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?

@Justbecauseofit

Someone complained about my face once, I got the feedback during my PDR.

Apparently the way I look at people can be very 'intimidating' (I'm a nice person honest! but I think I do have one of those 'faces') and they felt threatened around me because of the way I look at people.

Then my supervisor proceeded to tell me that she's noticed that she can 'tell if I don't like something' and if I can 'try to control my emotions not appearing on my face' that was my only PDR criticism of my work performance that i had to work on.

I apologised for my face and then later wondered if it was my actual supervisor that had the complaint as the rest of the staff I got on well with.

Now that time has passed the more I think about it the funnier and more bizarre it actually is. I was born with a resting bitch face but it doesn't mean I'm a bitch/hostile and I certainly am not going to waste anytime at work worrying about if I'm controlling my face or not.

I feel for you! This is the story of my life too!! Apparently my precise thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent are always written across my face. People don’t like it. I try not to do it but it’s hard.

My friend’s DH got pulled up for something similar at work - apparently his face gave everything away and he needed to work on his “emotional leakage”. Love that expression

I worked for a national bus company, the only non driver in the depot. I would man the phones for complaints, info etc.

A lady rang to complain because she had been on one of the Companies trips to the Trafford Centre. When she got there she found that the shops were too expensive and was unhappy that our service fell short in this regard.

When I worked for legal firm, I asked a client to drop in some photographs of the injuries she has sustained in an accident. Instead of addressing the envelope to me personally, she just put them in a plain envelope which was opened in the main post area. No-one could identify whose thighs and bottom they were. She said I was slow dealing with matters.

@MinnieMountain

A client who completed his house purchase a month before the first SDLT holiday last year was even announced, complained to my TL that he hadn’t benefited from it. She suggested he complain to HMRC

I'm feeling thick - what does TL stand for?

Someone complained a GP wouldn't do a home visit on Christmas Day to fix his stair lift.

There are some properly mad bastards out there.

@Justbecauseofit I've had the same... 'Wish you need to control your face, when I'm talking you look like you don't like what I'm saying' she was right though, I thought she was an idiot

"Please can you sellotape more quietly?"

Mine and my managers name are too alike
Yes, that's because there is a male version and a female version...
think Samuel and Samantha
I can't do much about it and it's pretty obvious he isn't called Samantha

I was covering the Closed Access/Short Term Loan desk in a university library at roughly 8pm on a Thursday evening. As the name states, access to these books was very limited with strict protocols in place. Most couldn't even be removed from the library. Others could only be borrowed for a maximum of 2 hours. A student officially complained that I hadn't allowed him to check out a dozen of these books overnight and therefore I was entirely to blame for him failing the exam he sat the next morning!

I was acting for client in non molestation and occupation orders against husband who was abusive.
She had young children. And he wasn't prepared to leave the house so she could return with young children.
He wasn't going to leave until the government gave him a house to live in of a similar standard to the owned property.
I suggested he get a job so he could afford to buy said similar property.
Apparently that was racist and he
Told everyone that would listen how racist I was 🙄

We once had a bloke complain because we had posted an important letter out to him, correct address, but the post man/lady had delivered it to the wrong house and the said owner of the house had returned it to us. He wanted us to tell him why his neighbour didn't find him and give home the letter. I didn't tell him it was probably because he was an arse. We had a right time with him, I bet he was a nightmare neighbour.

I talked to the manager of the local council's call centre and she explained that something like 20 people made up 5% of the calls to the council. One woman apparently called upwards of 20 times a day. They are obviously some people struggling mentally who see the Council as their lifeline but there seemed little or nothing the Council could do to stop people phoning because

i) "someone gave me a dirty look"
ii) "the postman hasn't been today"
iii) "the children at the nearby school are too noisy"
iv) "someone I don't know has parked next to my block of flats"
v) "the bus was 10 minutes late"
vi) "the doctors were closed for training (for 30 minutes...)
vii) "the Council have allocated the flat next to me to a [insert name of BAME minority here"
viii) "my electricity meter has run out of credit"
ix) "My mobile phone signal is really weak"
x) "The bin men refused to take my washing machine"

I can't remember any more of the stuff from the "frequent fliers", but it was all along the same lines.

In 2009 after the economic crash I had a lot of customers complaining to me and my colleagues about our huge million pound bankers' bounces. I worked at a customer-facing bank as a customer services person on 13k a year. I did try to explain the difference between myself and a banker but they didn't believe I wasn't a millionaire rolling in it 😂

*bounces?! Bonuses!

A woman brought in a half eaten, mouldy loaf of bread and demanded a refund. Funnily enough, she had firstly

A) ate half the loaf
B) brought no proof of purchase (ie receipt or a bank statement)
C) couldn’t tell us when she bought said bread (we could have checked via CCTV if she had said a time/day)
D) the loaf in question didn’t even have the little tag on it with the date on

So, she genuinely thought she could bring in what could be as far as we’re aware, a loaf she bought from a different shop 4 weeks ago which she ate half of and forgot about for a full refund.

Obviously, she was told no. She argued with a sales assistant, then myself, and then I passed her on to another management colleague as I’d honestly had enough of being told “this isn’t how shops are”, and they told her the same as me. So, she’d been told by three different members of staff, no.

