To want to hear your stories from customer facing jobs?

[TillyMint81]

I work in retail. Customers are for the most part lovely but there are some absolute idiots out there.
Like the one who brought back a pack of bacon because it said four slices and it had five. Or the one who complained about the oranges on Bogof because she only wanted one pack not two. and, oh, by the way, could she have the free one?
We also had a bloke who would walk round looking for low stock on the buy one get one free lines. If he found one that was down to one item he would ask if we had any in stock. If we did he would walk away but if we didn't he wanted that one for free..

I work for the Post Office, and had a customer go absolutely ballistic at me for speaking French with a French customer who was struggling to explain themself in English. Apparently I shouldn't have pandered to these "f*ing foreigners" and I'm a disgrace to good English people....

(2 weeks later a card arrived, from France, from this woman thanking me, and complimenting the store on their "wonderful welcoming staff" - I still have the card)

I worked in a large supermarket and got called an idiot a lot. I was doing my degree at the time.
One particular customer wanted me to find the brightest lightbulb for him. So I showed him the 100w ones. He then made me look on each box and find. E one with the largest lumens.
When I finally found the one with the highest rating on a shelf near the floor on my knees. He patted my head and said "don't worry, one day you will have a real job"
Sorry but he was a fucking prick.

Today ... "Is the 9 acre landscape garden outside ...?"

And a woman complained last week that there weren't real fairies on the fairy trail ...

"Is that any way to speak to a 3 year old ..." She was faffing on her phone while her son stamped on a toy tractor and when l asked him ( quietly and politely ) to stop she went off on one and asked to see the manager - who is me. Hah!

When I worked in a shop a woman returned sausages saying she'd bought them earlier and they were out of date. I'd personally checked all the fresh produce sell by dates that morning. I knew nothing was out that was out of date. (Small shop, I checked every item not just those at the front or anything) My manager still said we had to let her swap them.

Being asked at Goodwood Festival of Speed (the hillclimb event) where the startline grandstand was.....

Tales from a flight attendant:

Being asked to go to the hold to get somebody's book from their suitcase.
Being asked to open a window.
Passengers trying to steal my food and then complaining that I wouldn't give my food to them.
Passengers complaining about the food and wanting food from business class.
The chap who was gluten free and couldn't eat an ordinary sandwich. When I found him a salad said salad wasn't a meal and didn't business class have a posh baguette or something...
Being asked in a patronising way if I flew straight back to London after a 12 hour flight and not liking my smile when I said we got 48 hours downtoute in a 5 star hotel.

Being told I should have worked harder at school and get a real job. I took real pleasure in saying I had a BSc in nursing but chose to be cabin crew as it paid a lot better than NHS nursing and I liked the travel and nice hotels.

There's a reason I work in an office now.

Worked for a mail order e-cig company for a while, and usually did the tech support calls. Regular complaints from customers that their rechargeable battery was no longer holding a charge - when it had been in regular daily use for 2-3 years. Most were very pissed off when I explained that rechargeable batteries don't last forever, and our information on the web site did say that the normal life of a battery was around a year.

We'd also get calls complaining that the battery had caught fire/melted etc. Automatic first question would be what charger they had used; it was usually their high speed iPhone charger. When I would tell them that the instructions very clearly explained, in large bold type letters, that they should ONLY ever use the charger supplied with the e-cig, this was somehow our fault. Many e-cig batteries, especially back then, had a much slower input rate that iPhones.

The guy who sent back a battery as faulty when he had only ordered it recently made a bit of a mistake though - the clearly very worn battery he returned was a different colour to the one he'd recently bought!

Back when I worked on a market stall the lady on the stall next to me sold things like 'gourmet' crisps, nuts, olives etc. She always had little bowls of samples at the front of the stall for people to try, and the number of cheeky fuckers I saw abusing the samples was unbelievable.

I would regularly see parents take a whole bowl of crisps, give it to a small child and say 'here darling, have some more' and leave the child to munch through the whole lot while they worked their way through the rest of the samples (never actually buying anything of course). I even saw a few people just take a bowl and tip the entire contents into their own bag a few times.

The stall holder was always too nice to say much but she would occasionally smile sweetly and say 'come here for your lunch, have you?' or something along those lines. Not that anybody ever took any notice!

I used to work in an opticians. One day a customer came in absolutely incandescent with rage. He had purchased a pair of spectacles which were identical to the ones he already had from us the previous year. However, when he got home and weighed the new pair??!!, it seems the new pair were an ounce heavier than the previous ones. He was raging!
Who the fuck weighs their glasses, what a knob (with way too much time on his hands)

Omg! That made me laugh. I can imagine trying to look like that's within the parametres of reasonable behavior.

