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.

This is quite eye opening - about how horrible some people are, but also how unsupportive management often are.

Purplebunnie
I'm with you 100% on this. I wish they'd left the screens up, so many people have zero concept of personal space.

.

Sometimes I wonder how I keep my words in
10 years emergency services
2 years care work
2 years retail
And a grand total of 17 years call centre work

I worked at argos and someone reported me to the CEO because I didn't put their item in a carrier bag. (they were free in those days) I had actually put a sticker on to say purchased at argos in case they were going to another shop.

Item was an ironing board. I was actually given a formal warning.

I had a(n ostensibly very naice) middle class couple at my till a while ago.
The woman was really friendly, chatted away to me, asked where l was 'from' originally (my accent is clearly not local to where l work), I told her, and said l'm just working there until l retire next year.
"Oh, what did you do back home?"
"I was with the police for nearly thirty years. A manager for more than half of that."
Her husband looked at me. "And now you're REDUCED to THIS!"
I didn't respond, beside giving him a look that should have reduced him to a small pile of smoking ashes. But his poor wife. She looked absolutely mortified.
I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall when they got outside.

@Whatwouldscullydo hello fellow staff 😉

Another shift I was working with a trainee she'd been there about 6 weeks and hadn't yet experienced abuse or any incidents yet. About 8pm a customer's football team and bet lost the match. He asked for a refend for his bet because the player he bet to score was taken off injuried and the team lost which was his bet on the coupons. He decided a refund was in order because the player was taken injuried just before half time so therefore hadn't had enough time to score so the bet was invalid 🙄 I explained patiently why we can refund and the bet was indeed valid. After trying to charm and be reasonable I knew he was gonna turn and he did. He started screaning at me that he was right and I was wrong he was gonna complain and get me sacked so I had better refund him, I said no.

He went crazy grabbed a stool smashed the TV's and the gaming machines my poor colleague was shaken I didn't bat an eyelid just calmly told everyone to leave we're closed (glass everywhere). I called the area manager and security and we shut down. My colleague asked me why I was so calm I replied "three years of this crap will no longer shock you. Bookies are like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest" she didn't get the reference 🤣🤣🙈

Those who work at the bookies - out of interest, do you get female customers kicking off? I know they do in other environments, just curious about the bookies as this is traditionally a 'male domain'.

@Aqua20 the only reply to someone who goes down the route of repeatedly saying "Do you know who I am?" is "Well if you don't know who you are, how an I supposed to know?" 🤣🤣🤣

One used to come in with his toddler, was probably a good 10+ years older than me (18-23 at the time) and he then started stalking me on social media.

Another came up to me while I was out with a friend at a cafe and started shouting abuse at me for an issue they had in store (that still wasn't my fault).

One time I was threatened and told I shouldn't walk to my car alone because they'll "sort me out". Not that it matters but I was an 18yo 5"5 woman and he was a 6"5 bodybuilder in his late 20s.

And this was all from a job in the local supermarket 🙃

I worked alone in a bureau de change...my shift was 9am till 6pm....i was allowed one 30 minute break at 2pm for my lunch...i would display a clock in the window advising that i would be back at 2.30pm...more often than not i would come back to a customer kicking off because they had to wait....stupid thick twats couldnt grasp that by law i had to have a break.

Or "Yes, of course, I remember you; you taught me geography at St Stephen's school twenty years ago - how are you these days, Mrs Harris?"

I worked at a tearoom when I was 15, very small place, homemade afternoon teas, linen tablecloths, flowery teapots etc.
Two women came in with a baby and sat in the window seats. One of them started to change the babys soiled nappy on the table. I went over and said quietly something along the lines of "oh you don't have to do that, we have baby change facilities in the toilets". This was signposted.
She told me to mind my own fucking business, and called me a "judgey little skank".
I didn't know what to do so apologised and went into the kitchen to tell the owner. I stayed in the back but heard her ask them to leave.
We noticed after they had gone that they had unzipped one of the cushions and stuffed the open dirty nappy inside.

I would have punched her

I work in an understaffed local supermarket. I’ve had a customer throw crumpled and ripped lottery tickets at me then demand the manager check them when they weren’t winners.

