"The customer is always right." We've all heard that little nugget of wisdom.
But is it true? Anyone who's spent some time working in the service industry knows that customers can be finicky, snippy, and sometimes even just grade-A jerks.
Sometimes a bad customer lets their kids run around unsupervised wrecking things... and then blames a staff worker for not being a babysitter. Or adults themselves leave a huge mess for the staff to clean up.
More often than not customers are rude and have a tendency to yell when things don’t exactly go their way. It’s like these people don’t seem to have any understanding of that very simple golden rule we all (should’ve) learned as children, “treat others as you would like to be treated.” Some terrible customer service stories stand out in worker’s minds more than others, and over on Reddit, the users decided to share their worst customer service stories with us.
Here are the 31 worst customer service horror stories.
31. Watch Your Own Kids
Basically, I was working the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college at a science museum in South Florida. That day I was an operator for the Mars Rover ride. It's morning and we have a few families and couple of summer camps running around ages 7-12, and so I was pretty busy stopping the ride to tell the kids to sit down and stop hitting each other—the ride had a monitor so I could see inside.
It starts to quiet down as one of the camps goes to lunch so there are not so many people, but since I'm running the only ride in the museum and kids are still flocking to me constantly.
So I'm running the ride and this family of six (mom, dad, aunt or something, teenager, older kid and little kid) come up and wait in line. The little kid is going crazy running around.
NONE of the adults do anything to stop him, and I don't cause I'm busy watching the monitor since the little monsters on board have already gotten up and switched seats mid-ride twice. I was on the in ride intercom telling them to sit down when I hear a howl-scream from the line area.
The little kid had run into the metal chain (at neck level) that we kept separating the loading area and the line area, and had fallen backward. The mom marches up to me and starts screaming about how I wasn't paying attention and I let her kid get hurt. I stand there like a dummy ‘cause I can't believe she’s actually mad at me. She makes me get my supervisor to get me fired.
I'm right there and she’s telling the supervisor what an incompetent worker I am and that I have no business working around children. My supervisor, who is awesome, says very calmly, "Miss, this is a museum, not a babysitting service. You need to keep watch of your children, not the ride operator."
The lady and her family of goons storms out. She called the city for poor safety but the city only told us we had to change the chain separator to plastic or rubber. The maintenance guy did it the next day. He looked at me and said, "you know things are going downhill when you have to idiot proof a museum."
Did I mention it was my third day on the job?
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30. Top Pocket
I worked in the gaming department of an amusement park. I was working a game near our water park and a very large woman paid me with money she fished out of the top of her bathing suit.
29. Gobble Gobble
Having owned a grocery store for many years I've had some great and some really insane customers. The one that sticks out the most was a lady around Christmas time. She bought a frozen turkey from me and left happy as could be!
A few days later she comes storming back into my store, she proceeded to throw this bag of turkey at me and starts tearing me apart for the subpar turkey. "This turkey was so terrible I couldn't cut it, and when I did it tasted awful," this went on for a while, "I had my whole family there for dinner and this turkey ruined the entire meal" blah blah blah...
As I took the turkey out of the bag to check, I noticed that she had managed to cook the thing in the plastic wrap that all frozen turkeys come in. Even after pointing this out to her, I was still the bad guy. I couldn't win... after that we referred to her as the turkey Nazi!
28. Round and Round It Goes
I worked at an amusement park in the kiddie ride section one summer when I was 16 years old. I was working these little motorcycles that basically just go around in a circle like a merry-go-round. Well, the seat belt was a chain that you would latch into itself.
Anyways, this kid starts crying ‘cause he wants to get off so I let him off, go around and check all the other chains again (like we were drilled in training to do) and proceed to start the ride.
Well, some dummy decides he wants to unlatch his chain, and then his (I would have to assume) 50-pound head causes him to just tip right off the bike.
