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Original poster

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:
marionsfave · 04/10/2021 14:59

Not in my job as such. I owned a rental flat and my tenant was getting electric shocks through the tap. He rang the electric company who isolated the issue to the flat below. The residents of that flat were out so for safety, they cut her meter off and asked her to call them.

Instead she went to the local police station whereupon the police rang me on the number my tenant provided to ask me to switch her electricity back on as she had kids. I asked the police officer how he thought I could do that given I'm not the electricity company not the owner of her flat. I suggested it was easily fixed by her calling the electricity company. I could hear her ranting. Likely she didn't want to call them as electric shocks are a sign a meter has been tampered with.

MarshmallowSwede · 04/10/2021 15:00

I worked at a cinema as a teen and was told were too many seats in the cinema and that we needed to remove some.

ImSoMagical · 04/10/2021 15:01

I worked for national rail enquiries and took a call from a guy demanding I offer him alternatives for his planned journey which was cancelled, I couldn't so he called me an f*ing thick bitch and was putting in a complaint. It was 2005 and the morning of the July bombings on the underground.

Councilworker · 04/10/2021 15:02

I used to work in a complaints department. Someone once rang to complain they had bought some fish and they didn't like it and thought it might be off. Another person rang to complain they had bought a conservatory and it leaked.
Which are no doubt valid complaints but I work for the Council!! The fish person didn't want to involve trading standards or enviro health. They felt that as the fish shop paid business rates to the Council we had a duty to ensure they sold quality fish

The conservatory man was not happy that the Trade Association for conservatory fitters had not been able to help him and wanted to Council to deal with the Trade Association. When I asked how he yelled "Just sort it out" then hung up.
The strangest was also working for the Council complaints when a woman rang to say a pharmacy assistant had told her to go to the back of the queue. Apparently the assistant was quite brusque and this could have given the woman a heart attack if she had a weak heart which she didn't. I explained this was the council and what was she hoping the Council could do. She wanted me to confirm it was indeed a real chemist and not a fake one that had been set up....ah the general public

SapphireSeptember · 04/10/2021 15:04

I had loads when I worked in a supermarket cafe! Like a cappuccino being too frothy, but a latte wasn't frothy enough. Or ordering a macchiato and expecting a big mug, like in Starbucks, although one bloke got arsey with me explaining it to him, (because we'd all got so sick of people moaning about them, we started telling people what they are!) He then got arsey with me because we stopped selling them. (Oh dear.)

sixswans · 04/10/2021 15:07

I had a client last week who was furious that I wouldn't sign his dog's EU pet passport, what with , you know, us not being in the EU anymore (Brexit deal all my fault).

Hoppinggreen · 04/10/2021 15:07

I worked as a holiday rep once.
Feedback forms would usually be given by the reps on the coach to the airport for the guests homeward journeys. We usually binned them to be honest.
However, one of mine was kept and heavily circulated to give everyone a laugh - apparently I “might be frightening for old people”
No idea how or why

immersivereader · 04/10/2021 15:07

I remember years ago being asked to sign a petition demanding my DD’s teacher be sacked as she had been seen drinking cider at our village’s firework night party.

^

Grin😅

Mummapenguin20 · 04/10/2021 15:09

Some of these

TartanJumper · 04/10/2021 15:09

I worked in a local council department when I was mid 20s. On reception. Someone came in with their three kids, fine, not a problem. Their query took quite some time, so they were there for a few hours. Kids were well behaved, again no issue.
A week later she wrote a letter complaining we didn't provide her children with food while they were there.
Bizarre!

wigglerose · 04/10/2021 15:11

I used to work as a translator. I once was asked to translate a piece of text that had been translated from English to Arabic back into English for reasons too boring to go into. The text was exactly the same. No changes, spin, extra info, paragraphs missing etc. So I just translated it and lo and behold it was the same as the original English.
The client complained that it was exactly the same as the original English text.

Yeeeeeeeees? And?

regthetabbycat · 04/10/2021 15:12

I work in a beachside shop. A woman complained that there was 'no beach' and she'd seen photos of a beach so we obviously got visitors there under false pretences.

Explaining that the tide was in made no difference. And it was all my fault.

Rockmehardplace · 04/10/2021 15:13

I took a phone call in the council housing office complaining that “the seagulls outside were noisy”.

Becca19962014 · 04/10/2021 15:14

When I worked in a huge library someone complained that the book, they picked up to check out, wasn't good enough.

