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.

Just remembered someone who wrote an official complaint about me - apparently I was persecuting him. I had sent him a standard letter asking him to confirm his preferred contact details.

And another who complained to my manager because I declined to give him someone else's personal information which he had no entitlement to.

I'm always secretly proud when someone complains about me for just doing my job.

That said, it was an absurd sequence of events was he on drugs?and maybe he's laughing about that now too?
I doubt it. He is quite poorly and troubled and not having a very nice time of it.

I know he is seen as a bit of a joke but he is apparently a good guy, just troubled.

That information about charges (not actual bills) were sent in brown envelopes to the complainers parent. As brown envelopes would make it look as though they were about a debt and cause stress. Also that the letters were adressed to "Mrs M Otherof complainer" as that made it obvious to the dodgy postie (?) that she was widowed.
This complaint from a man who ran a successful business.
This complaint my boss actually had a meeting with me about and put a note on my employment record.

Some said that they didn't want a certain person to look after them because they were gay. My blood boiled when they said it but I had to hold my tongue

*someone

Apologies for my flippant comments then MrsDV poor old Brian.

Used to work for a bank call centre years ago.
Once got screamed at for not being able to exchange money for Disney dollars, and would not believe me that they were not legal tender.

Black Friday eve or christmas eve was also prime time for drunk ppl trying to increase their overdrafts. If it was declined and it nearly always was they would always rant how their kids were not going to have any presents now and it was my personal fault.

As a student in the mid-80s, I worked part time in a double glazing telesales department. We phoned people who were publicly listed in the phone book. A woman told me, upon answering my call, that my call was a gross invasion of her privacy.

I politely suggested she may like to consider going ex-directory!

TBF ginger I agree with her. Not being ex-directory is not an invitation for just anyone to cold call her

@CherryChasingDotMuncher this was 30 years ago. Selling of data was nothing like it is now and people who didn't want to be called went ex directory!

A patient took offence at my name because I shared a Christian name with someone she disiked in her family

Maybe she thought she was being funny or I was meant to try and win her round by proving that not all were bad people.

But if I said "Oh you use a stick, my NDN uses a stick and he's a right bastard" ...............can you imagine the fallout ?

I muttered darkly under my breath and thought I;m glad I don't live in your head

I also worked in a video store (remember them). We had an adult section and an old man complained to me (16yo) that the porn wasn't hardcore enough and did we have anything else under the counter. I said no only the legal stuff on the shelf and he ranted for ages about how ppl should be able to watch what they like and I was policing him etc. I found it quite amusing at the tine but looking back I was in a shop late at night aged 16 with a angry horny man and it could have gone a lot worse.

To all those querying BH's accident - a similar thing happened to me. No potatoes or drugs involved. I'd parked on the drive and was running indoors to pick up something before driving off again. As I ran in front of the car I realised it had started to roll backwards down the sloping drive. I ran back and dived in through the door, which I'd left open. I thought I could just grab the handbrake, but the car was picking up speed and I was half in/half out lying on the seat and running along. As the car got faster I fell out, the door, which wasn't far off the ground as it was an MX5, squeezed over my head, and I ended up with my head wedged behind the front wheel.

The car carried on down the drive, taking me with it with my head up against the wheel. I honestly though I was going to be killed. We have big brick pillars at the end of the drive and all I could think was that I would be smashed into a pillar. Amazingly the car didn't hit the pillar, it went straight down the drive (about 40ft), across the road, and as it hit the kerb on the other side of the road and bounced forward I was able to roll out from underneath.

A neighbour heard my screams and came out to help and called an ambulance. I was so lucky not to be badly injured. I had a chunk out of my head, my clothes were torn to shreds, and the next day I was black and blue from head to toe, but no serious injuries.

So it can happen very easily. The lesson I learnt was to never again try to stop a runaway car. And in the paper the very next day was a story of a man who had tried to stop his runaway Range Rover by standing behind it and trying to stop it with his hands. He was crushed to death.

Had a couple of women screaming and carrying on before a concert that the pints they were given had been sitting on the side "for hours" (they were freshly poured), they wanted a refund and free drinks, and demanded that we should serve every single person that ordered a pint (upwards of 500 in the 30 minutes before the concert) freshly poured pints. We had just started to pre-pour pints as the 2 machines we used for pints had a varying capacity of between 2 and 4 pints between them (should have been able to pour up to 12 at a time). Our team leader told them they were welcome to try another bar, but would probably have the same issue.
Been told that I'm a fucking disgrace by a football fan because they turned up after the game had started and couldn't get their ritual pre-match burger as the external food vans close at kick-off.
Working at a racecourse during the summer on a champagne bar, a customer wanted a recommendation. It got passed to me as, the bar manager was often not around, and I know more about champagne than most of the people that got put working on the bar. I asked if they wanted rose champagne or not. They were adamant that it had to be rose, but nothing expensive. I made the recommendation, and they bought a couple of bottles for their party. 30 minutes later, one of the managers comes up wanting to know who made a recommendation to that party. Turns out, they decided I'd overcharged them for 2 bottles of the cheapest rose. I explained that they had asked for a recommendation and that the price they had paid was the total for 2 bottles of that champagne. "No, it should have been £X." One of them shouts. They wanted to pay the same price as the cheapest champagne we sold, rather than the price of the rose. The manager told them not to come back to our bar for the rest of the day.
Been accused of tolerating sexism after advising a male hotel guest that the spa he planned to attend on the Monday operated a women-only policy on the indoor saunas on Mondays (he could still use the external saunas and other indoor facilities, just not the indoor saunas).

