To ask retail staff your worst customer stories?

[JaneTheVirgin]

There's been an influx lately of people complaining about the most minor perceived slight from customer service staff when in reality what they deal with on a daily basis is 99% of the time worse than not kissing your backside for buying a £5 chicken or £2 nail polish.

So, current and former retail staff - who was your worst customer? What shit do you put up with daily?

*Disclaimer for the whiny and chronically offended, I'm not talking about ACTUAL terrible service, which does happen but at a much lesser rate than terrible customers treat staff on minimum wage.

Oh loads, but this is the worst. When I was working as a doctors receptionist, a patient had form for ‘losing’ a certain medication, and had, on this occasion, been told (over the phone) that we simply couldn’t issue yet another prescription. Well. He came to the front desk, under the influence of something, and absolutely let rip at me (on my own, 32 weeks pregnant). This is a big bloke, probably 6ft2 or 3 and built like a brick shithouse and he was punching the door between the waiting room and the reception desk (I locked it when he came in, so glad I did!!), spitting at me, screaming that he was going to kill me (amongst other, much more disgusting threats), trying to lunge through the gap above the desk etc. It was terrifying and I don’t frighten easily. One and only time I sent out an ‘all practice SOS’ alarm, altho I expect the ruckus could’ve been heard throughout the building anyway.

So many. I’d be here all day if I was to go through all of them

But the top few-

• working in a bar, would have to clean the female toilets. Customers would throw plastic cups down the toilet and then proceed to piss/shit/change tampons on top of it. Obviously the toilet wouldn’t flush due to the cup so people would just go on top of whatever was there. So you’d have to manually unblock all of it in one go and it was absolutely rank. Also customers who threw their used tampons on the floor instead of into the sanitary bin beside the toilet
• had a customer who shit herself once in the club. Had to put her bag etc into a bin bag as it was covered in shit and then fashion a skirt out of a bin bag so a taxi would take her home. And then clean the toilet stall afterwards. Lovely.
• the creepy loner guy who would come to the club on his own every week and took a fancy to me. Would follow me around and beg to meet me after work. I started lying and saying I only finished at 6am (I did not, I finished at 3am) in case he did show up, so I was long gone by then.
• the guy who said he wanted to fuck me in his van
• the guy who didn’t have a cloakroom ticket and was screaming at me and threatened to come in there after me and was trying to climb over the door to get at me.

All of this was much worse than the gropes you’d get when you’d bend over to pick up cups on the floor etc. I once got someone fucked out for that at 10.13am. The club opened at 10am.

And then in retail

• Got screamed at by a man who was an hour and a half late to an instore service we offered that had separate opening and closing times to the store itself. These opening and closing times were clearly signposted online, on the door of the store and on the booth. He just started lying (“I’ve been served at this time before” and going on about how he was an NHS worker. This wasn’t long after Covid so he clearly felt like he should still get some sort of priority due to it)
• The drunk man who sat on the floor at the front of the shop and vomitted everywhere and wouldn’t leave. Had to call the police to remove him
• The career criminal who had been locked up hundreds of times over the years for really awful things (like SA, there are news articles about him) and every time he got out he’d come down to the shop and make an absolute nuisance of himself and end up getting re arrested. He once sat down outside the shop and got his penis out in front of everyone. Was arrested. Prior to that he threw jars of food at staff members when they told him to leave. He would also stand in the middle of the road for ages and refuse to let cars drive past him, causing tailbacks for miles.

It’s wild out there.

In hospitality it was always the drunks 🙄

One woman became pretty irrate with a colleague when we couldn't serve her alcohol at ten in the morning when she was attending a mum and babies coffee and cake session in the hotel bar.

Another guy got too drunk to serve one night so we stopped serving him. He set off the smoke alarm and staggered into the night. The whole hotel had to be evacuated.

I've lost count of the number of people who we tried to call cabs for but then the drivers wouldn't take them as too drunk.

Hungover, people reeking of stale booze, getting grumpy at check out next morning (wonder why so grumpy? Could it be the raging hangover maybe)? People smoking in their rooms, kicking doors in, all the rest and ALWAYS drunk.

It's enough to put you off drink entirely tbh 😂

Oh yes, forgot the time my colleague was collecting glasses in the bar and had pint glasses stacked up in both hands. A guy tried to give her another one and she said she couldn't carry it, so he just dropped it on the floor. Again - shitfaced.

