Some people need to be put in their place. That goes double when it’s a rude customer who disrespects retail workers, waiters, and other customer service representatives. No one knows that better than these Redditors, who got revenge on awful customers—with incredibly satisfying results. Then again, sometimes they didn’t deserve it…
1. Something’s Fishy
This one is a little different. My first job was at McDonald's. I was working the drive-thru, where we were required to do suggestive selling. Like "Welcome to McDonald's, would you like to try a Big Mac this evening?" or if we didn't lead with a suggest, after they place their order say something like "would you like an apple pie with your meal" etc.
If they didn't order fries, suggest fries. If they didn't get a drink suggest a drink. One night someone ordered a Filet-o-Fish (which are nasty even for McDonald's food). But when he came to pay for it, he decided he didn't want it.
Now, we would never sell a Filet-o-Fish, so the next guy that came to the drive-thru got something like this:
Me: Welcome to McDonald's would you like to try a tasty Filet-o-Fish this evening?
Innocent Customer: No, I'll take a Quarter Pounder
Me: Ok. Would you like to add a Filet-o-Fish to that?
Annoyed Customer: No, but add a Medium Coke.
Me: Ok, so that's one Quarter Pounder, and one Medium Coke. Would you like to try a Filet-o-Fish with your order?
Upset Customer: I don't want a Filet-o-fish, just tell me my total.
Me: Ok, I have a Quarter Pounder, a Medium Coke, and a Filet-o-Fish. Your total is 6.25 please pull around.
Irate Customer: I don't want a freaking Filet-o-Fish and I'm not paying for it!
Me: I'm sorry about that. So I have just one Quarter Pounder, one Medium Coke, and no Filet-o-Fish. Please pull around to the second window.
Then I put the Filet-o-Fish in his bag anyway.
2. Special Order Up
I used to work in a family-run store with my sister. I'm her half-sister, and I'm a lot darker than her. This guy and his friends kept coming in and throwing prejudiced comments at me. It was a rural area and a place where we sold farm-made cider in the store from local farmers.
The guys were total trashy idiots ad always came in to buy this cider because it was the cheapest stuff we sold.
Now for those of you who don't know, farm-made cider is literally just thrown in any, random, pre-opened container—whatever bottles, whatever. My revenge was brutal. Myself and my sister peed in some bottles and switched them with the normal cider that they came in to buy.
I know they drank my pee and I'm glad.
3. Hot And Heavy
I have been working in kitchens for several years now and only once have I ever manipulated a customer’s food. I'm not proud of it, but the poor chap got what was coming to him. I used to work at a pretty well-known sports bar chain with a menu mostly consisting of a variety of wing sauces and other fryer-friendly items.
Being situated in an upper-middle class neighborhood, we would always get the little 15-year-olds with Ed Hardy shirts and mommy's money acting like little children in our fine establishment. Being a line cook, I never really had interactions with these little brats, but one day I’d just had enough.
It started with a group of four 15-year-olds strutting through the front door and immediately berating one of the waitresses I liked, Sarah. She promptly got their drinks but apparently it wasn't fast enough. They called her slow and stupid and asked how she ever got a job waitressing.
Sarah came back to the kitchen almost in tears. I comforted her and sent her out to take the table's food order. That's when the leader of the bunch made a very grave mistake. Just like a few other wing-centric restaurants, we had a "challenge". Eat 12 of our hottest wings in six minutes and you got a T-shirt and your photo on a hall of fame.
This jerk decided to show off to his friends and attempt this seemingly easy challenge. Sarah came back to the kitchen with a grin and gave us a simple order: "Make him suffer". We proceeded to throw every possible molten thing we could onto these wings.
The hot sauce, vinegar, jalapeno juice, jalapeno seeds, habanero seeds, and a few shots of Tabasco would assault his palate like a freight train. But that wasn’t all. Being somewhat of a showman, I found a doctor’s mask and put it on. With the mask on, I proceeded to take a sauce bottle, and in full view of Mr Macho, inject every flat wing with sauce until it blew up like a balloon.
Satisfied with my work, I sent out the wings. As told by Sarah, he made it through one wing. If he had chosen a drumstick, he mostly likely could have had the satisfaction of two wings. But egged on by his friends, he chose a hot sauce injected flat.
When the stopwatch started, he took the biggest bite he could. The wing exploded like a poultry Pompeii, leaving behind the shallow husk of a man. He quit after that one and was quiet the whole night as his "friends" called him out for being a wimp.
Sarah got a nice 25% tip off the table, and I got a small bit of satisfaction in a business that can seem so dark. Of course, no ill will to Wild Wings at all. I cooked there for three-ish years and have many fond memories of the place. It was a small stepping stone in this culinary career I've chosen.
4. You Get What You Give
An older lady at one of my tables had cold pasta. She wanted me to feel it. I said I believed her, but she took my wrist and rammed my hand into the food. I was angry. I never, ever spit in anyone's food at my restaurant. However....
The lady continued to be a jerk long after her food was fixed and the manager told her it was on the house, along with a free dessert. Check time came and the lady whips out a gift card to pay for everyone's food. She was with three of her friends, it was something like a $55 bill.
I take it, pretend like I'm off to cash her out, but I switch her $50 gift card with an identical card that was never activated. I tell her there isn't any money on her card. The manager has to double-check. He confirms the card was never activated. Now, she is angry.
To be fair, I did give her back the original card. I said she could ask the person who got it for her about it. Maybe they had a receipt. The point is, people treat me like garbage at work enough as it is, but touching me?
Demeaning me by taking my wrist and putting it into cold pasta? I wanted to make her look bad in front of her friends, and I think I succeeded.
5. Should Have Just Been Nice
I used to work in a Safeway Deli. Horrid job. Anyways, one day, a guy that looks like he is trying his best to be a Mexican tough guy, but failing horribly, comes in. I think nothing of it. This is Portland, I see stranger things every day.
A buddy of mine, Dario, is helping this guy. Now, Dario used to be majorly depressed. He is an immigrant from eastern Europe, and has had a hard life. As a result, he used to be in some dark places, so he has scars up and down his arms.
