Ridiculous work complaints - tell me yours!

[YourFinestPantaloons]

I'm a teacher and Head told me this morning that a parent has complained because she saw me last Saturday night in the local cocktail bar having shots.

Apparently it's despicable that an educator of her child would behave in such a way and lead such a terrible example to pupils - as it turns out, her underage DD was with her (must have been at 11pm IIRC) in the adults-only pub and was 'appalled' at Miss Pantaloons' behaviour

Thankfully my Head is normal and we just laughed our heads off about it. these complaints happen very frequently. A colleague once got a complaint because she was seen with penis paraphernalia in town on her hen do. I think some people think teachers are just robots that turn off at 4pm and have to stay in the classroom over the weekend.

What's the most amusing complaint you've ever got at work?

I work in customer service for a book box subscription company. A customer recently complained that the last three books we had included in our boxes were about affairs. His wife has been deeply affected by an affair within the family, and apparently the choice of books was not only incredibly offensive but had caused immense hurt and distress, and how were we going to rectify this?

I was so tempted to tell him maybe he just should stop cheating on his wife.....

Also a teacher!
Parent complained to the head because apparently I personally have lost 3 of their child's cardigans? They were not named, said child has no concept of being responsible for their belongings and I have a class of 30 children with the exact same uniform. Yes... it's totally my fault! 🙈

Working Front of House. Woman complained because there were mushrooms, in her mushroom risotto. She "thought it would be mushroom flavoured, not have actual mushrooms in it". Took it back to the kitchen, chef picked the mushrooms out and sent it back to her 🙈

Also appear to have a problem with my face.

Was told it is too animated and that I needed to work on more bland facial expressions....

I had no idea what to do with that....

I work at a GP practice, a patient came in demanding an urgent on the day appointment to find out his test results, he made a formal complaint that I wouldn't give him an urgent appointment (we had none left) as his results were from 13 months ago!

Customer complained that he’d received no correspondence advising him that we now had the parts in stock to carry out a repair, this is a claim submitted back in March.

I forwarded a copy of an email which I sent to him in May, which advised him that we now had the parts in stock. I asked if he could perhaps verify that we had the correct email for him on file, which of course it was as he replied to the forwarded email!

He suggested that I double check when a customer has not replied, I explained that we send out multiple emails everyday, dealing with dozens of customers and that this wasn’t possible.

So instead of picking up the phone, he left it 7 months before booking in for something else and then complaining about the outstanding part of which HE HAD been contacted about!

Another customer never bothered turning up for his appointment and then asked us why we hadn’t called him to ask why, then he would have known to remember!

I work in a school and parents are utterly ridiculous. We had a formal complaint by a parent who was update that her dairy free child had no dairy free options on the school dinner menu. We hadn’t been told he was dairy free. He’d been diagnosed in the holidays, and we had no idea. Not good enough though apparently. That reminds me, I must book on that mind reading CPD course…!

My partners a teacher and yesterday received a complaint that their child couldn’t attend an after school club due to them doing something outside of school that evening. They demanded it got moved to another night because that suited them better! Sod all the other kids and teachers schedules! Some people are batshit!

@Hardbackwriter

I used to teach a university undergraduate module called 'Politics and religion in [time and place]'. A student complained in the end of module feedback that they hadn't realised the course would be about religion and that they didn't like that.

Another student for a different module wrote on the feedback form that I should wear more brightly colored clothes, which wasn't exactly a complaint but annoyed me greatly. I knew which student it was because she'd already offered this feedback in person!

Similar here - I worked as an English language assistant in a school in Quebec and a student wrote on a feedback form that I shouldn't wear brown dress and tights combo. I was going for a retro look and thought I looked pretty stylish, but still remember the massive dent to my confidence thanks to the 11-year-old fashion police.

Tourists asked if there was air conditioning at The Globe, lucky to get it in a modern theatre they were told, though to be fair in summer we get a lot of fainters

I love this post! Making me feel so much better!
I had one last week from a client complaining that my member of staff (clinician in private health care) had sorted their problem effectively, was a lovely person and that the clinic location, presentation and parking availability were fantastic. But was unhappy with the price as they hadn’t checked it when booking. Bit of back and forth emailing and they ended up saying they completely understood the pricing structure as it is the same at the physio they use…but had they have known that they wouldn’t have booked to get their problem sorted 🙄

I work in a school & encounter some lovely but also very demanding parents.

One Christmas a father called to tell me that I should tell his ex wife & child's mother that she mustn't cook Christmas dinner for their child on Christmas Day as he wanted to take her to MacDonald's as a treat. I was speechless.

School starts at 8.50 am. Any late children have to be signed in by their parents at the office.
One morning a parent threw a complete hissy fit because they had arrived at 9am and there was a queue.

One of my former nursing colleagues was hauled over the coals after a relative complained that she had sworn at her father. English wasn’t their first language, but simple explanations seemed to do the trick. My colleague was horrified at the accusation, but eventually realised that when the man had asked her what the medicine was for, she had replied ‘For cough’.

My Manager was in a meeting with various partnership organisations, it was agreed that a planning meeting with the involved people from all the organisations involved was needed, not just the managers.
My manager was tasked with arranging the meeting and sent an invite to the meeting to everyone. A manager from another organisation sent a reply requested that she recalled the email as he didn’t want his team receiving unsolicited emails and he cancelled the meeting.
It turned out that he hadn’t had time to discuss it with his team as he had forgotten about it.

