Are difficult customers also difficult family/friends?

[Dracomalfoysmum]

I work in a frontline customer service role dealing with a lot of unhappy people. Vast majority are fairly reasonable-unhappy but not particularly difficult-but at least 10% are exceptionally difficult-eg shouting on phone, swearing, repeatedly contacting to jam phone line, racist, sexist and manipulative in an abusive/gaslighting sort of way.

I only come across people behaving like this in my job and I always wonder what these people are like with their family and friends. I wonder if their partner/child/parent/friends knows they behave like that and if they behave that way towards them too? I don’t think any of my family or friends would act that way but maybe they do and I just don’t see it!

Curious to know if anyone is friends or family with someone who they know is an exceptionally difficult customer and are they also like that in ‘real life’?

Having only ever worked in customer facing roles I would say that it’s a bit of both. On the phone I’ve had a married couple take it in turns to scream insults at me about something that was entirely out of my control. So they’re probably horrible to each other as well but they’re as bad as each other.

It’s not what you’re asking but I’d really prefer someone shout & swear at me than talk in a perceived ‘mild’ manner, where you can hear the poison in every word - those are the only ones who’ve ever made me cry. Other customers or staff don’t pick up on it and when you ask them to stop it’s all ‘oh I’m just having a conversation with you, I’m not raising my voice, you just need to do better, you think you can manage this simple request? Or do you need to go back in to training? I’ve already explained sweetheart but you must be having a bad day if you don’t understand. Why don’t you scurry off and find out from someone who knows what they’re doing’ usually with a big fat smirk like they’re going to go home and wank over it. Even when I know I’m right and following procedure some people are very talented at knocking the wind out of you with their words. URGH they’re rare but those are the people I would really not want to know personally.

Sort of. I've worked in jobs where I dealt with people like that, and held meetings where they and a family member would meet with staff to discuss concerns (mainly unjustified) about their care.

At first I was surprised that so many of these absolute nightmare humans had apparently normal and pleasant partners and family. What I can to notice was that their loved ones either entered into their sense of grievance with them, or basically blanked their behaviour and stayed neutral. In all cases they never challenged them, and I think that is how difficult customers are endured by their families.

Why they don't just tell them to stop being dicks is another matter.

Healthcare. There’s always a rolling debate about asshole doctors are they mean to wives or does the wife wear the pants at home? Mostly I think people are who they are. Rude people are rude to people they perceive to beneath them and rude to family. In healthcare complaints are taken very seriously so that is always hanging over you and pts very much take advantage of that. I’m pretty assertive and now finally I can spot a shithead from a good distance. I am strictly business andit helps to be factual and strictly per policy. I do despise when a man acts rude to me in healthcare setting and the wife tries to compensate for his behavior…oh he’s just joking! It’s so demeaning to her and me both that we have go along like it’s all just a bit of teasing. I have had male pts try to trip me because they won’t sit properly in the exam chair and even in 2024 deny their name or misidentify themselves like its so very funny for 4 staff members to be looking for you when in fact your sitting right in the lobby and the wife to say…he was just joking. many people don’t want the testing ordered by their doctor but instead of saying to their doctor they wait and show up and then complain.

My dad was an embarrassingly difficult customer before his marbles rolled away. In real life he was mercurial - often lovely and the sort of person who'd do anything to be helpful, but unrecognisable in a temper when he would often turn to corporal punishment. Now he sits around in depression most of the time because his memory is completely shot and sometimes he can't even tell me and my sister apart.

I have relatives who cannot go to a restaurant without ostentatiously sending something back and humiliating the server and demanding to see the chef and giving them a massive dressing-down in front of everyone. They get off on it - and are also trying it on to get their meal comped. It’s awful. I don’t speak to them anymore, as they are just as awful at home.

I also have a long-standing friend with severe mental health problems who I won’t go out with in public anymore because you never know when she’s going to blow her fuse over something utterly trivial - her coffee isn’t the right temperature, or the menu item she wanted has sold out. She can become extremely aggressive. She feels isolated and abandoned, because nobody will risk going anywhere with her anymore in case she makes a massive scene. But she can’t see her own aggression - she is deeply paranoid and genuinely feels that people are deliberately trying to thwart or provoke her, and she’s just standing up for herself. It’s very sad. But also frightening.

edited to add: my friend is also like this at home and has been physically abusive to her partner. He won’t go to the police or leave her because he recognises how vulnerable she is. But I worry she will kill him one day in a rage over nothing.

You shouldn't have to put up with with abuse on the phone again work.

If they keep on after you've told them to stop being rude, it's perfectly acceptable to say "I am going to put the phone down now, bye" and then hang up. I did this myself on Friday.

Must be the majority of the population then as when I worked in retail most customers were rude, demanding and entitled. Forgot basic niceties such as “Hello” or “ excuse me” before launching their list of complaints.

Some were civil until they didn’t get their own way. Others just wanted to take their bad day out on you. The truth is, there probably aren’t that many genuinely nice people around.

Don’t think there’s really any excuse to lose it at customer service staff if they’re unable to help, no matter how stressed you are.

Even if they are able to help but unwilling I don’t think losing it is ok really… just escalate it to a manager if you need to.

You have just described my MIL, abusive when someone says something she disagrees with, uses kids in the family as weapons to get her own way and to guilt trip people and is very proud to have a showdown with anyone she disagrees with. Also very good at gaslighting people so I’m waiting to hear when her latest tirade of abuse is my fault as I’ve cut her out of our lives.