Well his parents start screaming at me. And I mean SCREAMING at me...the kid wasn't even crying or anything, and I ended up being told I had to take drug tests and fill out all these reports and stuff so I said screw it. Not because of the drug tests, rather the hassle of suspension and all that stuff.
So I go in the next day, quit, and just walk in and play in the park all day in uniform.
27. Lunch Rush
It's lunch time at Burger King. Things are extremely busy because of the dollar deal with the frappes and smoothies. So this lady starts with: "I know that you’re busy but I have been waiting for five minutes," very rudely to me. I was in an already bad mood, but just said sorry. She then yells at me that she I can't talk to her like that because she's a customer.
So I give her what she orders, hoping she shuts up. No, she complains that the ice melted because she waited so long. So I went and asked if I should replace it, mostly because I don't want to do a thing for this horrible woman. Turns out I had to.
But I couldn't help but mumble that I can't believe I had to do this for this awful lady. I give her the drink. She leaves saying that she's a nurse and she wouldn't ever treat her patients like this. She also says something about choosing this profession, and she’s never coming again... I hope. I don't feel bad about being rude to her.
26. Bait and Switch
Worked at Best Buy, and was training a new girl on ringing people up. She scans his cordless phone he brought up. It's $39.99 but he says it's $24.99. I ask him to show me where he got it and he shows me.
There are two phones with similar boxes right next to each other and I show him that and the spot where he took one from the wrong spot. He says he got it from the other spot. I show him that they are both fully stocked except the one spot from where he got his.
He starts talking about how we were all trying to scam him and that it was the classic bait and switch. I didn't have time for the BS so I tell him if he doesn't want it, don't get it. I could care less. He goes to get rung up again and starts yelling at the girl and he's calling her names and making her cry.
He calls her an idiot so I told him at least that idiot knows how to read and could grab a phone from the right spot. He gets my manager and he politely agrees with me that this customer is in fact, an idiot.
TL;DR: Idiot who can't read gets mad that he grabbed the wrong item and tries to make a girl cry and unexpectedly receives the same insults he was hurling at a poor girl.
25. Ticket for the Ride
Carnival ride operator stories:
The Zipper: Mother tells her rugrats to collect the change under the ride while the ride is operating. Besides the danger, that's my tips, darn it!
The Double Octopus: Kids standing on the fence shaking it back and forth, forcing me to shut down the ride and chase them off, over and over, while the parents browsed at Shop-O-Crap.
The Hammerhead and others: Being blamed for making people throw up or held responsible for others getting thrown up on.
Ferris Wheel: Kid ran right into the ride, around the step and under the wheel while it was running. Lucky not to have died. Later, cops came because the dad wanted to make trouble over his own stupidity until we shamed him into going away.
ALL: You are given abuse for everything from lost change to lost tickets to lost lunches. People expect you to police their line. Women get upset when you don't flirt with them—some men too!
24. Old Con
Not too horrific, but I once had a guy try to work the ten-pound note con on me. This is when you pay for a cheap item with a tenner, look put out by all the change and ask if you can give additional change to turn it back into a note.
At the point where the teller has both a ten-pound note and a whole bunch of change in their hands you then ask if they can exchange it for a twenty. It's a dumb con.
I politely refused the customer. He couldn't kick up too much of a fuss since he was a thief, so he just slunk off. I imagine you need to work that one a lot to get any results.
23.Veggie Tales
I work in a garden store. A few weeks ago, a guy comes in and asks for cucumbers. I lead him to the vegetable section and pull out a tray of English cukes. Guy yells "Those aren't cucumbers! Those are pickles!" and flips the tray up in my face and storms out.
22. Bumper Bowling
I used to work in a bowling alley. Our policy with the bumper rails or gutter guards, whatever you want to call them, was that they were generally for kids seven and under, but we could bend the rule if the kid was having lots of issues and we could be sure that they wouldn't throw so hard as to break them.
Unfortunately, we didn't have the kind that went up and down electronically, or this could have all been avoided.
