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!

Once at a staff meeting I brought up a coworker playing his rap music so loudly it was giving me a headache. He as outraged that I was complaining about this as apparently it was ‘disrespecting his culture’. He was the whitest guy ever! I ended up storming out of the meeting in disgust

@Cocolapew excellent 😂😂😂😂😂😂

@42andcounting desperate to know if it was a winning ticket!

i worked as a cashier in a bank and had a lady complain about me. She was upset that I had not graciously accepted her congratulations on my pregnancy. I wasn't pregnant. Apparently this embarrassed and upset her.

Some office staff at my company complained about the fire alarm being tested every Monday morning at 8:30am. It now has to be done before they arrive so 8:00am

They also complained that the hot water coming out of the taps in the canteen isn't hot enough. There's three kettles there though, use one!

They also complained about how a trainee technician looks at them. A kind of glare

I'm sure there's many more that I've forgotten

I worked in a back in the mortgage department

A lady wrote saying that as she only had a 20k mortgage she would like to insure just one room of her house rather than the whole building 😳

I sent a reply checked by both managers to say that unfortunately for as long as she had a mortgage with us that she’d have to insure the entire building and indeed that we would STRONGLY recommend that she ALWAYS insured the whole house

She then sent a letter to my manager saying that she’d spoken to a judge and that id broken blah blah blah law and she was going to have me arrested

Bank!!!

Fucks sake why does autocorrect do that!!

Bank is a proper word, its not like i made it up

Stormwhale

We used to have a toaster in the office canteen. Someone fairly senior from another department left toast in whilst he “stepped out for a quick smoke”. You would have thought an educated financial professional would know better. As you can imagine, thanks to this idiot, the alarms started blaring and our office with 300+ staff and clients had to evacuate. No fire, but it was such a shitshow.

It was fairly stressful as major meetings were ongoing elsewhere and senior management took a dim view to the unnecessary disruption. I decided to remove the toaster completely. He actually had the audacity to wail at me for not replacing it as he thought it was a fuss over nothing. He had a lot of front - I wanted to say “you are the reason it’s gone mate!”

I've name changed for this as anyone who knows me will know this story. So before I had DD I worked in a big pub chain as a manager for quite a few years. I was low level management when this incident happened, and looking back I wonder why I thought it was a good move going upwards One busy lunchtime, I was coordinating food leaving the kitchen. One of the staff takes out a salmon with a jacket potato and she returns saying the lady would like extra butter, takes a couple of the portions. She returns in tears saying they're demanding to speak to a manager, so I go out to see them.
"I asked for extra butter!"
"Yes madam, my colleague did say, and she did bring you extra..."
"WELL I WANT MORE!!"
"Okay no worries, how many would you like?"
"SIX!"
"Is that 6 in total or 6 in addition to the three you already have?"
"SIX EXTRA"
So I take her her 6 butters, and no word of a lie she used 9 butters on her jacket potato
And from that day forward she was known as Six Butter Lady. Interestingly she never asked for that many butters again so I can only assume 9 portions is too many

Jesus there have been many idiots in my employment history

Call centre's.. A client rings in at 2am wanting to buy a revolving island, we spent 2 hours on that call lol, manager was pulling his leg wanting to know if the island should be revolving clockwise or anticlockwise. It went on and on and on,,,but was funny.

Call centre's again.. Got told I was gonna be stabbed to death by a Telewest client whose TV connection was disabled and they couldn't get some important fight on screen. We only answered their out of hours calls and thankfully we were in Ireland not the UK lol, he then old me he was hiring a helicopter to come find me...Still waiting 25 years later on him..

Call Centre's again...Man wanted to have a 3sum, me him and his bull, .. He was very upset I declined and screamed death threats at me for refusing his bull, still awaiting death to find me.

Abused and screamed at by a client in a retail store cos I copped on all his 2 k was dud, and challenged him on it, buying a pc with dud cash is not a good idea mate.

The pervert calling at 2 am wanking down the phone, wanting to know the colour of my knickers, Management weren't happy I hung up on them ...Fuck off to you too so ..

The penny/cent one is another one, screaming abuse at me cos I didn't have a cent in the till. But had to be a penny, didn't want 2 cents I used to keep a few in my purse for her and go get one..It was just easier than being screamed at.

Not at all lastly but back to call centres again lol, we used to operate an sms or short messaging secretarial service back in the 90's for clients of a certain mobile phone company. It was a virtual secretary type thing, so you answer with Hi, James can't take your call right now, please leave a message. Well, the amount of women screaming at me that I was riding their husband, as he doesn't have a secretary..FML we all took some abuse over that service lol

MitziK, "'OK, let me get this straight. You want me to amend/correct/update falsify - - - - so that the figures 'look better'?"

LOL, well...we have a president like that. Which is why our COVID-19 figures are the worst in the world, and probably vastly under-reported.

At work there was a running gag between a group of 3 people who shared a bank of 4 desks with one other person. On the divide between two of the desks, one day a small chick appeared (the fluffy decorative type used on Easter bonnets and cakes). The next day, another one appeared, and the collection grew sporadically as one of the three people added to it. It was just a bit of silly fun and did not impact at all on anyone other than two of the three people who had the chicks between their desks. The fourth person, who wasn't in on the joke initially because of annual leave, didn't say anything for a while, then one day a small dinosaur appeared and they put in a formal complaint to the team leader because they could tolerate the chicks but when it got to dinosaurs it looked like a whole new collection was taking off! It was ridiculous. It wasn't even touching their desk.

