AIBU to ask for your best examples of times when the customer most definitely hasn't been right? (Lighthearted).

[KitKat1985]

Just that really. During my student days I did a number of crappy customer service jobs to enable me to afford to study (supermarkets, cafes, that type of thing). Now although most members of public are fine, there were definitely some who were ridiculously difficult, or would come up with the most stupid complaints. I was recently reminded of a incident when I was working in a café and we had a special of the day of four cheese pasta, which was under display under the hotplate. A customer ordered a portion which was served to her and she went to eat it at a table. A couple of minutes later she came back to the counter to complain about it. When asked by the manager what was wrong with it she said it was "too cheesy". What would you expect from a four cheese pasta?

Anyway, since it's cold and I can't be bothered to go out, I thought I'd ask the good people of Mumsnet if you had any more funny examples of times when the customer most definitely hasn't been right to help cheer up my cold afternoon with a slightly grumpy teething baby.

Many years ago, I was working at a veterinary practice in rural Scotland. A client came in to return some flea treatment that had been prescribed for her dog, and peremptorily demanded her money back. There was no problem with this because it was all in a sealed box, but I did wonder why she sounded so antagonistic. When asked whether there had been a problem with it, she said,

'We've a friend who's a plumber, and he'd a look at the dog and she hasn't got fleas.' I just said it was fine, and returned her money to her, and then out of interest, went to check her history card. The last entry on the card stated " Vaccination, +++fleas,' which I would only write if I had actually seen the things running around on the dog. It must have been hooching with them. I confess I felt rather sorry for the dog, but I hate to think what the owner's house must have been like.

"tosser who brags about using prostitutes" Brilliant!

Dazed: that reminds me of when I went to a popular chain restaurant. I'm a veggie and noticed pasta carbonara on the menu, the description was "pasta in a rich creamy sauce", no mention of meat whatsoever and, having been veggie for my entire life with parents who hate Italian food, I had no idea what it was. So I ordered it, my friends looked shocked but said absolutely nothing. It arrived with meat in it (obviously) and I questioned it only to be told by the waiter what carbonara actually was. Felt like a right idiot and found out a few months later that my 'friends' were all dicks anyway

KitKat I used to work in a supermarket situated within a shopping centre. One Sunday the shopping centre's fire alarm went off so the whole centre (inc the supermarket) had to be evacuated. The amount of people that just tried to walk out with their baskets and trolleys! Chancey bastards.

Staff were gutted when hardly anyone came back and they had to spend all morning putting back all these trolleys full of shopping...

Ah pixie I can kind of see why that would be confusing by not mentioning the bacon if you have never had it before ...shame on your friends . Surely the word chicken in the name of the dish would flag up it might be in there...

I worked for years in B&Q and found the customers there much worse than in other retail and customer facing jobs I've done.

Had a really mouthy guy in returns queue, all other customers avoiding eye contact with him. It was a long wait to be fair - but complain to the manager about that, don't swear at the 16yo Saturday girl!
Anyway, he had a paintbrush to return that was Homebase own brand. Instead of slinking out embarrassed, he stood his ground, supplier must have mixed up stock because he definitely bought it here, etc. I'm all "so you bought it here, scanned through the till?" Yes. "Right, I'll scan it - if it scans, I can refund you".

It didn't scan. No shit. Still shouting the odds though!

Most satisfying one was a a guy storming out after hurling drunken abuse saying he'd go to Homebase instead (they always think this is the Best Insult Ever).

We called the police with a reg number and helpfully the direction in which he was travelling. One of girls had a friend working up there, rang ahead, and reported back that the police had indeed met him there

And my worst personal experience...
Special order kitchen items could only be returned for 80% of price. Made very very clear.

I said to customer that we had no orders currently for it, but that it was a popular special order - so if she wanted I'd go out of my to personally check new orders for next couple of weeks, and swap it on and give her 100%. A little complicated, but with £40 to her. She wanted to leave the boxes in our warehouse. I told her no, as if they got lost or damaged, I couldn't refund at all. Made it absolutely clear that what I was suggesting was me trying to help her out, as she'd said she really needed the money.

It ended with her finger right in my face (I was 17) screaming "I will have your fucking job taken off you, you bitch". Niiiiiiiiice.

I was working in Waterstones one Xmas and we had several customers come in thinking they'd ordered a book with us when actually they'd ordered it with Ottakars. So the next time someone came in and I couldn't find any record of the order I politely suggested she might have ordered it at Ottakars - 'Oh, yes, so I did, so sorry!'
Unfortunately the next time it happened it was a middle aged man who took massive offence at being asked and gave me a huge earful for daring to suggest he might have been in the wrong, and stormed out. Then later I found the book where someone had put it on the wrong shelf.

