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Original poster

Nightmare customers and general bat shittery - what are your stories?

282 replies

saywhatnow1 · 11/07/2024 15:00

I have my own business doing dog boarding in my home. It's really successful and I love it. I also used to feed cats when I started, but I stopped that several years ago. Another thread I've been reading today, reminded me about some of my batshit customers, and what it can be like to deal with the public. Would love to hear some stories from others. Here are a few from me to start :

Was looking after a tiny dog, who kept biting me. The customer insisted that the dog must NOT eat from a bowl, but must be hand fed, and wanted it to be fed chocolate buttons! Obviously chocolate is poisonous to dogs, but this dog had been eating them for over 10 years at this point, so was obviouly used to them. Every time I tried to feed the dog it bit me. And proper nasty bites. My hand swelled up so big I couldn't drive, and I had to get a tetanus booster. If you walked past the dog, it would lunge at you and sink it's teeth into your ankles. After about 5 days of this, I e-mailed the customer who was abroad, and they called me that night. When I explained what was happening, and asked whether the dog could perhaps get collected by someone it would be more comfortable with, they said "Oh no. Buddy has been biting everyone for years. It bites my kids and my grandkids. No one will have him, they all hate him. Just go and get him put down please" 😳

Another lady wanted to put her dog in for daycare when she was at work. She wanted to drop her dog off at 5am, and collect it at 11pm! I explained that our opening hours were 7am-7pm, but that she was welcome to board the dog when she had long days at work. She was unhappy with this, and tried over and over again with long rambling texts, to get me to accept the dog from 5am till 11pm, because she "didn't want to pay any extra for boarding". 😵

I have had LOADS of customers pushing me, to let them collect their dog after 7pm. Sometimes wanting to stop by as late as midnight. No! I am not sitting here in my day clothes until that time. I want to get my jammies on at 7pm and have some semblance of a normal life.

I was feeding a lady's cat, and often it wouldn't come back for days on end. She kept texting me at 10pm, asking me to do a free second visit, to see if the cat was home. No! I was in my jammies and enjoying some wine. No, I'm not going back!

Oh, and there was the lady who said she'd be back at 5pm to collect her dog. 5pm came and went. I really needed to go out at 530pm to drop my car in for repairs. Tried calling her. Her phone was off. She didn't come back till 8pm!

Also had a lady come along with a beagle called Lucifer. She explained that he can't be left alone AT ALL. At the last boarder he was at, the boarder had gone out for 15 minutes to get milk from the shop, and when he got back his front door had been half eaten. Then she expected me to say, no problem, when would you like him to stay (what happens when you sleep, or maybe I wasn't meant to sleep?!"

Oh, and the last minute texts before a stay is about to start, with it casually thrown in that the dog isn't house trained. What? And you're telling me this the day before the stay? Well, he can't come then. Now what are you going to do?

These are probably quite minor compared to some examples others have!!

OP posts:
HeartShapedBox · 11/07/2024 17:46

Or Buddy, even 🙈😂

HeartShapedBox · 11/07/2024 17:44

saywhatnow1 · 11/07/2024 15:00

I have my own business doing dog boarding in my home. It's really successful and I love it. I also used to feed cats when I started, but I stopped that several years ago. Another thread I've been reading today, reminded me about some of my batshit customers, and what it can be like to deal with the public. Would love to hear some stories from others. Here are a few from me to start :

Was looking after a tiny dog, who kept biting me. The customer insisted that the dog must NOT eat from a bowl, but must be hand fed, and wanted it to be fed chocolate buttons! Obviously chocolate is poisonous to dogs, but this dog had been eating them for over 10 years at this point, so was obviouly used to them. Every time I tried to feed the dog it bit me. And proper nasty bites. My hand swelled up so big I couldn't drive, and I had to get a tetanus booster. If you walked past the dog, it would lunge at you and sink it's teeth into your ankles. After about 5 days of this, I e-mailed the customer who was abroad, and they called me that night. When I explained what was happening, and asked whether the dog could perhaps get collected by someone it would be more comfortable with, they said "Oh no. Buddy has been biting everyone for years. It bites my kids and my grandkids. No one will have him, they all hate him. Just go and get him put down please" 😳

Another lady wanted to put her dog in for daycare when she was at work. She wanted to drop her dog off at 5am, and collect it at 11pm! I explained that our opening hours were 7am-7pm, but that she was welcome to board the dog when she had long days at work. She was unhappy with this, and tried over and over again with long rambling texts, to get me to accept the dog from 5am till 11pm, because she "didn't want to pay any extra for boarding". 😵

I have had LOADS of customers pushing me, to let them collect their dog after 7pm. Sometimes wanting to stop by as late as midnight. No! I am not sitting here in my day clothes until that time. I want to get my jammies on at 7pm and have some semblance of a normal life.