I worked in a hotel, we had alot of business guests where their employers booked for them, we would have some difficult people and you could sometimes see their colleagues with them were embarrassed for the way they were carrying on. We also had a very difficult guest who I had no idea why she kept coming back because there was always an issue, I remember hearing her on the phone and she was also horrible to who she was speaking to, so I think it was just who she was.

Of course we had reasonable people who did complain and what they said was valid.

Some people are difficult wherever they go or just negative in life and I'm sure their families and friends who put up with it see it too!

Sometimes it's also the people who pay the cheapest rate for something who complain the most!

100% agree with that, the sort of passive aggressive and a bit of sarcasm too

@ahoyhoyhoy yes I completely agree-they are the ones I would call manipulative and I think are far worse in terms of personal impact than the shouty/sweary etc people. I think because they always make you second guess whether it is you or them!

My dad is my rock. Unbelievably kind, loving, helpful and supportive. We have a fantastic relationship and he really has been such a good father to me through the years.

He has a short temper when he is stressed and I've seen him blow up at waiting staff a few times over not very much. It's really at odds to how he treats me. I always tell him off and apologise for his behaviour to the offended staff member when he does it. I really don't understand it but find it hugely embarrassing when it does happen. He never loses his temper at me.

I think some people get really frustrated with services eg kept on phone for ages - and as it's relatively anonymous on the phone rant when they wouldn't usually

@Dracomalfoysmum

Some people get real confused with what being assertive really means

And think being aggressive is that

Step FIL is one of these. Difficult and nasty as a customer. Even worse at home, he is nasty, controlling, coercively abusive, financially abusive, short tempered and just all round unpleasant.

No-one other than MIL can stand him. His own children are NC, his own elderly mother is NC, his 2 brothers are NC. We and BIL and SIL see him (for as short as possible a time and we don't speak to him) at Christmas and Easter only and none of our children have any contact with him.

He knows we all hate him and why and so does MIL, she wont leave him despite numerous family interventions. It's very much a co-dependent relationship.

And also are assertive over the wrong things

If I say the first appointment is April, telling me that's unacceptable doesn't mean I can produce a sooner one
And then people want to speak to a manager - the instruction that the appointments are the appointments has come from the managers!

But they will be shitty with me then nice as pie to the manager when they say there are no sooner appointments

Pawsis I blame the sales culture for that behaviour. When you get a renewal price threaten to take your business away and you'll get a discount to keep your business. It doesn't always translate unfortunately. Cut price retailers and public services spring to mind, I think some people don't have the intelligence to understand the difference unfortunately. Assertiveness is a skill that stops you being put on the back foot for sure, but when it comes to the bottom line, it's there for a reason

We had two types of customers- the obvious shouty ‘I know my rights’ people, and the (usually posher), more quiet, always right and just as threatening ‘I come here all the time, let me speak to your manager, she won’t want to lose me as a customer’ people (when you couldn’t help them because there was no way of getting whatever they wanted). Both I’d say are equally as difficult to live with!! I always say though, if you can work in the mobile phone industry you’re very good at customer service, have seen the most horrible treatment to staff in phone shops

I'm inclined to think that they generally are especially if they are rude.
I know a lovely woman who always complains when she goes out for food, she does it nicely but it is quite wearing when you just want to enjoy your dinner. She doesn't seem to be after a freebie, which is what I first thought, more that she is hoping that the restaurant can learn from her "helpful" critique.
She's lovely in real life, but I wouldn't want her as a close family member.

I also wonder what the dickheads I meet in cars sometimes are like when they get out of their car. I think mainly their car behaviour is a magnified version of their true selves.

I have a very elderly aunt who is kind, generous and really interesting... with family. But is so rude to service staff that it's horrifying. She's lost a cleaner and two gardeners (she can't really manage her house and garden now) because of the way she spoke to them. And when I visited her in hospital the way she spoke to the staff made me have to seek them out when I left and apologise for her.

I honestly don't get how she can be so different. I'm really fond of her, but I don't take her out at all now.

I spent a number of years in a customer facing role, at a fairly high level of responsibility. Nothing has convinced me more that the majority of people aren’t particularly nice, they’re just careful with when they take the opportunity to show their true colours.

I preferred the obvious arsehole shouters who were rude to all, like an equal opportunities moment to encounter a twat.

The ones who made a judgment on the “value” of the person stood before them and then chose to behave horribly I liked a lot less. So the customers who would speak to a member of staff like absolute shit, but were sweetness and light, paragons of reasonableness when I arrived to deal with the situation wearing my suit. Or the ones who’d kick off calling me “young lady” and generally being misogynistic pricks (not always men as it happens) but would become affable easy going sorts the moment a male manager appeared. Those are the ones who tell you more about how people operate really.

I work in a different industry now and can spot many of the above sorts. People whose good manners and kindness hinge entirely on how useful you can be to them.

My ex MIL was a very nice woman in real life but omg could be the customer from hell. She was asked to leave a supermarket when they only had self service open and she had a rant about it. I think basically the issue is she's frightened of technology and didn't know how to use it.

She's the nicest woman but when she complains about something she's goes about it completely the wrong way. She puts her point across in a very blunt, rude way. It's strange!

"more that she is hoping that the restaurant can learn from her "helpful" critique."

I actually respect this more than people who pretend everything's OK then go and tell everyone they know never to go there.

A lot of the people who never complain are not nicer than the complainers, they're just people who can't handle any kind of confrontation. The kind who will smile to your face then write a passive aggressive note. There are lots of them on MN.

I think the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness is a fine line and anyone waiting on hold for ages to speak to someone to sort something that used to be simple brings out anxiety in many. Its not an excuse to be rude but frustration is often in the mix too. I hate speaking on the phone btw