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?

My husband had a patient complain because he'd had to leave work early as I'd gone into Labour.
He was back in work the next day so she'd only had to wait for one day for her non-urgent appointment.
She had a go at him and he explained his wife had had a baby and she replied "couldn't she have kept her legs crossed?!?"
😠

I was 8.5 months pregnant and a parent complained that I wouldn't lift their year 1 (6 year old child!) onto the toilet when he needed to go...

I suggested that she teach him how to wee standing up if he couldn't physically get onto the toilet seat.. (parent was a nightmare, child fine, no medical/physical issues!)

Strangest complaints on the child care and education section of my career:

When I worked in a nursery, staff were often asked to babysit. I did once. Parents questioned why I was charging the, (despite agreeing a rate beforehand) because they thought I was “truly dedicated” to my role and payment would undermine it. They then spoke to my manager and said they didn’t understand why I hadn’t done the online journal updates while at their house?! And they weren’t satisfied with the activities done with their child. They honestly expected a full nursery style day at their home on a weekend afternoon.

Similar to OP but no alcohol involved. Was on a train journey over summer term, over an hour so had headphones in and was reading something on my iPad. School family got on and sat across from me. I politely said hello, made a bit of small talk and then carried on. Next Monday at school they commented that I should really set a better example to the children by not relying on a tablet for entertainment and should consider my actions for the future.

A customer phoned to complain she’d received a reminder. The reminder was properly issued, but as we could see she had mistyped the account details, we could withdraw the reminder (and of course move the money over). The customer then demanded a full apology as it was her birthday.

@stillcrazyafterall

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 was behind someone in a Boots queue, some years ago. She was almost in tears of anger / frustration as both her partner and the staff member tried to explain an offer, possibly three for two, or something to her. Thankfully another till opened, or I would be there yet.

I used to work in travel complaints. We had one, never forget it, it even went to court.
Lapland holiday (we realise how special and expensive they are so were very open to trying to appease her).
The complaint: …….we should have employed people of restricted growth to ‘play’ Santas Helpers.
Santa did not look like the one on the back of the Coke lorry
And
It was too cold.

I work for a housing association dealing with antisocial behaviour complaints. My favourite among the many bonkers neighbourly complaints was the lady who wanted her next door neighboir evicted as she had smiled and said hello to her daughter as they walked past. Didnt she know her daughter is only 14 and therefore a minor and should not be spoken to!!

DH didn't get a promotion because he doesnt smile enough. DH is literally the funniest, kindest but most professional person you'll ever meet and a fairly high ranking Police officer. But nope, he needs to smile more 🤦🏻‍♀️ loved his work, his operation examples and even stole some of his suggestions from his interview to use themselves (and earn themselves a big fat pat on the back from the Super). I knew this guy, he wasnt a smiley person!!

Not somewhere I work but this afternoon I was in a discount store that sells, among many other things, those twee little signs on a rope that read things like "keep calm and drink wine". These were in the same aisle but the opposite side to toys, crafty stuff etc.

A woman was at the checkout raging at the assistant that these signs were disgusting and inappropriate in "the children's aisle" and her 7YO shouldn't be encouraged to drink. Bonkers.

The assistant kept calm and asked her to leave😁

In one job part of my role was to report to the senior leadership team and our overseas owners during a monthly video conference. I’d report on several things but my main report would be on complaints the business had received, risks of regulator involvement, monetary risk etc… I’d also report on the root cause of the complaints and identify areas that needed looking into. One month our complaints has increased by 500%, this was due to a ridiculously unthought through marketing campaign that our “marketing executives” had launched without consulting any other part of the business including the legal department and the administration teams who would be doing all the actual work as a result of the campaign. The campaign resulted in service level agreements not being met which in turn meant clients weren’t getting money, which meant lots of compensation payments, it also meant we breached a number of regulator service level agreements and missed Tax deadlines on behalf of clients. Basically it was a total shit show.

After the meeting the GM for Marketing kicked off in my GMs office demanding I be reprimanded for making a fool of him for doing my job. Thankfully she had more balls than any of the men in the company and told him to do one. As he stormed out of her office she called over to me to come in because she wanted to tell me what a great job I had done 😆

A litany of grievances in a meeting from a very difficult parent who claimed that I didn't understand ASC at all.

Their child was extremely high functioning. (They went on to get all A's at GCSE - when A's were still how GCSEs were graded). However, they were also... not the best behaved and were very popular with the more difficult cohort.

The parent had bleated on about how I should be aware that an ASC child might not always fully understand the task set and would need it explaining to them rather than reprimanding them. I fully agreed that an ASC student indeed might not understand the finer points of a topic. However, I failed to understand how an intelligent business student, who was given the task of creating a marketing campaign to sell tickets to a music festival was so off topic that they had actually Googled "Fat Chinese Babies", "Is Donald Trump a peodofile" (their spelling) and "Fit Korean girls".

[quote ClawedButler]@SickAndTiredAgain - that's what the squirrels WANTED you to think....

He was onto them.[/quote]

An ex employee tried to complain to HMRC because we had failed to pay her maternity leave and we were threatened with a big fine.
I did payroll and after a long conversation with the person who complained I worked out she had left our place of employment when she was approximately 1 month pregnant (and hadn’t even known). She thought you got paid maternity by the place you worked at WHEN you got pregnant as well as where you currently worked.
The woman at HMRC did a big sigh when I told her!

