Kate Hackett
That old adage “the customer is always right” has taken on a life of its own and that life is, let’s be real, pretty awful. It’s created and fostered an environment in which customers can create employees terribly for no reason other than “I’m paying.” And to top all of that off, people complain about everything.
Which brings us to a recent Reddit thread about just that.
u/Jing_Yuan_Lu asked folks over on Reddit:
“Customer service people of Reddit, what’s the dumbest thing a customer has gone out of their way to complain about?”
Here are the best answers!
1. Nature
Many years back, worked for a store chain which 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”.
Story is, customer removed the stone from the bulb and put it in her dish-washer to clean it…
I had to be super nice with her to make her realizing that salt dissolves in water.. Specially in hot water.. Without her getting upset and getting offended… It was a lonely moment..
2. Refund a donation
That our parent company said that a portion of every purchase goes towards the So The World May Hear foundation for poor kids hearing aids. He wanted that portion of his purchase refunded to him. I told him that the parent company had every right to do with their profits off every purchase that they wanted and most people were happy that instead of profiting as much they made a donation instead. He didn’t care. He was mad that his money was helping brown kids hear. F**k that guy.
3. There’s no milk here
Worked in an electronics store to put myself through college. I worked in the computer department but was sitting at the loss prevention desk upfront 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 a** because I wouldn’t help her find the milk. When he was done b**ching, 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 b**ching me out saying that I’m an a**hole, 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.
4. Closing time
A guy asked if I was the manager.
“Can I help you with something?”
Angrily: “Yeah, three Saturdays in a row now I come down here at 4:30, and every f**kin’ Saturday you close at 4.”
“Uh…yeah. We close at 4.”
“F**k you.”
At least he left then. The worst ones don’t leave. They just keep going.
5. Not starbucks
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 woman 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 countertop. That’s when we called security to escort her the f**k out of our store.
6. Drink Special
We have a drink special in the morning. Drinks are a dollar until 11:00 am. A lady called to complain that her daughter’s drink only cost a dollar. When we explained to her about the special, she said her daughter should have been charged full price regardless.
7. Sheer stupidity
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.
8. Pizza
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 dumba** here to eat instead of having it delivered. Because it’s fresh. Fresh pizza is hot, ffs.
9. Cheaper
It’s always “x has it cheaper”
Go there then. You are hurting literally nobody’s feelings.
10. Power washer
I once had a customer come in and the following ensued:
Customer: “Hi I am here to return this power washer”
Me: “Sure you have your receipt?”
C: “Well I bought it “As Is” two years ago. I used it for the first time last year and it didn’t work. I saw it this weekend cleaning the garage. I’d like my money back”
M: “Ah yeah we can’t do that. This product is 3 years old and was sold as is”.
C: angry tone “Oh yeah buddy? What kind of f**king store is this then? Let me talk to a manager.”
Manger proceeds to give them store credit for the amount of a brand new one. I put my two weeks in shortly after.
11. W..hat
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.
12. Library
I work in a library and I had a woman that was livid that we had a book of short stories in our Young Adult section about LGBT issues among teens. She was like “this is disgusting, this is giving their young minds a false impression of how normal people should live, this is awful”. My boss is a lesbian and was the one listening to her rant.
13. Use your brain
That I was using a cash register instead of “using my brain” to calculate the money.
14. Skip the line
At 18 I was working at a gas station. It was a busy day, I was the only one there and had a huge line. A woman comes in and skips the line and throws a $20 at me saying “$5 on pump 2.” Since she acted like that I chose to make her wait to have money put on the pump. When it would have been getting turned in line I put the $20 onto the pump since she didn’t wait around. About 5 minutes later she comes back complaining that the entire $20 was pumped.
I told her straight out that it’s not my responsibility to keep track of her money, and I placed it on the pump for a record of the funds. If she hadn’t walked away from the pump or had waited in line she could have completed her transaction like everyone else. She then tried calling the cops because I refused to give her a refund. When the cop got there and got the story he looked at her and told her to grow up and be responsible for herself.
15. Bakery
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.
16. Roadside help
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 afterward. 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.
17. Don’t say a word
I’m not sure if it counts as complaining but a woman once called to know the status of her case and confirm when she would be getting her money, pretty normal stuff until I said: “Yeah let me help-“ and she cut me off and said: “I don’t want to hear you talking. Don’t say a word to me, I don’t want to hear you, just do the damn thing.” I was like “ma’am this is a call center, I can’t help you without speaking to you” and she goes: “girl bye” and hung up.
18. Shoes
I worked at a shoe store and I had a guy come in and ask where he could get some books packed up for free and shipped. I said I wasn’t sure and that made staples would do it because they have an ups area there. He said he already tried there and then he called me a fat a** (I wasn’t fat. Just very pregnant) because I couldn’t be bothered to get off the ladder to help him. I was like dude. I sell shoes. I don’t know what you want from me. He storms out of the store and like 3 years later I’m still super confused about the whole situation.
19. Drinks
I’m a bartender and just last night a came in and I knew something would happen.. they are sitting at their TABLE and ask for some margaritas. I go make them and bring them out to the table. He proceeds to tell me “here’s a TAFFER tip; if someone orders a cocktail you should make it in front of them” I replied, well if you were sitting at THE BAR I could do that… Do you want me to bring the blender out to your table and make your frozen drink for you there!? WTH one of the dumbest things I’ver ever heard.
20. Probably not racist.
Had a woman call me racist because I asked her if she needed utensils for her take-out.
21. Sandwich order
A lady ordered a sandwich and then canceled 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. The 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.
22. No calls!
I worked for a cable company and I had people call in and complain because they got free unlimited calling to Mexico with our phone plans. “Well, I don’t want to call Mexico!” “Then may I suggest that you simply don’t do that? It’s not mandatory.”
23. No broccoli
I worked in a restaurant for years. People would always ask for broccoli as a side “I’m sorry, we don’t have broccoli here” Yes, you do! I get it every time I come. You’re just new “I’ve been here 6 years ma’am, and at no point have we had broccoli “ You don’t get it, I know Mr. (Name of Restaurant). My husband plays golf with him. “(Name of Restaurant) is a slang Italian word meaning ‘lively’. There is no Mr. (Name of Restaurant)”
24. Lifeguard
I was a lifeguard for 2-3 years in high school. Every day 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 f**king community pool. It was never young people, always the old ladies who would come in at 5 am to do water aerobics.
25. Racist
I’m not exactly in customer service, but I once had a customer call me and demand I sent a different electrician to his house because the one I sent “looked shady”, after a bit of back and forth I figured out the issue was actually that he was Cuban.
