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

I’ve had a customer (didn’t speak English) pull my hair as they wanted hair dye & I didn’t understand her language, I kept saying ‘sorry I don’t understand’ then she pulled my hair, other customers ask if we sell certain things, tell them no then go in a strop & say ‘well where am I meant to buy them then?’ Like I’m google all of a sudden. We get loads of non English speaking people in store, they are on their phone on google translate asking for the most random shit ever!

I had a bloke hiss at me that he was 'going to come back once your shift has finished,rape you and burn your corspe'

My crime?

I asked if he wanted sugar for his coffee

I was doing a run of early shifts that week-dp would drop me off and I'd make my own way home

The bus stop is about 7 minutes away from work,so I had to keep looking over my shoulder while convinced I kept seeing him

He did come back in a few weeks later to apologise to me,but I was too scared to speak to him

He kept waiting outside,so he could catch me to say sorry-i had to arrange lifts to and from work for ages afterwards

The police just said he had mental health problems so couldn't do much

Fucking loon-I still live in fear of him walking in,even tho he's banned

I wasn’t working that day. We had some extremely heavy rain which flooded the store (entrance is low lying) and a man hole cover popped open by the truck shutters. Had to close store early.

Customers were getting angry at the staff on why they can’t continue with their shopping.

Working in retail is awful! Lasted 2 months and it honestly was the worst job ever! One person's cash card wouldn't go though the till..kept getting rejected, I was the biggest bitch because I wouldn't let her take home the trolley full of shopping and come back later to pay! Another one complained because an item was more expensive in our store than in another one and wanted to pay the cheaper price 🙄.. another complained that the items they wanted were never in the reduced bin (nearly out of sell by date) and they always had to pay full price!..some people are nuts!

Full restaurant, my daughter as front of house manager.. me as owner and General manager that flitted between kitchen and front of house. She came to me one day. One of our (lovely) servers had been berated as we did not have an item on menu available. It was advertised on every table what we were short on thank you covid , our suppliers could not get. It was a very very stupid thing. Not a main meal. It was deep fried pickles which we bought in from mccains. Unfortunately for the guest.. when my daughter tried to calm and recifiy..they told her, nevermind. I will call the owner , he is one of our best friends. daughter told me this. I went out in my chef coat and asked what the problem was.. "everything was fantastic , but the server refused to check for our starter. .. and' I KNOW the owner" really. you know the owner? 'yes and I am sending him a message now" ME.. ok.. let me know how that goes. "her...(it was actually the woman not man..he looked embarassed) I then said. NO man owns this restaurant. I OWN this restaurant and I do not KNOW YOU and I am sorry, I try to make great service for everyone..our employees are valued people. Leave and pay your bill. never come back please. (I did this all quietly)

What are you talking about??? You just made it on to my list anyway 🤣

I was a customer for this one. I was next in the queue for the till at the garden centre, with a trolley full of plants. A man, with his little daughter on his arm, suddenly materialised behind me and said "you don't mind if I nip in front, do you? Only got a couple of things!"

If he'd given me time to answer I probably would have said yeah, sure - but he didn't. He just stepped right in front of me and put his stuff on the counter. In shock, I caught the eye of another customer and we both burst out laughing. This shamed him into turning round and cheerily saying "thanks so much! Sorry! Kid's getting heavy!".

In my mind, I replied "there's really no need to thank me, as you didn't give me any choice" but in fact I just stared at him blankly, I think.

I worked in a pharmacy years ago. A man came in complaining about horrendous diarrhoea and stomach cramps he'd had and how on earth could we sell diabetic sweets if they did that? I showed him the back of the packet, which had in bold 'Excess consumption can have a laxative affect'.
I said 'Oh dear, now many did you eat?' He said 2. I said, oh, maybe you are sensitive to them if 2 sweets caused that. He shouted 'not 2 sweets, I ate 2 packets of them!'. 😂

I completely agree that the parents in all of those examples, are batshit crazy. However I think you're in the wrong job by the sounds of your hostility towards the job itself

I once worked at M&S, and I found most of the customers to be insufferable snobs. My favourite was when I was on the food side as a cashier ringing a woman's shopping through, and she was loudly chatting to her friend about her finances. She started talking about HOW MUCH her mortgage was and then stopped and looked me dead in the eye and said "I guess someone like you won't ever have to worry about having a mortgage". I guess cashier trash will never get on the property ladder! And I actually did have a mortgage.

Give him time-he most likely will
He's so used to getting his own way all the time,that when life doesn't deliver,he has a screaming tantrum
I cannot tell you how many shops they've boycotted just because the staff couldn't deliver the impossible for him

We had recently moved from West Yorkshire to Lancashire. In Yorkshire sweets were sweets, spice or spegs. My brother and I were surprised to find out, at school, that all sweets in this part of lancashire were described as 'toffees'. Boiled sweets, chocolate buttons, licorice were all described as toffees.

Oh the trans Pennine language barrier! I, a Lancastrian, was teaching in Leeds and there was a planned bus strike for Friday, my form were debating how they'd get to school so I told them they would have to 'leg it'. After about half an hour of amazement and so on it transpired that in Yorkshire that meant truant whereas in Lancashire it meant walk!