A friend who used to work at a pub was told, when clearing the plates from a table that "the pattern on the plates ruined the meal". Though not enough to prevent them clearing their plates.

I worked in a newsagents in the 70's/80's during the regular newsprint workers strikes. You really wouldn't believe the abuse we got when customers didn't get their newspaper through the door in the morning. Even worse where the ones where we sent a substitute paper instead (on the rare occasions that we were sent extra copies of alternatives). People would come in slamming the substitute on the counter, ranting and raving. It's not as if people didn't know what was happening, the print workers strikes were well reported on the TV news etc. Customers seemed to think we could magic up their preferred alternative (as if we had the time to keep a second register of 2nd/3rd preferences, as if we had the time to think what alternatives are best suited to the missing title at 6am in the morning when the paper boys were waiting, as if we had unlimited supplies of alternatives, etc). Completely bonkers for something as pathetic as a morning newspaper. Heaven help them when something serious goes wrong in their lives!

Ah, just remembered a more recent one. In my current work, I have to send out documents requiring signatures. I have various dispensers of the sticky "flags" to indicate where signatures are required. I never even gave a thought to the colours of the stickers - I just used whatever was nearest and if there were two or more people, I'd just make sure I used different coloured stickers to help make sure the right people signed in the right place. One day I got a very irate woman on the phone accusing me of sex discrimination and telling me I'd put the women's rights movement back by decades. I hadn't the faintest idea what she was on about, but after a few minutes of her angry tirade, it turned out she'd been insulted that I'd used pink coloured sticky flags for her signature. She just wouldn't listen and believe that it was purely random!

I used to work in hospitality and yes someone did complain when I replied 'no problem'.
Had people order Chateaubriand then complain when it arrived that they were vegetarian and wouldn't be paying for it!

@karriecreamer

I worked in a small travel branch of a large newsagent chain and I know exactly what you mean regarding people losing their heads over a newspaper! Some times due to traffic or bad weather the delivery would be delayed, so we'd have no papers at opening time and you'd think I personally had caused the weather or traffic and delayed the delivery! I was once also called a fat useless cunt because we'd sold out of one paper. It's hardly a matter of life or death!

I once worked in a call centre doing customer service for a broadband provider.

As you might imagine, lots of complaints, think people going months without being connected, engineers not turning up to appointments, lost days off work etc. Completely understood how frustrating it must be.

Worst complaint was not from someone who may be entitled but from a "gentleman" who called and screamed down the phone about his router.

Had router arrived I queried? Yes. Was it switched on, could he describe what wasn't working? No.

It transpired everything was working perfectly but he had received a silver router and he specifically requested a black router and a silver router completely fucked up all his interior decorating...

I worked in a restaurant in the City of London and one of our regular customers was the head of one of biggest companies in the area - I'll call him Mr A.

One day Mr A had finished his meal and went to reception to pick up his coat - he handed over his ticket but when he got his coat, it wasn't his. We checked and double-checked his ticket, asked him to caome and have a look at the other coats and see if he could see his, asked if someone could have picked up someone else's ticket by mistake etc etc but we couldn't find his coat. We were all very apologetic and promised to compensate him if we did not get his coat back.

Mr A went absolutely mad - screaming at the women on reception, shouting that he would get everyone sacked and generally behaving like a five year old rather than a senior insurance executive. He then phoned the manager for another rant when he got back to the office yelling about our incompetence. He then followed through on his attempt to get people sacked by phoning the head office of the restaurant.

The next day, a different man - Mr B - came in and said that he believed we had his coat. It turns out that the previous day Mr A had picked up Mr B's coat as he left the office for lunch, had handed it in when he arrived at the restaurant without noticing that it was not his coat but when he was given back the same coat that he had handed in he noticed the difference.

Did Mr A come and apologise for his completely ridiculous behaviour? Did he fuck, he just came back a few days later as if nothing had happened.

I had a nanny booking that I lasted at for one day. One of the complaints about me was that I was wearing red nail varnish.

Working in a cafe popular with pensioners and builders, I had a quite mild looking man complain with gusto that his mushroom curry tasted of... mushroom curry

Apparently he expected it to taste of mushrooms and curry, with a hint of onions but it all tasted of curried mushrooms. He was really quite vile about it, calling me stupid for not understanding why his mushroom curry tasting of mushroom curry was a problem. My boss, as always, hid in the office until the gentleman left (promising to be back with the Police about his refund).

I lasted two weeks at that job and I still don't understand what the difference between mushroom curry and mushrooms and curry is

As a temporary "Christmas holiday" worker at a stationery shop in my student days, I witnessed a man old enough to be my father (and therefore know better) have a full-on tantrum over my inability to give him a refund for a game the shop had never stocked. If he'd had a receipt from a different branch I could have helped but resumably it was an unwanted Christmas gift. I was a teenager and it really struck me as an odd thing to see a middle aged man get so het up about such a small issue. The shop manager told him as much too.

Saying ‘no problem’ when someone asks you to do something perfectly reasonable that is obviously part of your job is a strange response. Of course it isn’t a problem. So asking a waiter if you could please have another glass of wine should not elicit the no problem reply.

You might be slightly, momentarily irritated by "no problem", but actually making a complaint about it is OTT.