Anyways, this woman comes in with her nine-year-old son and asks me to put up the rails for him. I tell her our policy, and that he should try out a few frames to see how he does without them before I put them up.
Halfway through explaining this, this woman starts shrieking at me that it's a dumb policy, and she wants to see my manager, and there's a grown man playing on a lane with bumpers (with his four-year-old son), but her kid couldn't have them. This went on for a good ten minutes of her yelling at me and my manager, all while this little boy is standing there crying.
So we end up getting her calmed down and on a lane. Five minutes later, she comes up yelling that her son sucks at bowling and needs the rails. So my manager reaches into the cash drawer, slaps her money on the counter and tells her that she's no longer welcome at that bowling center. And she leaves, bawling son in tow.
21. Pick a Movie
Not so much a horror story as just absurdly ridiculous.
Husband and wife come in to see a movie at my work. They're 30 minutes early. We have three auditoriums. They go into the wrong one for 40 minutes.
They come out and get mad at us because they read the sign wrong. We remind them that they haven't missed any of their movie yet, so they go into their movie for 45 minutes. They come out and tell us that they decided it was boring and they want to go into the 3D movie we have playing downstairs.
My manager lets them after arguing them into paying at least the $2 3D surcharge. They come out after an hour and a half and tell us it was boring and they want a full refund. My manager tells them no. They flip out, and we tell them to leave. They storm out, the wife says "I'm never coming here again. I'm only going to see movies at (theater around the corner)!"
The kicker is that (theater around the corner) is the same company as us, with the same bank account (not a corporate chain, just 2 theaters). I replied, "Please do!"
An hour later, the husband came back and said: "my wife left my jacket in the movie." I said "Well that means it could be literally anywhere in here," and told him to come back tomorrow and we'll check the lost & found.
20. Latte Explosion
I once had a customer try to throw their coffee at me. I had accidentally made a woman a latte with regular milk rather than soy. It was my fault and I apologized profusely. I told her I would make her another drink.
This wasn't good enough for the woman. Like a crazed banshee, she shrieked, "I need soy!" and threw the latte at me. The lid stayed on and totally missed me. Instead exploded on impact and got all over the counters, cabinets, and floor.
The bright side is that the owner was in attendance. He made quick work of throwing that banshee out, despite protests that she didn't get her coffee.
19. Kill ‘Em With Kindness
At CVS when I was working the registers, this unhappy and rough looking guy came in, he fit the typical biker stereotype, leather jacket covered in patches (there was a confederate patch back there), long hair, bandana, etc...
He kinda scowled at me as he entered and walked past as if I wronged him in some manner. I immediately felt that this guy was bad news. He comes back really quick from the aisle with a can of soup.
At my job, we had to ask if they had their membership card, so I asked him and he said "Not for your type I don't", while looking me over. At first, I didn't quite understand why he said that and was a bit shocked, to be honest, I'm brown, so I'm assuming he wasn't too keen on my race.
I figured I should just kill this guy with kindness and that's exactly what I did. First I noticed that the item he was buying was cheaper if he had got a different quantity, so without saying a word, I ran into the aisle and got the right product, I scanned my courtesy card since he didn't want to show me his and explained that the item I retrieved was much cheaper.
He paid his amount and simply said "Thanks a lot" and walked out.
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18. Adult Life
College students doing horribly because they don't study and then, when they receive a poor score on something, get their parents (yes, in a four-year university) to send you an email asking what they can do better/why they scored low.
It's a university, people; I don't care who your parents are or what they think about your work ethic. Grow up.
17. Wild Child
When I worked at Walt Disney World in the early 1990s, my roommate worked at the Contemporary. They had a family request a specific room layout, and the only one left was on the concierge floor, normally reserved for business guests and off-limits to kids. Concierge has a special lounge area with couches and chairs.
