Tell me about your worst customers

[Thegoodwitchglenda]

Wondered what your worst or most memorable encounters with customers are.

Just for fun and something to remind us to be kind to people in customer facing roles......its often not actually their personal fault.

Feel free to broaden this to colleagues etc if you're not customer facing :)

I used to work in an interior design shop that sold all sorts of homewares, furnishings and ornaments.
One day, when I was working alone, a bloke came in and started picking up various everyday items.
Each time, he'd ask me "What's this?"
Me: "Errr, it's a cushion...."
"What's this?"
"It's a fruit bowl..."
This went on for several minutes, before he proceeded to point to a very long, thin vase and inevitably asked me "What's this?" Feeling really uncomfortable at this point and wondering what the fuck was going on, I replied "It's a vase..."
Without hesitating, he picked it up, stared me straight in the eye and shoved it down his throat as far is it would go.

To this day, I don't know if he was the world's biggest creep or was experiencing a mental health crisis or what.

That sounds fair enough to me.

Many decades ago I was a trainee buyer for a chain of department stores in their flagship store. As part of the training we'd spend time in several different departments. Once I was in the leather goods department, selling pricey wallets and handbags.

A woman came in with a clearly older handbag and wanted a refund. She had no receipt and when I looked inside there was loose cigarette tobacco in the bottom. When I said without a receipt I could do nothing, she kicked up a bit of a fuss, so I took the bag into the department manager's wee office, who looked at it and said it wasn't even a brand we had ever carried.

She peeked out at the customer and said, 'oh it's HER'. Just give her a refund of £x (can't remember how much). So I took the bag and gave her the money. In those days this store would bend over backwards for regular customers.

And once in the kitchenware department a customer got so irate about something that when the manager turned his back she actually leapt up on his back and was hitting him while the 18-year-old me just stood gobsmacked.

More recently I was between jobs and took a job in a call centre for a mobile phone service provider. I lasted two months because of the abuse from callers. When I couldn't help one customer who was obviously trying to scam us, he told me to 'stick my fucking phone up my arse'. Well, this was the last straw, and even though it was against every rule in their rule book, I called him back and said very sternly 'did you just tell me to stick my phone up my arse?' and he squeaked 'no' and I hung up, walked over to the supervisor and said I wanted to leave and she just told me I didn't even have to finish my shift.

During my time there I realised that call handlers would just give the caller what they wanted to get them off the phone just to keep their average call times down. Supervisors would walk up to you and wave a piece of paper under your nose saying '10 minutes! Hurry up!' to tell you to get the call finished. If I'd have known just to hand out top ups and refunds I may have lasted longer, but the 'stick it up your arse' caller had followed hard on the heels of a man saying 'for fuck's sake, what's up with you, are you on your fucking period or something?', and I just couldn't take any more.

I used to work in a call centre and we got all sorts of bizarre and/or creepy calls. It was in the early days of freephone numbers (it was a directory service) so they all got in on the act.

I was once looking up something for a male caller and noticed that he sounded strange. I asked if he was OK. He replied 'you just keep talking and I'll just keep wanking'.

There was a regular foot fetishist who would ring up asking us to find outsized ladies' shoes in the London area. When he inevitably started being obscene and we cut him off he would ring straight back. Someone would yell 'foot perv!' and we'd all disconnect our phones for a couple of minutes till he got bored of not getting through.

There was quite a friendly glue sniffer from Brighton who would ring for lengthy chats when he was off his tree. I didn't mind him so much.

Then I worked in retail. Quite why so many people use shops as places to randomly shit in I will never know.

Customer claimed they’d found a dead bat sealed in a box of food. Said his wife was so traumatised she refused to go into the kitchen and was demanding compensation for all the takeaways and a professional clean of his kitchen.

Took many weeks of negotiations to get the bat for analysis, he kept making excuses, demanding money and threatening to go to the newspapers, then suddenly, one day just sent it in, which we thought was an odd change of heart. We sent it off to the lab. It turned out it was in fact a mouse, which given the damage to it, looked like it had been killed by a lawn mower, and the big kicker was, it had been dead less than a week.

I'm hoping the yob was charged rather than your boss?

Not myself, but ex boyfriend works as a barman in a pretty upmarket cocktail bar in a naice town.

Group of very smartly dressed up young ladies came in. Beckoned him over at the bar, and asked if he minded coming round and doing a mini photoshoot of them with the fancy wall behind. The bar was literally full of other people that they could have asked. He politely declined because it was a Friday night and they were busy. She apparently didn’t look happy, but off they went.
They returned to the bar about 10 minutes later, he takes the same girl’s order, made requested fancy cocktail, handed it to her.
And she looked him dead in the eye, poured the whole drink upside down on the bar, SPAT ON IT and went

“I don’t know who you think you are”

And then left with her friends.

I know I shouldn’t laugh but honest to god it was just completely bonkers 🤣🤣

Ladies of leisure expecting their 6 bedroom 8 bathroom homes to be deep cleaned by one worker in just 5 hours a week. Whilst they “go to the gym” aka go for a lunch piss up. "Oh but I just wanted a light dust around the spare bedrooms, gym, sauna, pantry, cinema, orangerie and laundry room…”

I'm not really sure what's wrong with this? They are paying customers. If you are resentful of their lifestyle then this likely isn't the job for you.
However you also need to give clear expectations from the get go as to what you can realistically achieve in the allotted time

In think it's the expectation to do a huge amount of cleaning in such a short period of time.

