Most bonkers complaint/dispute you’ve had at work?

[ChooseYourLameName]

Someone rang me today to complain I’d sent them a letter in an envelope I’d licked!

I don’t have any envelopes to lick. They all have a sticky bit you expose by removing the seal.

I couldn’t quite believe it. When I said it really wasn’t licked, he said ‘‘I can smell mouthwash you know!’’ Only satisfied when I said although I really didn’t lick it, I would post any future letters with tape to avoid misunderstanding. The strangest professional call I’ve had to ever take, bloody hell.

What’s your most bonkers dispute?

I once had a colleague complain that my bap was too close to her drink in the fridge and she was vegetarian. I quickly agreed to move it to another shelf but she still didn’t seem pleased it was still close by!

Had a member of staff refuse to be moved to a new manager because they were the same race as them, and they don't like [insert race]. I had to explain that if they were white, that comment would never be acceptable, a d just because they are the same race, doesn't make it ok. It's bloody racist whichever way you look it it. So she changed her mind and said it was cos he's a man.

When I ran a pub we had a couple come in about 8pm on a Sunday and asked for a roast. I said we would normally have finished doing Sunday lunches by then but I would speak to my chefs and see what I could do. They agreed to sort it for him. I took the food out and after a few minutes he called me over to angrily complain that he had burnt his lip on a roast potato and it was too hot. Yes, it was hot because it had just been cooked at your request dickhead.
He demanded a refund for both meals and even came in the next day to show me the imaginary blister on his lip. Ffs.

@MedusasBadHairDay

Oh The3rdWatermelon the toilet story reminds me of a woman who came into a clothes shop where I worked and demanded to use our toilets, the toilet was through the stock room so we couldn't let her, plus the store a few doors down did have public toilets. She was not happy with that, so went and shat on the floor of the changing room.

EEEEK!

Working in a department store, decades ago. A man had finally found the right character clothes for his God son. But they were extortionately expensive in his opinion, simply because of the logo.

This was said through gritted teeth, properly angry. I didn’t point out that a God parent isn’t obliged to buy X, they could make their own choice.

My class did not get high enough results in their voluntary yr 4 SATs.

I was put onto a competancy procedure ( in the end it went to the General Teaching Council and they decided that "there had never been a case to answer")

Anyway, my Headteacher did impromptu lesson observations weekly with no warning ( every week over 6 months until I went off sick).

One Thursday afternoon he came in to my Yr 1 class at 2.40 (tidying up time) to see a lesson.

I was told off for the look on my face !!!

Apparently the poor man felt unwelcomed into my classroom!

@ChickensMightFly that just reminded me of a phrase someone once said to me - like trying to lift a bucket you're stood in.

@VWGolfmk2 That is so sad, you must be a saint not to clock them one.

I once ranted/complained for 15 minutes during my lunch hour at work to customer services at the gas company, stating I was unhappy with the meter and that I must be paying for someone else's gas too... (it was my first home, new build...)

I asked to speak to their line manager because they would not get my POV.

They finally got me to calm down and the manager said to me he would stay in his office until I arrived home from work that evening and that he would own/sort the situation until I was happy.

Once home, I called the person telling him I had turned off the heating and that my meter was still turning... He said he was sorry for the situation and that he would get someone out first thing in the morning to investigate and rectify the problem.

He asked me for the meter number which I provided and very calmly he stated I was looking at my electricity meter!

Yes, I am that idiot...

I once had a customer shout at me that we should have self serve tills in our store for small items and all she wanted was dummies, the queue was long and she'd left her baby alone in the car. I refused to serve her and told her I would actually call the police queue or no queue. She left in a hump with out her dummies.

I worked for an interior designer in 2 of her stores in America. Apart from furniture and accessories we also sold Vera Bradley bags (they are fabric bags with florals and patterns). We had a customer who used to come in 15 minutes before we closed and spent a good hour looking at the bags. After making me dig out all the bags in a certain pattern she would analyse where the position of the flowers were printed on each bag. She would eventually purchase a bag.
A few days later the same woman would turn up at the other shop 15 minutes before closing and return the bag she had bought from the previous shop. I told her I remembered serving her at the other shop. She hesitated and then piped up ‘oh that wasn’t me that was my sister’. She said the bag was for her daughter and as her daughter is an artist she is very particular about where the flower pattern is positioned on the bag. I told her I also am an artist. That shut her up. It still did not stop her from finding another reason to yet again exchange the bag and spend another hour in the store.
My manager said that this was about the sixth time she had exchanged the bag and she always arrives just before closing. We used to have such a giggle about this strange woman.😝😂

I had another customer who came in with a Vera Bradley fabric bag that looked so worn out like it had been dragged through the mud. The woman had purchased it 6 months earlier and wanted to exchange it. She said it had a hole in it. Well I told her exactly where to go. The nerve of her. 😖🤨

@MacDuffsMuff

I had just finished work and went to the local garden centre for a mooch around. A very well dressed lady came and asked me where the garden canes were, I said I didn't know and that I didn't work there. She absolutely refused to believe that I didn't work there. The uniform for my old job was a purple polo shirt and the uniform for the garden centre was green polo shirt. She said that clearly I did work there as I was wearing a polo shirt and that she was going to complain to the manager that I was unhelpful.

I would have offered to go with her to the manager so she could file her complaint with me present.

I used to work in Sainsbury's - things that stick in my memory

1. A customer complained that the ingredient lists of our salmon weren't correct as omega 3 wasn't listed in the ingredients....😳 she then got angry because I couldn't tell her exactly how much omega 3 was added in the cheap salmon or the Taste the Difference Salmon

1. Another customer asked what food exactly she should buy to loose weight...

1. Christmas Eve 2010 one customer stole a ham out of another's basket in the queue and a full on physical fight blew up

American tourist asking why there was no air con at The Globe.