The dad was sitting in the lounge reading a paper, and his daughter was jumping around the room, couch to chair to couch. The girl at the concierge desk went over and asked him to please ask his daughter not to jump on the furniture, because she might fall and get hurt.
He flips out on her, yelling, "Who do you think you are, telling me how to raise my kid!" As he's screaming at the concierge, the little girl misses a couch, falls, and lands on the $18,000 cut-glass The Little Mermaid coffee table, breaking it. The guy grabs the crying child by the arm, says, "I TOLD you not to jump around like that!" and walks away.
16. Too Much Mess
This isn't specific to one customer. Not long after college, I spent about nine months working in the bulk foods department at the local location of a big retailer here in the Midwest. If you're not familiar with bulk foods, it's basically a bunch of plastic bins with little scoopers, and the bins contain a variety of products like candy, nuts, dog food, etc.
People come through and scoop some of whatever they need into a plastic bag, and then go on their merry way.
I found out first hand just how lazy, and messy people could be. I'd regularly have to go out and sweep the area because of all of the crap that was on the floor. I started working there in September or October.
Halloween gave me my first taste of a holiday in retail, and because we sold so much candy, that particular holiday made for a difficult introduction to how crazy it could be.
So anyway, I made it through Halloween, and then Christmas, but then came Easter. By that time, I'd grown very tired of the job. One can only take so much of bulk foods work. Maybe it was just bad luck, maybe people were conspiring against me, I don't know, but the week leading up to Easter was insane.
To make matters worse, as the holiday got closer and closer, it became more and more difficult to actually do my job because the area was so crowded. There would be so many people in the bulk foods area that getting my flat cart full of fresh product out there was extremely challenging.
The day before Easter I was nearing the point of no longer giving a care. To this day, 15 or so years later, I can still recall how much my patience was tested.
Normally I am about as laid back and stress-free as one can be, but when you're dealing with a bunch of anxious, pushy, impatient slobs who would just as soon elbow you in the face in order to get their stuff before you, it's difficult not to get at least somewhat angry.
So, as the minutes passed that day, the decision was slowly set in stone. I'd had enough. I waited until my area was a total disaster. Candy and nuts and all sorts of other crap on the floor, hardly any plastic bags left on the rolls, and many of the bins empty or low on stock.
I calmly went back to the employee only storage area for bulk foods, took off my work vest, dropped it on my cart, and walked out. That was a great feeling.
15. Game of Telephone
I worked in a call center for a short time taking credit card applications for a major credit card company. Toward the end of my shift, I get a call from a gentleman, and he is a little abrupt. He is difficult all the way through the call, and it takes about 25 minutes to get the application done when an average call of this type takes about 10-12.
He doesn't get the instant approval over the phone that he was hoping for, so he completely loses his mind. He starts yelling to me about how I lied to him, how I scammed him, and so on, not letting me get more than a few words in at a time.
This goes on for another 25 minutes, at which point, I can't deal with it anymore and have a supervisor come to deal with him. He then proceeds to yell at her for another 25 minutes, before he finally tires himself out and hangs up. Just another fun day on the phones!
14. Bad Attitude
I haven't had any extreme stories like most people. I do, however, have the few crazies that come into where I work often.
I had a lady who yelled at my manager and I for over ten minutes because she read a sign wrong. She thought because a sweater was on the same table as some skirts that it was $10 (the sign said "skirts for $10").
The price tag never even said it was $10. I just apologized and listened to her yell at us, but my manager didn't care. She basically had a "I don't give a hoot, you're wrong" attitude towards the woman.
I have customers who try to use someone else's credit card a lot. Our policy is if it rings up credit, I have to check their ID and name on the card. If it doesn't match up, I can't use it unless the person is with them.
This has resulted in me being called various insults, having clothes thrown at me, and pretty much everyone storming out of the store diva-style. My favorite being "bite me" simply because I don't see how it's an insult.