When I was a university student, I was working a breakfast shift in an hotel which involved bringing people tea & toast and clearing up. A man got up from his table and walked the entire length of the room so that he could bully and intimidate me (instead of all the tall, male waiters that were much closer to his table) because he had no water on his table. Absolute vile piece of shit. I felt very scared.

I used to volunteer in a charity shop.

Once someone soiled themselves and left the soiled pants in the changing rooms.

Another time a very drunk man who clearly was an alcoholic and had a lot of issues asked for help putting on a belt. I felt sorry for him so went over to tie the belt only to look down and realise the entire front of his jeans was missing and he wasn't wearing underpants. My eyes. He tried to pay for the belt but I gave it to him on the house so he'd get the hell out 🤣

DD works in a pharmacy. Sadly, a lot of their customers are rude and shout at the staff in person and on the phone. Part of the issue is that the local GPs aren't very efficient and it all bottlenecks at the pharmacy, also drugs shortages and staff shortages don't help.

Another issue is that customers don't listen to their GPs or the pharmacist's advice or follow instructions properly, and expect miracles.

I served a premiership footballer and he left me a 1 pence piece as a tip.

Traditionally a 1p tip is a way to express that you didn't forget to tip, you just thought the service was awful. You'd know better than me whether that was true or not, but that's presumably the message he intended to convey rather than just being cheap AF.

That's horrific. I hope you're ok now.

I was also stalked for nearly 2 years. It's suffocating.

.

@Birnamwood it was about 22 yrs ago. They think they can treat people like dirt because they have money. They obviously don't realise they can loose it, just as quick as making it

I had a complaint made to the police after I asked a customer to leave. I saw them physically push a frail woman in her 80s out of a queue. It was before Christmas and there was a long queue, he was a young man and came down and was pushing through people, then right in front of me forced this woman aside, luckily she was caught by others as she toppled. I was disgusted and said ‘you need to leave’ and repeated it a few times until he threw the basket over the counter at me and shouted ‘fuck you’. Metal basket!

I’d forgotten all about it until I had loads of missed calls a few weeks later. Answered after my shift and it was a police officer. Said he was ringing me as I’d been reported for a ‘hate crime’. Didn’t have a clue so he explained a customer had made a complaint I’d used racist language publicly towards them and threatened them while working. I was still really confused. When he then gave the date of the incident and a little more info I was stunned. I said ‘yes, I did ask a white man who pushed an elderly woman to leave! I certainly wasn’t racist, we were both white and English speakers…’. Turns out the guy was from Belgium. He’d gone and filed a police complaint! I pointed out to the officer I’d had no way of knowing he wasn’t British, the only thing he’d said was ‘fuck you’ while throwing a basket at me! No obvious accent I’d heard, but I’d been distracted by the need to duck.

The police officer said he’d call back to follow up, but he never did.

Worked in a cafe/visitor centre of a nature reserve…got shouted at cause it was raining. In Scotland.

Worked for a well known bank years ago. A gentleman came in to open an account. Asked for his passport ( fairly new) and something about him didn't ring true. He wasn't born in UK, but that wasn't the issue as we had a lot of naturalised UK citizens. So I asked a few polite questions and asked for proof of address. He gave me the address which I knew actually didn't exist, and I stated I needed proof of address , such as Council tax bill. He got very threatening to me, so I advised would need to get the manager. He grabbed the passport out of my hand and scarpered.
Reported to our fraud team and police.

I had a customer screaming at me because he hadnt brought enough money with him and i wouldnt let him take the products without paying.

ive had things thrown at me when someone hadnt bought their trade card with them and expected me to know who they were when id never seen them before in my life

sworn at because i wouldnt give someone who wasnt in the trade trade prices

i also really used to hate the amount of pressure we were under to sell extra items and extended electrical warranties. The customers really hated it and some were so rude when we tried but we would get screamed at by managers and area managers if we didnt sell enough. We had to report every day what percentage of customers purchased and if it wasnt enough we had to explain ourselves and also tell them how we were going to do better that day.

so glad im not in that environment anymore

I have so many stories.

Call centre worker at 19:

Customer didn't pay bill and I couldn't reactivate their services. It literally wasn't even possible. Customer told me to fucking die and hung up. My shift literally came to a close at the same time and I was able to log off and head out the door on time for once. Cheers rude man!

