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!!

Not quite as bad but I had a customer who ordered a take away pizza and then complained that there was tomato sauce on it as she was allergic

1. the menu said tomato sauce
2. we didn't do any of the creamy sauces so it wasn't a mix up
3. she never said she was allergic
4. it would have been no problem to make up the pizza without tomato sauce if she had asked.

I couldn't understand it! Pizza! It has tomato sauce as a default

When my father was dying we had Marie Curie nurses at night sometimes. They were wonderful and meant we could get some sleep. They explained that the night cover part of the job is voluntary. They get paid for doing it but they are not contractually obliged to do nights.One of them had been to a home where the patients dog bit her because it was stressed that she was near the dogs owner. The family refused to put the dog in another room. She didn't go back. Nurses were expected to sit in the pitch dark all night because the patient was sleeping. These were people who were entering the active dying phase. A light in the corner would have been a basic minimum. No heating on in a freezing house. Told they couldn't use the kettle or microwave during a 10pm to 7am shift. People behave in appalling ways to others who are trying to make the end of life better.

My aunt used to work for a well known department store in the States. People used to buy a new outfit on a Friday, wear it all weekend then take it back on the Monday and ask for a refund!!! Cheeky feckers 🤣🤣 not many got refunded as they were regular returners

Oooh I used to work in a mobile phone shop and an old man came in wondering if we sold tongue scrapers and stuck out his tongue and mimed scraping it. Ugh 🤢

Had a customer who wanted to return a swimsuit. I refused to as she removed the gusset tape and there were skid marks on it.

She yelled at me. I said to her “would you buy this swimsuit in this condition?” She said no. So why would she think we should accept this refund?

Then 2 years ago a customer got a three pack of babygros from a relative and asked she needs the next size up. The logo for the clothing was the old style changed mid 10s. I looked inside one of the babygros and found the label and dating code on it was 2011! Said to her does this relative have a 11-12 year old? Yes - their youngest child.

This happened to a relative. A customer turned up to test drive a top spec SUV. This was in the early 1990’s when dealers would let some customers take demonstrators home for a couple of days.

The SUV was returned at the end of the week, back seats laid flat, the floor, sides and back of the seats all deeply encrusted in poultry and calf shit.

I worked in a cafe and a man waltzed in, handed me an envelope and said ‘can you drop that into the local school on your way home, I’m not going past there today.’ - it was so odd and I was young and I did it! Thing is, it wasn’t on my walk home either! No idea why he just assumed I would be walking past somewhere he needed a letter dropping in to.

I also worked in a clothes shop on Oxford St, and one day I had to cover the security guard while he went on lunch and stand by the doors. A woman walked up to me to ask me a question about some clothes she was holding and she set the alarms off, I asked her to step back away from the alarm and she spat the words ‘you stupid little girl’ at me. So odd.

I was once that customer !
I had a pair of salt & pepper grinders that had a lifetime guarantee. One of them broke.
I took them back to John Lewis - in the good old days when their Customer Service was 1st class. I was not rude, but firmly stated that I was disappointed that they sold inferior products. I was holding my JL card, expecting a refund.

Assistant went away, Manager appeared with a replacement pair. He then said he was sorry he could not give me a refund as they had never sold that particular design , but please accept these with his compliments as I was a regular customer.

I went scarlet, thanked him profusely & fled.

@Auburngal Unbelievable isn't it?! 🤣

@Mrsm010918 The bodily fluids in a DIY store is slightly worrying! What the hell do they do? Wait for someone to go get them something, then think, "I know, while I'm stood here waiting, I'll just quickly knock one out by the MDF"?! 🤣

Oh! Just remembered another one! A woman caught her bag strap on one of the thin, tall gift card stands. She yanked at her bag as she walked into the main aisle and dragged the stand with her and it crashed to the floor, cards everywhere. Her bag strap broke and so she, complained, because " that stand shouldn't have been there"! Yes perhaps we should suspend them from the ceiling on some sort of pulley system for those who can't be arsed watching what they're doing! 🤣

Oh @Georgyporky the shame! Easy mistake to make though!