Well, it is hot in the deli, so his sleeves are rolled up and the scars are visible. This wannabe tough guy, completely unprovoked, starts ridiculing Dario about the scars, calling him insane, loco, etc. Now, Dario used to be a Thai boxer, and has a bit of a temper, so I tell him to go into the back, cook some food, and I'll handle this.
The dude is a complete jerk. Like 11/10 on my rage scale. So, he orders 1 1/2 lbs of Mac n' Cheese. I knew just what to do. I "trip" and spill it all over the floor. It was the last of the Mac n’ Cheese, and he was out of luck that day.
So now this guy is screaming at me, looking like he is going to jump over the counter at me. I call my manager. Manager comes over, tells the guy to leave. Guy won't leave. My manager calls the authorities, and the guy gets dragged out of the building. That’s when it got even better. Turns out, he had stuffed a bottle of $75 red wine in his jacket.
Busted. Also, he “attacked” an officer by thrashing around and pretty much head-butting her. It was nice to see him get slammed into the wall. A few weeks later, I got subpoenaed to be a witness against him in court, as my manager filed charges. The guy got put away for a while. True story.
6. Delayed Revenge
This is my father’s story. We owned a restaurant years ago in a mall next to a bar. Parking was assigned by business, but people would constantly park in our spots. One day, a man in a newer Corvette convertible parked right in front of our store and walked toward the bar.
Dad stopped him and asked him to move his car, as there were plenty of other spaces available. He laughed, and said "Try and tow me”. My dad shrugged, waited for about 20 minutes, and then poked his two front tires with sharpened wire, right in the sidewall. The tires didn't deflate right away because the hole was small. I'm sure they did over the next day or two though.
7. Oh, Baby
In 2004, I worked at a Blockbuster for the summer. I was working late one Friday night and the rush had essentially calmed down. A woman in her late 20s entered the store, and she was at least eight months pregnant.
She approached me, wondering if I could suggest a horror movie to her, as she was "in the mood to be scared”. I can’t believe what I did. Rosemary's Baby. God forgive me, I successfully recommended and rented Rosemary's Baby to a pregnant woman.
8. Taking Out The Trash
I was a janitor in a small suburban office building that had, among its tenants, a claims office for a fairly well-known insurance company. The manager of said company was a complete and utter jerk, and most of his employees were jerks as well.
They'd mistreat us janitors, and scream at us if the bathroom (shared by the rest of the building, I might add) had anything remotely wrong with it. One day, I went to take out the industrial-sized garbage can near their office, and it was obscenely heavy.
I opened it to find out why, and found the entire thing filled with boxes of files. The files were old paperwork for thousands of customers, and contained tons of personal information—I’m talking SSNs, addresses, bank information, the works.
On one of the papers I randomly looked at, I even saw information on what jewelry a woman kept in her home. This garbage can was headed for the dumpster in the back of the building, in a parking lot shared with two other businesses, very open and inviting for identity thieves.
So I contacted the main office of the company and informed them that I had just found thousands of confidential documents in my building's trash can, originating from the claims branch. I never saw that manager again—I’m not sure if he was fired or just transferred to Alaska, but whatever it was, he deserved it.
9. Oh, Lord Help Me
After a long day at cash, I asked a male customer if he had a membership with the store, and he responded: "No, it goes against my religion". I realize that the guy is an idiot looking for attention, so I ignore it, but he presses on with a smug, victorious look on his face.
He says, "You know, whenever I say that, people never ask me what my religion is". I had the perfect reply. Instead of biting and asking what his religion was, I just said: "Maybe it's because no one cares". He didn't say anything for the rest of the transaction.
10. Managing At Its Best
My very kindly-seeming fast-food boss was a really nice man who did charity work with immigrant children on the side, was endlessly cheerful, and so on. I'm working drive-thru one day. A customer orders his food in heavily accented English, and gets irate when I ask him (politely) to repeat his order.
I'm trying to stay calm and not respond in kind, and mostly succeeding. The manager can hear both sides of the conversation over the headset, so when the guy reaches the window and continues being a raging jerk, he comes over to do the usual manager thing.
That is, apologize, make sure the customer got what he ordered, and so forth. He even goes so far as to pre-place a straw in the man's drink. This isn't enough to placate the customer, who yells us both out in two languages as he peels out of the drive-thru.
I turn to start to complain to the boss. But I don’t know the best part. Before I can speak, he's patting me on the back saying, "Don't worry about it. I poked a hole in the bottom of his drink with the straw".
He then left it there, so that the drink wouldn't start flowing out until the straw gets pulled up to a normal height to drink from...
11. The Writing’s On The Wall
Back in the old-old days, I worked tech support for a company. Among many things, customers could dial into our computers and download activity reports for their account. This particular customer weekly would have a 100-page report when printed.
She had phone line problems frequently, and more so, just didn't want to bother dealing with pulling the reports, so she'd call and complain she couldn't get the report and expect us to fax it to her.
Once, we pulled the report for her, but came up with the perfect twist. We didn't separate the sheets when we sent it through the fax. These were the old faxes that printed off rolls of paper. It would cut the paper when it sensed a page break from the other end. Since we fed her a 100-page report with no page breaks, it just sent her one giant page.
When that didn't teach her a lesson about pulling her own reports, we faxed her the first few pages of a report, and then fed a loop of black paper into the fax machine. It faxed her about 50 pages of complete black.
After that, she never called us again to have us pull her reports for her.
12. Be Careful What You Wish For
I managed a computer repair shop. It was sort of like the Geek Squad, but cheaper and with some excellent techs. We had off-site laptop repair, so when a customer brought in a laptop that needed major internal hardware work, we'd pack it off to be fixed.
One day, a gentleman rolled in with his family and a broken laptop. He said it was just over a year old (out of our warranty) and that it was no longer working properly. He further claimed that it had not worked properly since we last worked on it (over a year ago...?) and that he was just now bringing it in.
Right. Well, to avoid conflict, I offered to waive the diagnostic fee and just ship it off so the laptop guys could have a look. The customer was happy enough with this, so we shipped. Fast forward a week, and the laptop returns. The motherboard is fried according to our repair center.