I worked in the returns department at a furniture supplier, we had one fancy metal bistro set returned via Littlewoods catalogue as it was 1cm taller than advertised 😐

@2Two

I once had the answer book to our Maths text book nicked by one of the local scallies, I knew he'd taken it because a) he started doing homework for the first time and b) his homework included answers like '12.5cm, accept +/- 0.3cm'.

Reminds me of when we had a physics text book with answers at the back. We used to go through all sorts of manipulations to get an answer that matched. One day I'd left my homework so late that I just rushed through applying what I hoped was the correct method and then just left my answers even though they were apparently wrong according to the textbook - I thought I'd get into less trouble for getting them wrong than for not doing it at all.

Turned out something had gone wrong with the printing of the answers for that exercise and I got totally undeserved credit for being the only one in the class who got them all right. My classmates were thoroughly pissed off with me, and I couldn't help feeling that they had a right to be.

Why? What right do they have to be annoyed when you did the work and they cheated ?

@SpiderinaWingMirror

I had forgotten youngest DDs classmate. Parents had said they did not want children to attend any religious elements of assembly or have religious instruction. Then not happy that they were not included in the Nativity Play that the infants put on ( and had done for generations). Head said " you either are happy with religious education or not, you can't pick and choose" They were outraged.

Similar scenario when I was a TA. We had a pupil with extreme behaviour problems but the parents weren’t interested in and were in fact quite anti any offer of support or intervention as they were adamant they didn’t want their child labelled as SEN.

Absolutely fine and their choice, until there was a school trip that involved using public transport. This child clearly needed one to one supervision as they were liable to either run off or be completely non compliant so the school informed the parents that unless one of them accompanied the pupil, the potential risk was too high and the child would not be able to go.

The parents kicked off hugely and informed the school that to exclude a child ‘with SEN’ from a school trip was discriminatory and threatened legal action!

@peaceanddove

A new graduate started work at DH's company. Everything was fine from Monday through to Thursday but she failed to show on the Friday. No word from her, nothing. She also failed to show the following Monday with again no communication. She did turn up on the Tuesday and breezily announced she'd been away at Glastonbury. No apologies, nothing. She was told her behaviour was totally unacceptable and given a formal warning. The next day the girl didn't come to work, but her Mum stormed into the offices absolutely raging that her precious snowflake had been treated so horribly, and that we needed to understand how much her DD loved going to Glastonbury. DH tersely pointed out that her DD needed to understand his company's policy on unauthorized leave.

That is my all time biggest 🤬

I wouldn't sell their 17 year old alcohol even though "he's 18 next week."

I also ruined Christmas by closing the shop on time and refusing to let someone in 5 minutes later. We closed at 8pm on Christmas Eve.

Ah the thread for me.
I was once chastised by a total nob head of a headteacher because I came into the office of school after a family visit with a hot chocolate in a McDonald’s cup. I had been rushed off my feet all morning and hadn’t had anything to eat or drink and had appointments in the afternoon. Apparently this was setting a bad healthy eating example. Same school got kids to hand out donuts on a Friday to all the office staff. Double standards much.
This head also pulled me up because apparently I was witnessed leaning over the filing cupboard and the line of my underwear became visible. I was pregnant at the time so not like I was walking about in crop tops and low slung jeans ffs. He specified it was a G string which seemed to be a worse offence than had I had different kind of pants on.

I work in HR and often have employees complain to me that we’ve ‘taken money from them’. It’s tax and NI, apparently a lot of people don’t actually realise they have to pay it. It mainly the new graduates, but even some of the more experienced staff forget that they have to pay tax on bonuses!

Oh underage alcohol.....LOADS of those!

So yes a pub can sell a standard pint of lager/beer/cider with a meal to a 16 year old. However.....

That 16 year old still needs to show ID.....no madam the photo on your DD's 16th birthday cake does not qualify as ID.

Any pub can refuse to sell alcohol for any reason to anyone. "The management reserves the right to refuse service for any reason ...blah blah" so just because the law says we can doesnt mean that we have to. Find the relevant legislation on your phone and sticking it in my face doesnt not change the fact that our chain has a policy of no alcohol for anyone under 18, meal or no meal.

Buying a bottle of wine and giving her a glass because "its her right" will get you warned and then when you ignore the warning and give her another it will result in me refusing to sell any more alcohol to your table. When we call me the "Fat fucking cunt who is ruining our kids birthday" your orders will be cancelled and you will be escorted from the premises and barred, including pub watch. Was an absolute treat when they found that out!

It is NOT my fault that, even though I am sure you are 18, you are under 25 so I have to card you and you have forgotten your ID. Dont call me names, dont swear and dont say that it is fucking ridiculous as you are "obviously" 18 when the bum fluff you call a beard wouldnt worry a peach.

My sister used to work in customer service and some of her stories used to have me absolutely howling. I can't remember them all, but my absolute favourite was someone emailing them wanting to get a refund on a set of oil paints that she had never used. And bought over a decade ago. From a totally different retailer. In a different country. She just assumed that she could because the company sold paints, they would refund for paint of any kind

I've reported this thread! Because I want it to go in Classics

Back when I was a very junior doctor I found a very angry family all complaining about me on the ward - apparently I had told them their relative was dying in a callous manner in the corridor.

I and the ward sister were baffled as the patient was quite well and ready to go home the following day.

Eventually we figured out a relative had stopped me in the corridor, asked me how the patient was, and I'd said 'he's OK, he should be going tomorrow'

Going HOME, FFS, home. Not out in a box.