To ask retail staff your worst customer stories?

Worked in a camping and outdoor shop. Young kid (under five) running around with a mallet. Mum not bothered.

Another day, another young kid was wrecking the displays, pulling out the sleeping bags, getting shoes out of shoeboxes. Area was out of sight of tills so we didn’t see it until another customer told us. Dad was quite posh. I concluded he was charge of his son for the day and didn’t know how to handle him.

Got called a retard because I gave her king-size cigarettes and not superking.

Oh so so many.

There was the woman who put her pin in incorrectly three times and the card was locked. I did warn her after the second failed attempt that if it was put in wrong again the card would lock but she just shouted that it was the correct pin and our tills were wrong.
So the card locked. She was irate and getting quite loud. Wouldn't accept that at this point we could do absolutely nothing about it and she needed to go to her bank to get it sorted out. She kept screaming it was our fault.
I asked for another method of payment. She only had enough cash to cover about half of what she wanted. I told her that she could pay for some now and we'd put the rest aside for her if she wanted to come back with more cash or a different payment method.
This was not what she wanted. She wanted to take everything as it was needed NOW and she would come in later to bring the balance in cash, but she was taking everything as it was, according to her, our fault her card didn't work.
Manager had to step in at this point as she just kept shouting. In the end she left with nothing whilst screaming she'd complain to management about how awful we were. We did put her stuff aside for a while in case she came back, but she didn't.
The sheer number of people who'd get irate when it was well after closing and we'd ask them to make their way to the tills and exit. No I don't get paid overtime actually.
I have also personally ruined many a Christmas due to the shop running out of a particular toy or "must have" craft item on Christmas eve. No we can't order it in for today. Oh, and have fun contacting head office to complain, they all knocked off yesterday.
Customers who wanted very large amounts of an item with very little notice. Ribbon was a common one for this. We sold over 100 varieties of ribbon by the metre and rarely carried more than one spare reel of each in stock. Each reel would contain between 20 and 50 metres. So if you want 200 metres of a particular shade of peach for wedding orders of service for this very weekend.... well you can pretty much guarantee we wont have enough. Some people were sensible to order several weeks in advance, some wouldn't. If they were nice, sometimes we'd phone other shops in our chain and see if they could post some, but if you were a loud, shouty and rude person, we wouldn't.
I swear some customers thought our stock room was like the warehouse and the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I worked in Next one Christmas, years ago.

Someone pooed in the mens' changing rooms 🤢

Working in a pub - generally vile place anyway - always told to unbutton my shirt to give the customers a treat etc by boss - gritted my teeth because I needed the money.

The day Nelson Mandela was released from prison it was on the TV in the snug - several locals, including an ex Liverpool FC player, started on the most vile racist rants - it was just disgusting - I didn't need the money that badly, I opened the bar and walked out

DD1 has worked in retail since she was 16 - had some vile customers including one who low level stalked her - ringing the shop demanding to know her shift pattern (never given out) and waiting for her after work - telling her he thought about her in 'pretty dresses' all the time - thankfully good management - she was never 'allowed' to serve him again after the dress comment and if he came in her manager sent her to the back room. She's been sworn at, threatened and, during Covid, repeatedly coughed on on purpose - and then there are the customers that 'need' to press themselves firmly against you to get passed or reach things - ewwww

I’ve heard from others that Primark is a good employer. Also McDonalds.

The best retail employer I ever had - of four - was Sainsbury’s.

Dd worked in Primark (for the record, they were an excellent employer), and was shouted at by a customer when she politely explained that, no, Primark didn’t do wedding dresses. She offered to show them the hen party accessories, but was roundly abused as the woman knew that Primark sold wedding dresses.

A woman I went to college with was a manager at Morrisions

She told the story of a woman who came in and wanted to return something but for some reason,they couldn't give her the refund

The woman stood there,reached up her skirt and pissed all over the floor before storming out

Sadly,I can believe it

DD worked in RI from 16-19, she said attempted returns of trousers with cruddy gussets were common place.

must be the area we live in or RI customers!

I used to work in a clothing store and had a customer came in; walked around the whole shop and back out again

Didn't think much of it ...

Until the smell hit me

She had urinated around the whole shop - everywhere!!!

Had to close and disinfect everywhere - I cried for the rest of my shift

@WickedWitchOfTheEast87

We're okay now Sounds about right, even down to the managers! Lucky me, I've got a 12 hour tomorrow so we'll see what abuse crops up then.

And we definitely should get danger money. The £11 is not worth the absolute creatures we have to deal with.