They had called the client, and per his instructions, put his Hard Drive in an external enclosure. The enclosure itself was the only charge: $0 for labor, $0 for diagnostics, $25 for the enclosure plus tax. They explained the pricing to him. Pretty darn cheap, considering that he's outside the warranty, right?
I call the customer to let him know it's ready. He hears the price tag (again). Then he flips the heck out. I was a bit stunned. I reminded him that although he was not in the warranty, we weren't charging him for the diagnostic OR the labor, such as it was, only for the enclosure.
This was an outrage, to hear him tell it.
We were obviously trying to take all he holds dear, and he would come to our store and take his machine. Uhh, ok guy. "After all, it hadn't worked since the last time you worked on it!"
I didn't ask why he then brought it back to us, but I decided to check that a bit. I told him I'd ask my boss, and instead, we hooked his HDD to the data transfer kit and had a look. Sure enough, there were some timestamped cookies right up until two days before he brought it to us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Without getting too detailed, let’s just say these were NOT kids’ sites he was visiting. A lot. I called the customer back. This time, both he and his wife were on the line. Both didn't let me get five words out before starting in with the screaming.
They threatened to sue me, have me fired, find out where I lived, and burn down the store. Comprehensive! I let them get it out, then interjected something along the lines of the following: "I'm really sorry that you're so upset! I have good news for you, though. The computer worked better than you think for that year”.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, someone was using it. For example, on [date,] the computer went to the following sites “…”. And I named a few.
Stunned silence.
"Don't worry, I have literally hundreds more entries to read to you. On [date] someone was apparently interested in..”. and then the screaming started. Not them at me....them at each other. Oh, glorious. It was a symphony of hate. Eventually, the wife hung up.
The husband, who sounded like a broken man, mumbled something like "Now my wife is going to leave me”. I told him that wasn't my business, but if he'd like the hard drive enclosure, it would be $25 plus tax. He never showed up to buy it. Imagine that!
13. Too Good At Revenge
I was the jerk customer once by complete accident. I was 22 and took my girlfriend and her parents to some classy restaurant for their anniversary. Anyway, the dinner was amazing and pretty expensive ($40 for a plate of lamb) but I had worked at the same company for four years making fairly good money, so I whipped out my bank card to pay the bill.
That’s when the waiter says "Someone made good money on their paper route" with a cheeky smile. Without missing a beat, I blurt out "Well, we can’t all be waiters". He immediately turns bright red and looks horribly offended and my girlfriend’s parents are staring at me in disbelief.
I tipped him big and tip every other waiter big to this day as penance for my big mouth.
14. Getting Away With It
I’m not proud of this one. This was back when I was delivering pizzas. We got a call right before we closed, and someone wanted a delivery well out of our delivery area. They said they would tip the driver well to make it worth his while.
Greedy guy that I am, I took the order, and delivered the pizza. Turns out, it was teenagers having a party while their parents were gone. They gave me a 65-cent tip and had a good laugh about it. So when I left, I did multiple donuts in the yard, tearing it up pretty good.
On the drive back, I realized how much of an idiot I was. I fully expected authorities to be called or at the least a complaint to the manager. Never heard anything about it.
15. The Biggest Loser
I was working at a coffee shop within the skyway downtown. It was two minutes after closing everything down. So the register drawers are all pulled, and there is physically no way that I could help a customer. Even if I wanted to work something out, it is still against the store's policy.
I'm cleaning up, getting everything else shut down, and some guy in a suit from the Marriott next over comes up, accosts me for being closed, and says that he NEEDS something to eat and coffee. Blah blah blah, you're just a loser working at a coffee shop, I work for a hedge fund, blah blah blah. you have to give me something because I want it and you're still in the store.
DIRECT QUOTE: "That's how customer service works, you idiot". I explain to him that it's not possible and that I would be penalized or could lose my job. He huffs and puffs and walks away a bit, shouting about how he deserves respect and this city sucks.
I turn my back to continue dumping the coffee and get the keys to pack up the bakery. I’m still reeling over what happened next. My back is turned for probably 30 seconds, and when I return, the guy has his hand down into the bakery case and has grabbed a bunch of muffins, biscotti, and even managed to pilfer a bottle of Coke.
He leaves no money, he just leaves the case open as I yell at him and gives me the middle finger as he strides off, going on about how I need to change my attitude. Initially, I'm really angry. I call security to get on the guy, tell them what happened.
While I'm on the walkie with the security desk, I notice something crucial. I see the guy left his set of room keys for the Marriott and a set of car keys with the rental tag/company fob attached as well. The guy's from out of town with a rental car.
So while I'm talking to security, I palm his things in a towel as I "wipe down the counter" for anyone that might have seen me. As I leave, I see some security guards and the jerk yelling and arguing about things. The man is unable to get back into the Marriott from the skyway.
I punch out and start walking home. As I round the corner and begin walking over the nearby bridge, I throw his rental keys and hotel cards into the water below. Screw that guy.
16. Oops Is Right
I had a summer job pushing carts for a hardware store, and we had to push carts in through entrance of the store. It was a routine trip, pushing in about eight carts, when one of my supervisors got my attention.
I became distracted, only to look up to see an 85-year-old woman getting smashed into one of the sliding glass doors by one of my carts that had slipped off the end of the line. Needless to say, she was rushed to the ER and it cost the company $45,000.
The last thing she said to me as she laid there in pain was "Why would you do that to me"... Oops.
17. Say Hello To My Bigger Friend
I once had a terrible job cleaning the toilets in a nightclub. One night a drunk idiot brings some girl into one of the stalls. I knock on the door and he tells me to screw off. I was young and non-intimidating, and he'd seen me on the way in. But I knew just what to do.
I tell the gigantic bouncer nearby, who I was friendly with, that some cheeky man was up to something in the stall. When the bouncer pounded on the door he got told to screw off as well, which, sadly, was a big mistake.
The guy got hauled out by the scruff of his neck and dragged out the back door. I know, I know. I'm a real tough guy.