13. To Be Discontinued
Worked at a cosmetic store on Christmas Eve. Had a customer ask me about a line of baby products that were long discontinued, probably two years earlier. I tell her “sorry, that line's been discontinued.” She loses her mind and starts yelling at me in this packed store on Christmas, about how can that be possible and all this stuff.
Ho ho ho.
12. Food Fight
I was working at a sit-down chain restaurant when a group of teenagers fresh out of the last day of high school came in to celebrate. They even brought a cake with them, which isn't a big deal, except we don't allow that because we serve cake.
One of the more level-headed ones talked to a manager and we decided to let it slide, even giving them extra plates. All is going well until one of them pulls a flask out of his jacket and starts spiking everyone's drinks. Illegal (21 to drink in the good ole' USA), yes, but whatever. I thought If I let it slide I might get a better tip. Fast forward to about an hour later, when the cake is being cut up.
These kids are borderline drunk now and one of them gets the bright idea to smush his cake into his friend's face. This starts an all-out riot at the table, with drunk 18-year-olds throwing cake, half-eaten burgers, cups of Dr. Pepper and mysterious alcohols, and even silverware at each other.
Our managers came out, but the policy is to not touch patrons at all (lawsuits), so we had to wait for the cops to come. They did eventually and took the lot of them away. Since it was my table and servers bussed their own there, I was stuck with the job of cleaning up the remains.
The cake was ground into the carpet, and the stains are still there. I spent maybe three hours making that section presentable again. The worst part was, since the kids were arrested, they didn't pay. I got no tip, registered $0 sales (manager comps don’t reflect in your total) for five hours of my shift, and later found out that one of the children's parents was suing the restaurant for not keeping a better eye on her ADULT son. Nothing came of it, but still.
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11. Hot Tea
I used to work in a very trendy teahouse in the cultural/arts/LGBTQ/bar scene part of my town. This was all well and good, but unfortunately, the unique nature of the cafe combined with this weird draw we had on teenagers led to a lot of people coming in from the wealthier conservative side of town—presumably coming for bars or hearing about it from their kids.
One day, this man came in wanting our silver needle white tea, iced. I asked if he wanted it sweetened rather hesitantly, as sweetening a white tea, especially to the degree he said he wanted, meant you pretty much lost all flavor. All of it. I warned him and he insisted, so naturally, I obliged.
We brewed teas as they were ordered, so there was generally a five-minute wait. Two minutes in he starts pestering us, we explain ourselves and he starts drumming on the counter. His drinks go out: two for one guy—yes he seemed to be drinking both.
He tastes both, pushes his way past the line to me at the register, and yelled that it tasted like water. I began trying to explain that white tea is subtle and offering to make a less-sweetened one when he uncaps the cups and quite literally threw two teas onto me.
Two girls seated near the register promptly ran out and my equally terrified coworker rushed to refund him (against policy) while he shouted at us for being terrible at our job, etc., etc.
At closing, we got in trouble for refunding him.
10. Stickler for the Rules
I work at a Blockbuster and a few days ago I had a customer call in and ask for me to hold a copy of The Grey. At the time we didn't have any copies of the movie in the store and that they were all rented. The man sighed and began mumbling and grunting. He asked if I could check the dropbox for him, which I had already done.
I told him I would double check but that the best time to call is right when we open, yadda yadda, blah blah. He then began to call me names and that other employees held movies for him and that I "must be a reeeeal stickler for the rules" and he hung up on me. I'm assuming he thought that I wouldn't have held the movie for him if we had gotten a copy in—I would have.
I wish I had the quick wit to snap back that, yeah, I was a stickler for the rules of life that say that if I don't have possession of something, I cannot set it aside for you.
10. Fright Night Fight Night
I used to work at a haunted house.
I worked both ends of the venue when it was slow. I would sell tickets and then jump into costume to scare. I was pretty good at my job.
