The worst complaint you have ever received

[planetclom]

I’ll start.
Someone complained they when they arrived early for an appointment I saw them early, they did not want to be seen early ...
Someone complained that I was only interested in box ticking and in the next sentence complained I spend to long trying to sort out their issue...

Work in the NHS if that is relevant, I suspect it is.

A customer complained about me because I asked him to move his foot so another customer could get past with her trolley.

Ataleoncetold I know, right?! I'm always getting good feedback for my friendly and warm outlook towards customers, so it did give everyone a good laugh when we heard that

Can I just say it have been loving these, not finished going through them but they are making me laugh out loud and I need it after the day I have had at work.

ArcheryAnnie That is not okay.

Worked in a bank as a cashier years ago; only job I've ever quit without another one lined up - people got on and off being signed off with stress like a merry go round.

Anyway, we had a regular business customer come in with his cash. In his mid 50s, fairly quiet man. So, I had to ask him to clarify what digit he'd written on the pay in slip (it was spider scrawl, not that I said that to him).

Oh that was IT. He had clearly had a shit day and was looking for someone to take it out on. I was this, I was that, I was stupid and unprofessional blah blah blah. Didn't take it to the manager though (what could he say? "She asked me what number I had written?!")

He tried to have a go at one of the new girls who got quite upset another day, so I said I'd make sure he came to me from then on. He got a curt good morning, cash counted, a curt goodbye, and he never said a single word about his tirade. Or anything else, for the rest of the time he came to my till until I quitted for my own sanity.

I had a parent make a formal complaint to my Principal because I wouldn't peel her 9 year old child's banana each day. Student had been given instructions on how to peel banana, but refused to actually do it as 'mummy always does it for me'. Same child also had to have parent come along to swimming as they had never dressed themselves.

I'll get flamed for this but Mc's milkshakes are sugar iceshakes anyway. They're disgusting.

Used to answer the complaints line for a company making something along the lines of chocolate bars. The size of the bars was reduced, but the cost remained the same, basically a stealth price rise. Customer rang up frothing about the size reduction, I gave her the company approved spiel about trying not to pass rising costs to customers, but she wasn’t having it. Nope, she had decided that a chocolate company was trying to make customers eat less chocolate due to the obesity crisis, and that by slowly reducing the size of bars we planned to gradually wean people off chocolate altogether. No amount of pointing out that as a chocolate company the very last thing we wanted was people “weaned off” our bars would convince her otherwise.

I work in the NHS and generally have loads of patience - I'm often seeing people/ their relatives on the worst day of their life and give a lot of leeway around behaviour.
My DP does a similar job though and was once utterly bewildered by a very serious complaint that came in weeks after he had seen someone, from her mother who'd sat in. It alleged all sorts of awful malpractice.
Obviously he denied it and his documentation was there but it still went right up the chain of command because of the severity of the allegations. Finally, the family went to a meeting that my DP wasn't at but the chair happened to be from the same part of the world as him.
The relative lost the plot and started yelling that she just didn't want her daughter to be treated by a dirty (racial slur) and she shouldn't have to be in a meeting with another "one of them". Obviously the complaint wasn't progressed any further but it really affected my DP and now he works in a specialty where he's rarely if ever alone with a patient. It's scary to think of what could have happened if the woman hadn't "confessed" in the way she did

Years ago when I was 17 I worked in a coffee shop and a customer complained to me that the toilet was much too small, this really wouldn't do at all, was there anything I could do about it? I was just like, 'righhhht, I'll just get my sledgehammer out and knock the wall down then shall I?'

Same shop, different day, another customer got very cross that the price of food is increased if you eat in than if you take away. I politely explained that the reason for that is that food is subject to a form of value added tax when eaten in, which is set by the government, and therefore there was nothing I could do about it. The customer refused to accept that I, a 17 year old girl in a coffee shop, was not in charge of deciding taxes on behalf of the British government sigh.

Same shop again, a customer asked me if the syrups we put in our coffees (e.g. Caramel latte) were sugar free. Then made a complaint about me to management when I stifled a little giggle, as syrup is literally entirely sugar

A mum complained that we had too many peppa pig toys for the babies during their swimming lessons. It was explained to us that the children would learn far more quickly if peppa was removed. She was in the process of weaning her child off peppa pig, so could we please ensure all PPig toys were taken away.

I worked in a pub and one customer complained his white wine straight from the fridge was too cold.

I know wine can be overchilled and it impairs the flavour, but this was like a bog standard country pub not La Manoir Au Quat' Saisons.

When was fired from my job my boss repeatedly told me "it's nothing to do with your work"

Oh would it be I've told you your employee (whose so far up your arse you can see him when you yawn) was stealing from you.

6 hours AFTER telling you (giving you ample time to check cctv to prove my story) I am left jobless

I once worked for a travel company who organised coach trips to Ladies Day at Royal Ascot.

I received a letter of complaint from one person because "the horses ran by so fast we could barely see them!"

