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!

@nexus63

I’m sorry you don’t like the feel of real fur but it was incredibly rude of you to simply drop a customers coat simply because you don’t like it

I had a client complain I was married with children and that I should be at home looking after my kids (ultra conservative religious) - my boss basically said tough shit if you want to work with us then you'll have to get over it. They did and I won them an award for the project.
Didn't like working for them though as they clearly had a world view not very compatible with mine.

Some of these are

I had a secretary at work complain that I was paid more than her and it must because I was sleeping with the directors
She thought because she was older than me and also female that she should be paid more..... thing is I was a professional not support staff and also an associate director, so I suspect my professional worth may have been a little more, as were my multiple qualifications but apparently she thought that pay was just directly related to age 🤔

As a uni lecturer lots of students grumblings.

Quite a few who currently keep complaining about reduced face to face contact....not just complaining but expecting me to change the timetable to put more in. They don't seem to grasp the reasons why face to face teaching has been reduced.

Students unhappy with assignment marks including one who said she had showed it to her mum (who was not a specialist in this area, nor was her her mother a uni lecturer, didn't even have a degree in the subject) and her mum reckoned she should have a higher mark so could I therefore please change the grade.

[quote Namechangeme87]@IWillWearThatGlitteryWoolly I read that as gynecologist initially and was sooo confused 🤣😅[/quote]
Me too, had to read a couple of times to understand 😂

Someone complained that I had answered my direct dial number at work when he didn't want to speak to me. He had phoned the switchboard and asked for me by name, I had been unavailable at the time so he was given my direct dial number to try later.

So when he phoned me directly and I answered, he complained.

@Springersrock

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

I'm presuming you weren't working in a haberdashers?

I once had a colleague who didn’t like the smell of food/drink, which is fine as we were only allowed water in the office. Oh no, she would complain to HR if she could smell any trace of food/drink on our breath, clothes etc. She used to eat pickled onion monster munch every Wednesday, as we were all annoyed (childish) one Wednesday we all ate pickled onion monster munch (they were vile). We were all hauled into HR for workplace bullying, but on a plus side she never mentioned food smells again.

When I was a waiter I used to ‘make’ all the desserts, as in put all the components together (fairly common). A customer complained that the crush on her creme brulee wasn’t even, she asked me to give feedback to the chef, I mentioned that I had finished the creme brulee and apologised for the uneven layer of sugar. The entire table refused to pay for their desserts because they didn’t want food that had been handled by a waiter. We had to call the police.

I used to deliver takeaway food, a customer complained that we didn’t supply disposable plates and cutlery.

A colleague was going through pay packets (in mail boxes per department) and complained that I earned slightly more than him. I was more experienced and had a higher level of professional qualifications, he was older than me. In his mind age brought greater pay rather than actual experience and career specific qualifications.

When I was cabin crew, a passenger tried to eat my salmon and cream cheese bagel that I had purchased for myself in the airport. They then got upset that I wouldn’t hand over my personal food because “they were hungry and it was bad customer service not to.”

Passengers also felt entitled to ask to use my personal mobile phone.

People think they buy the crew with their flight ticket!

I used to work for a photo agency and too many clients just didn’t understand that photos can’t be enlarged or enhanced beyond the quality of the original. I blame TV shows and movies with their ridiculous, made up technology that enables people to zoom in on grainy CCTV in such fine detail they can count the criminals eyelashes or something.
One that sticks in my mind was an older woman who’d spotted her late husband in the background of a press photo of a celebrity at an event. She wanted to buy a print, but couldn’t understand why we couldn’t make her husband’s face as clear as the celebrity’s (this was many years ago so the original image was a 35mm negative). I even had her son calling me up, berating me for trying to rip her off by sending such a “poor quality” print of his father. I felt bad that I couldn’t help but they just didn’t understand what I was trying to explain.

People are so weird!

I didn't have to deal with this one myself, but witnessed the conversation. It was summer time, early 2000s, and the disposable BBQs were flying off the shelves at the Sainsbury's I worked in. You know the ones, little foil trays with a card lid holding in the coals and a grill. We had a whole stack of them right at the entrance.

That year, the card lid had a photo of kebabs being cooked on the disposable BBQ, chargrilled to perfection.

One customer bought a disposable BBQ and returned a few hours later, angry and visibly sweating, and started shouting at the lady on customer services because (as near a perfect quote as I can remember):

'THERE ARE NO KEBABS IN THE FUCKING BBQ! WHAT KIND OF FAST ONE ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL? SELLING BBQS WITH READY-MADE KEBABS BUT STEALING THE KEBABS FROM THEM AND KEEPING THEM FOR YOURSELVES?'

Similar to the PP who had a complaint about the lack of fresh fruit in the cereal box, this man genuinely believed he was buying fresh kebabs as well as his disposable BBQ, despite the fact that they were stored on a pallet in the entrance with no refrigeration whatsover and were not heavy at all.

I've just read that Michael Fagan, the man who broke into the Queen's bedroom, has complained that the actor who played him on The Crown was too ugly with no charisma !

