Is the customer always right?
Obviously not, which is why Reddit user Jing_Yuan_Lu asked this question recently:
Here are some of the most 🤦♀️ answers:
1.
Many years back, worked for a store chain that sells all products related and connected to Nature. Among them, the Himalayan salt stone lamp. It’s a stone made of salt that encases an electrical bulb. It is supposed to help for regulating ions in your home/office.
A customer called us to complain that their stone disappeared at home and asked for a refund. As open mind, as I can be, I however tried to understand what she meant exactly by “disappeared”.
The story is, the customer removed the stone from the bulb and put it in her dishwasher to clean it…
I had to be super nice to her to make her realize that salt dissolves in water… Especially in hot water.. Without her getting upset and getting offended… It was a lonely moment..
2.
It’s always “x has it cheaper”
Go there then. You are hurting literally nobody’s feelings.
3.
Working pizza delivery. One time a guy called in, threatened to kick all our asses and more because we put sticks in his pizza. I told him I would be happy to come pick it up and examine it (we got a LOT of fraud calls, people trying to get free shit every day). When I got there his tone changed (I am 6 foot, 270 pounds) and he showed me the “sticks” in his pizza. You know what they were? He ordered thin crust, and some of the crust broke off onto the pizza. He was nice as can be after I pointed that out.
4.
I was working at OfficeMax during back to school season. This woman comes up to my register with a few things and I start scanning it in. She notices the one item rang up less than she was expecting. She actually got an attitude with me because we hadn’t had a chance to print new shelf tags for that aisle yet. I told her I would wait if she wanted to get more. She declined and continued complaining to me about it. I said “well I can override the price to what the shelf label said.” I realize now that I was being a bit of a bitch by saying that. She politely declined that as well, paid with her card, and rushed out the door with her things.
5.
Somebody called head office to complain that they heard a Michael Jackson song in our store.
6.
I was a lifeguard for 2-3 years in high school. Everyday I would get people complaining about the pool temperature as if I could do something about it. “Ma’am, the pool does not have a heating system, I’m sorry. Larger bodies of water hold their temperature longer, which is why it’s so cold”. And they would complain ALL. THE. TIME. “This is your job, you need to fix it!” I’m sorry lady. This isn’t the 4 Seasons Hotel, this is a fucking community pool. It was never young people, always the old ladies who would come in at 5 am to do water aerobics.
7.
Restaurant with open kitchen, so customers and us cooks can converse freely. Customer wanted crispy fish. Made it really crispy. Not done enough. I cooked a new one, literally like 15 minutes on the fryers; I cooked three or four other orders around it. She then complained that it was too hot and she didn’t want it.
8.
I may have worked for the same store.
We also sold bonsai trees which can be kinda tricksy to keep so you got a care leaflet with them. The leaflet said to water the tree you should immerse the pot entirely until soaked and then allow to drain completely (disclaimer: I have no idea if this advice is actually correct). Anyway customer comes in with dead tree in pot with zero soil left, ranting how the advice was terrible and demanding a refund.
Turns out rather than fill a bowl and immerse the pot she’d run a bath and immersed the whole damn tree, right to the tips of its poor little branches. Soil dispersed, tree died.
Seriously at what point during this process are you not thinking “I have to run a damn bath every time? I know bonsai are high maintenance but this seems extreme”
– TrypMole
9.
Ah I got a great one. So I have a small retail business with my mom that’s strictly brick and mortar. Normally our return policy is within 21 days for store credit. During the holidays we extend it so that anything purchased between black Friday and December 24th can be returned up until the end of January.
A few years ago this guy came in around the end of April trying to return Christmas gifts on DRY CLEANING HANGERS. When I told him I wouldn’t take it back, even for a store credit, he blew up on me and cussed me out in front of other customers in the store. He then proceeded to leave a 1 star review and bash the store saying how he’s “never been treated like that before at a store”. How tf do people like that exist?
10.
Not sure if this is really a complaint but more sheer stupidity…
At my first IT job, someone was returning a computer monitor and insisted on speaking with someone from the IT department rather than just leaving it in the cage as they were asked.
So I came down to talk with them to see what was going on and she was very adamant that I “double-check” the monitor to make sure all of her information was off of it….
This lady literally thought all of her icons, files, and folders were saved directly to the monitor itself and wouldn’t leave unless I powered it on to show her.
I didn’t even bother trying to explain it to her, she seemed extremely rude and it wouldn’t even be worth my time. So I literally plugged it into the wall, didn’t connect it to anything, and powered it on.
“See, it’s completely blank. Your good to go”
She smiled, said thank you, and left.
– maxdps_
11.
I owned a computer biz for a few years. The one that always got me was this chick that brought in her computer slammed with viruses, spyware, etc. so bad it wouldn’t boot. Got it all fixed up and she picked it up. Brought it back the very next day with the same thing. I asked what sites she visited since she picked it up and she, completely unashamed, said “oh my bf and I are on porn all the time”. Um, ok. I told her I would go ahead and clean it again for free but if she visited those sites I couldn’t do it again without charging. Picked it up same day. Back in the next. Me: “did you get back on the porn sites” Her: “of course”. I could not make her understand why this kept happening and would continue happening so I just asked her to go somewhere else.