5 minutes later, I noticed her leave the store. I checked cameras- she stole a new loaf of bread without paying.

It’s just unbelievable. The kicker was during her rant she told me she’d just came from church and honestly, she was one of the nastiest customers I’ve ever encouraged. So arrogant, rude and utterly relentless.

I’ve had worse people during my time in customer facing roles in terms of being angry/aggressive/drunk, but I’ve never had anyone be that brazen to steal what was denied to them in no uncertain terms three times.

I was expecting her to leave a complaint and was quite sad she didn’t. I was looking forward to pointing out she actually committed theft when responding to it and forwarding her details onto the police.

TL = Team Leader

Someone came in to tell me that the mug she'd apparently bought from me a month ago had a slightly broken handle - apparently she could feel it was loose when she picked it up.

I didn't recognise her, she'd bought it a month ago and goodness knows what had happened to it in that time. When I sell a mug I always check the handle in front of the customer, along with checking for chips and that the design is correctly printed, just to avoid situations like this.

Anyway, she couldn't remember what date she had been in, didn't have a receipt, and didn't even have the mug with her!

Not sure exactly what she expected me to do really :/

"I'm trying to order photos online but I can't find the option to get it delivered to school"
Photos aren't delivered to school anymore, due to Covid photos are sent direct to parents.
"Previously they were sent to school for free, I don't want to pay."
Oh are they charging for delivery then?
"Yeah £4.99 unless you spend over £30 and I don't want to pay it."
Hmmmmmm. There isn't anything I can do I'm afraid. I can't waiver the delivery fee as you aren't buying from school its' another company.
"Well can you have a word?"
No. It maybe worth you calling them yourself.
"So you can't do anything?"
No
"Helpful"

Two girls came into school during a Teacher training day and set a fire in one of the classrooms. Parents said their daughter shouldn’t be excluded because it was our fault that she only set the fire because the school was open. Apparently we should not be in school during Training days.

Supermarket job back in the day - A women came in, clearly not the brightest bulb, she was buying pregnancy tests and standing at the till going back and forth whether to buy them or not because they so expensive. I was about 19 and rather lost for words - I said she could go to the doctor and test for free, she kept saying no no not sure about that, can’t get an appointment for a couple of weeks. She then asked me about refunds, do we refund things? So I said we refund faulty products wit( receipt and certain items for certain reasons etc. So she then said, if it’s negative, she could have it refunded then? Because she wouldn’t need it? I said no, we obviously can’t refund a used pregnancy test. She looked puzzled and asked why. I said because it’s used, they can only be used once. She then said that she was certain she was pregnant, so negative would be a faulty test. So I emphasised, no, you have to pee on it, you can’t return it. She the. Said that I’m clearly quite thick, she wanted me to guarantee that if its negative and she goes to the doctor and finds out she is later in the month, she will be able to get her money back. Or indeed if it’s positive because the doctor can tell her and she might not need it anymore!?!? I just lost it and said no while trying not to laugh. She then demanded the manger and kept pointing at me and saying it’s a simple request and this isn’t how you treat people and so forth.

Not me but I was behind a woman in Wilco's a while back who was returning a box of harpic toilet tablets, the ones that clean the loo. She said they were rubbish so wanted a refund, the guy was trying to explain that she'd used 3 of the four so she couldn't get her money back. I left him trying to explain by and went to another till...

I had a complaint made against me by someone on my own team, because I dared to have lunch with another member of the team.

I had a complaint made against me by someone on my own team because I had Kept vital information from her resulting in major embarrassment and putting her career in jeopardy.

The vital information? I mentioned that I wasn't the new hire she thought I was but had been with the company nigh-on two years at this point but had been off on client sites which is why she never me me before.

As she had been lording it over everyone else on the team due to her 'seniority' of six months or so and it totally undermined her authority.

Not that she had any authority outside of her own notions about herself mind you and nobody else cared about who was there the longest only her. Still, I was expected to leave at once so she could resume her rightful seniority.

Still, she sort of get her wish as I got a promotion with another team so moved there shortly afterwards. For the rest of my time working there, she would give me evil looks whenever we met in any of the communal areas.

@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?

We had the opposite when I worked in a school. The PE department had their annual (riotous) fancy dress night out in a local bar and a man they met there took his son out of his private school and moved him to our state school because he thought a school staffed by such top blokes would suit his boy down to the ground. We all took a discreet special interest in the lad after that and he did very well and seemed very happy.

I work on the customer service desk, so I suppose you can imagine the kind of complaints I have to deal with.

The most common complaint is when customers ask for cash back (because the main tills no longer do it, they get sent to us.) They then flounce out of the store upon being told that they can't have cash back if they don't make a purchase of any amount.

The worst complaint I've had to deal with was a customer threatening to pour a bottle of milk over the counter, because I could only offer him an exchange instead of a refund when he told me he didn't have a receipt to prove where he'd bought it from.

I've had to deal with him twice in the last two weeks for the same complaint, he accused me of lying about the stores policy and is convinced that the fact the bottle of milk was own brand should be the only proof he needs and if he speaks to another member of staff he'll get a different answer