Family of three going through, pretty basic stuff. The father is jumpy but looks like he is having a good time, the mother and daughter are terrified. I take advantage of one of my favorite spots towards the end to give them a good finishing scare. I jump out, yell, and then the daughter turns 180 degrees and runs face first into a wall.
I take off my mask and radio my buddy to turn the lights all the way on. She is bleeding pretty bad but I can't tell if her nose is broken.
I escort them out to the lobby, grab the first aid kit, paper towels, instant ice pack, and a cold bottle of water. I start to apologize, but before I can finish the father goes all crazy on me. Starts off just yelling and poking me in the chest. Then it escalates to "WHY IS THAT WALL THERE" and shoving. The whole time his wife and daughter are telling him to calm down and that she is fine.
Being me, I laugh when he asked why a wall was there and he got really handsy. Backed off, told him if she was fine they could leave. "No buddy, I'm gonna kick your butt." I clocked out then and there and walked out to the parking lot. Still dressed as Jason Voorhees.
Nothing ended up happening except him yelling at me more. Oh, and some guy in the parking lot yelled "AWW GUYS, THIS DUDE ABOUT TO FIGHT JASON!"
9. Wild Child
When I worked at Walt Disney World in the early 1990s, my roommate worked at the Contemporary. They had a family request a specific room layout, and the only one left was on the concierge floor, normally reserved for business guests and off-limits to kids. Concierge has a special lounge area with couches and chairs.
The dad was sitting in the lounge reading a paper, and his daughter was jumping around the room, couch to chair to couch. The girl at the concierge desk went over and asked him to please ask his daughter not to jump on the furniture, because she might fall and get hurt.
He flips out on her, yelling, "Who do you think you are, telling me how to raise my kid!" As he's screaming at the concierge, the little girl misses a couch, falls, and lands on the $18,000 cut-glass The Little Mermaid coffee table, breaking it. The guy grabs the crying child by the arm, says, "I TOLD you not to jump around like that!" and walks away.
8. World’s Worst Man
I work at a McDonalds in Australia. A few Fridays ago there was probably the most inconceivable act I’ve ever witnessed by a customer.
A lady and her elderly mother came through the drive-thru. They had to wait for fresh food and so we asked them to park to the side. They decided, while parked, to get dessert as well, so the lady came inside to order. When she was served, she also received her order from before.
Another customer waiting on food thought that she had just come into the restaurant and got her food before he did when he'd been waiting (approx. 8 min) so he gets angry.
This guy abuses everybody in the store. Customer, crew, manager, and this lady. She tries to leave, so the guy goes out to her car, opens the door, pulls her elderly mother from the passenger seat and beats her.
He beat an elderly woman. Because he had to wait 8 minutes. For McDonald’s.
What really got me is that he could have destroyed her quality of life, for the rest of her life. From what I could gather she was quite fragile. It makes me angry to think she might never fully recover from something like that.
7. The Price of Rum Cake
I used to work at a place where one half was a bakery and the other half was a cafe/restaurant. My job was basically to chill behind the pastry counter and get cookies, cakes, pastries, or bread for people.
One day this really old lady came in, like she was ancient, and she approaches me by the pastry counter and asks how much a baba rum costs. So I told her that it was $2.50 and she starts screaming at me "LIAR!" It really took me by surprise, and then as soon as she had flipped out she returned to normal and started asking me the prices of other things we had.
Every time I told her the price she would start freaking out and say that I was lying to her, but then other times she'd gently say "Oh wow! It's only that much? What a great deal!"
So she ends up back by the baba rum and asks how much it is. I tell her what I told her before, $2.50. This time she's like "Okay, I'll take it!"
So I'm putting it in a box for her (and by this time my manager had kind of been drawn out of her office because of all the yelling and is just standing by) and the lady goes, "CUT IT! I WANT YOU TO CUT IT!" so I asked her if there was a specific way she wanted me to cut it and she responds "YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING CRACK-PIPE WOMAN, GO BACK TO SCHOOL!"
