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 was on a very posh weekend for a friends birthday.
Landed at a little airport in South of France-
When we got off the plane to walk the short distance to the terminal the woman guiding us said
"I'm sorry about the wind"
Making us wonder what kind of complaints/demands she usually deals with...

Took an old lady on "hunger strike", because she didn't like her nursing home, into hospital (ex matron I seem to remember and not "officially" diagnosed with Dementia), on establishing that I a) wasn't welsh speaking b) wasn't welsh, and c) didn't go to church, she duly announced that I was "going to hell".

More seriously have had a false complaint that I shoved a patient, where the patient took the brief (2 mins or so) opportunity of my colleague being out of the room as her window to fabricate the story, her totally inconsistent account sorted it in the end, but super stressful.

Like the OP I too work in the NHS

Had a child come into A&E who hadn't been vaccinated at all. He had a deep leg wound filled with dirt, so at high risk of tetanus, which is often fatal. As he hadn't been vaccinated, I had to explain to his mother that we recommended giving tetanus immunoglobulin - which is similar to a vaccine but, unlike a vaccine, works immediately. I was not judgemental and said nothing about his vaccine status except to explain why we recommended the immunoglobulin. When she initially refused it, I had to explain that tetanus was potentially fatal, so she could understand why it was so important.

My thanks for trying to save her child's life was a complaint to the department head that I had bullied her because she was anti-vaccines.

Worked in Sainsburys years ago, on the customer service desk.

A lady came in one day to return an item, but when she got it out of her bag it was a Tesco product. I explained that as it wasn't bought from this store I couldn't give a refund. She exploded calling me a liar, saying that she has never shopped at Tesco in her life and that she definitely had bought it in Sainsburys.

After explaining once again why I couldn't offer a refund, she demanded to speak to a manager. I called him from his office and he came and gave her a refund, and a gift voucher as an apology!

I didn't last long in that job!

Worked for a rail company, on board. We came to a stand on day as there had been a fatality, body on the line. When this is announced we were told to say it was an ‘incident’ on the line so as not to distress anyone. We are allowed to say what’s actually happened if asked face to face.

Man comes up to me and asks what the incident is, I explain there’s been a fatality up ahead. Well, why can’t we move? Sir, the fatality has occurred on our line, so we can’t at the moment ( hoping he’ll understand). Why not? Sir, there is a body on the line and the police and emergency services need to deal with the situation so we can’t move until they’ve finished and the line is clear.

Can’t you just roll over it?

He seriously wanted us to just roll our train over the body and go on our merry way....

I used to work on a bookshop back in the 90's.

We used to get a lot of celebs in to promote their books. If people couldn't make the event then could leave an 'order' for the celeb to write a dedication/comment and signature and the customer could pick it up later.

One day we had Micheal Palin in with his new travel book. He spent hours and hours signing extra books.
When a woman picked up her book she complained that it was written a bit messily and Mr Palin hadn't used a capital letter where needed. Obviously Micheal Palin had long left the building. I apologised and offered her a refund or a simple signed book rather than a dedicated one. That wasn't good enough. She wanted it rewritten by Micheal Palin. She just couldn't see why that couldn't happen. Deadlock. In the end she called me an stupid idiot and took the book.

The amount of abuse I got in bookshops was awful.

I work in a bank & have had many weird & wonderful complaints but best was a customer who threatened to turn up to a call centre with a gun & police detained & questioned him for 2 hrs. He then wanted compensation for the time & inconvenience caused as he had to spend 2 hrs in the police station 🙄

I was shouted at very rudely by a horrid woman when I mouthed the words "can he have a lollipop?" At her son when I was working in a coffee shop and we would give out lollies to kids. I never assumed they could have them as I know people are weird with sweets, kids have allergies etc
Apparently I'd made her day "hell" as he saw me mouthing it and she didn't really want him to have one, so she said no and he kicked off. I said I tried to be discrete but she went on about how I didn't understand children, how he wouldn't behave all day etc. Horrible woman. I held my tongue but wanted to say it wasn't my fault her little darling was such a spoilt brat

I mouthed the words at the woman I should say, the son was stood next to her

Customer claimed that because he didn’t read the terms and conditions he shouldn’t have to pay the fee.