I briefly worked for a virtual secretarial services company. One of our roles was in call answering - so if you were out of your office, you could set up a call divert and we would answer your phone for you and take a message or provide basic info.

I once got a phone call from someone trying to reach the client office. He wanted me to open a set of drawers in the office and read some papers or something like that. He COULD NOT GRASP that I was not physically in the client office and that the phone call had been forwarded to me sat in my own office miles away. He just kept saying "But if you look behind you it's in the drawers! Why are you so unhelpful?!" He eventually called me useless and hung up. We weren't supposed to tell people outright that we were a phone answering company but in his case I obviously had to and he still just didn't get it! The director of the company did call me back later to apologise

Years ago, DH employed a junior member of staff, an 18 year old girl. Two weeks into the job, the girl disappeared for 3 days. Didn't respond to any calls or messages. Eventually, the girl's Mum contacted DH to inform him that her daughter was at Glastonbury having managed to get a last minute ticket, but she would be back at work the following week. DH's response was basically 'Er, no she won't.' The Mother was furious with DH for depriving her little darling of a job and thought it was perfectly acceptable for her daughter to just disappear off to a festival because "it was Glastonbury and tickets are so hard to get "

Ex Customer service worker for a few companies here:
TV rentals co: Customer called & complained that their tv broke due to poltergeist throwing tv off the bed so not sure heir fault
Electrical co:. The Fuzz away (for piling on jumpers) was not shaving his beard.
British Gas: We don't ever answer the phones cos customer made a cup of tea, even went for a sh*t & phone was still ringing.

@LondonlovesLola

RiftGibbon The person asked for your title. That’s not uncommon, cheeky, rude or disrespectful. I would have been confused when you refused too.

But it was irrelevant. I had already told him I was the only person if this name. He could have put Ms

I just read something by a parent who makes her child's packed lunches look all fun and pretty. (Instagram ready stuff) You know, sandwiches in shapes, carrots and cucumbers cut into hearts, lots of fresh fruit and tasty healthy food. She received a complaint from her child's teacher and was told she needed to make simple sandwiches with an apple and a packet of crisps or something simple and basic because the teacher felt like the other children would be jealous.

I would have emailed the teacher back:

LOL. No.

At work, we use those little coloured tabs to indicate where people need to sign documents. The ones we use come in packs of several different colours. We use them randomly. If there are 2 or more people to sign (husband/wife, or business partners), we'll colour code them, so, say, Fred to sign the orange tabs and Bill to sign the yellow tabs. We really don't think much about them to be honest other than making sure the colours are different if different people have to sign them.

One day we had this deranged woman come storming into the office, shouting, effing and blinding, threatening to report us etc. Apparently someone had put blue tabs for her husband to sign and pink for her, and she had taken it as some kind of sexist personal insult. She tore up the documents in front of us and insisted we send her a new set with "gender neutral" coloured tabs, before storming out of the office again, slamming the door behind her!

@Sidge I assume you aren't in the UK? As I thought you could have a smear test between "routine" tests if you had new symptoms? Doesn't excuse the awful way the lady spoke you you though

DH took a sandwich into his office ( no customer contact ever and not a shared office ) in a green plastic box with a dinosaur picture on. His boss called him in to say that it was very unprofessional and please ensure that you don’t bring it in again.

@Badbadbunny - although please bear colour blind people in mind. Around 4.5% of people are colour blind, and yellow and orange isn't a good combination. Red and green is also a problem.

ooh, i was about 17 and working in a supermarket on cusomer services.

A lady came in complaining that the 34" trousers she bought yesterday weren't actually 34" but were smaller. I asked her "what do you mean?". She goes on to say Her husband is 34" waist, and he tried these on and they didn't fit, so they can't be 34", and she wanted a refund.
I happened to havea tape measure under the counter, so I said "hmm, that's really strange. Let's see what htye measure! so I can writ eit down for the return reasons and send it back".
I measured the inside of the waist of the jeans, and they were actually around 34.5". I looked her and said "ell, they're defintiely 34", maybe your husband isn't 34"? Nevermind, we can give you a refund anyway, as you have your receipt."

But, then she kicked off "My husband is a 34" waist! are you saying he's fat?? these jeans are wrong! You stupid cow, I want the manager to handle this, you're clearly just rude " etc

So, I called the manager and explained everything. The manager sighed. and said "You can have the refund, as Binary said" asked to look at the woman's receipt. Turns out she'd bought the jeans around 6 months ago, so wasn't eligible for a refund anyway.

Woman gets all stroppy again going "what am I supposed to do with these now then???"

I helpfully suggested she donate them to charity.

[quote tectonicplates]@Badbadbunny - although please bear colour blind people in mind. Around 4.5% of people are colour blind, and yellow and orange isn't a good combination. Red and green is also a problem.[/quote]
Yes, we ask about that in our "know your client" questionnaire. It's one of the markers that clients have on their files. We also avoid using colours in reports, graphs, spreadsheets etc.

@Rowley21

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?

I thought you were going to say that the mother expected a teacher to come to her home to tutor the child!