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!

I was temping as a clinic secretary in a small country hospital, in the same region as I grew up.

One afternoon I get a phone call from a woman who wanted to know what her partner had an appointment for as he got a letter and this was the number on it. it

I explained madam I can only discuss that with the patient, now I recognised this woman as a friend of my mother's who when she asked for my name and when I told her who I was threatened to tell my mother on me "threat of an Irish mammy" as I would know she was the partner of A whose details I was withholding from her.

She did complain to my mother who hadn't a clue what she was on about to which I just laughed when she told me and the woman also put a complaint into my management at three different levels that I wouldn't help her out as he was obviously not telling her something. How rude of me to protect the patients details as I wouldn't confirm that he was a patient even.

Waiting in reception to pick up my car from a service when another customer stormed in, loudly complaining that ever since they had fitted four new tyres the previous day, his car radio could no longer get radio 4. Unfortunately my car was ready before I heard the outcome.

@Natsel84

I'm a hairdresser..

Years ago a client, had her hair cut very short ( first time in the salon) ... came in 8 weeks later complaining that her hair had grown , she wanted her money back ... 🙄

Wasnt really sure what she was expecting 🤷‍♀️

I used to be a Nail Tech and I had a client who complained about the 'gap at the bottom that appeared after a couple of weeks' and looked at me like I was conning her when I told her it was natural nail growth. 'What, so I need to have this done every 2 or 2 weeks?'

Honestly, you can't make it up!

We once had a serious team meeting about a dispute that arose when someone hid someone else's fart machine.

@rslsys that's my life most days car dealership life

To paraphrase:
Customer: What pitchers do you do?
Me: Here’s a menu! We do X,Y,Z if you’d like a soft drink or A,B,C if alcoholic.
Customer: I want A but I want him to make it (points at male member of staff)
Me: Sorry the bar is quite busy at the moment, but I can make A for you!
Customer: No I don’t want a female to make it, I want him to make it.
Me: If you don’t want me to serve you I’ll have to ask you to leave the queue.
Customer: So you’re refusing to serve me? I bet you’re not even old enough to sell alcohol. Show me your ID. I want to speak to your manager about an underage female trying to sell me alcohol!

I used to work in a call centre for a now closed down celestial bodied named electronics company.
Had a fella call up to complain that on his built in free view tv some of the channels only played adverts during the day and that programmes didn’t start until the evening. Therefore he wanted to keep the tv but be given a full refund as not all the channels were showing programmes 24/7.
I was on this call for 45 minutes while he droned on and on about it. He could not grasp that the retailer of a tv was not responsible for the tv channels scheduling.

Years ago I worked in a builders merchant - the only woman there! I had to deal with an angry old pensioner, couldn’t grasp the fact we didn’t do oap special rates, complained about delivery charges, then wanted to pay by cheque. We didn’t have a stamp with the company name which meant he had to write it - proceeded to scream at the top of his lungs ‘ do you want me to write it in blood’! Calmly told him to write it in whatever he wanted, we would still cash it!! All while the manager was hiding behind a door crying with laughter 😂😂

I used to work in a call centre for a water company, on the billing line. One memorable call was from a customer who asked “Is my neighbour allowed to do her sister’s washing?” Turns out this customer was on a water meter and her neighbour wasn’t, so she wasn’t pleased that the neighbour was seemingly doing extra washing for her sister, using unlimited amounts of water.

Another call centre job, for a credit card company, we used to do a Ferrari owners club credit card. One customer called up and said that the red of the Ferrari on the card was the wrong shade of red. I said it was due to the allowances of the printing process.

A customer called to say his statement was wrong, as he had added it up with the help of pen and paper. I quickly added it up with the calculator and said that the statement figure was indeed correct. He said “oh there you you go with your machines again!”. After a while he rang back to apologise that he had got it wrong. At least he called back to apologise!

DH once had a bride to be in wanting to buy something for her wedding the next day.

Had a huge tantrum when told it wasn’t something DH could help her with - he isn’t a shop, and his business isn’t related to weddings in anyway

She then left an absolutely scathing review on his business Facebook page.

I’m a gardener. A client once complained that the leaves had fallen off the trees I’d planted for her a few months ago. It was autumn. They were deciduous.