My son worked in Tesco as a student. His colleagues on the tills were from India. They were also at the Uni doing Masters degrees and PhD. Customers were foul to them.
Drunk customer came in after a football match. He pulled down his trousers and shat in the cheese chiller.
Well spoken, nicely dressed man came in to buy something. He assumed it was on special offer. It wasn't. He paid full price with cash. As he handed the cash to my son he spat into the hand holding the money.
I had a friend who worked in Miss Selfridge. The shop had big pillars at intervals so the clothing rails were arranged in squares around the pillars. It created ' private' spaces. Every week someone would come in and do a shit in the private space.
I worked in a furniture shop . Every lunchtime a man would ring the shop phone ( no mobiles in 1988)and tell me he was masturbating.
We worked in our community shop during lockdown. We were volunteers. People were vile.

Not retail but I’m an ex Holiday Rep from ‘back in the day’ when there were thousands of us across the Med (unlike these days).
Anyways, I’ll never forget one chap. I even recall his name and where he was from (Batley in Yorkshire).
It was October, third week, Corfu 1989. To be honest, it was miserable, end of season and it had pissed it down for pretty much his whole week. The week before it was sunny and 23 degrees all week.
I was taking a coach load back to the airport, night flights ☹️, so stopped at his hotel (about midnight) and gathered the departures and ushered them onto the coach. He was nowhere to be seen. After searching, he was located in the bar, off his face. He saw me and just launched his 18 stone bulk at me, red faced and literally exploding with vileness. Screaming and cussing like a banshee about how shite his holiday had been and how he was gonna ‘tear me apart’. He whacked me around the head, grabbed the front of my blouse (ripping it) and spat at me.
It took three people to get him away from me.
I was terrified.

I can’t match most of these, but having done shopfloor and till supermarket work I experienced:

• a man who came in smoking and when I asked him to go outside and smoke there he threatened to knock me out. A warehouse guy had to come up and face him down;
• a woman who threw things at me at the till because the till roll had run out, there were no spares at the till and I had to wait for a supervisor to bring a new one;
• a woman who had been caught shoplifting, banned, but returned a couple of weeks later, who told me she would kill me after I refused to ring up her shopping.

All many years ago. Happy days. Not.

So many when I worked in a major supermarket as a student:

The woman who screamed at me (literally) because there were sizeable puddles in the car park. This was North West England, in November.

The woman who demanded I get her some Tesco Finest Mincemeat. I went to the shelf but couldn't find it so asked a shop floor colleagues. He said that there was no such product as Tesco Finest Mincemeat, but suggested the most expensive Tesco own brand mincemeat instead. It wasn't good enough, apparently. It had to be Tesco Finest, which at that time didn't exist (shop floor colleague said they got a lot of queries and they'd checked). She stood there bawling at me, calling me useless, an imbecile, a liar. Her husband shamefacedly put a jar in their trolley and apologised.

The man who started swearing at me because at 4.58 on Christmas Eve, there were no fresh turkeys left.

And my favourite:

A man came to the till with Wliko own brand rubber gloves. I explained that I couldn't sell them because we didn't sell them. The household aisle was adjacent to my till and a colleague quickly ran and got some Tesco ones. He started ranting that he wanted the yellow Wilko gloves instead of the yellow Tesco gloves and I was giving him appalling service. I even offered to give him the Wilko ones, then he started to shout at me again because he wanted to pay for then. It was very strange.

Worked in TK Maxx (in Belfast) for a year after finishing uni. Was on returns and had to refuse someone a return. Can't remember why. He started yelling about being in the IRA and he'd be waiting for me when I finished work. I said yes a lot of terrorists have been released recently. My uncle's one. He killed people. I'll let him know you'll be waiting. I'm sure he'd like to meet you. He wasn't waiting and none of my uncles have been to prison (or killed people). I still don't know how I kept my cool or mad up a believable lie!

The other worst customer was one that return soiled underwear. So gross!

My daughter works in retail now and doesn't take any crap from anyone! Had a guy trying to buy a bottle of prime for his son. My daughter refused as you need to be over 16 to have it. He threw the bottle at her. So she threw it back at him and told him to Fuck off out of the shop!

He'd probably found the TV in a skip.

Once worked for Argoose Man bought a telly in & said he bought it last week & now it doesn’t work, Asking for his receipt he said he hadn’t got it., turning the tv round. I noticed that the catalogue numbers were not ours & explained that our numbers had 7 digits, the tv had 5. Of course he told me he didn’t actually buy it from my store but somewhere else but it was definitely from the big A store. Sorry sir it doesn’t scan on the system so it definitely is mot from any of our stores. The manager had now got involved & asked him to leave with his tv whereupon he picked it up ,walked to the door, shouted at us and proceeded to smash it on the floor. Weird

Name changed

Been working at a supermarket for 12 years.
I've had on several occasions (and have seen it happen to other female colleagues) disregard what I am telling them and asking for a male manager instead 🙄 on one occasion a male colleague came and explained the exact thing I had just said but they took his word for it, even though I'm this man's manager.
Another occasion someone loudly asked to speak to a "MANager, not you"

There's been smelly customers that are so bad we keep air freshener behind the counter for after they've left

There's the creepy ones who are usually much older men flirting asking what time we finish work etc one had a fall so had metal frame on his legs he told me his address to go give him a sponge bath 🤢

One time we pulled in a cage that had been outside and there was a used condom hanging on the bars 🤮

Wtf?! Someone punched and spat at you?

