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Ridiculous work complaints - tell me yours!

522 replies

YourFinestPantaloons · 04/10/2021 12:59

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 GrinGrin

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?

OP posts:
fucknuckle · 05/10/2021 20:50

@FuzzyPuffling

"Please can you sellotape more quietly?"
i may have been the one said this to you if you worked in my team a few years ago. i’m so sorry!!
LadyWithLapdog · 05/10/2021 20:51

A client complained I offered her a sweet. I’d gone to collect something from the printer for her (in the old days when we didn’t all have a printer on our desk) and the sweets were in this communal area, by the printer. No, I didn’t come back sucking on one, just picked up 2 and offered her one. Written complaint.

BecauseMyRingBurnsSheila · 05/10/2021 20:52

My cousin is a lawyer. She had a complaint from her boss that the advice she was giving didn't suit him or the client. He wanted her to give different (illegal) advice to the client. She refused in front of the client and was sacked.

Needless to say she won that tribunal and a hefty payout. But what a muppet sacking a clearly very good lawyer for not doing something illegal. We weren't sorry when he had to sell his flashy car to pay her off.

Fedupofmagic · 05/10/2021 21:05

I got accused of moving an entire station overnight.

Customer was convinced that the night before he had travelled directly from station A to station B.

Station A and station B are on totally different lines, always have been, and there's no direct link between them.

He wasn't having it. I (personally) had apparently rearranged the tube map overnight just to make him look an idiot in front of his new girlfriend.

My supervisor had a good laugh over that one.

JakeyRolling · 05/10/2021 21:09

The most common complaint is people outraged that they actually have to pay for the service we provide.

TheSunIsStillShining · 05/10/2021 21:17

Finally found a petrol station that had fuel and a shorter queue than the others around us last Friday.
There is a limit of max £35 worth of petrol. Finally my turn, filled up my car for petrol worth £21. As I was closing the cap the guy behind me in the queue got out of his car and started yelling at me that because of people like me we are running out of fuel (only topping up a little bit at a time) and how he can't get enough fuel because of me and on and on. In my face. I'm petite and he was not. Other customers were gathering around as he was working himself into a proper rage.
The only problem was: I own a Smart. for £22 I actually filled my full tank from totally empty. Where it became truly funny: he didn't believe me that my glorified backpack literally cannot hold more fuel! I was lying and it has a capacity to be filled for at least £60 worth! :)
He wanted to prove how I'm a lying bitch by putting more into it, but at that point I did promise to call the police if he touches me or my car. And reminded him of the CCTV and went into the shop to pay.
Even as I was driving off he was still yelling that this whole fuel thing was because of me. Yeah, sure....

On some level I still find it funny how someone has no grasp of reality even if they are staring at it....

Topazmumma · 05/10/2021 21:28

When I worked in a well known High Street catalogue store, a customer phoned the store to ask if the 50m hose would be long enough for her garden, or would the 25m one be long enough 🤔 thinking I was being planked, I asked her how long her garden was. She wasn't sure, but couldn't understand how I couldn't offer her more advice!
She then queried the price, as I told her it was on offer at £5 less than in said catalogue. She argued it was still showing the original price in HER catalogue... I'm not sure how she thought we changed EVERY catalogue in every home in the country.

msgreen · 05/10/2021 21:38

Really WTF is wrong with everyone drinking shots its crazy,
just not something we want to encourage anyone to to do
its a just so damaging for the body .Its
no wonder we have a teen drinking culture nightmare , the clubs in
our city have an SOS bus to to take kids to hospital ,or try to clean them up after they have helped scraped them off the pavement covered in vomit etc. We should be setting an example as parents and educators
Excess drinking is a bigger health crisis than covid open your mind

Topazmumma · 05/10/2021 21:41

*Pranked, not planked

ElectriciansMate · 05/10/2021 21:49

When I worked at a gp surgery, a patient cancelled her appointment. I gave her slot to another patient who’d walked in from the street. And got a serious telling off from the gp for being “too kind” to the patients!

WiddlinDiddlin · 05/10/2021 21:56

Starting from the very beginning..

Washing up/general skivvy in a pub that had a lot of OAP's bussed in on weekdays for lunch.

Lunch service started at 12. We closed at 3.30pm. Food stopped at 2.45.

At 3.20pm, I am the only one left in the kitchen, everyone else has naffed off home except the barman who is mysteriously AWOL... there is a banging on the kitchen door.

I get berated by two old ladies, who arrived at bang on 12 and have been steadily eating their way through their meal since approx 12.25, with at least three refills of roasties and veg (we did free top ups of 'all the trimmings' hence being so popular).

They are very angry because all the staff have vanished and the barman has told them we are closing and how DARE I..yes, me, the pot washer, stop serving them food when they still have room for more. AND what was more.. we'd made them feel TERRIBLY unwelcome for turning some of the lights off (in the areas that were now empty of people, not where they were nor their route to the exit!)

I dunno what the problem was, the rest of their gang were making their way back to the bus, so I don't to this day understand what they thought they were going to do, stay til evening opening hours and get a cab?