Wow. The owner's scum, and her friends no better😬

Wow. The owner's scum, and her friends no better😬

I work in retail and have many stories,but my brother takes the piss

He's the narcissistic golden child of our narcissistic mother

She once bought an iron and left it on the side while she went to work

Narc brother needed a shirt ironing and as she wasn't around to do it for him,he ironed the bloody shirt himself

He was only wearing the bloody thing and burnt his right tit

After he'd called her back from work,and she'd raced him to a&e (holding his hand the whole time,as he was 26 at the time and needed his mummy) they stopped off at the shop she'd bought it from and had a go (screaming and shouting) at the poor retail worker for not warning him (it was her that bought it,not him so she couldn't have said anything even if she thought to warn him)

It's told as an amusing story on how bad retail workers are,not how utterly thick bro is

(Same idiot did the same thing but with a set of hair straighteners a week later-not his fault at all but mine for not warning him)

woman comes up to the customer service desk with an opened, almost-fully-eaten box of different cheeses. The ones you get at Christmas. All that was left was about 2 inches of Brie. She said she wanted a refund because she ‘didn’t want it any more’ I was like (in my head) wtf? You’ve eaten almost the entire box and now you don’t want it??! I asked her if there was something wrong with the product, was it spoiled or something. Nope, she just didn’t want any more cheese.

I honestly could not be fucked arguing with her and in a way admired her gall. Refunded her and chucked the Brie in the bin.

@MoonWoman69 well, if it’s anything like our local DIY stores, they use the floor display toilets regardless of the fact that they are not plumbed in …

My SIL (a pain in the ass) ordered her son spaghetti bolognese and then complained it had tomato in it as her son was allergic. Ordered him some chips instead, which he covered in tomato sauce, but apparently were ‘different’.
she also orders him dairy free meals some places have had to make specially and then orders normal ice cream for pudding.

Ive worked in schools, not directly with the children, but support staff would come in to complain at me about the number of parents who wanted school to parent their children. One who had a new boyfriend and her children weren’t happy so she wanted someone to explain to them that she ‘had needs too’.

I overheard a John Lewis sales lady tell another sales lady that someone had just tried returning a toilet brush which had been clearly used.

Eww @MooseBeTimeForSnow I can understand kids getting confused and doing that, in a way, but not adults! That's just gross! 🤢

About bodily fluids. My ex works at a different supermarket chain to me (wasn’t working at one then)

He was putting customers’ returns in the general merchandise section. Hears lots of sighing. Follows the noise and it was a man in his late 40s-early 50s wanking in front of the scented candles! He got managers and security to turf him out. No idea who cleaned up the mess

Think every DIY shop with bathroom displays and bathroom shops have at least one display toilet which has been used as a toilet! Thing is there’s no privacy and from what DIY shops are near me, always busy!!

Worked as a CS team leader for a bougie online furniture store which went bust a couple of years ago. Customer called up to request a refund, got very shouty and sweary. He was speaking to my colleague, who asked me to take the call as an escalation, which I did. He explained that he had already disassembled this super king-size bed fully, and wouldn't be repackaging it for collection.
I asked him to clarify his disassembly, as that bed was well known for arriving half-built and in very bulky packages.
It turned out that he had taken it upon himself to saw apart every individual panel, in such a way that it could never be repaired. He was appalled that I couldn't accept the refund.

The reason he was trying to return it, by the way, was because it was too small.

My favourite was the one who phoned up to complain that her drink was served far to hot the previous day.
When I spoke to the café manager he knew exactly who she was. She was the one who the previous day had ordered a coffee and told him to put it in the microwave to 1 minutes because "he always served it too cold." He refused because that would clearly make it far too hot, but she went on and on, so eventually he went into the kitchen, and put a cup of water into the microwave for a minute, then came and told her he'd done what she wanted. 🤣

A slightly more sympathetic one was a lady who wanted to bring her dogs in. It was a no dogs except assistant dogs rule ( at least partially due to having someone with a severe allergy). She was asked not to, and walked off in a huff. I got a four page handwritten (in beautiful writing) complaint which boiled down to not being allowed to bring the dogs in when "she had been to a funeral earlier in the week."
To be totally fair, the café manager loved dogs and was also very soft-hearted, so if she'd told him, would probably have found her a corner even if it had meant asking the allergic staff member to take a break until she'd finished. But she didn't and four pages about her, her dog, and a funeral (sounds like a film!) was overkill.

@Auburngal I'd have rubbed his bloody nose in it and made him clean it up before I turfed him out! Too much love scent in the candles for him eh?! 🤣

Hope you called the police instead, and the ferry company banned him.

My husband and I used to run a chimney sweeping business. One time I got a call demanding that we come out immediately. I refused, because it was 10.30pm, in November, and there was a howling gale outside (this chimney would have to be cleaned from the top, so no chance!).

I asked what the emergency was, and the customer said "Well, it's on fire, obviously!". She wasn't impressed with my suggestion that she call the fire brigade.