I used to work in a shoe shop.
A woman was purchasing a pair of shoes and wanted a discount because one was a display shoe and it 'might of had other people's feet in it' there was nothing wrong with the shoe, it looked perfect so I said there was nothing I could do.
She stormed off without buying them and complained to my manager and told him I was rude. He reiterated that she would not be getting a discount .
Seriously. Any item of clothing in a shop could have been tried on in the fitting room of a shop and you wouldn't expect a discount if the item had no actual fault but "might have been touched by somebody else".

Just place marking to come back later!

Got told off by a customer for saying the words no problem when I was offering her help.
Was probably my mum.

I translate documents from German to English and occasionally get complaints from Germans that I have translated them wrong, based on the fact that they don't know the English words I used, and thus cannot believe they exist. Recently, for example, someone complained that I said a "method was employed" for a certain purpose. He only knew "employ" to mean "give someone a job". If he'd spent a few seconds putting "employ" in a free online dictionary he would have seen it was the correct translation, but he was sure enough of his own English to complain without checking he learn it from a book.

My husband used to have a book that has been compiled by a man who sends joke letters to companies. Sometimes he gets taken very seriously and it gets really funny. My favourite is when he writes to a 'canned meat company' to tell them how fabulous their meat is and that they should not be afraid to write that it is offal on the tin (they wrote meat product or something) Indeed he has been eating offal for years having no shame and good health. One question though, why put a picture of a dog on the label?

They write back in all seriousness to tell him that they are pleased he loves the product but that it is actually dog food...they say the picture of the dog should have made that clear.

He writes back with the hilarious..."Dog food! Sir, there is a picture of a tiger on a box of Frosties but nobody in their right mind would think that a tiger eats cornflakes!"

99yellowballoons DS2 manages to wear out the soles of his school shoes in a couple of months!

That bloke should be pleased!

I have also been accused of ruining someone's Christmas. Sigh. I suspect it had more to do with leaving the Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve afternoon.

Add to the mix Sunday Trading laws when Christmas falls on a Monday (as it does this year). Apparently Sunday Trading shouldn't count when people are doing their last minute shopping.

I was working in a vair naice chocolate shop at the time and we were about the only shop in town to be open until 5pm (most did 10-4) so by 4pm we were absolutely rammed with people panic-buying apparently their entire Christmas list. We did gift wrapping and everything. But when we did finally shut the doors promptly at 5pm and start to cash up, we had people hammering on the plate glass to let us in, and screaming that we'd ruined Christmas when we didn't.

Every December I'm grateful I don't work in retail any more. Agree with pps that it ought to be compulsory though!

On a early morning shift in a cafe, we hadn't had the milk delivery yet and had run out of skimmed milk. Had a customer go bright red with rage when I had to explain I was unable to "skim the whole milk" right then and there for her.

Another highlight was the mother who, despite being told it was very spicy and that she should get the plain chocolate, insisted on buying the chilli chocolate ice cream for her toddler (along the lines of "don't tell me how to parent my son!"). Cue a toddler screaming at full volume because his poor mouth felt like it was on fire. Obviously my fault....

I also worked in a NHS dispensary, and the amount of people who would give you hell because THEY had forgotten to order their medication was insane. One woman announcing to the waiting room that I had effectively "killed her father" because she hadn't ordered his aspirin tablets before Xmas was a particular favourite.

raven I did some DE>EN some years ago for a German university. I wasn't really equipped to explain to a cross German academic why Rektor translates to Vice Chancellor and doesn't at all imply he is someone else's deputy...

I actually don't think it's BU to ask for a small discount for a pair involving a display shoe. Not because ew other people's feet but because it won't be in quite the same condition as the other shoe.

I overheard in the fish and chip shop a customer demand a refund because he found a bone in his fish

Many years ago, I had a casual holiday job working for a certain then-Government owned gambling organisation at racecourses. Perfect job for an impoverished student, and most of the customers were enjoying their day out and were great.

That was until you experienced the coach parties at the big meetings, oh my days, some of them (usually such-and-such a pub's lads' club outing) were a handful.

I could bore you all afternoon with tales of drunken excess from these good folks but one guy sticks in my mind. Day one of a big summer meeting; first race was off at something like 2.30 pm and we'd been taking bets for about 2 hours before then. Yer man and his mates had been slouching around in the main concourse of our enclosure for a good 90 minutes of that 2 hours, taking the air, and partaking of beverages in quantity.

About 3 seconds before the off of the first, yer man decides that he ABSOLUTELY has to have a bet on that EXACT race and comes up to my window. Now, I was as quick as anyone in my team at getting the bets through the machine, but it was too late as the horses were running before he'd even finished asking for what he wanted. I then get this slurred rant containing such gems as you've got no sense of urgency, and why don't you pull up a fucking deckchair and make yourself comfortable, and actually, d'you know what mate, you must be some sort of fucking poof because only birds and poofs do your job etc etc. (All this because he left it too late to put a fiver on a horse that didn't even place anyway.)

Supervisor came over at this point and gave him a short horoscope reading. Oddly enough we didn't see him again after that.