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!

@chocolatepudandchocolatesauce I am in the UK and no you wouldn’t have a smear if symptomatic, you’d be referred to colposcopy. A smear is a screening tool not a diagnostic procedure. Colposcopists will examine the cervix, and will sample or biopsy any potentially abnormal looking areas but that’s not the same as a smear.

She wasn’t symptomatic either, she just wanted a smear doing!

@Sidge thankyou for clarifying that :) I've learnt something useful.

I've got hundreds but I think by far the worst was during last lockdown when we were not allowed to do unnecessary journeys. I had a customer demanding to know why I had not driven 4 miles to my nearest open post office on a Saturday to send her packet of napkins and she was taking further action over the matter. She was completely fuming. Never known anything like it.
I did once have someone try and tell me a cushion had disintegrated when she just touched it. Said cushion looked like it had been in a fight with a wild cat. But no, she insisted, I just touched it with my finger and all of these rips suddenly appeared.
I deal with crazies regularly.

I helpfully suggested she donate them to charity. I'd also have suggested she bought a tape measure to check her husband's waist! When was he last measured?
A lot of these stories should be posted on NotAlwaysRight!

[quote Soubriquet]@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[/quote]
If someone hadn't chopped its legs off, it could have got back up by itself.

@sueelleker I wouldn’t have put it past her! 😂

[quote Sidge]@LondonlovesLola no he was asking for RiftGibbons marital status, not job title. It’s none of his business whether she’s a Miss Mrs or Ms and has no bearing on the issue.[/quote]
Miss, Mrs, Mr, Ms, etc are all titles, so LondonlovesLola was correct.

I used to work as Cabin Crew 3 of the most memorable complaints were…
It was a very busy flight and we actually ran out of vodka, this woman went absolutely mad shouting and swearing that we needed to land and pick up more vodka due to her being a functioning alcoholic and needing a drink. She got so worked up she ended up wetting herself in her seat. It was a full flight so she ended up sitting in her own wee for about 6 hour! She later wrote into the company and complained and we all got a verbal warning for doing what I don’t know.
A dad travelling with 2 children, he had ordered children’s meals that were duly delivered to said children. He complained to the Purser that the chicken nuggets on the meal weren’t McDonalds chicken nuggets as that is the only food his children would eat. He made us take the meals back and forced his children to not eat for the whole flight. I felt really sorry for those poor kids.
Best one that I’m so proud of is a man was asleep through the Breakfast service, I did try and wake him up but he just grunted and turned away from me so I carried on. About 2 hours after the service he rings and says that he wants some croissants. I explained that they had all been thrown in the bin, well he was shouting that I was stupid and that he knew there would be croissants in Business Class and I needed to get him some. I did check they entire aircraft and each galley had thrown them all away and compacted the rubbish. I went back and told him this, cue more shouting and calling me a liar. So I went and got some from the rubbish and fluffed them up, put them on a First Class silver salver, warmed them up and delivered them to him. He had the biggest smile and said “THERE I KNEW YOU COULD FIND SOME IF YOU REALLY TRIED”. I had the biggest smile seeing him tuck into them!

Caller: You sold me a broken computer scanner!
Me: spends half an hour talking the caller through how to uninstall and reinstall it, then instructs caller to put something on the glass and press Scan
Me: What can you see on your screen?
Caller: A plain white square.

Me: repeats the whole process Now what do you see?
Caller: Still a white square

Me: Third time lucky? repeats it again
Caller: I still see a white square.

Me: What did you put on the glass to scan?
Caller: A blank sheet of A4 paper.

@chocolatepudandchocolatesauce no the same happened to me. I had irregular bleeding and bleeding after intercourse but because I'd only had my smear test done 2 years earlier I had to wait the year till my next one before I could have another one done. Got told the same that the results would just be quashed. In the end I did end up having one earlier after a referral to the gynaecologist. Came back dodgy but the follow up one was normal and been ok ever since

There was an inbox for the [email protected] address my company used to send out emails and very occasionally it got checked to delete bounced back emails etc. Over the period of a year a customer had been replying and getting steadily more irate at receiving emails from us.

The last reply was ALL IN CAPS and informed us he was going to sue us for daring to know his name and address because they were PRIVATE.

The emails he’d been receiving were confirmation of purchases he’d made, to be delivered to his home

I used to rent out an annexe to my house. Only ever had one nightmare tenant...

She was fine for six months, then started smoking lots of weed - which was only a problem when she did it in a certain place and the smell came through vents into my lounge. So I put a note through asking her to stop.

Then I got a call one morning from a police sergeant. Tenant was accusing me of harassment, by putting notices through the letterbox (there had been one earlier asking her to pay rent or I'd serve notice, and she hadn't answered emails).

She'd called the police to complain I wasn't letting her smoke illegal drugs in the property.

