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!!

Exactly.

I'm a nursery manager and have so, so, so many stories of parents with ridiculous requests.

One that stands out was a mum who came in one day to let us know "James" would now be called "Oscar". This child was 4 years old with SEND and had in the last month started responding to his name. He had been with us since he was 6 months old. The reason for this was because dad hasn't proposed yet so she decided to go with the name that she originally wanted as dad had chose James. They were still together but she wanted to piss dad off

Another parent broke a door. I was showing them around the nursery as prospective parents and the mum was anxious about door handles being opened by children. The doors had handles at the top and middle to open so children couldn't reach them both to open a door. She tried to open one door by pulling on the middle handle and seemed satisfied that a child couldn't do it. I carried on talking to dad who had asked a question and then put the corner of my eye see her climbing the door, both feet where the middle handle was and pulling down on the top handle whilst sort of rocking her body. Dad managed to get his words out before I could and told her to get down just as the door cracked and her foot went straight through it. I still can't understand what she was trying to do or how she managed to break a door. Dad was so apologetic and she blamed the door saying that it was obviously too flimsy. Luckily someone was on hand to take the door off immediately and there were no children in the room.

We used to get shoplifters in the supermarket that would cut open the meat trays and stuff the meat into their pockets and walk out.

Working for the NHS.

A patient phoned to cancel his appointment because, "any fool could see that was the day before his birthday".

Part off my job was recording ECGs. I would explain I needed to get to their chest so could they undress from the waist up.

You would be surprized how many men thought this meant remove trousers and underwear. Only ever men and only ever when it was a female member of staff.

After the NHS I worked in a private hospital in London. Had a patient refuse to attend because there was no patient parking. They were booked in for a pacemaker!

Then for my sins I became a teacher.

I often start a lessen by telling students the subject and asking what they already know. An adult, a fully grown adult complained to my manager that I was making then do my job because I asked questions.

I had another who complained I was racist because I didn't give her a pass grade. I had not met the student, I was trying to clear the backlog of marking from someone who had left,

THe student didn't have a name that you would associate with a particular background, nut no, I was obviously racist.

My dad was inadvertently 'that' customer in a sweet shop.

My dad loves toffee and fudge.

We had recently moved from West Yorkshire to Lancashire. In Yorkshire sweets were sweets, spice or spegs. My brother and I were surprised to find out, at school, that all sweets in this part of lancashire were described as 'toffees'. Boiled sweets, chocolate buttons, licorice were all described as toffees.

So my dad went into a sweet shop and asked for, "a quarter of toffees please" and couldn't understand why the shop keeper kept asking what he wanted with my dad saying, "toffee".

Eventually my dad left the shop empty handed and quite puzzled.

All these posts are horrific but this one makes me really hate people! I'm so sorry you had to go through all this.

@3kids3dogs That's reminded me. A student wrote an essay about hygiene and one of the things she put is that you should not touch dogs because they had rabbis.

Brainless idiots who leave things to the last minute on Christmas Eve.

Try to buy gift cards but the system that activates them is overloaded and crashes. Think it’s one system for all retailers that sell 3rd party gift cards. They kick off with us

Then those who moan at us because we have ran out of turkeys. I remember one man saying where did this lady get her turkey from. I said she pre ordered it and you had ten weeks to do this.

I do hate it when people say when their turkey is off and think Christmas was ruined. This was the year when about a thousand homes were flooded (can’t remember where) on 23/24 Dec. I thought to myself that those families had Xmas and other things ruined. Surely they had more food to feed the family than a turkey

@sashh I had to postpone eye surgery as it was two days before my birthday. After surgery, you cannot tolerate any light and eye was so sore for 5-7 days.

I had blood tests on my birthday before

Named changed because this is a bit more specific than normal.

In a previous role, I was the HR rep on the implementation of a procurement system. We had to have all our staff data loaded so people could order stuff for their teams.

Someone mucked up the HR data and I wouldn't approve the data load, but the project manager went ahead with it anyway.

Comms included making sure teams had two weeks stock of urgent / essential stuff. No-one did of course.

When go live went wrong, as I predicted, I was not happy to get a call from a nurse telling me that children might die because she doesn't have enough syringes.

A patient phoned to cancel his appointment because, "any fool could see that was the day before his birthday".

I hope I get a call for an admission for the morning of the date of death that will appear on my death certificate. That would be super-efficient.

Dh did a temporary job at the local call centre cleansing department. (Emptying bins)

They used to get one guy ( who lived in our road!) phoning up and telling them they were a useless bunch of cunts every single day. And why wasn’t his bin emptied every day? Because there were useless wankers. Same time every day.

They used to just scroll on their phones till he finished. They weren’t allowed to do this unless this nutter phoned up.

Their manager gave special permission for phones on this occasion.

