Nightmare customers and general bat shittery - what are your stories?

[saywhatnow1]

I have my own business doing dog boarding in my home. It's really successful and I love it. I also used to feed cats when I started, but I stopped that several years ago. Another thread I've been reading today, reminded me about some of my batshit customers, and what it can be like to deal with the public. Would love to hear some stories from others. Here are a few from me to start :

Was looking after a tiny dog, who kept biting me. The customer insisted that the dog must NOT eat from a bowl, but must be hand fed, and wanted it to be fed chocolate buttons! Obviously chocolate is poisonous to dogs, but this dog had been eating them for over 10 years at this point, so was obviouly used to them. Every time I tried to feed the dog it bit me. And proper nasty bites. My hand swelled up so big I couldn't drive, and I had to get a tetanus booster. If you walked past the dog, it would lunge at you and sink it's teeth into your ankles. After about 5 days of this, I e-mailed the customer who was abroad, and they called me that night. When I explained what was happening, and asked whether the dog could perhaps get collected by someone it would be more comfortable with, they said "Oh no. Buddy has been biting everyone for years. It bites my kids and my grandkids. No one will have him, they all hate him. Just go and get him put down please" 😳

Another lady wanted to put her dog in for daycare when she was at work. She wanted to drop her dog off at 5am, and collect it at 11pm! I explained that our opening hours were 7am-7pm, but that she was welcome to board the dog when she had long days at work. She was unhappy with this, and tried over and over again with long rambling texts, to get me to accept the dog from 5am till 11pm, because she "didn't want to pay any extra for boarding". 😵

I have had LOADS of customers pushing me, to let them collect their dog after 7pm. Sometimes wanting to stop by as late as midnight. No! I am not sitting here in my day clothes until that time. I want to get my jammies on at 7pm and have some semblance of a normal life.

I was feeding a lady's cat, and often it wouldn't come back for days on end. She kept texting me at 10pm, asking me to do a free second visit, to see if the cat was home. No! I was in my jammies and enjoying some wine. No, I'm not going back!

Oh, and there was the lady who said she'd be back at 5pm to collect her dog. 5pm came and went. I really needed to go out at 530pm to drop my car in for repairs. Tried calling her. Her phone was off. She didn't come back till 8pm!

Also had a lady come along with a beagle called Lucifer. She explained that he can't be left alone AT ALL. At the last boarder he was at, the boarder had gone out for 15 minutes to get milk from the shop, and when he got back his front door had been half eaten. Then she expected me to say, no problem, when would you like him to stay (what happens when you sleep, or maybe I wasn't meant to sleep?!"

Oh, and the last minute texts before a stay is about to start, with it casually thrown in that the dog isn't house trained. What? And you're telling me this the day before the stay? Well, he can't come then. Now what are you going to do?

These are probably quite minor compared to some examples others have!!

@Auburngal
Then 2 mins before we closed, the same people used to come in from the council flats back of the store to buy cigs
was there a need to add council in?

Was there any need to chirp up with this reply.

always someone ready to get offended on behalf of someone else

This is proper outing, but I had emergency surgery the night before my 40th birthday. Although I was a bit sad to cancel my plans, and spend a few days in hospital, I was doped up to the eyeballs, so spent my birthday off my tits in a completely different way! 😂
Was just glad to get the surgery on a Saturday night, and get the issue dealt with.

Great thread, OP. I also love how dedicated you are to your jammies. You have your priorities straight!

Not exactly batshit but more..confusing and lacking in common sense.
(For context I work in a cafe/bakery).

In the last week I've had:

A customer as me if a bacon and cheese pastry was vegan

A customer asking if a pastry on a shelf in a window display was hot (as in, hot already, not could it be heated up. No 'hot lights', just a normal shelf in a normal window).

A customer asking if a clearly sweet pastry item had cheese in it (eg; a chocolate croissant)

All items clearly labelled. I was a bit 🧐 at all of them!

I get customers ask me if certain items in the reduced section are vegetarian.

Even in the meat reduction section

We often get Americans upset over the fact the Tube doesn't go to Oxford, or Cambridge, or Windsor.
@RainintheDesert well the Oxford Tube goes to Oxford. A glorified bus route probably isn't what they were expecting though.