Think you win! (Though haven't got through rest of the thread yet..)

I was on the basket till. An elderly lady had a small trolley and put her shopping on the belt. Usually I would have had to say "sorry baskets only" but she her items would've fitted into a basket. No one behind her.

Spent some time chatting to her, packed her shopping for her whilst someone else put their shopping on the belt.

The woman behind the next person told me I needed to hurry up and this was a basket till only. I said I was just helping to pack the lady's shopping. The customer became really abusive towards me. I dealt with the next customer then buzzed for the supervisor to come and sat there until they arrived (was relatively quickly as I was also 7 months pregnant), got up and left the checkout saying "I refuse to serve an abusive customer". Later that day I was called to speak to the manager who said I'd received praise from the elderly lady, plus two other customers.

Another was when a man decided to vape whilst waiting to pay. I asked him not to as it wasn't allowed in store. He said the rules were "no smoking" so carried on 🤦‍♀️

@Prescottdanni123 Oh I was ready to go all in but I had to control myself, it's not so easy!

20 odd years ago, when Early Learning Centre’s were stand alone stores on the high street we would get parents who would try to treat us like baby sitting services.
“little Timmy is ok here for an hour or two whilst I nip into Debenhams” whilst pointing out a toddler who is creating havoc at the Thomas the Tank Engine table and then being a dick when I try to politely refuse when really I wanted to ask them if they’d taken leave of their fucking senses or were just naturally that thick.

Oh so gross!!! Did they apologise? Hope you got time off to clean up!!!

Lovely person.

When I worked in a supermarket, a customer was packing his shopping into one of the shop's distinctive bag-for-life bags, it still had the tag attached and looked brand new, still with the folds they have when they arrive from the warehouse.

I didn't see him pick it up from the end of the aisle so it was likely one he had bought previously but it was policy to check, so I asked 'just to check, that you've already purchased that bag haven't you?'

He went OFF at me. Shouted that I was an idiot, why would he try and steal a BAG, how dare I even ask, he was very rich, how pathetic I was, maybe I would stoop so low but he wouldn't, no wonder I was on a checkout in a supermarket, maybe if I wasn't so stupid I would have done better in life.

I just let him rant, and then suggested he take the tag off so it was clear (as some staff don't ask, if the tag is still attached they just put the code in to charge the customer). He went off again and demanded to see the manager, I called the manager over who confirmed it's policy that we have to check, and he suggested he removed the tag as well, customer called me a stupid woman and slunk off.

I might out myself here as I love telling this - I was working in the supermarket because I got bored over lockdown and was dying to get out, so I did a shift or two a week. Also my best friend was the store manager so it meant we could see each other, but I'm self employed, very lucky to be doing extremely well.

About 8 months after this encounter with the shitty customer, I needed some quotes for a £500k job. I shortlisted four companies and they all visited me at my property (I'm very lucky to live in a lovely home, lots of land etc) to cut to the chase, yes, one of the potential companies turned out to be HIM.

I recognised him immediately when he arrived at my home but he didn't recognise me at all. I treated him the same as I would with anyone, coffee, talk of the trade, what needed doing, timescales etc.

After his pitch, I walked him to his car, thanked him for his time, shook his hand, but then just before he got in his car, I said 'have you taken the tag off that bag-for-life yet?'

He looked really confused, sort of laughed but didn't get it, but then, and it was blissful to see, the penny dropped. He went white. He opened his mouth, closed it, and didn't say another word. He got in his car and left.

One of the best moments of my life I think. I can't begin to imagine how confused he must have been.

Needless to say he didn't get the job.

I have been called a b*tch, an idiot, stupid, threatened with arson, had all kinds of power games played on me, threatened to be looked personally on social media, got hung up on when ppl heard my (non-male) voice, got threatened with many lawsuits or social media cancellations, been told countless times I was bad at my job ...

The one I found outrageous (and that I got very often) "You are paid to listen to me, shut up" (generally happens after you have explained to them by a + b the error of their ways and they get angry about it, go on a rant and don t want to let go)

"No, Sir (because, 99% of my customers are male, surprise), I am paid to provide all necessary information you may request, assist you in any process and of course listen to your feedback and suggestions because we value our relationship with you, but what you re asking for is emotional companionship to process the consequences and grief deriving from your own actions, there are specialised services for that, we re not one of them" (never said it out loud, I wished :D)