18. A Screw Loose
About a year or so ago, a guy came in very angry that we didn't put all the screws back in his laptop after we worked on it. He also had other problems with this unit. I tried to look him and his laptop up in our customer database and couldn't find him.
I didn't remember him either, so I think either he was pulling some kind of scam or just didn't remember who worked on his laptop last. I didn't tell anyone about the missing screws because it's really not an important detail. I have a bucket of laptop screws and added the three missing screws in just a couple of minutes.
He comes back to pick up the unit. After approving a price to have the other problem repaired, he throws a tantrum and demands a discount because of the missing screws. My boss turns the laptop over and asks him to show him the missing screws.
Unable to point out the missing screws, he blames me and says I replaced them. My boss doesn't understand what problem is. The guy is getting more and more upset. I just keep saying I can't remember if there were any missing or not.
The guy gets so upset he pays and slams the screen of the laptop down before he walks out. Two days later, a woman brings in the same laptop with a broken screen and asks us to repair it.
19. Seeing Black
I used to work at a Kosher pizza shop when this huge Karen comes in. Long story short, after she was done complaining, she ordered a pizza with green olives and swore to high heaven she would tear the place apart if she found any black olives.
My buddy who was spinning pizza that day mumbles to himself and starts making the pizza. I was halfway into making a sandwich when I noticed him doing something. His plan was ingenious. He was hiding a black olive under each green olive with such care that not even CSI could zoom in on that.
I confronted him and told him "We need to respect the customers". We subsequently broke out into laughter and tossed the pizza in the oven. She never noticed.
20. A Taste Of His Own Medicine
I worked as a busboy when I was 16. I noticed some dude making a mess on his table by dumping out coffee creamer and pepper and spreading it around. He was with two girls and doing it while laughing at me.
I brought him a few napkins and told him that he had better clean it up. However, he just crumpled up the napkins and threw them on the table, telling me to do my job. So I picked them back up and wiped his mess off of the side of the table…onto his lap.
He apologized after that and cleaned up the rest of the mess. Nobody complained to the manager.
21. Snack Attack
I once threw a bunch of 13-year-old girls out of the coffee shop I was working at. When they came in, they politely asked me if it was okay for them to eat some snacks they bought somewhere else.
I guess I must have been in a good mood that day because I told them "Okay, but only if you keep it somewhat out of sight" even though it was against our policy.
Not even 15 minutes later, these girls were throwing their snacks around and being incredibly loud. I went down to ask them to lower their voices, which they said they would but of course didn't.
So I went to their table again and told them to leave and not come back until they learned to behave.
22. What’s Mine Is Yours
My family used to own a couple of rental properties before we developed the land. It wasn't the greatest part of town at the time and some of our tenants were less than stellar members of society.
As such, there were several occasions where they simply weren’t paying rent. Now, the way that rental agreements work in Canada, all you can really do is serve an eviction notice and if they choose not to leave, there isn't much you can do immediately.
It can be a very long and drawn-out process, and the landlord has no real authority to physically remove them from the property. Well, our loophole was to start dismantling the home. In a bad part of town, we'd make sure the tenants were out and remove all the doors, which is technically still legal since we never actually entered the home.
They usually leave pretty quick after that happens.
23. An Extra Special Order
I worked at Roy Roger's. It was a summer job and I hated being a cashier, but since I spoke English (at least better than the rest of the staff) they put me up front. So one day two girls I knew came in trying to buy some fried chicken meals.
However, together they only had enough for one meal. I knew one of them well and her parents have always managed to fall on hard times, even both working two jobs each. I knew she did not have money and was probably hungry.
So, I charged them for one meal, but gave them two and threw in some fries. Before they could correct me, I signaled that they should just move along and they did. All was well…except the old lady behind them (who was a known troublemaker) now tells me that unless I give her something extra she will tell the manager.
I really don't think she had a case but didn't want trouble, so I took a small bucket, went in the back, took the chicken out of the garbage can that fell on the floor that day, and gave it to her as an extra she demanded.
24. You Catch More Flies With Honey
My company repaired a very specific $42,000 piece of equipment used in a certain auto dealership service bay. It was used heavily, and many repairs could not be attempted without it.
One day, one of my tele-support girls got a call from a Service Manager and had to endure his rants and horrible language, to the point where she was almost in tears. She got really mad and came to me with the details of the call.
I called the guy back and told him we would no longer do business with his dealership, until the Dealer Principal (the Actual OWNER) called us back to apologize to her for his boorish behavior. Turns out that the jerk that called in for help was not actually the Service Manager, but a Master Tech that was sitting in for his boss, while his boss (the real Service Manager) was on vacation.
The real Service Manager called us and begged us not to make him go to his dealer owner to make the call. We said "nope". The owner called us back, and tried to bully us into feeling bad for getting him involved, threatening to call "corporate" if we didn't fix his tool.
I told him that he no longer had to worry because we were removing his dealership from our customer list, and I'd save him the trouble of calling corporate by calling my contact (a big-wig name drop) to let him know the specific reason why. NO SOUP FOR YOU!
Did I mention that we were the ONLY company with parts and expertise to fix this tool? He was forced to turn away certain types of repairs, which surely hurt his business...
25. Getting Dirty
Long ago when I worked for a home improvement store, old people with brand new Cadillacs would always want something inherently messy loaded into their cars. You'd try to be polite and tell them that bags of cow manure, sod grass, top soil, or mulch may leak and ruin their interiors.
Sometimes they would agree and call a friend with a vehicle better suited for the job. But every once in a while, you'd get some crotchety old guy who insisted that "you load it, and make SURE it doesn't damage my leather seats!!" They got what they deserved. I'd make sure the bag ripped open on the trunk latch or press my hand through the bottom so that a modest amount would fall out all over their precious interior.
Even worse were the truck freaks who bought the biggest, baddest, most powerful truck known to man, then wussied out whenever it came to doing anything "dirty" with it.
26. The Magic Olive And Friends
I worked at the Olive Garden, and other servers would give jerks the "Magic Olive". The put it bluntly, it was an olive that was placed in someone's butt and walked around for a few minutes in that sweaty dank dungeon of disgust. But that was just the beginning.