On a roll now... God I hated B&Q customers!

Wallpaper batch codes. No, that's the point, it's a batch, we can't order more. We'd ring round other stores though. There was no physical system for transferring stock, but there was paperwork system - so if a member of staff went over we could collects.

I worked weekends, but went to uni in a different town, with a really big store. A fair few of times I explained this to the customer, so it was really clear that I was offering to collect on my own time for them. It would take about an hour, which when you're an hourly paid student is a big unpaid favour for someone you don't know.

I stopped offering, because for everyone really appreciative thank you that I got, I had more rude "I want it now - pick it up tomorrow, bring it straight back" or "right fine (no thank you) don't bring it to store, drive it to my house (10 miles other direction".

I didn't like the word "entitled" then!!

A friend of mine is a police office, hotfuzzra. She's also had bucketloads of grief when manning road closures. She is always amused by the idea that shouting "But I'm a friend of the Chief Constable!" is ever going to magically reopen the road. Just to the FOTCC of course. Not to anyone else.

She's also amazed at just how determined some people are to make a simple situation so much worse. She'd much rather not arrest people (and get stuck with the bloody paperwork as well as fill the custody suite up) in a situation where "Probably best to just move along, sir" is all that's needed. But no. Rather than move along, the eejits in question are much keener on throwing themselves around, screaming abuse and invariably trying to fight the police. When they finally get arrested, they then scream that they've been victimised.

I really don't envy your jobs!

Oooh I've been namechecked twice on this thread - I feel famous!

Working for complaints, I could go on all day. Yes there's always a few who say they will bill for their own time and charge for sending a letter like the bank does. After six years I had it down pat - yes sir, we'll certainly consider any request for compensation. The charge is an administration fee rather than the indicative cost of the piece of paper and postage etc etc. Makes me sound horrible, but actually, I was really good at it and very empathetic. I was able to speak confidently to the arseholes though

My dad is they type that complains about everything. Natwest won't give me a loan - explain why and give me compensation. Barclays pissed me off when they sent me a Barclaycard when they took over Marbles - explain why when I haven't asked for it and give me compensation. Halifax branch was closed due to being done over when I went to cash a cheque - explain why you inconvenienced me and give compensation. He normally gets it too, probably because he's pretty pig-headed and never gives up!

My favourite wrong customers are the ones who call and are incensed that you have the audacity not to work for the company they were trying to contact! No sorry, I can't do a transfer from your Santander account to your HSBC account because you have rung a completely separate bank!? I was kind enough to google the number and transfer her I hasten to add...

Dazed - but carbonara doesn't have chicken in it so why would it be in the description.....?

It's pasta carbonara and normally has bacon or pancetta surely?

You're more generous than me Cabrinha - I don't think I would have ever even offered!

One of our everyday annoyances when I worked in a supermarket was that we shut at 8pm. We never got paid for staying after 8pm, no matter how late out we were. From 7.45pm every evening we would start making announcements along the lines of 'this is a customer announcement, this store will be closing in 15 minutes, and we would kindly ask you to start making your way towards the checkouts', which we repeated at 7.50pm, then 7.55pm and announced the store was shut at 8pm, and we would continue to announce from 8pm that the store was now shut (so it was pretty clear that the store was shutting imminently / had shut). You could almost guarantee at least once a week some git would come in at 7.58pm and start doing a trolley loads worth of shopping blatantly aware that the shop was shutting. Sometimes we would even start turning the lights out and they would still keep doing their shopping. On more than one occasion managers had to physically go up to them and ask them in person to leave when it was getting to like 8.30pm. Remember we never got paid for after 8pm and yet we weren't allowed to leave until the store was empty, which wasn't regularly until 8.15-30ish. So rude.

Snatchoo, Dazed was referring to an earlier post, where customer ordered Chicken Piri Piri and was upset that there was indeed chicken.

