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’?

I understand this and agree to a certain extent. It's just wearing to know every single time you go out that something won't be right.
I usually go to restaurants I like and it just adds a stressful layer to the evening when rice is being sent back for being cold and curries sent back for not being spicy enough.

Sorry to hear so many people have had similar experiences :( I often think it doesn’t help that in my job although we can put the phone down and restrict contact,
no one ever actually tells the customer that they were wrong and why. So the entitled/difficult/manipulative behaviour just continues. Although I imagine even if we did say clearly why the customer was wrong they still wouldn’t listen and it would be turned on us.

Not necessarily, especially if the behaviour comes from entitlement or narcissism. We're friends with a grandiose narcissist and he's charming, witty and funny to his peers. But an insufferable arse to waiters, customer service or anyone who he considers below him. Oddly enough he doesn't seem to realise that other people can see this dichotomy extremely easily. Eg. we're all sitting at the table and can clearly see what he's saying to the waiter. He's convinced that if he's nice to some people and horrible to others, the ones who get the nice treatment won't catch on.