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.

I agree that everyone should have to do at least 6 months in some kind of public facing role in their life, like national service but for work

Mind you, it's not just the public who have stupid complaints. I once lost my job in a shop, the boss complained I served too many customers. I suppose I was should have ignored them and chatted with the other staff instead

I have worked in travel for most of my life and have seen some very funny complaints.
A man that wrote in to complain that the food in his hotel was Spanish and that the entertainment was conducted in Spanish, he was in Majorca!
Another complained as he has brought a gold chain from a random shop in Egypt for £200 and when he took it to the jewelers in the UK, it was only worth £50. He wanted us to refund the difference.
The best however, was the individual that wrote in to complain that our shop was closed on Christmas day!

I once had an (impatient) client whose work I was editing.

I’d read it and had a few queries before I was due to start so sent back their work with the questions as comments.

I then got back a shitty email asking what had I done to their work, it was unrecognisable, how could I call myself a professional.

I politely replied that, as I’d said in the previous email, it was their own work with some points that I needed to clarify.

They then sent back the answers with no mention of the previous barrage, no apology etc, and most bizarrely, given the previous complaint that I had ‘stolen their authorial voice’ and replaced it with my own, lots of the questions were answered with ‘no idea - do what you think is best’

I had a complaint yesterday when I was working with a Visual merchandiser on a store visit and outside assessing the window of one of our stores/cigar lounge.

The guy asked if he and his wife could drink a coffee in the lounge.(He could see people inside smoking cigars and drinking). I replied yes they would get a complimentary coffee if they purchased a cigar to smoke in the lounge.

He started raving about how it would spoil the coffee having to sit in a room filled with cigar smoke and how unhealthy it was. He seemed to completely miss the point that this was a cigar lounge not a free coffee cafe.

DS had an official letter of complaint written to manager of Tesco about him because he inadvertently asked a customer for her Clubcard twice whilst working all day on a checkout.

She was also a woman that knew him from our village and she was a TA at his school.

Tesco were great.

At a works review my line manager, adhering to the ridged criteria set by the company, couldn't find anything wrong with my work or any area to mark as 'needs improvement '. This was, apparently, unacceptable. She said she'd have to say my time keeping could be improved. This was a lie. She knew as well as I did that I was routinely 30 minutes early and had never been late at all.

Soooo many.

Most recent just yesterday. We own a small building company working on building sites. We have had difficulty securing payment from the company we are contracted to. The MD keeps knocking our invoices down as he says we haven't done that amount of work. When we have complained he has told us to get a Quantity Surveyor in to remeasure.

We put a Quantity Surveyor on yesterday.

He is fucking furious . He has sent muliple emails, breached his contract with uss by kicking us off the job, told me by email that I must answer the phone to him to allow him to scream at me, told me I must not speak to the main contractor, told me I wasn't allowed back on site with QS despite me having the full permission and support of the main site AND that he was charging me for his time to send all these emails.

He is not a happy bunny. But owes me 10k and has done for 6 weeks so I right royally don't give a shiny shite that I have 'destroyed our relationship by being petty over 10k'.

I worked at a concert hall and we had a customer come to see "Taboo: The Boy George Musical" then complained that it was "a bit gay".

Oh I have loads but one that springs to mind ..,, I worked in a very very posh department store in London. A regular customer came in, he was awful. Used to look at you like you really were shit on his shoe. He had brought a very expensive suit on another dept and in walking out the door the alarms went off. Now I appreciate this is annoying and sometimes embarrassing but this guy was already an established knob. I apologised and brought him over to the tills so. Could take the alarms off. Didn’t ask to see his receipt as I knew this had been purchased. He kicked of hard at me because the other dept that had left the tag on had wrapped it beautifully and I was ruining it. Which I wasn’t. He called me s stupid girl. That really hurt. I did point out it was better to do this now than him realise when he got home. I’ll never forget that customer and the way he looked st me. I really hope he got his comeuppance.

I worked in a small branch of a popular high street chemist. Customer complained that we didn’t have the same stock selection as the flagship store in the city centre. Which was about 100 times bigger than our store.

Fakename there may be an entry on wiki for ‘dress shoe’ but it also says in US English and I am and was in the UK. Additionally if you’d read the wiki entry it doesn’t describe a particular kind of shoe, just the circumstances where it’s worn.

Sorry but hate it when ' no problem' is said.

Really?! It means that your request for assistance is not a problem for them, that they're happy to help you. They're not trying to convince you that there isn't a problem at all

Oh- so many!!! NHS and A&E in another country. Best was probably a husband complaining I had called his wife a cow, when I’d said that using the salt replacement drinks for gastro was like a cow using a salt lick. Tastes gross and didn’t really help. My 45 minute conversation of how to relive symptoms boiled down to I’d called his wife a cow for using them.......