Working as an on all manager for a care a gen y I fielded a number of ‘interesting’ calls over the years. Some were justified and you’d investigate, give an interim explanation then file the report to the office in case they wanted more details or to take it further but, some were just pop crazy!!

• phone call at teatime on a Saturday asking if the carers could just pop in to caller’s parents and do their tea after Mrs Jones at number 21 - except, when getting details of callers parents, they weren’t clients of the company, he’d just seen one of our vehicles parked at Mrs Jones’ house every weekend and thought it was an obvious solution to call us when he couldn’t be bothered going himself “as we were in the area anyway!” No, we didn’t go in to his parents but did offer to send details of our package charges if he’d like to sign them up.

• got a call asking us to not visit Mr Smith tomorrow as going out for family lunch and wouldn’t be back in time. Later that weekend, got a call from another relative asking why Mr Smith hadn’t been given his meds at lunchtime - explaining the call had been cancelled by relative X so it would be down to whoever was with Mr Smith to administer meds apparently wasn’t the correct answer and staff should have gone to the (unspecified) restaurant where they were eating to give the meds, despite the call being cancelled!

• got a call from a hospital discharge coordinator on a Saturday afternoon asking us to reinstate care calls to a client from later that day (not an issue, happens regularly when clients are discharged at weekends) but to increase from once daily, solo carer, 45 minute breakfast call, to 1 hour call, 4 times a day, 2 carers needed full personal care required including tube feeding client using a pump - and then being surprised that, not only do we not have extra care staff available at the weekend to meet such a change in care package but that, before being allowed to do tube feeding, staff would have to undergo specific training and assessment and be signed off as competent. Hospital assumed we’d just call a staffing agency in the same way they would if they needed extra staff for a shift.

• Mrs Brown’s family called to say she was in hospital so wouldn’t need the calls that weekend but could we still send the carers as her family, who she lived with, were having a big dinner party on Saturday night and needed help with polishing the cutlery and silverware beforehand; plus, would need someone afterwards to do the clearing up including putting away all the silverware and the expensive dinner service which the catering company they’d hired wouldn’t do!!

On a more personal note, I had clients/families who often told me to treat the client’s house as my own, especially if doing overnight or live in contracts. One family told me I was more than welcome to use the swimming pool, just to remember to cover it over afterward; another was more than happy for us to use their tennis court or gym. One client said, if I ever wanted to go out for the day on the river, let him know and he’d get the boat out and book me through the company so I’d still get paid - having seen photos, he definitely had a boat and was a member of a local club. Got asked to go on holiday with a client - sadly they became too unwell to go as it was something they had enjoyed dearly with their spouse during healthier years and wanted to do do one last trip.

And the company had one client who wanted to go out to eat every day so we’d walk to the local restaurants and eat out - every day if he wanted to!! More difficult was he always wanted us to share a bottle of wine with him so I took to keeping Ribena made up in an old red wine bottle so he thought I was drinking or he’d get upset that we were refusing his hospitality!!

The lovely families more than made up for the difficult ones over the years!!

Yes.

Wonder how many poor sods in customer facing services are going to get balled out today by 'frustrated' customers because systems are down due to the Microsoft outrage that's occurred.

Usually you do get "Sorry you've had to wait" though.

To which I'd reply "No problem, not your fault" of course, not go off on one about it.

I’ve done a similar job in the past and while most clients are lovely, you do get the ones who sign a contract saying they’ll do as much for themselves as possible (to become more independent) but then expect you to do every single thing for them including cooking a roast dinner for their whole family! I’ve had one who insisted on having 6 cups of tea made after each one was too dark, too light, too strong, not sweet enough then swears at you when you bring a pot and milk so they can do it themselves. Sometimes you get treated like shit because they assume because the job you do is minimum wage, that you’re beneath them, regardless of the fact that you’re there to help them. No wonder I’m studying on the side to do something totally different!

I don't understand why an apology would be needed in a situation like that tbh, it's not like someone has done something wrong and the staff obviously already have their hands full dealing with an emergency.
What exactly are they apologising for? Someone being injured or unwell? Not being able to split themselves in two and deal with the incident and serve customers at the same time so customers don't have to wait? Not being able to produce another member of staff out of thin air? For the way life just happens sometimes?