I worked in an upmarket optical practice in G Street. Several times a week we would get well-heeled women coming in wanting to look at upmarket flooring. The flooring company's showroom was actually in St G's Square. When I suggested they may have misread the address given on the flooring company's advert in the upmarket glossy magazine I was usually told quite rudely not to contradict them...

Most of the time it is just bullies who are just seeing what freebies they can get if they kick off at someone they perceive as weaker or inferior then them i.e. anyone in a customer service role. I have stepped in on a few occasions when I have seen some poor 18 year old waitress getting picked on by some arse of man or woman. I used to be that teenager being shouted at for no reason so it makes me mad. I had an argument with a woman on the table next to me in a cafe who kicked off that the waitress had got an order wrong when the food arrived. She had not, I had overheard the whole order earlier, it was just that for whatever reason the woman had changed her mind and instead of owning that fact thought she would kick off instead. She absolutely hated being called out in front of her friends.

When l was teaching it students weren’t allowed to wear hats indoors

One kid was a repeat offender. His mother said he couldn’t take it off as he had dyspraxia. The same woman accused one of the members of staff of sitting with her legs open.

I used to work for one of the big mobile phone companies. We used to get customers kicking off that their new phone or upgrade hadn’t turned up. And I mean swearing, shouting, the lot.

More often than not said phone was already being used on a pay as you go number, also in their name, and making frequent phones calls to their main number! They didn’t realise we could see all these things!

When I worked on cruise ships we had loads of people kick off that the ship wouldn't wait for them in port or that the ship wouldn't 'pop' I to a different port so they could have a look around.

We docked in Civitavecchia and advertised the Rome tour (which required a coach trip to get to) and people went mad that they couldn't see the Colosseum from their stateroom ("but we're in Rome? Why can't we see it?").

I had a gentleman shit himself and shake the turd out of the leg of his shorts and try to walk off as if this was perfectly normal. I had to catch him and ask him to collect his shit from the floor and in future use the toilet.

I worked for a mobile network in a call centre back role - hardly spoke to customers, only rang them if they had a big issue.

One of my tasks was getting a list of customers who were passed onto debt collectors and claimed that they returned phone within 14 days of signing up/upgrade.

We could check on systems if both SIM and mobile were used and where. Sometimes we checked on eBay and some people have usernames which are their name followed by year of birth, football club etc and I found evidence of these selling their phone - including photos of the box with IMEI number which matched the phone details on the list from debt collectors. Sent screenshots of the auction and say "carry on with claiming debt" etc.

I've worked in customer facing jobs all my life and so often people just beggar belief. I have so many stories I wouldn't know where to start!

I do find it preposterous that customer service advisors are paid so badly. Currently looking for a new role and nothing over £23k. Basically pretty much min wage to put up with abuse and shite all day! Outrageous

I work on the tills at a well known store. The majority of customers are lovely & as I’ve been there quite a few years, I get my regulars. Unfortunately you do get some rude customers. I go by the philosophy of always try to be kind because you don’t know what’s going on for someone but some people are just arseholes! I had a guy ask for change but we’re not allowed to open the till & even if it was open, we couldn’t for example swap a £10 note for 2 fivers. I explained this politely but the guy swore at me & shouted “ Remind me not to shop here again”. Wish I’d thought to reply “ If you’re not coming again then I won’t need to remind you”!
Our policy used to be that we had to honour the price on the shelf, whether it was correct or not, but now we generally go by the price on the till (with some exceptions). Again, most customers are nice about challenging a price but you get the ones that boast how they are in retail management & know the law. Sometimes they will have a go at me, even though I have nothing to do with pricing.
Very glad I don’t work on customer services as the staff there get so much abuse, verbal & even physical. An ex colleague had a boxed hoover thrown at her!

I worked where people did fitness tests to qualify for clinical trials. 1 guy didn't pass the 1st test- height and weight. He tore up the paperwork and started eating it!

A relative of mine was a holiday rep who lived in a resort. The hotel weren’t supposed to tell guests where the rep lived for obvious reasons, so instead a guest followed her back to her apartment then turned up every day at her door to complain about stuff. He would arrive at 6am, 11pm any time of day or night and the hotel refused to do anything about it.

What IS the professional response to a customer calling you a cunt?

Managers should back up their staff whenever possible and there’s no way in hell I’d have let him travel!

@LoveSandbanks "thanks sugartits" works well in pubs......not sure about other places .
Disclaimer that might just have been through pub I worked at :)

*the not through .

Blimey, mine seems tame after this lot! However......
A lady came up to me when I was doing the trolleys and said she wanted to buy our toilet rolls, but they are now embossed, not flat and could I do something about it? I'm in the car park, pushing trolleys and besides, I don't manufacture the bloody things! I told her to speak to the customer service desk staff, which she did, but apparently she'd been in several times asking various staff members to " do something". Iron them perhaps?

And don't get me started on behaviour during Covid, I could write a book!