I worked in a pub and once had a regular who was high as a kite on coke try to throw the cigarette machine at me. It was less scary than it sounds because we all knew it was bolted to the floor. His friends were asked to take him home and not bring him back for a month and once he'd apologized. We had a nice note through the door the next day and when he came back after a month, he was never an issue again and actually helped when we did have issues with other customers. I think the sheer embarrassment and piss taking by his friends sobered him up really quickly.

When I worked in clothing retail I had a customer return a blouse because all the buttons had "fallen off". They had quite clearly cut them off with scissors (they handed me the buttons with the cut threads still attached). Then there was the customer returning some trousers that had shrunk in the wash. She pulled the still soaking wet trousers out of a plastic bag and dumped them on the counter, water spreading everywhere. The lady who wanted to know if several items would fit her daughter (who wasn't there) and got really shitty with me when I asked what size her daughter was. And the countless people wanting to return things because they'd changed their minds, claiming "it's still got the tags on, I haven't worn it" when it stank of BO/perfume, had food stains, scuffed, you name it...

I had one of my best ever experiences of customer service on a ferry. I was struggling with a toddler, a baby, all their paraphernalia and a folding cot, one of the crew came up to me on the car deck, grabbed my bags and cot, told me to just concentrate on the children and took me to our cabin, 'I'll be here in the morning to get you back to your car'. He totally refused to accept any tip either that evening or in the morning, I wrote to the company and hope he get some recognition from them.

Female taxi driver here, I once had an elderly man his wife, daughter and grand daughter who was about 3 years old get in my taxi.
The man sat in the front whilst everyone else got in the back, the man then said to his daughter pass the little one to him, to which I said that's not allowed he proceeded to tell me "oh don't worry she's not going to be sitting on my lap she likes to sit in the footwell" I literally stared at him in disbelief and promptly told him absolutely not and that the taxi was not going to move till he had handed the little girl back and she was strapped in.
He then started ranting at me so I told him to get out or be thrown out to which i had a bad attitude and it was his granddaughter and if he wanted to put her in the footwell it was none of my business and that as a female I shouldn't be driving a taxi anyway.

He went straight on my shit list !

Has your brother been into Greggs and demanded water hotter than boiling for his tea?

Years ago we were checking into a small chain hotel in the US, Saturday night and they were busy. One man barged in with his family demanding a room, he'd not booked, when he heard our British accents he demanded that they cancel our reservation for him, Americans should always come first. Not our general experience of Americans by the way.

This is why packs of peanuts have the warning 'may contain nuts'

All of the bodily fluids ones have reminded me of a story from when I worked in Matalan whilst at college.

I was on my fitting room duty, and could just smell something BAD, when I went in to look, there was a poo as thick as my wrist in one corner…I’m surprised the person could walk after.

Best bit was when I called through to the office and a ‘senior’ member of staff, who had previously told my then boyfriend (now husband) he would amount to nothing in life, told me to come grab cleaning supplies…NOPE! She had to clean it up herself (and not that I’m still holding a grudge but 20 years later and she works in a bingo hall whilst my husband most definitely made something of himself) - sucks to be her!

@RainintheDesert how could i forget Google ,at least once a week we get the Google says you are open until 10pm , and even had a complaint wth a Google screenshot saying that we were open on Tuesdays and they had made a special journey and we were shut- ruined their Christmas Day outing!!

Many years ago I worked in a shop selling ice creams, beach toys, sweets and cigarettes. They were hot on under age sales of cigarettes as the owner'd been fined twice. Usually kids in the park who told police they'd got them in totteys.
Any way one day this kid came in bought a load of sweets and tried to buy cigarettes. They were apparently for his sister who was on the beach with the baby. Having run through all the cigarettes hé asked why. I told him.he was under age and asked him for the money for the sweets. Thé charmer screamed at me to shove them up my arse.
I was shocked, this was 1973 or 4 and in West Kirby. They've Always been there.
Another days serving ice creams a lad paid for his 99 with a load of change. It was short. I chased him down the road and he paid up. One of his mates Saïd 'she caught you?'.
The plate glass doors had screws in the runners to stop theft in Season. Otherwise with a queue for ice creams up the shop all you heard was thé doors being opened and thé sight of half empty cupboards at thé end of a Sunday afternoon.

All for 25p/hour.

Working in a bar - had a woman tell me off for putting ice and lemon in her gin and tonic... as it was the ice and lemon that gave her a hangover.

I'm a tube worker. Batshittery goes with the territory.

In general customers can't understand why the information on Google is different from reality. That's because Google doesn't update when there's a disruption or planned closure. But Google is God and you can't tell people they are wrong.

I once had a man many years ago who wanted to get from London to Leeds in under an hour, and was very upset that this wasn't possible. He had an appointment. I said, I can't move the cities closer together. He went nuclear and demanded to speak to my supervisor,who pretty much repeated what I'd said!

We often get Americans upset over the fact the Tube doesn't go to Oxford, or Cambridge, or Windsor.

It did look delicious so I get it. But still.

I always call it morrishits in my head now.