The team leader in question was staggered and asked the group to ensure they didn't encroach on the other person's desk, but ultimately explained it was harmless. That person left a few months later. They were presented with a dinosaur balloon by the team

[quote Dimpous]@42andcounting desperate to know if it was a winning ticket! [/quote]
Well, I could have just cancelled the ticket, but then it occurred to me that if I bought it myself and it won, I really would have been up on the day. Yes, I'm a horrible person. And yes, karma was not on my side, and I didn't win a bean on it

I worked in housing for a while and one day got what I originally thought was a prank call. One of our tenants wanted me to sort out the lady he'd let move in as she was withholding sex and that wasn't fair. He refused to accept me politely pointing out that was not our problem and complained to management calling me a frigid lesbian amongst other things. Management had him thrown out of the building.

Once in Toronto Airport, we were witnesses to an American lady having a go at an airport employee because the luggage trolleys didn't take US dollars. Her argument seemed to hinge on the fact that they were worth more and that was more important than us being in Canada.

Not customer complaints but used to work in a place with absolutely batshit manager and owner. Got hauled into a disciplinary once because I used to spend some of my lunch break (note some) reading a magazine or a book while I ate in the staff room. Apparently this was teetering on the edge of gross misconduct because I wasn't contributing towards the team ethos. On my unpaid lunch break. Where I could have left the premises if I wanted to. And during which I did have a chat with other staff members, I just liked to read a bit while I had my sandwich. I was in my early twenties and very green, they'd have gotten quite a different response from me now.

After I left (funnily enough not long after my 'gross misconduct', of my own volition because I figured life was way too short for that nonsense) I found out another staff member had also been disciplined and threatened with suspension. Her crime? Her best friend worked in the same place. Rather than post it out she brought in her wedding invitation and popped it in friend's locker and mentioned she'd done so as they passed on the stairs. Manager overheard, called the owner who drove down to the building, hauled the staff member into the office and spent over an hour insisting that either she uninvite the best friend or she invite the entire staff across the three separate branches of the company to her ACTUAL WHOLE WEDDING as it was grossly unfair, would cause huge discontent amongst staff and was apparently against some sort of equality policy. I believe in the end the union had to get involved. For the record not a single other staff member had complained or saw an issue with it.

Power mad.

@Dinosauratemydaffodils

I worked in housing for a while and one day got what I originally thought was a prank call. One of our tenants wanted me to sort out the lady he'd let move in as she was withholding sex and that wasn't fair. He refused to accept me politely pointing out that was not our problem and complained to management calling me a frigid lesbian amongst other things. Management had him thrown out of the building.

Once in Toronto Airport, we were witnesses to an American lady having a go at an airport employee because the luggage trolleys didn't take US dollars. Her argument seemed to hinge on the fact that they were worth more and that was more important than us being in Canada.

I work in housing and can absolutely believe this I'm really trying to think of the best one to add to this thread as there's so many, people are insane.

@PrincessForADay

I'm a manager & wear a name badge that identifies that.

Had a customer demand to speak to "proper" manager, politely explained there I was a manager, he still demanded to speak to "him" not me.

Yes the customer didn't believe women could be managers.

Sadly had this happen more than once

Me and my fellow female colleagues get this too, a lot! What they mean with us is they want to speak to a man because how can we silly little women know or understand anything about horses/gambling. Apparently there's a difference between being trained to know about odds and bets or knowing it because you have a penis.

VienneseWhirligig

So glad I don’t work in an office! The hilarity would kill me
Sounds very Tim, Dawn and Gareth to me!

Stompy! WTF is wrong with people?!

I left a note in red pen for my job share and she complained that writing in red is aggressive.

My first job was in a well known posh department store. It was my third day; training lasted 2 weeks, but to say they were shite at remembering to actually train me is an understatement.

Anyway, on the till on Day 3. Customer starts screeching at the top of her voice and snatches the trousers I was folding off me. "Do you not know how to fold properly? What a disgrace. I'll do them myself". Proceeds to make a big show of folding said trousers, and everything else she purchased, all whilst ranting about my ineptitude, about standards dropping every time she came in here, blah blah.

I just stood there, mortified. Customers behind her in the queue were eye rolling and side eyeing her.

Off she went, and she collared my Section Manager and Floor Manager to loudly complain and point at me.

The customers I served whilst she was doing all this were bloody lovely to me.

Both Managers take me off the till once the queue had died down, took me in the back. I thought I was going to get fired, but instead they howled with laughter. Apparently this customer was in every week, and loudly complained about something every single time.

I work in complaints for the emergency services, so you can imagine I get some corkers.

The one that stands out for me, for sheer lack of perspective, was the man complaining about the situation with his young daughter (who was only endangered in this man's mind) was on a par with the Rwandan genocide....

Having been through Uni with a survivor of said genocide, studied it in detail as part of my degree, I restrained myself to a non-committal 'mmmmmh'

@nexus63

i worked for a high street ladies clothing store and always worked on a saturday at the changing rooms....less went missing on a saturday, a lady came to try some things on and handed me her fur coat....i dropped it as i hate the feel of real fur, she demanded to speak to my manager and ranting about how expensive her coat was and demanding a discount, my manager let her rant on and then said...i would have have done the same as i hate the feel of fur. several times i have gone into a well known discount store....i often wear basic black t-shirt same as the store uniform, i was asked where something was, i said it was probably on that aisle, a few mins later she came rushing up to me saying how stupid i was for not knowing the layout of the stock and if something was out of stock...i let her rant on then said very slowly....i do not work here i was just trying to be helpful.

I was in Sainsburys a few weeks ago and an elderly lady asked where antihistamines were. I pointed vaguely to the area. She then demanded I get them for her. For some strange reason, I did. Apparently I'd selected the wrong brand and was trying to rip her off etc.

I was wearing gym clothes and a Superdry coat. Christ knows why she thought I worked there!