It was then placed on top of Olive Garden's famous large bowl'o'salad and taken to the table. Once there, the staff would personally serve the offending patron a portion of the salad with the Magic Olive. I witnessed this several times, and it never failed that the person would end up getting physically sick.
It happened to a regular once, and he was back in the restaurant a week later talking about how he had gotten sick, but that the food here was too good to pass up. But inspired by this, I also got my own kind of special revenge. This customer pulled all the normal stuff, saying one thing and then getting mad when I brought what he asked and claiming he asked for something different.
He dumped out a drink on to the ground claiming that there was too much ice and threw some bread sticks at me claiming they were cold. I went back, made him a new drink, got a new basket of bread, and brought out the salad.
I placed everything on the table and told him that I was sorry for messing up, but that I had taken extra time to make these especially for him to make it up to him. I then personally plated up some salad for him and told him that I put some extra toppings on it while no one was looking and that I hope he enjoyed it.
I then asked him to go ahead and taste everything while I was here to make sure that it was as he liked. He hadn't caught the tone or inflection in my voice by this time, so when he took a bite of salad, I let a big grin slowly spread out over my face, and asked if it tasted as good as it looked.
He just stopped chewing. He didn’t say anything. He just stood up and walked out of the restaurant and spit out the salad on the sidewalk never to be seen again.
This once again proves the old adage, "Never mess with the people who handle your food”.
27. Dine And Dash
My buddy would spend $40-$60 at restaurants and never tip. Ever. I'm not a waiter but I'm a dishwasher at a locally popular restaurant, and all the servers there are the nicest people you'll ever meet, so I understand why someone would be upset for no tip.
So I'm at Ruby Tuesday's with my buddy, let's call him Bart, and some girls. Bart spent about $35 and I spent $12 (I'm pretty broke). We decide to take one check.
The whole time we were there, he was criticizing the waitress for being too ugly for her job, he made more money than her, etc. Bart puts down exactly $35 and tells me to cover the tip. I ask him why we don't just split the tip. He informs me that I "don't understand how things work”.
To this day I don't understand that comment. He also knows I'm a generous tipper, I'll tip at least 30%. Anyway, I decide just how to screw him over. I tell him that I'll cover the whole bill. The girls had left earlier and they already paid so the bill was only like $48 or something.
He's surprised but says, "I'm shocked. You're only a dishwasher and you make way less than me but whatever, I was going to ask you to pay for me anyway. I don't want to spend any money tonight”.
So he goes to the bathroom. I call the waitress over and tell her that Bart was paying for the both of us. She decides to wait for him to come back. I then left the restaurant and drove home, as I drove both of us there. I found out later that he came back, discovered I was gone, tried to leave, and almost got the authorities called on him until he paid up.
He ended up having not enough money and tried to explain that this was my fault. He walked 17 miles to his car because he didn't have money for a taxi. He doesn't talk to me anymore. Also, I saw that waitress at a gas station a week later. We both had a nice laugh.
28. Some People Don’t Care About Fame
My buddy managed a movie theater in Edmonton. Hilary Duff and her bodyguard came in one day and blocked off the bar section for her own private use, without permission.
He goes up to talk to them, and the bodyguard says, "You can't come in here, this space is reserved for Hilary Duff". He responds with "Screw you, I'm the manager. I'll go where I want" and kicks them out.
29. Happy Birthday To Me
I worked in a nightclub for a few months when I was at university. I was working in the indie room one night when a very tipsy birthday girl comes up to the bar. It’s against the local rules to serve people who have drank that much, so I keep an eye on her while I serve other customers.
Turns out she wasn’t as bad as I thought. I thought maybe her heels were causing her some trouble (this happens a lot in clubs). So I serve her. She goes away and comes back about ten minutes later.
She slips on the bar and falls on the floor, so I tell her I'm not serving her and if she tries to get more drinks she'll be thrown out. So she goes and sits down and her friends come up to the bar. I tell them that by law I can't let this girl have any more. I make them promise not to pass her anything. They order sambucas and take them away. At this point the bar is pretty quiet and the girls just blatantly pass the drink to their friend, who is half asleep on the seats.
I got so angry I just hopped the bar and started screaming at these girls. They obviously think I'm a stupid jerk at this point, so I get them all kicked out.
30. Too Hot To Handle
Until last month, I worked at a small pizza shop in Houston. I was a cook, but there was no wall separating the kitchen from the front of the restaurant, so I was able to see and hear all of the customers. We had overpriced food that catered to yuppies, and most of our customers were jerk.
One guy, however, was right off the jerk scale. Like, he wanted to use his Discover card to pay for his order, and when the extremely polite and shy 17-year-old cashier girl informed him we don't take Discover, he started yelling, saying things like she was stupid and incompetent, she was lying, etc.
He started yelling about how he owned a restaurant and it was an outrage we didn't take Discover, like that would somehow change the situation. The cashier was almost in tears by the time the guy cooled down. I knew I had to do something.
One of the items on his order was our "hot wings," which we used Frank's hot sauce on. On his, I decided to substitute it with a quarter bottle of 1.5 million Scoville "Da Bomb Ground Zero" hot sauce we had for our own use. Fifteen dollars a bottle and three drops will make a large bowl of chili almost inedible.
The spiciness filled the air and burned our sinuses as the wings slowly worked their way through the conveyor oven. He sat down at a table in the front and took a huge bite of a wing, got a blank expression on his face for a couple seconds, then spit it out and let out a loud "Aaagh!" as he shook his hands back and forth blowing air into his mouth.
In doing so, he managed to splatter some of the sauce in his eye, and within 10 seconds, he was on his knees on the floor yelling for tissues and crying. After that, the guy was almost polite, and my manager found the whole thing hilarious.