I worked in a call centre and had experience exactly the same with perv callers and exactly the same experience with the footwear thing, waiting till the call nearly ended!!

I once worked in a call centre.

My first ever call was a woman bellowing "DO YOU KNOW WHAT A CRETIN IS!?"

I was there for 3 months and because of it I hate the human race, cheered when Covid kicked off, and can't wait for Putin or some other nutter to blast us all to Kingdom Come.

Well all of the comments re her being a lady of leisure just sound spiteful and bitter.

and it’s up to the poster to make it clear that it’s too much! It’s hard to know how long this stuff actually takes in one go if you haven’t done it

I used to work for a company that monitored texts that came in for one of those tv channel dating things where you send in a text with your name, age, details etc. and if someone was interested they could text you. We'd have to read each one, delete anything with words that aren't allowed, and then approve it. For ones that were really good we'd put it on loop so it would keep appearing on tv.

You could send in pictures, and some people would send weird pictures of themselves in (a lot of men wearing women's underwear and other strange outfits). Some people would send in strange messages. As a whole, there were a lot of nice people who'd have a chat with you which was nice! I enjoyed those customers.

There were a few who'd call us names and they'd end up being banned, which I found weird as they'd pay money to send it and we'd just decline it. We'd normally get this for declining messages or not putting their messages on loop.

But the worst customer I had was a creep who sent in a picture of himself naked, holding his package, and a message directly to me. It was something like "mcdonaldschip, do you like what you see?". I'm so glad I don't do that job anymore as the pay wasn't worth dealing with creeps and people being rude.

Why are so many men so creepy?

Sorry everyone - but these have all been so eye opening! Never worked in a customer facing role but my daughter does and even the shoplifting stories have me shocked.

The macdonalds family infested with worms 🤢🤮

Working in a picturesque cafe as a teenager. The local MP was doing some hand shaking photo op outside. We hadn't yet opened for the day. He came in with an assistant who demanded a cup of tea be made while the MP used the facilities. 10 minutes later the MP swans out tea in hand, didn't pay for it of course. Shortly after we realise there is a terrible smell in the cafe. As the youngest I am sent to investigate. The toilet is completely destroyed. There is shit and blood 3/4 the way up the walls everywhere. A big puddle of pee on the floor. Dirty toilet paper just dumped on the floor. I've never seen anything like it since, even after cleaning hotel rooms in popular stag weekend locations. Revolting man. Didn't say a thing or even look slightly embarrassed. Had to close the cafe for the rest of the day and bathroom had to be redecorated.😷

I worked for Argos in the early 90's.
There was a glass display cabinet with toasters, kettles etc.
I was putting sale tickets on these items.
A man came behind me and touched my bum/top of my leg under my skirt asking if I'm in the sale.
The words 'fuck off' came out of my mouth. He complained to the manager who wanted me to apologise. Did i, no I didn't.
Started to look for another job the next day.

When I worked in a Tesco express part time during uni. I was kneeling on the floor in the bread section putting it on shelves. A man came over and said "god look at you, on your knees in Tesco, what a shame you haven't amounted to more"

From then on I refused to be on the shop floor if he entered the shop.

Also had a man scream at me because the cash machine outside (which had nothing to do with Tesco - it was a NatWest cash machine just sharing a wall with the shop) wouldn't give him his money, so he wanted me to give him money from our till. Insane.

No cameras in those days and your manager was a fucking coward

Stabbed in the neck with a fork by a male patient.
Punched in the face by a male patient.
Kicked in the stomach by a male patient.
Called a c*#t and threatened with rape by friend of a patient simply because I politely asked him to wait outside the ambulance.
Tray of dirty cat litter thrown over me by a female patient.
Bitten by a female patient.
Multiple sexual assaults by male patients - mainly groping
Threatened with a machete and blocked from leaving a property (male patient)
Countless incidents of verbal abuse/aggression/threats of violence.

Thankfully the majority of patients aren’t like this but you never know what you’re walking into.

I've had a few in my time.
One that stands out was a man who came into the car mechanics where I worked years ago. He had his car in with us for extensive works which would take around six/eight weeks (vintage car). One morning the boss had phoned him to confirm a detail about a certain aspect of the job. He wasn't home so boss had left a message with his wife and was waiting for a response.
A few hours later, the customer storm in...actually smashing a pane in the glass door when coming in. He started absolutely screaming at me, stamping, throwing his hands around, getting in my face. It took a good few minutes for me to even be able to understand what he was trying to say. When we finally got to a lower volume, it turned out that his wife had passed on the message, but in a completely backwards fashion that made it sound like we hadn't even started the work on the car. I don't know how she had got that (I heard the message boss had left and it was very basic and clear) but she had the wrong end of the stick and told her lovely (!) husband the wrong info.
I finally managed to get through to him by actually walking him to the car and showing him what had been done. He said nothing and stormed off, screeching away in his van. Anyway, later he turned back up and said his wife had made a mistake and he'd "told her off" and he was sorry for the misunderstanding. He refused to pay for the door glass and was basically an arrogant shit until we finished the car and swore not to ever book him in again. I've never had someone so close to hitting me and I dread to think what his wife puts up with. We should have called the police looking back, but the boss was complex (whole other story).

I worked in a phone shop when I was younger and had several men pass me their phones complaining that their internet wasn't working and can I please make it work, and it would be pornhub just open up on the screen. Grim!

Don't get me started on the women who come to male strip shows...

Hands everywhere

And a more burlesque show some dirty old men who just scream "wife let them out for the day"