Worked one evening a week in a local convenience store a few years ago

Two 15 year olds came in and asked for a scratch card, asked for ID and they said they didn't have any as they were 15, I explained that they had to be 16. They argued a bit and went off in a strop

A little while later they came in with a scratch card absolutely full of themselves, they had asked an adult to buy it for them and it had won £50

They were not happy when I had to confiscate it in line with the small print on the back

Cabrinha, I used to work for B&Q too. So many douchebag customers! I used to love working on a Wednesday when all the pensioners came with their discount cards because it used to royally piss off all the arsey builders who came in

I overheard a guy in Waterstones the other week complaining that they didn't have a book he wanted (some really obscure war book by the sound of it). The lovely guy on the till pointed out that they don't have room for everything, but could order it in. He asked if the customer had ordered through them before, and the man said yes and gave his name, and then when no details came up got really huffy and said "oh well... It might have been under another name... I have several names I use of course". Of course. Totally normal.

I worked in retail the whole way through Uni (often full time hours in my very generous holiday periods). My store was at a busy London Station.

I cannot begin to tell you the horrors I saw.

People pissing and shitting in changing rooms / changing sanitary towels and nappies and leaving their used crap behind. Even a used condom was found once. The changing rooms were manned by one member of staff at all times and two in peak busy periods.

We had terrible problems with theft when I first started there - very late 90's. People that would argue with you / threaten you and generally bully you into refunding them despite the fact the items they were returning clearly had the security tags ripped out and had been stolen days [if not hours] before by the very same cheeky fuckers. Additional security did put a stop to this though.

We had a man that used to come in sporadically on a Sunday [always on a Sunday!!] and wank on the leggings - took a while to figure out what he was doing.

This was on top of your usual nightmare customers, you would be guaranteed to have at least one nightmare per day.

That said though it was actually quite a good job, I ended up as an assistant manager even though I was a FT student and I was going to be fast tracked into any graduate scheme I wanted (co. had numerous retail outlets under their umbrella and I could have had the pick) but I buggered off traveling instead and then realised how much I hated Joe Public

My Mum used to work at a fairly down at heel Sainsburys. They used to ban nuisance customers but only if they really were appalling. This included a man who wore his trousers so low you could see his pubic hair and a woman who would shit in the aisle.

Yuk crucru. Remind me to not go food shopping in sainsburys. Was this one a former exist supermarket next to ymca. (Remembers worse sainsburys ever visited)

Working in a body piercing studio attached to a gift shop that sold a fair bit of tat: Bad Taste Bears, T shirts with wolves/moons on them, crappy goth clothes, jewellery boxes shaped like settees (), shit jewellery and a huge cabinet full of smoking gear. As shops go, we were a total twat magnet.

Stoner bloke: 'Yeah I want you to pierce my ear with this innit.' produces filthy, blackened, obviously very cheap 'diamond' stud
Me: 'Unfortunately I can't pierce you with that jewellery, sir. The metal isn't of a standard I'd use in a fresh piercing and it can't be sterilised properly.'
SB: 'Yeah whatever love. Just do it, yeah? It's not gonna kill me.'
Me: 'It's not worth the risk of infection. You could potentially contract septicaemia.'
SB: laughs 'You stupid bitch, like you can get an STD off an earring!'

I worked at a fudge shop at uni. We made our own fudge, whilst wearing wench outfits, copper cauldron, marble tables, the works. It said fudge in very large letters on the shop sign. We had rows and rows of fudge on the counter. We gave out free samples of fudge. You could watch us make the fudge about 6 to 8 times a day. We did fudge.

Woman comes in one day and asks for macaroons. I told her sorry, we only do fudge. She was outraged and demanded to know where she could get macaroons, then, if not here. I told her I had no idea, we only did fudge. She stropped off in high dudgeon, muttering.

Sigh.

I work for M&S and a woman was screaming down the phone about an incorrect online order.

She gave me the order number and I didn't recognise as ours. She continued having a go at me and I said are you sure it's an M&S order .. Turns out it was from John Lewis!

I have told this story before on here before anyone thinks I have ripped it off from some other poster.

I used to work in Asda, by the entrace were some umbrellas on a stand. I think they were £4 each. Adsa uses barcodes, nothing is ever labelled unless it is a whoops price. Next to the Asda was a pound shop, in the days before PoundWorld etc. They used bright green price stickers with £1 on them.

Some wag had "hilariously" put some pound shop bright green stickers on the umberellas.

We had a lady going crazy because we wouldnt sell her an umberella for £1. She was adamant that because it had a £1 sticker on it we had to sell it to her at the price. Never mind we didnt use stickers, never mind that it was clearly from the pound shop next door, never mind that we told her all this, it was the law that we had to sell it to her at £1

We didnt let her have it for £1. I was all for getting a £1 sticker and putting it on the highest price TV we sold if they had to sell it to me at £1 - its the law you know

Vodka. she probably put the sticker on herself.