I worked in a convenience store when a bus load of drunkards stopped by after spending a day at the races. There were only 2 of us working and suddenly the shop was packed. Once lady came up to us screaming and threatening us and demanding to know who sold her 11 year old alcohol. Turns out no one did....the little buttercup stole it (obv she didn't appologise).
In a clothes store I had a manager accusing everyone of stealing stock and pointing the finger behind people's backs. It turned out she was stealing bags full of clothes for her holiday and after the holiday brought them all back as 'faulty' and gave herself cash refunds! I was gutted I wasn't at work the day she was escorted off the premises.
I've had 2 stalkers. One was apparently obsessed with my shoes?! Another used to wait for me before and after work and try to grab me and kiss me. I called the police with that one.
When working in a sports shop customers had to chose their trainers upstairs where a member of staff would call the code down to the lower floor where shoes were kept and the customer would come down to try them on. One customer didn't want to wait for the code to be called down to me, so just toottled down stairs and gave me the shoe. I explained without a code I had no idea how to find this item in a stock room with about 1000 boxes of trainers. Customer became aggressive and said he was going to "shove this fucking trainer up your arse".
I have loads more, but the long and short of it......I wouldn't work in retail again for all the money in the world.

I work in a retail store and there are too many awful customer experiences . A funny and baffling one happened just a few weeks ago
When an oap came in to complain about his new Hoover as it was filling up too fast !!

I work in a pharmacy - we must have a different definition of "3 working days" to everyone else in the world.

The number of people who drop off a repeat request at 6.50 Friday - for a 7pm close and say I'll pick it up Monday... Nooooooo - 3 working days will not start til Monday if you drop it in at the end of a day...

And parents who let kids play with the stuff for sale - in a pharmacy - all we sell are things that should be kept out of the reach of children - and we have no low shelves so they are being given stuff to play with by parents.

When the children were wee I worked in a supermarket.
I had a customer throw their basket of goods at me as I had asked him to use the self service checkout as the main checkouts were now closed. My shift had finished 15 minutes before that, so I was already late leaving and it was now after 11pm and needed to get a bus home.
Sworn at when I couldn't put alcohol through after 10pm. The tills automatically blocked the sales due to licensing laws.
It was my fault personally if an item scanned at the wrong price or their card was declined.
Called a 'whore ' and a 'fucking cunt' when I asked a young guy for I.d. When he attempted to buy cigarettes.

The poor staff in the clothing department had to deal with customers shitting in changing room cubicles, people shagging in them as well.

We also had a disgusting man who came in, in his wheelchair then would demand a female member of staff take him to the toilet, not just wheel him. He wanted a female to remove his pants and 'hold' it for him. Customer services declined his request.
He would grope female staff as he went round the store too.
He was eventually banned after he demanded to be taken to the toilet again and when told no he got a bottle and peed in it in full view of customers, and then on the floor.
We suspected he didn't actually need the wheelchair as he ran out the store when security were called. The police were involved after that.

Former bookseller.

"Do you sell umbrellas?"
"I'm afraid we don't."
"But it's raining!"

"Do you have The Vadinci Code?"

"Do you have The Medici Code?"

"Do you have The Redondi Code?"

"Do you sell three-piece suites?"

"I'm after the biography of Michael Jackson"
"Which one?"
"The one about his life."

"How can you call yourselves a bookshop, you don't even have Harry Potter! I've looked under H and P and you do not have it!"
"Ah, we do, it'll be under R for Rowling."
"Who the hell is Rowling and what do they have to do with it?"

I once had a customer bring back her tin of baked beans because they looked mouldy, they were kidney beans as per the can. 🙈

When working in a pub I refused service to someone as they didn't have ID. They said I could phone their mum and she would tell me they were actually 18. When I said no, he said I could phone his boss instead as he worked for London Underground.

alleypally that think 25 which is there to protect employees is just so unreasonable

Polarbearflavour's mention of fire alarms has triggered some memories. As a hotel receptionist I would usually stay in post when the alarm went off to call the fire brigade and field any calls, unless it became unsafe to do so. This was a frequent call to the switchboard:

"There's an alarm going off in my room. Can you send someone up to sort it out please?"
"That's the fire alarm sir, you need to evacuate the building."
Sometimes followed by an attempt to discuss whether it was a genuine fire etc... just get out!

Like the folks refusing to leave their coffees, I once had a guest at the desk persistently try to get me to finish checking him in/out (I forget which) while the alarm was going off, despite me telling him to leave the building. It wasn't very loud in reception (we also had a big flashing light behind the desk) so I get that he might not have heard it at first but it was like he didn't believe me, even though there were people filing out from upstairs and I'd stopped what I was doing to call the fucking fire brigade

At that same hotel, the alarm would trigger if a guest showered with the bathroom door open. This happened regularly, despite signs screwed to every bathroom door to say the door needed to be kept shut. You could always spot the very wet culprit making their way out

I had to laugh at my friend the other day. We were at Whipsnade Zoo and she asked a waitress in the restaurant how much it was to go on the train! She was most put out that she didn't know

I used to work in a bank which could only accept change if it was bagged up. A customer came in with a giant carrier bag full of loose change. I told him that it would need to be bagged but offered him a table near the back to do it on and the bags (we would normally give them a hand if there wasn't a queue). He went bananas and started swearing and threatening me, causing a real scene in the middle of the bank before storming off and you guessed it.... the carrier bag burst from the weight. Change bounced everywhere. People in the queue cheered and I had to look the other way whilst hiding my grin!

Supermarket cashier - I once had to serve a guy wearing absolutely nothing but a dressing gown barefeet and in the middle of winter. Think he was a bit drunk

We had a gentleman requesting to leave through the fire door because it was closer to his car than the main exit. Brilliant idea except if we opened that door then it would set the alarm off and we'd have to evacuate the entire shop