Cops were very nice and advised me on eviction proceedings. They told her it was a 'civil matter' aka not their problem, but she called them a few more times during the eviction process which followed the letter of the law.

@BluSpider

Caller: You sold me a broken computer scanner! Me: spends half an hour talking the caller through how to uninstall and reinstall it, then instructs caller to put something on the glass and press Scan Me: What can you see on your screen? Caller: A plain white square.

Me: repeats the whole process Now what do you see?
Caller: Still a white square

Me: Third time lucky? repeats it again
Caller: I still see a white square.

Me: What did you put on the glass to scan?
Caller: A blank sheet of A4 paper.

I literally face palmed at this...

Worked in clothing retail. Woman kept me talking for half an hour while she explained how completely terrible it was that we never had her size in stock. We did, but it was one or two items she wanted, and her size had sold out. It was the best stocked as it sold well (1990: size ten, contrast with today). I couldn’t get her to understand that we had had lots in stock and we’d sold them, and to come back on our delivery day when I’d put one aside for her. But no, it was terrible and nobody cared about people like her, poor old size tens. Bloody on and on and on. I was this close to telling her she shouldn’t be looking to chain store stock delivery systems for her validation.

I can’t believe I’m still annoyed about that pointless ear bending thirty years later 😂

@BluSpider

@BluSpider

Caller: You sold me a broken computer scanner! Me: spends half an hour talking the caller through how to uninstall and reinstall it, then instructs caller to put something on the glass and press Scan Me: What can you see on your screen? Caller: A plain white square.

Me: repeats the whole process Now what do you see?
Caller: Still a white square

Me: Third time lucky? repeats it again
Caller: I still see a white square.

Me: What did you put on the glass to scan?
Caller: A blank sheet of A4 paper.

Actually, this could well have been me

I once spent about an hour trying to get the photo copy function on my snazzy new work printer/scanner/copier to work.

There was about 3 of us standing round it, getting more and more irate as the bloody thing kept spitting out blank pages. Until we realised we were photocopying a blank sheet of A4 paper I had taken out of the paper tray

Remembered some more...
Another corporate banking one. My boss told me off because I had gone out during my lunch break. "What if it had been something important?" (Which it wouldn't have and never was). I should have more of a corporate ethic apparently.
So after that, instead of going out for 20 minutes to stretch my legs and get a sandwich, I took the full hour I was entitled to, outside the office.

At Uni, a fellow student slagging me off to his mate because I wouldn't write the conclusion to his essay for him. He said it was selfish of me because I knew how to do these things well and got better marks than him.

Working in a public library and a customer getting angry with me because I couldn't find her a book "about that artist who has got an exhibition on."
She didn't know the name of the artist, the titles of any of their works, where the exhibition was on, or anything about anything related to the topic.

@Dddaddy

Colleague put in a formal complaint that I put my own, bought by me, not part of the tea fund, used teabag in the bin and didn’t leave it for her to reuse.

🤢🤢🤢

Had a patient come into to the private dental surgery I worked in at lunch time when I was on my own. Shouting and swearing because we'd had the temerity to send him a bill. I was young and terrified. He finally left and I locked the door behind him.
His daughter rang later and spoke to the dentist complaining that I'd called him a "fucking n-word". (Not a word I ever use, even forty years ago).
My fucking boss didn't even ask me about it and just apologised for my bad language. Git.
And it was the last time I was on my own at lunch time with the door unlocked.

We sent a gift hamper to someone with wine, biscuits, condiments etc.
Got a very shitty response from the bloke on the phone saying that we had sent him French wine. We should know and have a record of the fact that he doesn't consume ANYTHING French because of the war you know. Never will anything French pass his lips or had passed his lips for the past 50 years - so we could just bloody well come and collect this abhorrent offence of a hamper today.
He did say he really liked the cheese we sent with it and would be keeping that .......it was Roquefort.

Night club, customer was removed for offering drugs in lieu of paying for drinks and trying to get the female drinks waitresses to sleep with him (another no-no, we literally had rules saying "please do not attempt to solicit the staff".)

Then he phoned the police and actually waited for them to arrive, to complain that the door staff had confiscated his cocaine, and that was stealing. He was arrested for being drunk and disorderly if I remember.

@VodselForDinner that's straight out of Dogma, must have been a Matt Damon fan.

This may out me, but we've had a few bonkers complaints, one that really sticks out though is when the engineer didn't say goodbye to her cat, we had to go back to say goodbye as she was hysterical on the phone.

I had someone go batshit crazy this week as she asked 'what is VAT and why is it on my bill?'

She has lived in the Uk all her life.

I actually cried after that as she was so so so offensive. and because i have a bunch of stuff going on with my DS and a chronic ilnness.

On shift in a pizza restaurant. The manager had flooded the place by doing something dodgy to the glasswasher. A man complained I wouldn't let him in for a meal, he'd have been ankle deep in water!