Fucking hell I always told my staff if someone hits you and you hit them back I’ll make sure they don’t lose their job. Madness that people have treated you that way!

Not my story but when I was waiting to be served in the CoOp once a bloke pushed to front of the queue. He literally walked straight passed us all. The woman serving pointed out there was queue of people before him and he needed to go to the back of the queue and without saying anything he chucked the sausage roll he wanted to buy at her and walked out.

When I worked in a well know clothing chain as a teenager she found a half eaten Big Mac thrown and fries thrown on the floor.

Good on you! You did a brilliant thing!

I've been f/t employed from 16, I'm 58 now, then went f/t self-employed in 2018. I've worked in various retail, on 2 lots of bus companies, 2 mental health charities, various cafe's and restaurants, as a cleaner for different businesses, then back to Retail - Specialist Niche - in 2018 and have a whole host of weird customers!

Here when I am now in self-employed, last year I had a woman coming in to my shop, I was sat behind my desk, tapping away on my laptop. I greeted her as I do with everyone, ''Thank you for coming in, feel free to look around''.

She stood in front of my desk and very haughtily barked ''Don't you have ANY IDEA of who I actually am?''

I honestly had absolutely no idea who she was, never saw her before. So I replied ''Well, if you don't know who you are then how do you expect me to?!''

She looked like I'd just slapped her and she barked ''I am the former mayoress of this place''.

So I said ''Oh, OK, so you're just a glorified pen pusher then?!''

She was absolutely horrified! ''I'm going to report you to your boss and have you sacked on the spot and I'll make sure you you never get another job again!''

I smugly replied ''I AM the boss, I own this company, so who exactly are you going to report me to?!''

She threw a right royal tantrum and stormed out!

I never saw Miss Piddlepants again!

@difficultspaghetti That sounds about right if I had a pound for how many times a customer used a stool to smash the TV's and machines I'd be a billionaire by now. I hope you and your colleague are ok 😊

@GarlicGrace yes we should have danger money but shockingly we're lucky to get a pay rise every year but the shop managers all get their £500 bonuses at xmas us keyholders got fuck all but grief and abuse and we were the ones who were making the company thousands of pounds a day!

I could fill this thread up with the incidents I had to deal with day in day out. One customer just wouldn't stop complaining I wouldn't give him a discretionary payment (he said my colleague had misunderstood his selection he was adamament he chose selection 9 when it was clearly selection 7 on the bet that he wrote) when I told him again for about the tenth time no he started screaming abuse at me how I was a stupid fat cunt, a bitch and a whore and my attitude is appalling he's been betting in this shop for years he can't understand why I'm being a difficult jobs worth. I told him to leave and he got angrier and said I've got plently of mouth behind that counter glass and if I weren't there he would he give me the hiding my mother should've given me to teach me respect!

Something in just snapped in me so I went out on the shop floor and told him there's no glass counter protecting me now and I've still got plently of mouth. I also added that if he touches me he had better knock me out because if I get back up you're in for it and by the way smile at the camera's he stormed out angry I know I shouldn't have gone out there but I'd had enough of grown abusive men thinking they could speak to and treat me like shit and expect me to still be helpful.

Also I had a customer come in who was so drunk he could barely stand before anyone could refuse to serve him he started pissing up the betting terminal and another up the gaming machine a week later and his excuse was the toilet was closed and there was nowhere else he could go, I told him he could have gone outside and done it up a wall his friend replied that no toilets open meant his friend had to make do and both were adamant it was right that his friend had pissed up our machine couldn't see what the problem was! That was one of the few times I lost my temper with a customer and my manager was so worried I was gonna hit the both of them he walked me back behind the counter and locked me in lol

We had to get our carpet deep cleaned because the smell was awful for days after I went a bought a plug in air freshner to mask it and when another interfering manager saw it she started telling me I shouldn't have spent the shops money like that I was so at the end of my patience with customers and a few lazy colleagues who needed surgery to remove the chair from their arses before they did anything I told interfering manager I am not doing a double shift smelling piss and technically we should be closed and it wasn't her shop so she can't tell us what we can and can't buy even the area manager sided with me and that cow started coming down and checking up on me afterwards I nearly bloody comitted murder because of that nosey cow she always sided with customers even when they were abusive lecturing us on how to handle customers and she would never shut the shop when it was a serious incident we had to keep working of course she never followed these rules herself and when a customer smashed one machine she closed up saying she felt too shaken up to work despite expecting me to continue after a customer had threatened to come back and stab me in the chest at closing time!

Wow what an essay! This thread is cathartic lol