Another one - years ago I worked for an airline. A plane was unable to land at Buenos Aires airport late one night due to a sudden fire in the control tower. It had to divert and make an unscheduled overnight stop in Montevideo instead. All the passengers were found hotel rooms for the night and provided with transport to them. One passenger refused to get off the plane, saying “I can’t possibly stay the night in Uruguay; I’m from a good family!”

I had a customer at work send us a letter detailing all of her complaints and her suggestions to improve.

Stuff like,

There was only 1 spare loo roll in the toilet (we didn’t keep many in there as people would nick them)

There was a dog getting out of a car in the car park of the business next door so we should put a solid fence up

She caught the sleeve of her coat on fe door handle of our customer room so we should change the handles to knobs

She then rang about a year later to ask if we had any spare Velcro we could send her

From when I worked in travel there were loads

2 separate requests for a holiday cost to be refunded as the whole thing had been completely ruined by:

1 - a dog barking at night occasionally
2 - the ornamental fountain in hotel reception not working for 2 days out of 10 (was being cleaned/repaired)
3 - being yelled at for selling a customer drachmas when they were going to Cyprus. Checked their order and they had ordered that specific currency and said destination was Crete

There were so many....

I work in a school and we had a parent ask for speech and language interventions to do at home to help her child. The teacher agreed and they exchanged emails so the teacher could send over the speech and language papers. The next week the mum came down to the school screaming at the teacher asking how dare she suggest her child needs speech and language intervention and denied ever asking for this.

How would the teacher have got her personal email to send it to if she hadn’t had the conversation with her and given her the email?

@ShowMeYourCat

As a teen I used to work in Safeway (RIP) and when we were on the checkouts we had to offer everyone a free ABC magazine (loyalty card magazine for those not familiar with defunct supermarkets’ loyalty schemes). After serving one woman she queued for ages at the customer service desk to complain she didn’t want the free magazine I’d offered.....just don’t take one then?

To be fair I think I'd find that annoying every I shopped in there. Surely if I wanted one I'd pick one up?

@Babyiwantabump I had a very similar situation with 1p I used to work at a motorway service station when I was a student so many years ago! We saw a real cross section of the great British public in there, each day something mental and bizarre happened. One man slammed his £5 onto the counter to pay, he was very rude and walked off without his change of 1p. As he went I called after him but he ignored me and I figured he was in a hurry. I just continued serving and then he returned about 10 minutes later demanding his 1p and wanting to know why I hadn't given it to him and said I was a liar ?! Liar about what? I never did work it out!

@VenusClapTrap

I’m a gardener. A client once complained that the leaves had fallen off the trees I’d planted for her a few months ago. It was autumn. They were deciduous.

Formal complaint for teaching that Jesus wasn't born on Christmas Day.
This was in a secondary school and the whole lesson was about the concept of religious myth and the Gospel writers using sources relevant to their target audience.
Apparently the mum had spoken to the Archbishop who was going to 'come and set me right' about the issue.

I was working as cabin crew and a woman got really angry because I wouldn’t boil an egg for her daughter and she didn’t want scrambled egg. The eggs came ready made in a breakfast meal, we just put them in the oven.

She wouldn’t believe that I didn’t have a box of eggs and a hob in the galley.

@Funkypolar omg that's crazy, there's not much space on a plane what the hell did she expect you to do!!?! Absolutely bonkers 😂
Love this thread it's hilarious!!

When I worked for a cinema chain a customer asked for a ticket for himself and his 14 year old son. I explained I couldn't let his son in as the movie was rated 15 (it wasn't actually policy to ID teens with parents unless they were very obviously underage, but he'd literally just told me). He was most unhappy with me!

I work in one of the big supermarkets. Working self scan checkouts and asked someone for ID yesterday. She didn’t have any so had to decline the sale of wine. Her boyfriend walked up behind her at this point and started shouting at me, telling me I’d ruined their roast dinner and that I must be calling him a paedophile because he was 45!
Not sure what that had to do with anything but there we go.
Also had a customer tell me that he hates masks because people look so odd. He actually had the cheek to say to me “Take you for example, you look like a rabid dog”. What a charmer!

I used to work in Argos a man wrote to the Managing director that I refused to put the Ironing board in a carrier bag as he didn't want
anyone to see his purchases.

@Crinkle77 or you could just say ‘no thank you’ like other people did, rather than complain about the teenager who has been asked to offer them and who is just doing her job. Plenty of shops ask similar questions, it’s hardly a massive intrusion