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?

Retired infant teacher here, the many complaints I’ve received include -
Being personally responsible for the distribution of nits
Losing items of clothing
Allowing cuffs on jumpers to be chewed
Upsetting children by trying to persuade them not to chew the cuffs of their jumpers
Telling children to put a coat on to go out to play in the rain
Letting children play out in the cold/ rain / snow/ heat
Not letting children go out in the cold / rain / snow /heat
Not choosing their child to play Mary
Giving children spare clothing to wear when they’ve had an accident ( clothing was “ secondhand” and unacceptable)

And from the Head after a letter observation in Reception - not happy with my lesson as I didn’t ask the children what they could to get better at what they were doing. They were playing in the sand tray.

@slashlover

Once had a woman return a Christmas tree to a shop I was working at for an exchange as the first one reminded her of her dead husband.

I currently work in a charity shop, we had to start a policy that Christmas trees/ornaments/etc. could not be returned after Christmas Day. The number of people who bought a second hand tree (£5 or so when the original price was £50) and then tried to return it in January was shocking.

Wonder if you could get away with pretending they were donating it back, 'oh how lovely of you to bring it back as a donation. What a lovely thing to do....'

Regular customer (always pleasant) in a high street clothing store - she had bought two identical style Xmas jumpers for her grandchildren, but returned them saying she needed to exchange them for larger sizes.
Unfortunately we had no larger sizes as she already had the largest in the children’s range.
We of course offered a refund but she wouldn’t accept it. She wanted the same jumpers in larger sizes. We explained again.
No good.
She repeated that she wanted the same but larger etc.
Nice manager joined in and gave same explanation. Nope.
She wanted THE SAME JUMPERS BUT IN LARGER… etc etc
We retreated defeated but she stood in the shop repeating this for two hours.
As she was normally perfectly reasonable we didn’t know what to do.

My manager one day told me that one of the clerks/ushers had reported me for inappropriately dressed for court because the (black and professional) wrap top I wore meant that she was concerned that the judges would be distracted during court staring down onto my boobs 😂 we had a good laugh over that …

Oh I had this once. It was another one of the women I worked with that had a massive problem with the younger women that worked there. I was wearing a completely appropriate but V-necked top of some description and trousers, but my breasts were a HUGE distraction. I mean, yes I have huge boobs. But no I'm not going to wear unflattering outfits to assuage her insecurities.

(I know it was her as she had made similar complaints about others in the office. My manager was completely professional and didn't tell me!)

I worked in a Land Rover dealership for a few years. The clientele was sometimes eccentric…. one woman was bewildered and then annoyed that I was unsure of the merits of a Toyota Corolla and therefore couldn’t join her in reminiscing about her beloved first car

A woman brought one earring back to the small shop I worked in and complained that she'd lost the other.

She wanted a refund.

I was but the manager gave her the refund.

They weren't broken or faulty...so nothing wrong with the mechanism at all. She said they were too light and the hook had just 'flown' out of her ear.

@Bobsyer

My manager one day told me that one of the clerks/ushers had reported me for inappropriately dressed for court because the (black and professional) wrap top I wore meant that she was concerned that the judges would be distracted during court staring down onto my boobs 😂 we had a good laugh over that …

Oh I had this once. It was another one of the women I worked with that had a massive problem with the younger women that worked there. I was wearing a completely appropriate but V-necked top of some description and trousers, but my breasts were a HUGE distraction. I mean, yes I have huge boobs. But no I'm not going to wear unflattering outfits to assuage her insecurities.

(I know it was her as she had made similar complaints about others in the office. My manager was completely professional and didn't tell me!)

I don't think bare cleavage belongs in an office. It just doesn't.

Wonder if you could get away with pretending they were donating it back, 'oh how lovely of you to bring it back as a donation. What a lovely thing to do....'

We don't accept donations of trees/Christmas stuff in January because we have nowhere to keep it for 11 months and it ends up in our bin. We usually get donations of Halloween stuff in November too, outfits we can keep as they're small, bulk decorations...no.

