To hate customers

[rahjama]

Somewhat lighthearted.

Working in hospitality/retail, what things do customers do that really, really annoy you when you're working? I'll start

• Booking for 6 people and then saying "Hope it's okay we're now a party of 194"

• Paying in cash but they're 1-20p short. "Can you cover it?" No I cannot

• Sitting on tables that are dirty/unset/in the process of being cleaned when there are clean and set tables literally next to them. Then complaining about the lack of cutlery.

• Buying the cheapest pint, saying it's flat/doesn't taste right, then swapping for the most expensive pint.

• Picking up an allergen menu and then saying "is this all you do?" No that's all we do GLUTEN FREE it says at the top!!!!!!!!!

Used to work in Debenhams...

One woman bought half the sale bin. 90% didn't have a barcode so needed to type the SKU in. She returned it all the next day.

"Can I return this? No, it's not been worn...."

"Can I return this thing I bought yesterday?" No receipt, no tags, four year old stock, I know we didn't have any in the sale that year and they want the full original price refunded.

Not the customers fault - but customer not happy with refund policy, demands to speak to manager, manager on the phone tells you to give them what they want.

Customers who throw stuff at you/shout at you/generally behave inappropriately.

Gold card holders thinking they could push to the front of the queue. Nope, just meant you spent £500 in six months or something.

People who leave their small children unattended on the toy department then get shirty when they're called out on it. Sometimes they'd actually left the store. Or the three year old who'd had their five year old brother left in charge of her was memorable. Brother wandered off. I found the three year old, who didn't know her surname or her parents names so I ended up carrying her about the whole floor, talking about Tweenies and asking her to point if she saw daddy. For half an hour. Then her parents turned up and claimed they'd only been on the next department🙄

Yeah, if I order a hot drink and a meal in a cafe I would expect and want the drink to arrive ASAP and the food later rather than the drink be delayed to come with the food. You can just leave the drink there or sip it if you want to consume both simultaneously. Can't see why it'd be important for a coffee to be piping hot while you're eating tbh.

Yes this is the strangest thing to me. I have the coffee while I wait then a juice or other cold drink with my meal. Tap water even.

What he says is funny but that bloody music Can't cope with it.

The one that sticks in my mind is when i worked at a well known supermarket beginning with a T. A staff member had called me over as she was being screamed at by a woman (pretty incoherently i must say) and said woman had demanded a manager.
She was unhappy with the chicken she had bought and wanted a refund, as the chicken had clearly been abused. I asked her to clarify as she was upset and she held up the raw chicken and said, look at it, its clearly been abused. Not knowing what else to say i agreed with her, saying, yes, well its dead, so i suppose that is pretty abusive. She screamed and threw the chicken at me. I still don't really get what her issue was!
Oh, and the guy who brought his bread back (square sliced loaf) because it was the wrong shape!

Why do customers demand to see a manager? Do they think they’re entitled to call a manager form their busy work schedule to pander to their usually unreasonable requests?
Most of the time the managers say what has already been said.

I saw a YouTube video of a man ranting at a bus driver because he wanted to see an inspector!…Bus inspectors haven’t existed for about 30 years , this isn’t like that tv show “On the buses “. This isn’t 1973.

Also considering buses are moving vehicles that can travel long distances , how on earth did this man expect a bus inspector to even turn up onto his bus to listen to his ridiculous complaints?

Sometimes buses can be 10-20 miles away from their depots, it’s not within the parameters of an “inspector “to leave their work station and travel many miles away to speak to a disgruntled passenger!

Apart from that , did the man seriously expect the bus driver to just sit there and wait?!

You worked for M&S didn’t you? 😀

I worked for Argos in the early 2000's. A famous singer came in to purchase
an ironing board. I made a joke that it will not fit in a carrier bag.
Which made her face screw up. I did sellotape a small bag to prove
that she had paid for it in Argos
She reported me to the managing director that I refused her a carrier bag.
She also lied during an interview with Terry Wogan making it out
that all of the staff were laughing at her.
I was given a written warning.
How the f**k can an ironing board fit in a carrier bag.
That made me determined to get another job.

Who was the ironing board singer? Give us a clue.

The most intriguing bit is why anyone would mention a disappointing purchase experience at Argos during an interview with Terry Wogan.

I worked in hospitality for years and can relate to all this. My husband used to say just smile and take their money. It's more than frustrating though.

I dont work in hospitality but I do work with the public. The latest favourite whinge is "you didn't call me back" when I say yes I did and quote dates and times I get told "yes I know but I wad busy so didn't answer" ... idiots

Any kind of customer service role. When a customer says I’m going to complain, say something like “ please do, they don’t listen to us, so they’ll hopefully listen to you. Would you like their phone number?”

Sometimes you get some confused looks because they were expecting an argument!

I really want to know who IBS (ironing board singer) was too! I wouldn't be in the least surprised surprised if it was one person in particular.

I'll bet Wogan was fighting so hard to suppress the laughter and only allowing IBS to continue rambling on to give herself some more rope. Our Terry knew very well how to respond to petty, ridiculous non-events (spoiler: not with a straight face!)