When working in retail a customer complained that she got a parking ticket because I didn’t tell her she couldn’t park in the disabled bays... I had no idea where she had parked 😂

When I was a student I worked for Next and just before one of the sales a man rang demanding that we pick up a list of stuff and set it aside for him to come in and buy at his leisure. He claimed he'd studied law and our T&C and legally we had to because of . He got very angry when told no and said he was going to ring head office with a complaint. We were allowed to hang up on callers that swore at us so that probably pissed him off even more

I recently had one who wanted us to reimburse her for a locksmith.

We'd spoken to her, at her request, earlier in the day. The conversation gave her a headache so she needed to go out to buy painkillers.

She locked her keys in the house on the way out - our fault apparently!

I'm a teacher. A parent complained when I refused to speak to her child using an Indian accent.... (I'm not Indian)

Mmgirish hahahaha can you imagine the horror if you did!

Oh god @ny20005 that reminds me of another of mine from my time in consumer credit - we had a lady call into our customer services call centre saying she couldn't afford her loan repayments because her husband had died and that she was going to kill herself when she got off be phone. It was reported to 101 who sent her local police straight round to her home to do a welfare check. The very young agent who took the call was really distressed it was awful for her, really upsetting. I had to send her home.

Customer complained the next day and demanded huge amounts of compensation. Her reasons were:

1. She was very embarrassed that the police had been to her house, what would the neighbours think? They had hammered on her door in a very alarming manner
2. She was eating her dinner with her husband (!) and mother and had to explain herself to them
3. We had broken the data protection act by giving her details to the police!

Hmmm. That one wasn't upheld either!

Used to be a bar maid in a nightclub and one night a girl spent ages weighing up what to buy before asking for a blue liqueur we had on the top shelf. As a night club we didn’t really sell much liqueur so it was more for show, but I poured her the standard 25ml and passed it over. She went mental! She said ‘is that all I get??’ and disgustedly pointed at the glass.

I explained yes that was the standard measure and she then demanded a full glass. I tried to explain we don’t sell spirits by the glass, only in measurements, and I could give her a double or two separate doubles but I couldn’t fill the glass to the top with the liqueur (which probably would’ve been gross anyway). She kept saying what an outrage it was and how i was trying to rip her off. She was screaming and holding up the bar queue and eventually asked for a Smirnoff ice instead..

When I had checked her ID I could see she had only recently turned 18 so I assume she was just inexperienced and didn’t know much about booze, probably assumed the blue liqueur was like an alcopop - but if you don’t know, just ask, don’t have a screaming fit...

Years ago, I worked at a lochside hotel. A guest arrived at around 6pm in the winter time and complained that he had paid a lochview room supplement but could not see the Loch. We advised that the Loch would be seen in the morning, in the daylight. Not acceptable, hotel management should arrange flood lighting to ensure a Loch view is available at all times.

I worked in Sainsburys as a teen. When I was changing the till roll a customer was moaning and tutting about the hold up so I asked him to Keep His Hair On.

I later received a written warning from my manager. The man had complained that I mocked him for wearing a wig? I didn't even know it was a wig.

My DM coming round to my house and saying all sorts of nasty stuff to me because she hadn't been invited to non-existent events at the DC's school. She'd been sitting in her flat stewing over not getting an invite to things that weren't actually happening.
Not sure how I can fix that one. I will never be able to invite her to an non-existent event.

When I was working in a shop once, there was a really rude bloke who used to come in pretty regularly. He claimed to be unable to understand me (this was down south.) one day he came in, put his stuff on the counter and said "and 20 lambert and butler you scouse bitch" my response "I'm not Scouse" got me a complaint for lying to him. Funny thing is, I wasn't lying!

One of the best was a woman who complained her salad was too cold

Thats not a weird complaint, it's perfectly legitimate. Restaurants etc often serve salads at far too low a temperature, with fridge cold ingredients that then have no flavour and are also unpleasant to eat. It's not just salads either, lots of cold dishes are served far too cold, things like pates and cheeses and many others.

I worked in a building open to the public. It was near a water works. One day a 48 inch main burst and all the roads surrounding the building were about three feet under water, for quite a long time. At the time I cycled to to work and got as near as I could but it was too dangerous to continue so I went to another branch and worked there until the water receded, as did my colleagues.
Yes, we had a complaint made against us by a man who had put on his fishing waders and made it through the floods but the building was closed - why on earth hadn't we all done the same? How dare we give up so easily?

“I can’t read without my reading glasses”.
“Can you read with them on?”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t need to wear them, it’s a disgrace.”

I was once threatened with a government inquiry. What a waste of time that would have been!