@HarebrightCedarmoon

Heh. Reminds me of when I was age 6 or so and newly into Y1. I wrote a poem about an ermine stoat (largely plagiarised from my animal poems and stories book, no doubt) and got a ? after the word "ermine". Basically ended up teaching my teacher what it means.

Oh this reminds me of a good one from my school days. A2 level history, can’t remember what module it was but I’d written a mock essay and used the phrase “political vacuum” in it. All well and good, it made sense and was relevant to the question…

So I thought. Until our new history teacher scored it out and wrote “vacum” beside it. I didn’t know what was worse- the fact she’d corrected my correctly spelt word for her incorrectly spelt one with such confidence or the fact she’d spent the entire year making our class hate her as she wouldn’t stop bleating on about her old school she taught at.

My school was a grammar, her old school was a grammar which was one of the top 5 in the country. She often regaled our class in how superior and intelligent the students were.

That very may well have been true but, please. If you want to act high and mighty maybe do some due diligence before making an arse of yourself. The woman also couldn’t use ellipsis, either. So, so many written feedback comments with “……….” in the middle of a sentence.

I don’t expect teachers to be perfect, but if you want to destroy the confidence of a class with shitty remarks and correct them for things that are indeed correct, you better make sure you’re pretty damn perfect yourself.

She no longer teaches at my old school. Lasted about 2 years after I left for uni. Wasn’t surprised.

@Thewiseoneincognito

Having worked in retail I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stood and heard a typical ‘get me the manager’ type loon moaning on and on about the most ridiculous things. I always smirked at the ‘I’m going to trading standards’ line they usually spout when things don’t go their way. Ok Hun, good luck with that now piss off, Next!

Oh they do go to Trading Standards. They most certainly do. I was a consumer advice officer for trading standards for eight years. Have quite literally heard it all.

Always a favourite (not actually) were those complaining about porn. Usually older men. The women weren’t attractive enough/the videos weren’t long enough/didn’t make me come.

There was also a couple complaining about their landlord after they’d opened and played a dvd that was delivered to the house to find a home video of the landlord and his wife having sex on the couch in their house. Including watersports. The rental was furnished. With the sofa.

Also, a few from my nightclub days. I think I’ve blocked most of them out but the few I’ll never forget-

• a man was annoyed at me because I wouldn’t go outside and “have sex in [his] van”
• a man was annoyed at me because I wouldn’t give him my number. He’d went to the club about 6 weeks in a row, on his own, to ask me for my number and when I finished. I kept telling him a stupid time like 6am (I finished at 3am) so I didn’t have to deal with him because I was certain he’d be the type to actually turn up and wait
• a man was annoyed with me that he couldn’t check his coat into the cloakroom at 8.30 when the doors were at 6.00. He didn’t understand the concept that the gig was sold out and everyone else turned up nearly two hours prior so all the coat hangers were full. He went on to insult my age, my education level and my sex (he seemed to think I was a barely 18 silly little female drop out but I assured him I was actually in my early twenties and a graduate from a Russell Group university). I made sure I ran my mop over his coat when doing floor spill duties as he had it stuffed between his feet on the floor. It would be a shame in the watered down bleach from the mop water and sticky alcohol ruined it. Poor soul.
• people were annoyed when I got them chucked out for groping me
• people were annoyed when I got them chucked out for smuggling drugs/their own alcohol into the venue

And finally, a girl I went to uni with started in this club after me. I’d been there a while and she was obviously new. She got sacked within a few weeks and never spoke to me again. Deleted me off social media, the lot. I assume she was annoyed I didn’t fight her corner.

She genuinely thought you threw out glass pint glasses after every use. She was asked to mop the area in front of the bar- she lifted the mop up to mop the bar top. She mopped up vomit and then continued to use said vomit covered mop on the floor, spreading it.

I’m sorry, but I cannot defend someone who has so little common sense.

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.

To be fair to them, if somebody has compromised enough mental health, it could manifest in any way. Most of us would sigh or grumble if we couldn't get online, but if you have rock-bottom self-esteem connected with poor MH - possibly coupled with hearing voices in your head - anything like not being able to get on SM, in touch with others and or gain validation could tip somebody over the edge.