Daily grumbles are people refusing to use self service checkouts when I’m the only person on the shop floor trying to deal with a frozen delivery by myself.

Customers not understanding that retail staff like myself pride ourselves on being helpful and friendly, but we have jobs to do when self service checkouts are easy to use.

Working Christmas Eve in Woolworths and it was always a challenging shift but one year was off the scale. People expecting a full range of stock and incandescent because things had sold.

Store manager got so fed up he just shut the store nearly three hours early. 😀

Good for him.

Another job I did - not retail - was in a restaurant in a UK seaside resort town. One night we had a load of pissed-up businessmen from a conference in. They were so awful to the waiting staff that the duty manager threw them all out. We were all ready to back him up if the owner had come down on him. But good sense prevailed.

The ratio is very heavily male. Female customers are not a huge percentage of the customers.

I've had " arguments " with both male and female customers although not anywhere near as many. Most issues with a woman have probably been refusal to use the loo or to leave the customers alone because they arebt actually customers, just the hobos wanting to scrounge money or change up their coins or use the loo ( which is a no cos of drugs etc customers only)

I always think of 'the worst toilet in Scotland' from Trainspotting when a bookies' loo is mentioned!

@PurpleNebula84 that's good one lol

Whilst bookies are mostly a male domain women do gamble and some have been quite rude but I've never had one smash the shop up. The few times women got abusive to me one was a druggie and it was very obvious she had track marks on her arms and feet (she was wearing flip flops) she came in asked to use the toilet and I said no they aren't available she then said she would bet after I repeated myself calmly and politely and she went nuts told me I was an unhelpful bitch and a fat pig and accused me of having an attitude because she was skinny I was on a power trip. In actual fact she looked like skin and bones full of scrabs and I didn't want to clean up mess left behind by drug addicts and I can't touch any drug paraphernalia left behind either.

Mostly the female customers I dealt with were ok some were really rude but not many abusive incidents with them. The ones who called me a cunt, slag, bitch and whore were all men.

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

Name him! What does it matter? Reveal the tight git!

A man who stood there shaking his leg until a shit fell out of the bottom of his trousers

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Pebblesflintstoneandbambamrubble

Bloody hell, where do you live? It sounds like the 7th circle of hell!!

I didn't do very long in retail, but I am a veteran of care and hospitality.
I've had 'interesting' days in both jobs but have seen the worst of humanity in hospitality, been called every name under the sun, groped, slapped, pushed, grabbed by the scruff of the neck, my hair grabbed, threatened with implements, threats to kill me, my family, torch my house..... not to mention talked to like shit, or like I'm stupid, patronised, belittled, humiliated and attempts to embarrass me.
Now, if people come at me with an attitude or treat me like I'm thick because of the job I do, that's exactly what they get, I act as stupid as possible, get everything wrong and if I went any slower I'd go backwards 😂 well if I'm going to be treated like shit anyway I might as well have some fun with it! And the customer is always right so if it's an idiot they want, it's an idiot they get! Gotta give the customer what they want after all!
One that sticks in my mind though is from retail, my job started 2 hours before the shop opened sorting magazines and newspapers after delivery (that I had to collect) and setting the tills up etc, one guy complained to my manager that I wouldn't let him in while doing this (I wasn't allowed to having the safe open and dealing with the tills plus having cases and stacks of stock everywhere) but his biggest issue was that it was 'deception' because the shop lights were on so we looked open despite the door being locked and a big closed sign and the security grills over the windows etc, he wouldn't accept that I needed the lights on to see and said I should be working in the dark so as not to deceive people into thinking we are open.

It has definitely got worse since covid though, people seem to have lost the ability to take responsibility for themselves and their feelings and emotions and it's simply easier and socially acceptable to take it out on customer facing staff and you're likely to get apologised to and something for free for behaving like an arsehole to boot, it's why it's got so bad.
People know they're being unreasonable and unfair but they also know they'll get away with it, and then some have the absolute brass neck to complain about poor service because of places being understaffed - people do not want to be treated the way described on this thread, and that's partly responsible for a lack of these staff - and it's partly the culture that has evolved around 'The customer is always right' it's morphed into 'The staff are always wrong'. While many including me laugh about these experiences, being in an often combative, abusive and negative atmosphere affects mental health and does cause people real problems.