Mind you this was a summer job so I was just like... what?
But yeah, my manager decided to intervene then and tell the lady she had to calm down and she couldn't treat the employees like crap and that if she wanted to stay she would have to relax.
Thankfully, the lady decided to go to the other half of the place, the cafe section, and she began bothering those poor waitresses about her coffee.
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6. Toddlers in Corsets
So many. I think one of the worst was this one lady that was mad her eight-year-old didn't look right in the costumes in her Old West photos. I was working with a customer at the time, and she just rushed into the booth and started dressing them.
When I finally got to her and told her the corset wouldn't fit her child at all she said, "Well you weren't here to help were you?" I told her it was because I was still working with the person before her and everyone deserves the time they pay for to make sure it's done right.
She continued to be rude, and just plain awful throughout the whole process so I ignored her completely and just focused on making it fun for the kids. In the end she was so awful that her brother who was paying for the photos tipped me about 10 bucks on a 20 dollar photo.
There are a lot worse ones like the lady who hated Mexicans but goes to Mexican restaurants—seriously, why. It was implied that she told a group of small children she would drown them in the waterfall. She wouldn't talk to me because I was brown, even though she was paying.
Or the woman whose kid threw a tantrum because he couldn't get a purple cotton candy. She walked up to me like "Why can't he have a purple one?!" and I pointed at the display box and said "Because ma'am, all I have is pink and blue right now."
Then there are the people who think their caricatures look fat. I have at least two years’ worth of daily rage. I have given up on most people now and just expect them to be awful.
5. New Shoes
For my internship I worked at an internet store for six months, maintaining the website but also maintaining stock and eventually also packaging and making sure stuff get send to the mail. Since our boss worked in a physical store 20km away we would stay in touch over Skype or call each other when I or my colleague had problems.
After six months, I finished my internship, but I worked there every summer on my own when the only employee went on a holiday. This was one of these summers.
A pair of football shoes came back because after the person ordered them one of the rubber pins on the bottom broke off. So it was an FG shoe (Firm ground) which was only qualified to play on real grass, and if you played on anything else with it then the warranty would instantly be lost.
So we could see (there are certain signs which are 100% accurate) that this specific shoe had been used on fake grass, so instantly, he lost his warranty with Adidas.
As a sign of goodwill, my boss and I decided to send him a new pair of shoes. However, we would warn him that he should not use these shoes on fake grass because the next pair we wouldn't replace.
So, I called him up to tell him the result of his complaint about his shoes. As I tell him we will send him a new pair, I also give him the warning to only use them on real grass. Expecting him to be glad he gets a new pair, I didn't see his reaction coming as he goes completely CRAZY, saying I accused him of lying, being a total jerk, and that he never played on fake grass with his shoes.
In the meanwhile, I am completely thrown back on the phone because this wasn't what I was expecting from someone who just got a new pair of shoes free of charge. So I calmly try to explain to him that it is just a tip from us trying to be customer friendly and that I am not accusing him of anything.
He ended up raging for about 15-20 minutes until I said, “I am sorry but I not wasting any second of my time at this, we will send you a new pair of shoes and hope you have a pleasant experience from them. Goodbye, sir.”
4. Assault with a Deadly Appliance
My father works in a big store here in Italy, and he was at the return desk for a few years.
A guy once showed up and wanted to give back a coffee machine well past the return period, so obviously, my dad said no. After a few minutes of arguing, this man raised the coffee machine and threw it at my dad, who miraculously avoided it.
He called the security and dude was arrested. It seemed just a "normal" aggression by a stupid customer but it was later discovered that he had a criminal record for assault and HAD A LOADED GUN IN HIS POCKET during the fight.
My dad still gets shivers when he tells the story.
3. Bad Son
A man and his mother always used to come into the café I used to work in, and he always was a bit strange, but a nice guy, and he'd talk with everyone, myself included, when he came in.