I invited them into the kitchen and offered them anything they could find in there to eat, there was nothing and apparently this also was RUDE and they'd tell my manager (good luck she went home hours ago!).

They left when the bus driver came back in to fetch them, and then the bar man reappeared giggling nervously. I wasn't best pleased!

Many years later... some of my first ever dog training classes.

Week three of puppy class, the owners of a gorgeous but very whizzy busy little breed stayed back to complain...

They'd followed all the advice to get their puppy to listen, stop biting, stop tripping up the kids etc etc... and now whenever they said his name or entered a room, he would...

Run up and sit smartly and wait for an instruction.

This was apparently terrible. I never did find out why!

Shehasadiamondinthesky · 05/10/2021 22:00

The opposite really, my internet provider told me it would be two weeks before I would be connected and although I thought that wouldn't exactly be convenient for me I jokingly said - I'll have to kill myself if I can't post cat pictures on facebook.
I really was just joking - he didn't laugh he called his manager and it all went nuts from there, they kept ringing me to check I was ok - they arranged for it to be connected the next day and gave me the managers number to ring at any time.
It made me think - do they have lots of cistomers who kill themselves when they can't get onto the internet or did they think I was completely nuts? It all just seems totally bizarre to me even now 2 years later.

Ohdoleavemealone · 05/10/2021 22:00

Customer RANG us to complain that she couldn't find our number to ring us Confused

Hippee · 05/10/2021 22:01

lockdownmadnessdotcom - the Parkrun thing is because your barcode also has your in case of emergency number - so if you keel over, they can call someone. If people know that you can just be looked up (or have a photo of the barcode on their locked phone) they won't have that information with them.

Hippee · 05/10/2021 22:04

My old boss was called by a colleague's union because "he had been unsympathetic in her bereavement" - said colleague hadn't mentioned to the union that it was a pet that had died. Boss had been sympathetic - just hadn't offered her compassionate leave.

GremlinDolphin4 · 05/10/2021 22:16

I do exactly the same job as someone else ie when I’m at work she’s not and vice versa. Although because of the nature of what we do the job isn’t strictly a job share, there are things which make the job easier and more efficient if handed over.

When I first started I was surprised that there is no handover book or similar and used to leave little notes for example letting her know I’d reported a printer not working and someone was coming to fix it on Thursday (when she was working) etc etc. I got no replies until she sent a very rude email telling me to stop telling her how to do her job! On the rare occasions I see her she literally ignores me and she never responds to anything I ask. I absolutely love what I do but it is mad that we have absolutely no contact and that she means about any we do have!

cricketmum84 · 05/10/2021 22:20

@WhyOhWhyOhWhyyyy

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!
Yes this drives me mad!

I have been a payroll manager for 16 years and have a great business plan that at some point I will set up a consultancy service visiting high schools, colleges and universities explaining tax, NI, pensions and payslips before they are set free into the big wide world of work!!

Camblewick · 05/10/2021 22:25

Another teacher here. A parent complained that I wore too much green (I do wear a lot of green) and it was upsetting her daughter as she didn't like the colour. This was at a parent's night.

tankcrossing · 05/10/2021 22:31

I had a customer ask me what size curtains he needed for his lounge window. When I asked him how big the window was he showed me a photo of his window on his phone.

Apparently I should know how big this was by looking at his picture.

TSSDNCOP · 05/10/2021 22:40

@cricketmum84 do it.

RosesAndHellebores · 05/10/2021 22:46

@cricketmum84 yes, specially designed for those with PhDs please Grin

Originalmumster · 05/10/2021 22:46

I worked in a pharmacy in a forces family medical centre and a woman came in saying the tablets we’d issued for her sons asthma weren’t working at all and he’d got worse .Asked to see the tablets and they were suppositories clearly marked with instructions and Not for Oral Use. She’d been forcing the poor child to swallow them even though they made him gag

LouH1981 · 05/10/2021 22:51

Back in the day, I used to work on the Entertainment counter at Woolies. It was Christmas Eve and absolute bedlam. Instead of using the real DVD’s like they do now, Woolies used to use fake display cases and we’d swap it for a real copy behind the till.
A chap (who admittedly had being queuing for ages) brought a GTA Vice City case to us and I had to break it to him that we’d sold out of them. He went absolutely barmy, calling me every name under the sun etc. Until I calmly showed him the HUGE out of stock sticker that had been placed across the display case.
Since becoming a parent I do now understand his pain and in fairness to him he came a few minutes later to apologise.

TheLittleRedToothbrush · 05/10/2021 22:55

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TheSunIsStillShining · 05/10/2021 23:05

Got an email today from Project management office (pmo) head to stop email bombing everyone on the project.
My direct PM pointed out to him that I only sent the meeting agenda notes to the people who will be attending the workshop tomorrow. And yes, that will be 90% of ppl working on the project.

In the same email pmo head told me off for not adding the agenda to the meeting invite. Which he sent out, not me.
And I sent it to him on Friday asking for it to be included in the invite.

And I have yet to point out that there are issues in the project plan made by him: we have multiple deadlines on dec 23, 24, 25, 26.
Yeah, sure. Stahanov, here we come ....

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