31. Probably Still Sleeping…
I work at a coffee shop. We offer a blanket discount on refills, slightly less expensive than the small if the container meets certain size requirements. I once had a guy come in with a very large thermos, probably about a half-gallon and insist on the refill price. After arguing for several minutes about the size limit I get him to agree on a price and ring him through . He then insists that not only does his thermos need the typical hot water rinse before we fill it, but it should be rinsed with coffee so that the water wouldn't dilute the coffee. The thermos takes more than one pot of coffee to fill up and the guy is very rude about the wait, and seems not to care about the long line of people forming behind him. The next day he got a pot of old decaf. Haven't seen him since.
32. You Don’t Get To Choose Your Nickname
I was bartending. We had a semi-regular who was always obnoxious, insulting to staff and other customers, and all that jazz. However, she was also a relative of an executive at the resort I was at, so we couldn't do much except cut her off and then worry about our job.
Finally, one Saturday night, we had enough. She ordered a California cooler about the same time that we just used the last olive out of a jar. I told her, "I'll bring it to your table”—but I had a far more sinister plan. She went to the table, and out went 4/5 of the cooler into the sink.
Into the cooler bottle went all the olive juice from the empty olive jar. I served it to her. The best part? She drank the whole thing and never noticed. We gave her the nickname “Olive” and when she would come back into the bar, we would greet her, "What's up, Olive?”
She liked the nickname, but never knew how she got it.
33. Overreaction Much?
I worked at a small movie theater a few years ago. A man came in with four kids and his wife. They were coming to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I sold him his ticket and said, as I do to everyone, “Here's your ticket. This also considered your receipt”.
The tickets we had were the ones you get at carnivals. It pops out of the machine, I rip it in half, so I have half and the customer has half. To issue a refund, I need both halves. Well, Captain Redneck threw all the tickets away.
He went into the movie and he came out about five minutes later with everyone and said, "the theater is old. I want my money back”. After talking with my manager, we agreed that in this case we would refund him.
So I ask for the tickets, which is policy. I knew the guy bought a ticket, but I still asked for the stub. He FLIPPED out. Started slamming his fists on the counter. Then he goes to the garbage can where he threw the tickets away, and kicked it, so the garbage went all over the floor.
I called the authorities, and they came and detained him in front of his family. The best part is he kept resisting, so the cops had to kneel on him...and it wasn’t a very civil arrest.
The family didn’t get their money back. What's funny is if he would have just been reasonable about it, I would have just written the numbers from the stubs on a scrap piece of paper, and everything would have gone fine.
34. A Lesson They Won’t Forget
I was working in a convenience store as a clerk and I see two 13-year-olds entering the store. They look around, and finally leave while I'm serving a customer. My co-worker came to me just a bit after and said that those two just stole a watch on the counter while I wasn't looking.
I ask her to take the cash, and I go out and see them both going in a side alley. I follow them and catch them before they leave. I ask them to go back inside of the store and they follow me, somewhat intimidated.
So we're inside the store and I try to make them admit they took the watch. “There are cameras you know, I saw you after you left”. The usual bluff—we didn’t have cameras. After maybe give minutes of “I swear we didn't do it!” and “Why would we do that?” they admit they took the watch.
At this point, I'm telling them I won't give them trouble if they just hand the watch over to me. They tell me that they threw the watch away on the roof of the movie rental place next to the convenience store before I caught them. This is when I decided to teach them a lesson.
I go on and say that since they couldn't give me the watch, they would have to pay for it (mind you, it was a $10 watch). As they are beginning to leave to get the money, I ask one of them to stay with me to make sure the other one will come back.
After 5-10 minutes, the kid comes back with $4, clearly not enough for the watch. After a lot more back and forth, they get so desperate they actually (without my knowledge) go back to the roof of the movie rental place.
They had to climb up a shaky pipe, on a A/C unit, and go back down after that. They were literally shaking from the experience when they came back to me. I then asked them: “Will you steal again?” “'N-n-n-o-o-o sir!”
A few weeks later, I decided to go see some friends in high school. I was heading toward the 11th grade when I passed by the two kids. I saw their surprise as they saw me and their hands twitching at the memory of that time they stole something...
35. Your Daily Bread
When I was a teenager, I worked at a local grocery store. There was this one woman that always came through my line (I was "promoted" from bag boy to cashier). She was always a witch, always negative, and always mean to me.
It seemed like she purposefully chose my line each time to be mean to me. One day, I was having a very bad day. I have chronic migraines and my morning had started with a horrible migraine headache that had luckily cleared up before I came to work.
However, I still had some of the symptoms and warned my boss that I might not be myself much that day and did he still want me to work; he did. This happened to be the day that she came through my line again. She was complaining, as per usual, and I was trying to ignore her.
When I scanned her bread, I must have grabbed it wrong in her eyes because she screamed, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP CRUSHING MY BREAD”! I’d had it and didn't care if I lost this customer; I was tired of her. I don’t regret what I did at all. I held the bag up by the opening (where the twisty tie is) and said, "This bread is crushed?" before repeatedly bashing the bread all over the conveyor belt the storage area behind me, tearing the bag open and sending bread all over the place.
"Now your bread is crushed" and then I walked away. I was written up and suspended for a few days, but it was worth it because I never saw that woman ever again.
36. How Do You Say “ You’re Screwed” In French?
I used to work for HP, setting up chargeable repairs for business printers. For whatever reason, our office serviced the UK market, but was actually in Paris. We'd constantly get people who couldn't be bothered actually listening to the options and choosing the right department, and sometimes they would start screaming at us for not randomly happening to be the right person to deal with their issue.
Make us angry enough, and we'd transfer the call to a randomly chosen business in Paris. We'd conference the call, and listen to them get bizarrely confused, unable to vent their anger since their victim usually didn't even speak English.
37. An Ear For An Ear
I worked at a night club as a bartender. It had only been open about two weeks and we had those solid glass ash trays on the bar for some reason. This guy got really in his cups one night and I cut him off.
He picks up one of those ash trays and throws it at me. I dodge it, but the bartender working behind me was not so lucky. The ashtray hit him in the ear, nearly cutting off half of it. When I turned back around to the dude, I instantly hit him with the two bottles I had in my hands.
One was a Jack bottle and it busted over his head. By the time his head hit the floor, the bouncers were already dragging him out the door. This was probably the meanest thing I have ever done, but he really deserved it.