– tuscabam
12.
The store manager was walking by my register as a customer was walking up to check out. My manager said I had to take my break in 15 minutes to which I said, “Okay” The customer complained that it was unprofessional for the manager to speak to me and that I was unprofessional to respond when a customer was approaching the register because I needed to be focused on her and greet her appropriately.
13.
Had a lady call me racist because she came in to buy glasses, and I asked if she has been to our store before or if she has her prescription with her. She even told her young daughter to watch out for people like me… Uhhh…
14.
I work at a bakery and we sell pigs in a blanket for breakfast. A few years ago one of the kinds was a spicy blueberry sausage (it had blueberries inside the sausage link). One day some lady got one (knowing it was a blueberry sausage link), bit into it and noticed some dark looking things inside the sausage link (surprise, it was a blueberry) but for whatever reason she thought that a flake of black gunk from inside our oven somehow managed to get inside the sausage link (even after said link was rolled in a croissant). She called the health department on us and tried to get $50+ of free food.
My boss asked her what she ordered, he brought out a link of the sausage to show her and she immediately shut up and left the store. Unfortunately we stopped selling that kind because “if one idiot is gonna think that then others will”, which is sad because they were pretty good.
15.
A lady ordered a sandwich and then cancelled her order because she thought it took too long. Someone else from the party she was having called and made an order. We made it and delivered it without issue. Same lady calls back APPALLED that we would allow one of her guests to order from us after she made it very clear she wanted to cancel her own order. It’s not my business if other people at her party want to order food and I had no idea it was her party anyway. I told her it was very common for multiple deliveries to go to the same house party, why wouldn’t we make them sandwiches? She then told me I would obviously never amount to anything in life and she was going to make a formal complaint against me. It was such a weird complaint. It was probably 10 years ago but it still bugs me sometimes.
16.
Worked in an electronics store to put myself through college. I worked in the computer department, but was sitting at the loss prevention desk up front to cover while the LP supervisor took a quick lunch break. An old lady comes in, asks where the dairy section is, and help finding the milk. I told her, kindly, that we weren’t in a grocery store. She looks confused and leaves. A couple of minutes later her (presumably) son walks in, and starts chewing my ass because I wouldn’t help her find the milk. When he was done bitching, I slowly waved my arm across the store and asked him which one of those aisles looks like they might have groceries in them. He stares for a good few seconds, and then starts bitching me out saying that I’m an asshole, and he wants to see a manager.
So I paged the loss prevention supervisor up to the front. The LP supervisor invited the guy to never come back to the store.
17.
I work for a popular roadside assistance company and had a guy call in wanting to get roadside assistance for his daughter who was stranded. His daughter was not on his membership and there was no room to add her because he already had his wife added. So I suggested he remove his wife for now and add his daughter so she can get roadside assistance and then switch them back afterwards. Apparently this was the most outrageous suggestion. He went and told my supervisor that I was “making him choose his daughter over his wife and no father should have to make that kind of decision” lol.
18.
Worked at a coffee shop that wasn’t Starbucks. Frappuccino is a trademarked word for Starbucks blended coffee drinks. When customers would ask for frappuccinos we would just put in the order as what we called it and let them know the name for it at our store so they would recognize it when the barista called it out. Had a women get so upset she was screaming, all over the word frappuccino. According to her it was the traditional Italian word for a blended coffee drink (it’s not) and we obviously thought she was stupid to tell her otherwise and how dare we insult her like that. Tried to calm her down and just say we called them something else but it would be a similar drink…didn’t even correct her about the rest. She continued to flip out and literally looked up and called our corporate customer service line in front of us, holding up the rest of the line, to have them tell her the same thing. She then started screeching to demand to talk to the president of our company, and started knocking stuff off our counter top. That’s when we called security to escort her the fuck out of our store.
19.
A guy asked if I was the manager.
“Can I help you with something?”
Angrily: “Yeah, three Saturdays in row now I come down here at 4:30, and every fuckin’ Saturday you close at 4.”
“Uh…yeah. We close at 4.”
“Fuck you.”
At least he left then. The worst ones don’t leave. They just keep going.
20.
Had a woman call me racist because I asked her if she needed utensils for her take-out.
21.
I used to work at a pizza place with a small dining room. So many people would complain that their pizza was too hot to eat. Of course it is. It just came out of the oven. This is why you chose to drive your dumbass here to eat instead of having it delivered. Because it’s fresh. Fresh pizza is hot, ffs.
22.
The best is always people who aren’t using your services or paying you for anything but demanding your time and attention.
Work at a vets office part time and every shift someone calls in asking about some random medication or another vet clinic when we insanely busy (we see roughly 40-50 pets a day) and demand that I look up phone numbers and pricing for other clinics, people act like smart phones and the internet aren’t at their disposal.
The best was one time this lady called because she found a wild rabbit and wanted us to give it an exam. Explain to her to put the rabbit back outside as it could have a number of diseases and it’s not safe to keep a wild animal in your house, also we don’t see anything other than cats and dogs. She then demanded I look up a vets office that did take wild animals, told her “ma’am, we are very busy and this is a personal issue and you aren’t a client. I will not do research for you. Have a great day.” She then left us a one star yelp review and tried to write a complain to the better business bureau.