Another complained that I didn't know the book they meant when they said "the red one by what's-his-name on thingy", massive academic library. Zero chance of anyone finding that.

Both times my manager, who was a bit of a nightmare, made it a formal investigation.

WeAllHaveWings · 04/10/2021 15:14

I once worked in IT in a production site. Got a call one day from a team leader to say the PC in the control room wasn't working.

Asked him questions and he confirmed screen was blank and power light wasn't on.

Asked him if it was switched on and he said no. eh...... can you switch it on then? Answer was - No I can't, I don't have time to switch it on, who switched off? Can you send someone up to switch it on? How do I find out who switched it off?

He actually complained because I couldn't tell him who switched off the screen and I never sent someone up to switch on.

wigglerose · 04/10/2021 15:15

I have another one! I used to work in a language school on reception in the summer holidays. Students were often housed with host families. Students were also given feedback forms to fill in.
One student complained the stairs to their room was too narrow to get their suitcase up.

KaptainKaveman · 04/10/2021 15:17

One of my (male) students' mum once complained that I was too young looking for a teacher and her poor ds found it 'confusing'. Clearly they wanted me to look like some ageing 25 stone Trunchbull type Hmm

lockdownmadnessdotcom · 04/10/2021 15:21

@JustAnother30Something

Customer complained she was being unfairly penalised for choosing to pay her bill via cheque.

She wasn't, cheque payment is fine. But if you're not going to post the cheque until the bill due date - its going to be paid late. Which comes with a fee 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

To be fair, it's very hard to post a cheque before the bill due date. I found this a real pain when I was dealing with my father's affairs as he'd refused to move his bills to DD. Admittedly there was a slight delay with the post redirection, but generally letters only arrived one day later.

But lets say the bill was dated 1st October. It wouldn't be sent out until 4th. Second class. So at least two days. Then it would take the extra day so it wouldn't arrive with me until 7th, depending on whether there was a weekend inbetween. And it would be due on 10th! So there would be little or no time to pay it on time.

When I worked in a library we used to insist that borrowers had their library cards with them (even though we could look them up quite easily). We got a few complaints about that. It's similar to parkrun where you have to have a physical barcode even though you could show it on your phone. But them's the rules.

Couchbettato · 04/10/2021 15:25

Worked in a call centre for a phone company. Had a customer call to say we needed to let him out of his contract without any termination fees.

When I asked why, he said he got a phone off of us, didn't like it, went into store and they said as it was an online purchase he needed to call us.

He threatened to bomb the shop and then walked out.

Shortly after the police turned up at his house, found out he was growing cannabis and confiscated it.

The customer said that seen as we've ruined his income, we need to let him out of contract without any penalties and if we didn't he'd be raising it with the ombudsman.

Charmatt · 04/10/2021 15:25

I give procedural advice to school governors. One governor took exception because I explained that it wasn't possible to change rules on Admission to give governors children priority over other children and that the LA had a a standard Admissions policy. Her answer to me was that I was 'eminently efficient but with no fluffy edges!'

I bought a fluffy cardigan to wear for their next meeting - the chair knew what I had done and thought it very funny!

StarCourt · 04/10/2021 15:27

@Hoppinggreen was also a rep. Some of the comments on CSQ's!!

smoshbambi · 04/10/2021 15:27

A long time ago we had a complaint from a very angry lady who said her expensive face cream hadn’t made one bit of difference to her face. She was very upset. It was face cream in those little capsules, and it turned out she had swallowed them instead of opening them up and put the cream on her actual face.

smoshbambi · 04/10/2021 15:28

@Charmatt hahaaaha 😂

terrywynne · 04/10/2021 15:29

That I did not respond same day to a phone message left the morning of... 25th December. Both of us were in a countries where Christianity was the main religion and where the main celebrations were on 25th. The industry I was working in was in no way essential and the query absolutely did not need responding to same day.

CharityDingle · 04/10/2021 15:30

Used to issue feedback sheets at the end of training courses, where there was space to input comments. One might expect suggestions/ comments on the facilities/ what part of the course worked particularly well/ not so well/ something they would like to see included.
And that's mostly what was received.

One memorable one, a participant stated that there was purple gravy on her dinner...

No, me neither. Grin It was in an establishment that had a particularly good reputation for its food. There were options to choose from, on the menu. She chose whatever it was, and nobody could recall seeing the purple gravy there, before nor since. I don't think it was even worded as a complaint, more so a comment.

I'm glad I worked so hard delivering that course. Hmm