I was feeding a lady's cat, and often it wouldn't come back for days on end. She kept texting me at 10pm, asking me to do a free second visit, to see if the cat was home. No! I was in my jammies and enjoying some wine. No, I'm not going back!

Oh, and there was the lady who said she'd be back at 5pm to collect her dog. 5pm came and went. I really needed to go out at 530pm to drop my car in for repairs. Tried calling her. Her phone was off. She didn't come back till 8pm!

Also had a lady come along with a beagle called Lucifer. She explained that he can't be left alone AT ALL. At the last boarder he was at, the boarder had gone out for 15 minutes to get milk from the shop, and when he got back his front door had been half eaten. Then she expected me to say, no problem, when would you like him to stay (what happens when you sleep, or maybe I wasn't meant to sleep?!"

Oh, and the last minute texts before a stay is about to start, with it casually thrown in that the dog isn't house trained. What? And you're telling me this the day before the stay? Well, he can't come then. Now what are you going to do?

These are probably quite minor compared to some examples others have!!

But what did you do with Benny?

Adviceneeeeded · 11/07/2024 17:39

The amount of customers who don't understand that if the booking system says fully booked then that means we are fully booked and there is no table available. N, calling us does not mean we can magic up a table. And no we can't cancel someone else for you.

I had some one email and leave a bad review because we where fully booked. And I mean booked to the brim. Nothing we could do. They tried booking 10 minutes before the time they wanted on a Saturday night 🙄

TheLightSideOfTheMoon · 11/07/2024 17:36

When I was pregnant (the only time I worked in retail) a customer threatened to “wait for me after work” because I wouldn’t sell him Grand Theft Auto Vice City (I think it was Vice City).

I had refused to sell it because,

a) It wasn’t out yet. It came out a few days later.

b) It wasn’t actually in stock, we didn’t have it.

Apparently I was lying. We had them piled up in the stock room and I was pretending they weren’t there. And he ALWAYS got stuff early. (He didn’t, there were chunky fines for breaking release dates.)

So when people say that these Grand Theft Auto games make other people violent, I kind of think, “Yeah, maybe.”

Takeoutyourhen · 11/07/2024 17:35

A lady tried to return a pair of trousers which she had hemmed up and washed and were now too short. She couldn’t understand what the problem was!

ToxicChristmas · 11/07/2024 17:29

We had a customer throw a frozen chicken hard at a staff member seated behind a till (they had to go to hospital) because there was a small queue. Yes, the police were called.
I had a customer rage at me for a good twenty minutes unbroken about an issue with his car that we had in for repairs. We had phoned and left a message with his wife who had totally misunderstood what was said and told him the wrong thing. I couldn't get a word in edgeways or figure out what he was screaming about. When he eventually petered out after saying some truly venomous and personal stuff, I managed to explain what we had called about which was something extremely trivial and nothing bad -more of a personal choice question. He stormed off slamming the door without another word. He did actually come back later on and apologise but I'd imagine it was because the garage owner refused to finish the job unless he did. Calling someone a slag and a trussed up tart who pretends to know about cars is pretty over the top really.

WiseMenSayNothing · 11/07/2024 17:14

A woman once came up to our customer service desk asking for a refund on a child’s item of clothing because it was ‘faulty’.
The fault? The blackcurrant her DC had spilt on it wouldn’t wash out.

A store I worked for offered days out vouchers so had posters up of a certain theme park. Customer rocked up & mentioned theme park so I assumed she was asking about the vouchers.
No, she asked me to direct her to this theme park, and had actually driven a couple of hours to get to where we are. I didn’t have a clue how to direct her because we were 60 odd miles away from the place.

Another retail place where a woman in a right strop slammed a rock hard melon down on the counter and barked ‘tell me, exactly how am I supposed to ripen that?’.
I replied that maybe if she took it back to the competitor she bought it from, they might be able to tell her. The huge sticker with their name an barcode on should have given her a clue where to return it to.

As a hotel employee many years ago, asking what he would like for breakfast. “porridge”.
‘sorry sir, we don’t actually have porridge on the menu’
’But I always have porridge for breakfast, so that’s what I want’.