I've worked in retail over 20 years and still am sometimes surprised by some customers.
Recently I've had a woman return bedlinen over 10 years old as it has holes in and she would have expected it to last better.

Another lady returning a pair of shoes that kept slipping off when she walked - could someone help her , was she missing something?! Colleague suggested using heel grips if she had narrow ankles. But she said no she would prefer to return them. Her receipt was well over the return period so I offered gift vouchers. Said that I can't offer refund as the shoes aren't faulty and it's passed the return day. She accused me of saying there was something wrong with her feet!

Another customer on the phone asking if we have a certain item of clothing. It was new and we didn't have it in so I checked and suggested she could order it on the website. She asked me whether I thought she should order x-small or small!! Bearing in mind I haven't seen the sizing on the item or the size of the customer it was hard not to laugh.

One Christmas there was a long queue of customers . Woman wanted all items packed as gifts. I quickly removed prices and prepared gift bags and she complained to a manager that I removed the prices too aggressively!

I have really enjoyed reading others experiences that seem oh so familiar!

Someone rings up and wants a repair carried out on something quite old they bought second hand. We tell them we can't help, que weeks of emails and phone calls where they refuse to take no for an answer and complain about poor customer service... our customer service is great... for our customers of which you are not one

That's made me laugh!

The customer is always right- and sometimes a right- fill.in word!

People who don't pick up after their baby/young child has thrown (after chewing and spitting out mostly) all over the floor.

People who change nappies on booths/chairs/tables in restaurants.

🤢

Honestly, with some of the things I get asked for, it wouldn't even register that someone asked to keep a menu back unless it was really busy and I needed it, most times they're handed back to me after taking an order by the customers, I couldn't see why anyone would have a problem with you keeping one on the table, I wouldn't at all.

And yes, upselling is a thing, and some places are more aggressive than others at getting their staff to do it, I've had training in upselling with previous employers, in hospitality, but by far the worst was a well known newsagents who had the till piled so high with this weeks shite that you could barely see over it and you had a target to sell each week - fail your targets so many times and you'd be facing disciplinary. Staff ended up buying each others targets if you couldn't make them, bloody awful.

Quote fail on my last post, meant to quote this one 🤦

Online retailer here. Customers who don't read descriptions, look at photos or even read the title. Oh and those who buy at 10pm on a Friday night on a bank holiday and are messaging you by Monday morning asking why they haven't received their order. And don't get me started on those who call your business number or email you at midnight and then again at 7am the following morning asking whether you received their email/voicemail and could you reply because they simply have to know immediately whether the item you are selling matches their cousin's dogs brothers hair colour 🙄

I posted someone’s order a lot earlier than our ‘standard dispatch time’ stated.
she had and email to say it was dispatched.

she got a card from the post office to say it couldn’t be delivered; they went back again and still couldn’t deliver it.

I didn’t know this until three weeks later she asked me when her parcel was leaving and I told her it had gone already - when she checked the tracking it was already on the way back to me but apparently this was my fault because she ‘didn’t know what the post office card was for’ so didn’t go to collect it.

She said I shouldn’t have posted the item out when it was ready and made but admitted she’d received the dispatch email but ‘didn’t know it meant it was on its way’.

Apparently this was all my fault and I should have reimbursed her for the postage costs

We had customers bring power tools in for repair in cardboard boxes they had dismantled them in an effort to do a DIY repair. The cartoon above the counter read "What was this before you tried to repair it?"
There were missing springs, washers etc that made some things impossible to repair especially if they'd been bought from Aldi, Lidl who have no contracts for spares.

Customers could get quite nasty when you sent them home with their box of scrap

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I get why customers kick off when they lose or if there's a rule 4 that deducts off your winnings and I agree that its unfair, the staff don't make the rules but we do have to follow them or we could end up on a disciplinary and lose our jobs and we don't deserve a tirade of abuse either or threats to wait for us after closing time when that happens. I was spat at twice once in the face because a customer placed a late bet despite the fact I had asked him loads of times to come to the counter 2-5 mins before the off time. The other spitting incident happend because I wouldn't let a banned customer gamble so he spat on me called me a jobsworth and a cunt before storming out. Spitting on the machines is also unfortunately a common occurrence its disgusting and there's no need for it. One of my colleagues had water chucked in her face with the warning that next time it would be acid by a customer and all because she couldn't cancel his bet as the race had gone off. I left after the second spitting incident no amount of money is worth the abuse I got on a daily basis, most gamblers are selfish, nasty and vindictive fuckers especially when they don't get their way. I wouldn't work retail again after that I'd rather scrub dirty toilets lol I will never work in customer service again after three years in a betting shop thats enough to drive anyone to the brink of madness lol

Another petrol station one - we used to put cones blocking the lanes to the pumps that had ran out of fuel. The amount of people who would get out, move the cone, pull up to pump and attempt to fill up was shocking! Some of them had the good grace to be embarrassed but a few got angry.

And my favourite call centre one -

Me: Is that Steven with a v or a ph?
Steven: WITH AN S!