Ooh another one. The building manager demanded to see me and then proceeded to rant that someone had masturbated into their underpants and then abandoned them in the gents toilets. He wanted me to try and find out who had done it.

On another occasion someone had taken a shit in one of the toilet brush holders... again he thought I should be able to get to the owner of said turd....

I dont know why everyone always lets me know when there has been an atrocity in the toilets at work. I must have an air of authority over lavatorial affairs.

I worked in a secondary school and had to chase up any unexplained absences by a certain time in the morning as required by government. We had one batshit mother who refused to phone in and report if her daughters were going to be off sick as she wanted to test how robust our process was. It was a school of over 1200 students. If all the parents did this we would have to spend most of the day contacting them to check on their kids.

I used to work for an up and coming e-cig company, in the early days of them becoming popular in the UK. Among other things I tended to do the basic technical support calls, and also test any faulty kit that was returned as defective before issuing a replacement or refund.

One day we received a jiffy bag containing a battery from a customer who was claiming that his new battery wouldn't charge. At first sight I could see this was a very much used battery, with dirt & grime around the threads and the coating rubbing off in places. I wondered whether the customer had sent us the wrong battery by mistake, but when I checked on the system the last time he'd bought anything apart from liquid from us had been over a year previously.

So I phoned him up and explained that we wouldn't be replacing the battery as it was over a year old. He started shouting and swearing down the phone at me, and when he started on the "you're a stupid little girl (in my early 50s at the time, highly qualified ex professional project manager), I signaled my boss to listen in on the call. He came on just in time to hear the customer scream that he knew where our offices were and he was coming down (from about 150 miles away, to judge by his order address) to "sort me out". I looked around the room at my boss (6 foot 4 sports & gym fanatic) and the MD (6 foot 2 built like a rugby prop), and the German Shepherd curled up by my feet, snickered to myself at the thought, and asked him if he would like to speak to the sales & marketing director.

Surprise surprise, when he got on the phone to a MAN he was sweet as pie. Suggested that he hadn't shouted or threatened me at all, but clearly I was a stupid little girl (he liked that phrase) who "can't tell her arse from her elbow". Boss gently pointed out that a) he had been listening in to much of the call, b) He had the battery in front of him and the customer's account details, and c) I was actually the technical researcher for the company who was also planning the launch of the next gen products so I did know a bit about the business. Never heard from the customer again.

I worked in a greetings card shop temp over a Christmas period, many people would pick up cards but not look at the prices then get arsey with me about the price and say it was my fault and I was over charging! Forgot I was secretly the CEO of Clinton cards!! Why pay fro something without looking at the price ffs!

Had a woman shout at me for hair straighteners not working as her daughter was getting ready for clubbing but now couldn't go?! , my job had nothing to do with that, I was working for the water board so why she called us about it I still don't know!

Another i had was standing in savers and a woman appearing telling me it was out of order a certain product was out of stock, once she'd stopped ranting I politely told her I didn't even work there! I was a customer to! She looked me up and down and said well you shouldn't dress like you work here then because I had an ID tag around my neck from my office! Some weird people out there! 🤣

I used to work for a large insurance company. One week there was a spate of brief phone calls from a client wishing to complain about something or other. He would phone our office then insist somebody phone him back as he didn't see why he should spend his money making a phone call with a complaint. The silly bastard failed to grasp that he was losing control of the situation because whoever got the job of phoning him back would do so when it suited them, not him, which might explain the multitude of phone calls. I bet he was only about three foot nowt tall as well. Life is too short for such petty nonsense, my dimensionally-challenged complainant.

I'm reminded of some more. I was working in a bank and there was a power cut in the whole square. We were standing outside to explain that everything was out so we couldn't even open up to serve customers. I man was screaming abuse at me because the cashpoint machine wasn't working and he needed to draw out money for his holiday which he was going to the same day!

On holiday in a lovely resaurant in Italy an American couple at the table next to us loudly complaining that they weren't celebrating American Independance Day.

My friend went to mend a ladies fridge, because it was making a strange noise. He arrived but the fridge was fine. Apparently it only made that noise when you turned the kettle on.
Wouldnt except the noise was the kettle boiling and insisted it was the fridge. 🤣 bless

That I sent a factual email. I sent and email to our regular visitors saying something like "due to the government announcement we will be closed from X date, we continue to review the legislation and we will reopen as soon as possible. We will let you know when anything changes". The complaint was that I didn't "fluff" the email. This regular visitor thought I should have written paragraphs about how disappointed we were to close, how sorry we were to let the visitors down, how we supported the government, etc etc.

I used to own a shop. One day a customer phoned but the line was so bad I couldn’t understand a thing she was saying so I asked her to phone me back. She phoned me back and the line was still really bad and I couldn’t understand anything she was saying.
A few weeks later I checked on Tripadvisor and this so called woman had written the most horrible review about me and my business and saying something like I acted like she was speaking Chinese 😖. I most certainly wasn’t. I genuinely could not hear or understand what she was saying because the line was so bad. Some people are just so vile 😫😠

I worked in an open plan office. One woman would loudly shoosh anyone who made a noise. That included talking as quietly as possible into the phone or coughing. Heaven help you if you laughed. Drove us nuts.

I ran into her a little while ago (we were all made redundant). She admitted she didn't know how easy she had it there as her new job was much less tolerant.

We had a client complain about our ‘hold’ music! It was Happy by Pharell 🤯

When I was on the Health and Safety team I received a complaint from someone who had walked into a pillar in the warehouse. They said the pillar was a hazard and should be removed.
The pillar had been there over 20years, it was one of many at regular intervals in the warehouse for the purpose of holding up the roof.