One time, though, he came in with his mother, and his mother asked him to buy her a cup of tea because she'd left her money at home. He kept saying “No, no, I don't want to, I don't want to.”
His mother was being perfectly reasonable, and she asked him politely again, at which point he took the bag he was holding and flung it across the room, almost hitting a baby.
The owner told him to leave and he did, but just as he was going out the door, he turned around again and began yelling incomprehensible things at the owner and hit him in the face. The owner pushed him away, and with such force that he actually fell back onto his mother. THEN they left.
2. Temper Tantrum
I used to work at a very popular lingerie store. It was just after Christmas and we had a ton of customers—people returning things to use gift cards that they had received. I'm working at the registers when this lady comes up to the counter and says that she wants to return a bra that she bought.
She had the receipt, but the bra was clearly used so I was hesitant to let her return it. But my manager just said to do it, so, following the return policy, I told her that I could put the money back on the debit card she had used to pay for the bra.
She had been polite up until then. But then she started screaming "NO! I WANT CASH!" I was pretty surprised but tried to calmly explain to her that I couldn't do that because the computer wouldn't let me. I didn't have the authority to override the return system. She starts screaming "I JUST WANT MY CASH!"
The manager comes over and tries to resolve the issue, but still, the woman keeps yelling "YOU TERRIBLE, INCOMPETENT PEOPLE, GIVE ME MY MONEY!" over and over. Finally, she throws the unwanted bra in my managers face and storms out. I thought it was over...but boy, was I wrong.
After she leaves, the computers stop working. I guess because we had been trying to override the return system, we had messed something up because it would no longer accept debit or credit cards at all. Then about ten minutes later she comes back, walks right up to my register and hands me a debit card.
Knowing the response I was going to get, I calmly informed her that the computers were no longer accepting debit cards. Good god, the stuff she yelled at me. I just stood there silently nodding and apologizing every now and then while she just yelled and yelled and yelled.
After she left, the other customers in line all gave me thumbs up and said stuff like, "Hey, she was crazy. Don't worry about it." Worst day of my whole time working there.
1. Bad Burger
I’ve posted these before, but gosh darn it, they're still relevant. I worked at a crummy not-chain burger shop off of a highway in high school. A lot of the customers were horrible, and so was the owner/manager.
A man comes in and orders a burger. He pays and walks out of the store. He always has some scam going, and constantly tries to con food out of us. He has money but just loves stealing/scamming. He lets it sit in the hot table for like a half hour, and comes back. "I DIDN'T ORDER IT WITH MAYO, I'M ALLERGIC TO MAYO."
He throws the now-rock-hard burger in my face so hard it gives me a black eye. My boss chases him out of the store trying to beat the snot out of him. He showed up a few days later and tried to pull another scam then freaked out on us. Ad Infinitum. He was a source of lots of laughs and head-scratching moments. Dude did NOT give up.
A woman comes in from one of the nearby motels. She orders a strawberry shake and takes it into the bathroom. She's in there for like a half hour. We don't see her leave, but someone screams, and we check the bathroom. it's COVERED in strawberry shake and blood. Even the ceiling. I clock out and leave. Jerk bosses and their jerk wife cleans it all.
Weird disgusting guy comes in and rants about boobs and porn and other disgusting stuff constantly. I mean like REALLY obscene stuff in front of senior citizens and four-year-old kids. It's like a freaking sketch comedy setup. Makes all the other customers angry. You can never call him out. He always orders like $90 of our nasty food. Always talks about how hot his wife and daughter are in a really gross way. One day he comes in with his family, and his wife looks like a model, so do his daughter and son, and they're all nicely dressed. And of course, they all laugh and play along with his nasty stuff.
There's way, way more. I could go on forever. Fights broke out in the lobby a few times, another weird woman stole the tip jar that had like $4 in it and actually ran off Zoidberg-style making weird noises, etc.
Sources: Reddit