There's nothing to apologise for in that kind of situation, and I'm certainly not apologising for someone else's shitty behaviour either, that's on them and expecting someone else to apologise on their behalf just absolves them of any responsibility for it, blames someone else who's likely been more impacted by it and all so someone can have their feelings of frustration validated instead of dealing with them.

We had this when one bank's systems have crashed. This MS outage is unpredictable - no idea which companies are going to be affected.

Think instant banning of customers who shout at the staff when it's not their bloody fault should be done.

I used to work in a fast food place that also had seating and the food serving area was quite narrow. A member of staff totally out of the blue collapsed to the floor and was unconscious. I was the manager and also a first aider so I went to help them. Lots of customers in the place most people were lovely when we explained briefly what had happened. One guy though starts swearing and ffs to the staff, they asked him to take a seat for a minute and they would try and serve him, he said he wanted his fucking coke now and couldn’t we just step over the stupid fucker lying on the floor. Having checked quickly on the casualty I bobbed my head up and told him to get out he was barred from the place.
Luckily the staff member turned out to be okay.

We had staff and customers collapse in all sorts of places. Customers tut and sigh because they have to go the long way round to the aisle, step over the sick and first aiders (staff and customers who are FAs or nurses who happen to be shopping) or queue for longer - depending where the person has collapsed is.

Banning these impatient people is needed. How would they like it if they saw their loved one being stepped over so someone can get a jar of jam? Sod your jam and show respect.

An apology is just a courtesy. Stops escalations in their tracks.

Any customer who complains to head office of any retailer or any other service (cinema, restaurant etc) about their card rejected payment or took ages due to a national or international issue are pathetic scum

Won't go into reasons but a young lad in my store was suspended without pay for a week. His mum came in f*ing and blinding at the supervisor who was serving customers about how badly they were treating her baby. He was working for us whilst waiting for his call up papers to the army. Love to see his mum take on the RSM!!

won't say where i used to work as its a bit outing, but ive been assaulted, had things thrown at me, screamed at, locked in the loo, multiple threats on my life - all fun and games. I work a much less dangerous job now 😂

Working in a nursery we had a little girl called Ella* whose parent always had some complaint or negative comment every morning. She doesn't eat enough, please don't let her get dirty (in a free flow nursery where we changed the children whenever they did get dirty). We were all aware that Ella was the child's middle name but it was what the family preferred. After almost a year of Ella being with us suddenly it was "Please call her Octavia from now on, that's her real name and is what we want to call her now she's older". Fine. Happy to do so.

We all adapted to calling the child Octavia, probably quicker than the child did! It took her a long time to respond to that name and if we needed her attention quickly we had to say Ella.

Finally the parents gave up the pretense. At the door, "come on, Ella!" "See you later, Ella." For another year.

Oh. Yeah, they had no intention of ever calling her Octavia. If you asked that little girl her name, guess what she would say. How confusing that must have been for the poor child. I wonder what she goes by now.

*names and other details changed, obviously

In the words of Joycie the barmaid to Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses "ain't customers stupid!!!

Urgh! Really?! 🤮

Hadn't spotted this at the time, hence why I'm replying now!

Anyone who needs apologising to when they've been held up or not got the service they expect because the staff are dealing with an emergency right in front of them that they can see, needs to have a look in the mirror and wonder why they need to have an apology in those circumstances.

It has nothing to do with courteousy and everything to do with ego and self importance. Hardly a life changing experience which will have long term traumatic concequences when you've had to wait to be served your weekly shop whilst staff deliver first aid to someone.

And it doesn't stop escalation, it makes people feel justified in taking out their frustrations on someone else at an event that happened that was beyond anyones control but needs to be dealt with.

So many people desperate for a bit of attention "Look at me , I'm a victim of the big bad service workers who dared to put someone else in front of so important me'

Some people, an ever increasing number don't want good or even great service any more, they want subservience, they want unquestioning deference, they want their ego stroked. As I said in a pp - pathetic.

Lost count in the number of customers who try to return a child’s coat bought 2 years ago as grown out of it.

Seriously🙄