Even if they suspected you were 99.9% being flippant or just harmlessly 'nuts', they would never want to take the risk of having fobbed off somebody apparently threatening to kill themselves and it coming back on them (and they might actually have a little humanity on top of that).

It's a bit like when you get the 'jokers' at the airport who say "Ooops, careful you don't set off the bomb in that case!!!!!!!!" with a ridiculously exaggerated chuckle - and then are horribly offended at the 'humourless jobsworths' who call the police and subject them to unpleasant searches and massive delays or denial of travel. If they're the 1 in a million who actually did have a bomb in there - and they admitted it to you in plain sight, but you ignored it and waved them through as 'a bit of a wag'.... how would you ever live with the potential aftermath, much less ever work in that industry again?

I went to a summer party years ago, younger staff members arrived drunk with bottles of spirits hidden in pockets. They behaved badly. My sell f and other managers were halled up at work for not managing them. Never bothered with any work socialising afterwards and left as fast as I could. Apparently should have acted as bouncer. F that.

This is a fantastic thread, by the way!

Worked in a hotel cafe. Customer complained his latte (served in clear glass latte cup) did not have 3 distinct layers 🙄

Many years ago now, long before all the manifold educational recording and reporting programmes that exist now, DH, an IT whiz, created a wonderful system to keep parents informed of their children's progress. After every major common test in my department (I was HOD), the parents received a bar graphed sheet, with the child's result over various skills assessed, a comparison with the others in the set, and with the year group, all colour-coded. It was so easy to create a visual record of how the child was doing in each skill area, and a huge encouragement for them to work hard on upgrading their skills. The parents and kids were over the moon. The Head told me that I couldn't use it, as it made the "rest of them look like fossils". Rather than rolling it out across the whole school, it was better to prevent me from using it. It was a private school, and DH was prepared to do all the data gathering and processing for free. (Shakes head - as opposed to Head).

Customer summoned the manager to complain that the 11th century castle didn't have a lift!

@msgreen

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

You alright hun?

I had a complaint from my boss at work and he wanted me to get some new shoes instead of boots as he said they would cause more wear and tear. I wear boots as my ankles are screwed and have a lot of falls because of it and they help prevent it with the ankle support, he knew this. Anyway, I got the cheapest thing I could to keep him happy that I could slip on and off when I got there making it easier to put my actual shoes on and off before and after shift. Didn't see the point in spending a fortune on something that would be unsuitable eitherway. They cost £6, wore them a couple of days and then he said doesn't matter you can wear the others. I just wasted £6 on a pair of shoes that I would never wear, they went straight to charity shop, for a stupid reason that made no sense and could possibly lead to time off work as on my feet and had to be fast and very likely to have more falls and more injuries without the ankle support. I know £6 doesn't sound a lot but at the time it was for me.

"You are breathing too loudly" ..... yep, for real. She was a female partner in a City law firm (and a psycho, obvs) and she was trying to focus on a piece of work. I was - breathing normally.

A former boss who was actually usually really nice said my voice wasn’t manly enough he feared it might hold me back 😁.

@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?

Well I do think teachers need to set an example. It’s ok to drink but to be off your face drunk is another thing altogether. My husband is a teacher and two of his colleagues out so drunk on a night out they fell over a sleeping baby. Another fell down the stairs at a residential when she was responsible for other people’s kids....

Hmm about the retail ones. I treated myself to some very expensive boots in my twenties. I literally wore them twice and they fell apart. I politely took them back and the manager was horrible to me really aggressive.

Being drunk on a residential is completely different to being drunk on your own time! Drunk on a residential is negligent and irresponsible and falls far short of professional standards. Getting pissed on your own time and making a tit of yourself…. Embarrassing but Completely different!

Not a work complaint but a neighbour
I didn’t know her but she complained about my security light keeping her awake
When I asked her where she lived so I could adjust the light she refused to tell me saying that it wasn’t relevant where she lived