I used to work in a coffee shop. So many stupid complaints about coffee.

If someone ordered an espresso, our manager made us point to the menu and ask 'are you sure this is what you want?' like you would to a small child due to amount of people who don't know what an espresso is. Many would act like we were playing a prank when we presented them with a single shot of espresso.

Similarly a latte with extra milk. But not a wet latte. Not less espresso, but more milk. The only ingredients are espresso and then steamed milk to the top. Any more milk and it would overflow. They don't want a cappachino, but a latte with more milk and no less coffee??

Stupidest complaint was from a man who bought a hot chocolate, then returned 2 hours later with it undrunk and complained it was cold.

I worked for the Community Service office and we got complaints from one girl's mum that we were mean expecting her to come and do community service as that would mean her getting the bus on her own (she was not a child) and she found it scary. She was doing community service because she was caught mugging and burgling her neighbours as well as various other anti-social activities. Yes, I am sure she was too scared to get on a bus!

I used to work for people looking after areas of open countryside. A well-to-do gent once wrote us an abusive ranting letter covering two sides of A4 about how, on a walk beside the river, his 17 year-old son received a tick bite on his, erm, private part. We very politely wrote back and expressed our sympathy, but that the vegetation HAD been recently cut back and that, unfortunately, such things were a possibility out of our control when walking in the countryside in summer whilst wearing shorts. The photographs (oh yes) showed that it was a minor bite and his letter to us made it clear that no lasting consequences (eg Lymes Disease) had followed - it was the mere fact that it had happened.

He responded with a further 3-sided letter of foul invective detailing again his son's tick-bite and their continuing mortification. It was so unpleasant and in such graphic detail that I felt so sorry for the son and REALLY hoped that he didn't know what his father had been putting about him on paper to strangers.

Really bizarre. Privately I thought that "fratricide" might mean killing your brother, and "patricide" might mean killing your father, but I now had a bit of an inkling as to what "countryside" might mean... But mostly I felt very sorry for the son, and not entirely because of the tick.

I had a call with a customer which did not end well. Essentially, he wanted us to confirm him that he can do an upgrade to his IT infrastructure while patching the whole lot up with some provisional licences to save money, despite the documentation being not really positive about this solution.
When I told him we can't give him "an informal answer" which would confirm his workaround so he can save money, I was accused of acting like all other corporations do and his company like doing it differently. To which I replied, sure but I still won't send you the confirmation because if anything goes wrong, you will point a finger at us and I will not allow it.
He really didn't like the fact that a little woman was picking on his bullshit. What a petty muppet.

At my workplace, Customers often complain their fish dish is 'too fishy

If customers are often complaining, isn’t that something you’d listen to. Too fishy fish means it’s not fresh or has been over handled.

I worked for a transport company once and we had a serial job applicant. He applied for EVERY job going regardless of his skills or experience. He was offered interviews for the jobs he had the qualifications for but kept failing to turn up to them.

Anyway. He took us to tribunal and represented himself. He said we were full of nepotism and to prove it he cited ever Smith, Jones, Brown(e), Patel and Shah that worked at the organisation. He gruels believed they were all related 🤦‍♀️

Customer at a timeshare resort once complained that the water pipes were frozen. In the highlands of Scotland. In Winter. The warmest it had been for a week was -14.

I’m a teacher who had a complaint in from a mother stating that I shouldn’t take her DS out on a field trip in May as it is was the height of the hay fever season. Another teacher had a complaint that her severely obese 14 year old should not be made to do PE as it made him out of breath! I could go on and on…

@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'm laughing at this one because I'm also like this. Apparently, you can read my reaction on my face before I've even said anything. I was a female police officer in London for 20yrs so I guess my 'resting bitch face' came in handy 😆

@MarshmallowSwede

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.

Did you get your tool bag out & dismantle some chairs?? 😆🤦🏼‍♀️

@BoredZelda

At my workplace, Customers often complain their fish dish is 'too fishy

If customers are often complaining, isn’t that something you’d listen to. Too fishy fish means it’s not fresh or has been over handled.

I think maybe you should read the full post to see where the poster works...

I had a great 'OMG teacher in pub!' complaint once.

I'd been out to see a mate's band at our local rock club. They're a goth band. I'm a bit of a goth. I was attired...appropriately for the occasion.

At some point quite late in the proceedings, I bumped into some young guy because we were both walking past each other in the bar & too busy chatting to our respective dates to pay attention to where we were going.

We both apologised to each other, smiled, & went on our way. Didn't recognise him at all.

The following Monday I was carpeted by the Head, who admittedly couldn't keep a straight face when he asked me if it was true that I had '...assaulted one of our year 10s on Saturday night, by punching him across a bar whilst, & I quote the lad's mother, Ms Purpureus, who is understandably upset..."dressed like fucking Frank'n'Furter" '.

I was most affronted, as I'd actually been going for Siouxsie Sioux or possibly Patricia Morrison.

Working in an emergency response call centre - I refused to send out a 999 ambulance to someone who had pricked his finger with a sewing needle. He called back (on the emergency line again) to complain.