabbage.’ Once again, I tried to explain to him that it’s all based on weight and I can’t lower the price of his cabbage. After yelling at me and berating me over this, he wanted to see a manager. So I called up a manager who was obviously already very done with everyone’s crap and explained to him what’s going on. He told the customer exactly what I did, but offered to remove it if it was really that big of a deal. Guy said no, it’s fine, whatever. At this point, I was nearly in tears and just wanted to get back to folding t-shirts. I finished ringing up his items in silence while the customer kept telling me how I should at least offer him a discount or give him the cabbage for free since I caused so much trouble.”
All She Wanted Was To Take The Spin Class
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“I was working at a gym, and we had a raffle as part of some event. One of the prizes was a certificate that could be redeemed for a free six-week session of one of our classes (depending on the class, this was worth up to about $200).
Well, the woman who won the certificate came in and wanted to use the certificate to take our spinning (stationary bike) class. The only problem was that this particular class was free.
For a good 15 minutes, I tried everything I could think of to explain to this woman that she could just take the class for free and use the certificate for something else. She was adamant that she had to use the certificate for that class. I was yelled at, called a liar, accused of false advertising. The woman escalated the issue and spoke to my supervisor, who I think accepted the certificate and put a credit on the woman’s account.
Some people just don’t want to listen or accept the fact that they’ve misunderstood something.
Later, one of my coworkers suggested that I should have offered the woman a voucher for a cup of coffee to make up for the misunderstanding. The coffee, of course, was always available in our lobby and also totally free.”