38. The Till Has Turned
This is the worst thing a co-worker did to a customer. I was working at a sport-mart as a key-holder. This is funny for me because...well I'm a com-sci major, and not really into "sports", but I'm a good salesman. The whole job was a joke.
I had an elderly couple come in...and I'm not one to judge for the way someone looks. The wife had a thin/short T-shirt that showed off her belly, no bra, massive head with moles, no make-up, long spindly unkempt hair, and yellow buck-teeth.
Point being, she was probably the ugliest, funniest-looking person I have met. Again, I am not a superficial person at all, they seemed to be good people…especially after what this horrible cashier did to them.
They picked out some Nikes that where on sale and went to the counter. One of the guys went to ring them through. HE got through all of their stuff and looked up to tell them the total, and as he looked her in the face, he burst out laughing. But he wasn’t done. He ran to the back of the store, laughing all the way.
The only problem is that the back of the store was about 100 feet away...that was the most awkward eight seconds of watching him run to the back of the store. It took me a second to get over the shock of "I can't believe I'm watching a cashier run away from a customer" and I ran up to the till, apologized profusely, and finished the transaction.
They seemed to be understanding.
39. Pre-Teen Power Trip
I worked as an usher at a movie theater. It was common for a person to buy a ticket and let their friends in an out-of-the-way exit door for free. This was back in 1977, before cameras and alarms.
So I would note where the group was sitting. Being an usher, you would see the same movie over and over, so right when the good part was coming up I would bust the whole group and kick them out.
I was young and had an incredible sense of power shining my flashlight in their eyes and escorting them out. Over time, the same group of guys got the idea of giving me a drink before the movie to look the other way.
40. The Queen’s English
When I did tech support for a major computer company, we were encouraged to keep our calls as short as possible, and we were ranked by call length, among other metrics.
A lot of the support was already outsourced to India, so frequently the first thing a customer would say after hearing my voice was "Oh, good, you're an American!" That's how I learned that about half of our customers would hang up immediately if they heard an Indian accent and keep trying back until they got an American.
So I came up with a clever trick to make my job easier and push my call length stats down: Answer the phone in a heavy fake Indian accent. Many, many people would hang up immediately. I would let the accent fade if they did stay on the line; nobody seemed to notice. I'm a bad person.
41. Show Me The Money
I work at a bar/restaurant and have pretty strict morals against doing anything bad, even towards the worst customers. However, last night I got pushed way too far. Someone left their debit card in the check presenter after leaving me $4 on $103. So today, when she returned to pick up her card, I made sure she had to ask me personally for it.
I also had her duplicate receipt wrapped around it with the tip and total facing out. I thanked her with a big smile, and could tell she was uncomfortable...Still, I don't think there is anything wrong with what I did, really.
If you have the audacity to tip so poorly for adequate service, and the stupidity to leave your card, you definitely deserve to feel uncomfortable.
42. A McSlam Dunk
I worked at the Comcast retail center. One guy in particular came in hot and was adamant that we doubled his bill. I look into his billing history and lo-and-behold, he hasn't paid in two months.
I point this out to him and say, "Let’s be real, you haven't paid in two months". We're both white, and I guess my use of the phrase "be real" triggered something in him because now he's complaining that I have bad customer service and I should go work for McDonald's instead. Without even thinking, I had the most perfect comeback.
I immediately respond, "But then where would you work?" I know Comcast is evil and all, but taking money from that jerk made my entire week.
43. He Knows When He’s Been Beat
I once saw an extremely rude guy picking on waitresses and just being a total jerk. There was, however, one male waiter, whom he promptly summoned.
Guy: Another drink.
Waiter: Sorry, no more left...
Guy: Excuse me? Bring me the drink!
Waiter: No more left for YOU.
He then walked off, leaving the guy to himself. The rude dude then left the place quietly, to my great surprise.
44. A Family Affair
I’m a server. A host set me up with a table with a couple and their toddler. The two sat on the same side of the booth, kissed, etc, so I knew they were a couple, but the woman looked much older. Like, she looked terrible.
She's super rude to me the entire time. She asked for her eggs over easy hard. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Ma'am, your eggs can be over easy, which is kind of runny, or over hard, where they're fully cooked.
Her: Oh, bless your heart, you have no idea do you?
Me: Ma'am?
Her: Why don't you get me a real server, and he can make my eggs the way I like them.
Me: Uhh, ma'am I know how eggs are cooked. Over easy hard doesn't tell me anything. Do you want them over medium?
Her: How hard is your job? Honestly, how hard is it to just serve people eggs?
I'd had it. I gave her order to the cook, and of course he asked me what she meant. I told him to just make them over medium, as I felt like that was what she meant. I gave her the eggs and she sighed real heavy.
Her: I'm sorry, was my order too hard? Did ya not understand me? What the heck kind of place is this that nobody can make me eggs?
Oh boy, did I get her. I took a deep breath, and said this:
"Ma'am...I apologize to you, your son, and your grandson. Let me go ahead and comp your meal”.
Her face twisted up and got so red I thought it was going to pop off of her face.
"THIS IS MY HUSBAND AND THAT'S MY SON!!"
Ohh boy, it was so worth it.
"WHERE IS YOUR MANAGER!! I NEED YOUR MANAGER RIGHT NOW!!”
I got my manager. He yelled at me in the office, but couldn't prove that I was purposefully disingenuous. So I didn't even get written up. It was awesome.
45. The Most Satisfying Monkey’s Paw
I was working as a waiter in a resort. The guest is a Type A Jerk. You know the type. Obviously has to be the "group leader" of a table full of 4-5 other dudes. During my spiel, I tell the table we are out of a certain thing. I start taking the table's order and get to him...
Jerk: "I'll have the THING”.
Me: " As I said, sir, we're out of THING”.
Jerk: "Maybe I'll just call my GOOD FRIEND the GENERAL MANAGER and they'll find some for me”.
Me: "You're more than welcome to do so but the number on the business card you picked up at the front is an office number, not their personal phone. Also, they're the one who just told me we're out of THING. Maybe if you called them in advance to let your GOOD FRIEND know you were coming, we could have held some back especially for you”.