I had a customer blame me for putting her pin in wrong three times, resulting in her card being locked.
It was my fault, despite having nothing to do with her pressing the buttons, it was the tills fault as the till must be wrong as she was insistent she'd put the correct number in.
She was getting very cross. She then offered me £20 in cash to take all the goods, despite it being worth over £40. She got even more cross when I refused this. I told her that she could have £20 of her shopping, but not more.
She was insistent she'd send someone back later to pay, the items were for a school and were NEEDED TODAY and I would be ruining the children's Day if I didn't comply.
Again I refused, you can't just walk out with stuff you haven't paid for. She insisted I call the manager, who told her the same thing.
She just kept yelling. It was all our fault, we were utterly unreasonable, we were selfish and she'd write a scathing letter to head office etc etc.
We said we'd keep her shopping behind the till for the day so she could come back later with enough cash or a different card to pay.
She left, telling other customers on her way out how terrible we were.
She never came back. If head office did receive a letter complaining that we wouldn't let her steal from us, we never heard.
I also was shown a letter, written on very fancy paper, from a customer who claimed that I looked miserable (I wasn't) and had refused to comply when asked to spill my soul to her about my miseries. This was, according to her, incredibly rude.
No, "incredibly rude" is getting right in a total strangers face shouting "Aww cheer up!" repeatedly, then "Why won't you cheer up? Wot's wrong love, tell me what's wrong!"
No, I wasn't miserable, but by the end of her shouting at me, I was a little scared.
My manager found the whole thing rather funny.

Ahhh, editing work brings out the very worst in some people.

I recently had an (ex) "close friend" send me a list of peremptory instructions about how to help her write an important document for work. The document that had nothing to do with me, and benefited me in no way, yet I was expected to put in several hours of work, for free. Much as I have given her thousands and thousands of pounds worth of editorial support for 10 years, in exchange for no acknowledgement and token gifts.

The email was sent on my 40th birthday. She'd just totally forgotten about "me" altogether. I think there is no fitter symbol of the one-way nature of the relationship, really.

Those kids whose work is never chosen as excellent, despite the fact they try hard, feel shitty.

As opposed to the lauding of sporting achievements, which many children will never be able to achieve, either?
I spent my primary years being ridiculed for my lack of sporting prowess, but praising my academic achievements wasn't allowed, 'because it would make other children feel bad'.
Not exactly fair, either.

Working for a bus company, a woman called to complain her bus hadn't turned up. I checked the tracking data and it had run to time, she asked 'oh is it (name of company) bus? Cos I saw that one drive past me but didn't think that was it'
She was most annoyed I wouldn't send out another bus to pick her up.

I used to work in a café. Someone once ordered the 4 cheese pasta and then sent it back as it was 'too cheesy'.

Now work as a nurse in the NHS. Most of our complaints are actually from relatives rather than the patients. Usually based around the fact that relatives have no idea how busy we are. E.G. A relative will ask me if I can help them locate their loved ones missing T-shirt, and I'll polite explain that I'll look out for it, but I can't stop what I'm doing right now to go searching the whole ward for it (because I've usually got loads of meds to dispense, 20 phone calls to make and have patients that need urgent attention). There's often a lot of huffing about this. Ditto we get complaints from relatives when we do things like give their loves ones a bath and a hair wash, but that no-one then blow-dried and styled that hair or did their loved ones make-up. It would be genuinely lovely if we had the time to do these little things, but we just really don't anymore.

Harrypotternerd fo you think they'd issue one for me against British Gas.** They keep writing to me every month demanding money

Had a customer knocking on my door at turned 11pm one evening.

Apparently, since I live on the same premises as my business, I was being pathetic to refuse to deal with them in my dressing gown after I stumbled out of bed and I won't go far in business if I'm not prepared to put the work in.

They left with many threats to sue me for ruining their holiday and to "bring me to my knees".

I used to work for a very popular charm company and one Christmas Eve at about 4pm a customer came in to ask for a specific Christmas charm and I had to explain that we'd sold out, however could ring our other stores and see if they had one and we would ensure it was ready for her the day after Boxing Day. The customer got very angry and then informed my manager that I personally had ruined Christmas and I should feel very guilty!

A good friend of mine was caught up in the 9/11 events in New York
Thousands of people were stranded so the restaurant she worked in opened up and invited people in for shelter and hot drinks.
One woman went apeshit because the water my friend brought her dog was from the tap!!!
I like to think she was in shock rather than a total nutter

I work for a charity and one client made the following complaints about me:

The £100 in supermarket vouchers I had sent did not include cash for taxi fare.
The supermarket was 10 minutes walk away and she had no mobility issues.

She wrote to my manager complaining that we would not pay the £28,000 she wanted to renovate her property.

She owned 3 houses but refused to sell one of them to clear mortgage arrears as they were her pension fund for the future. She wanted us to pay the arrears.

She said I should cover all the costs needed as she turned down a marriage proposal 20 years ago and I should show gratitude.

She complained that my refusal to fund the renovations would mean she had to become a prostitute.

She wrote to her MP saying we had not helped her and were refusing. The MP wrote to my manager complaining and demanding an explanation.
We wrote back pointing out the £100s in crisis grants we had given plus the 3 houses ect. The MP apologised.

She somplained that the crisis food shop I delivered for her did not contain the beef pork and lamb joints she had listed. I had provided beef pirk and lamb steaks as she was only feeding herself and I could not justify spending £30 on meat.

I had to be investigated after each complaint. It nearly made me quit my job.

A kid was running wild in the store and knocked into a display of novelty mugs that laughed when you tipped them up. One fell and hit him on the head.

Mother complained about the store being unsafe and worst of all the products laughed at her son while beating him.