Now, this may not seem all that destructive, but to this guy, at this table full of his colleagues, it was BRUTAL. He TRIED to save face but it failed so hard.
Jerk: "Well if you can't keep your food in stock then we probably should have gone somewhere else to eat”.
The gauntlet has been thrown down.
Me: "That's an excellent idea, sir. Would you like me to check if there is a table free at our steakhouse?"
Jerk: "Yes, maybe then I can get some food”.
He starts talking to the other guys in the group like somehow we're in the wrong here. They're ALL just looking at him like he's a total idiot, because he is. But I was just warming up. I go to the phone, call the steakhouse, and ask if they have space for ONE. They do. Good. Back to the table.
Me: "You'll be happy to know, sir, that our steakhouse is able to accommodate you and will have a table waiting when you arrive”.
Jerk: (in the jerkiest voice he can muster, which is nowhere NEAR as jerky as I could be) "THANK YOU for SOME KIND of service”. He turns to the rest of the table. "Let's go, guys”.
Me: "I'm sorry, sir, I was under the impression you would be dining alone and didn't ask if they could take a party this size. I assumed they'd be dining with us, seeing as they all ordered items we have available”.
The guy just looks dumbfounded, and while he's standing there trying to process this, one of the Dudes at the Table chimes in...
DT: "Don't worry about it, head on down there. We'll meet up at the bar for drinks later”.
The jerk grabs his drink, says nothing, and walks out. He hits the door and the rest of the table goes into that quiet "What an idiot” laugh that only men of a certain age and income bracket are able to do properly.
The kind that lets you know this is funny now, but come Monday that guy’s world is going to be slightly different in many, many small ways. The evening continues. Sometime after I take that table their dessert my general manager pulls me aside.
Manager: "What the heck happened? I spent the last half hour getting yelled at by some guy that says you were super rude to him”.
I give him a quick rundown. We did not have what the gentleman wanted so I made him a reservation at the steakhouse. End of story. I have NO IDEA why he would possibly be upset. His co-workers over at the table are having a great time.
The manager goes over to their table and starts talking to them, presumably starting with how their meal was and ending with "What happened with the other guy that I saw with you?" It got even better. It was beautiful; they had my back the whole way. They threw him so far under the bus for acting like a jerk that he rolled out the other side and got hit by a semi in the next lane over.
They were nothing but complimentary to me, which was a nice bonus. The manager came back over and told me everything seemed fine with them, shrugged it off, and went back to doing whatever he does.
In closing, just take this bit of information and carry it with you always: NOTHING infuriates awful humans more than someone doing EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT DONE...monkey paw style.
46. Freedom Fries
I was working the counter at a ski resort's cafe. This teenage jerk came up with French fries and said that he didn't bring any money, so could he just have them for free? I said nope, he said: "But I'm a good customer”.
I said okay but fries are for paying customers, and proceeded to take them away from him and pop one in my mouth right in front of him. He had nothing to say to that, but his friend cracked up and apologized for him.
When I turned around, all of my co-workers were in awe of how perfect the moment was.
Flickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer
47. The Puppet Master
We had a realtor that came into our local computer store a lot that we had dubbed “’Roid rage”. He is all cool one minute and the next minute he is screaming and throwing around insults, using his size to intimidate people.
On more than one occasion he had made our female sales staff cry. My boss had finally told him not to come back, but I was not there for it and missed out on his final rant. About two years later, I was buying groceries in a Safeway and I hear some guy yelling at the checker over an expired coupon for Muscle Milk.
I walk up to see what’s going on, and lo and behold, it’s ‘roid rage guy. No longer in danger of getting fired, I tell him he doesn't have the right to yell at her and he can stuff the coupon where the sun don't shine.
He asks me if I want to take it outside and get my butt kicked and I calmly tell him, "How about I call your wife and share all those emails you sent to casual encounters on craigslist?” He freezes in his tracks and suddenly realizes who I am.
He just walks off without saying anything and pushes over a stand of chips on his way out. The cute checker thanks me and we ended up dating for three months.
48. Switching Sides
I work at a family law firm, and we had a potential client call to inquire about our services. She wouldn't speak to my enrollment specialist because "he sounded like a gay" and asked to speak with his supervisor, me.
He told me what she said to him, so I got on the phone and started asking her questions regarding her case. She described herself as a "good Christian" who wanted to take away her ex-husband’s paternal rights because he is moving in with his "god-hating sinner of a boyfriend”.
She would not allow her child to be subjected to such "blasphemy”. I told her that I'd need his information for the documentation, politely finished the conversation, threw away her information, and called the ex-husband and offered free representation.
49. Clean Up In Aisle Five
I previously worked at a pet store for a few years. One pet peeve (ha) I always had was that customers who brought their dogs in would almost always leave any of their dog's poop and not bother to pick it up.
However, worse than that were the customers who saw their dogs take a dump and then run to get me and ask me to clean it up. Once a customer was walking (dragging) his dog over by our fish wall. The dog at one point starts taking a dump and the customer sees this and continues to drag his dog down the entire side of the fish wall.
I approached him and said "You need to clean that up sir. I have some paper towels and cleanup spray in my podium that you can use". The customer looks at me, then down at his dog, and "My dog didn't do that, I was watching him the whole time".
The guy had the audacity to walk away. So now I am super angry at this point and my co-worker and I clean up the line of poop by the fish wall and then stuff it into a plastic bag. My next move was brilliant. We handed the bag over to our cashier and told him to make sure to put it in the customer’s bag when the time came.
I watched as he did so later, and I'll admit that gave me some sick sense of satisfaction.
50. A Hot Tip
I was delivering pizza in college. Two guys came in for a pizza and were being loud, obnoxious, and general all-around jerks. They were also spitting on the floor that I was going to have to clean at closing time.
When I went out for a delivery, I called the authorities and gave them the description of their car and the license plate number. It turned out so, so sweet. When I came back from the delivery, they were pulled over and being led through the standard sobriety tests on the side of the road. I have no doubt they failed.
Sources: Reddit,
