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!!

I was recently in the bank to get £2000 in cash out, rather than spend days getting it from an ATM.
The teller said 'We don't have that sort of money in here. Do you think we print it or something!' 🙄

Just remembered another one from when I was a student and had a weekend job as an estate agent. One couple came into the office having seen a property in the window which they wanted to view. I said no problem and pulled out the diary to organise a time. But they wanted to see it 'right now' which was not possible as all the other agents were out on viewings and it was just me in the office. I politely explained this and they suggested I close the office and take them to the house immediately. I refused and then they demanded I give them the keys to the house and that they would pop them back in later. I said absolutely not as all viewings need to be accompanied. At this point they started to get angry that I would not just hand over the keys to an £800k house (1998 prices) with an added 'who do you think we are' to which I replied 'I have absolutely no idea as you have literally just walked in off the street'. At this the bloke exploded with rage calling me a 'jobsworth little prick', he then leaned across the desk and hissed 'I'm going to get you fired' at which point I finally stood up and was about a foot taller then him (blowing my own trumpet here but I was at the time playing county level rugby and was a big fucker) and suddenly he was not so mr hard man and I just calmly told him to 'fuck off.......now" and he slithered out the door. I saw him in the pub randomly a few weeks later as he was ordering a drink at the bar, I walked up to him and said cheerily 'any joy finding a house yet' to which he took a fee sips from his pint and left. Absolute arse of a man.

I can understand that, but this was for an ECG, it takes about 10 mins from parking your car to setting off home. I hope you didn't call the staff foolish.

To be fair, if he wanted a Fosters, he should have drunk his own "offering"!!! 🤣

I was shopping in Morrisons recently and picked up a desert and was asking DS if we should buy it. A staff member came over and took it off me and walked away. I was shocked and tried to ask her what was going on but she went into the back and I was left just sort of a bit stunned. There weren't any others left.

This is a brilliant thread, I am literally sat here with jaw ache, my mouth won't shut! Just when you think you've heard it all, something else comes along! Astounding!

I'm guessing that staff member wanted it for their own tea.

It did look delicious so I get it. But still.

I always call it morrishits in my head now.

I'm a tube worker. Batshittery goes with the territory.

In general customers can't understand why the information on Google is different from reality. That's because Google doesn't update when there's a disruption or planned closure. But Google is God and you can't tell people they are wrong.

I once had a man many years ago who wanted to get from London to Leeds in under an hour, and was very upset that this wasn't possible. He had an appointment. I said, I can't move the cities closer together. He went nuclear and demanded to speak to my supervisor,who pretty much repeated what I'd said!

We often get Americans upset over the fact the Tube doesn't go to Oxford, or Cambridge, or Windsor.

Working in a bar - had a woman tell me off for putting ice and lemon in her gin and tonic... as it was the ice and lemon that gave her a hangover.

Many years ago I worked in a shop selling ice creams, beach toys, sweets and cigarettes. They were hot on under age sales of cigarettes as the owner'd been fined twice. Usually kids in the park who told police they'd got them in totteys.
Any way one day this kid came in bought a load of sweets and tried to buy cigarettes. They were apparently for his sister who was on the beach with the baby. Having run through all the cigarettes hé asked why. I told him.he was under age and asked him for the money for the sweets. Thé charmer screamed at me to shove them up my arse.
I was shocked, this was 1973 or 4 and in West Kirby. They've Always been there.
Another days serving ice creams a lad paid for his 99 with a load of change. It was short. I chased him down the road and he paid up. One of his mates Saïd 'she caught you?'.
The plate glass doors had screws in the runners to stop theft in Season. Otherwise with a queue for ice creams up the shop all you heard was thé doors being opened and thé sight of half empty cupboards at thé end of a Sunday afternoon.

All for 25p/hour.

@RainintheDesert how could i forget Google ,at least once a week we get the Google says you are open until 10pm , and even had a complaint wth a Google screenshot saying that we were open on Tuesdays and they had made a special journey and we were shut- ruined their Christmas Day outing!!

All of the bodily fluids ones have reminded me of a story from when I worked in Matalan whilst at college.

I was on my fitting room duty, and could just smell something BAD, when I went in to look, there was a poo as thick as my wrist in one corner…I’m surprised the person could walk after.

Best bit was when I called through to the office and a ‘senior’ member of staff, who had previously told my then boyfriend (now husband) he would amount to nothing in life, told me to come grab cleaning supplies…NOPE! She had to clean it up herself (and not that I’m still holding a grudge but 20 years later and she works in a bingo hall whilst my husband most definitely made something of himself) - sucks to be her!

This is why packs of peanuts have the warning 'may contain nuts'

Years ago we were checking into a small chain hotel in the US, Saturday night and they were busy. One man barged in with his family demanding a room, he'd not booked, when he heard our British accents he demanded that they cancel our reservation for him, Americans should always come first. Not our general experience of Americans by the way.

Has your brother been into Greggs and demanded water hotter than boiling for his tea?

Female taxi driver here, I once had an elderly man his wife, daughter and grand daughter who was about 3 years old get in my taxi.
The man sat in the front whilst everyone else got in the back, the man then said to his daughter pass the little one to him, to which I said that's not allowed he proceeded to tell me "oh don't worry she's not going to be sitting on my lap she likes to sit in the footwell" I literally stared at him in disbelief and promptly told him absolutely not and that the taxi was not going to move till he had handed the little girl back and she was strapped in.
He then started ranting at me so I told him to get out or be thrown out to which i had a bad attitude and it was his granddaughter and if he wanted to put her in the footwell it was none of my business and that as a female I shouldn't be driving a taxi anyway.

He went straight on my shit list !

I had one of my best ever experiences of customer service on a ferry. I was struggling with a toddler, a baby, all their paraphernalia and a folding cot, one of the crew came up to me on the car deck, grabbed my bags and cot, told me to just concentrate on the children and took me to our cabin, 'I'll be here in the morning to get you back to your car'. He totally refused to accept any tip either that evening or in the morning, I wrote to the company and hope he get some recognition from them.

When I worked in clothing retail I had a customer return a blouse because all the buttons had "fallen off". They had quite clearly cut them off with scissors (they handed me the buttons with the cut threads still attached). Then there was the customer returning some trousers that had shrunk in the wash. She pulled the still soaking wet trousers out of a plastic bag and dumped them on the counter, water spreading everywhere. The lady who wanted to know if several items would fit her daughter (who wasn't there) and got really shitty with me when I asked what size her daughter was. And the countless people wanting to return things because they'd changed their minds, claiming "it's still got the tags on, I haven't worn it" when it stank of BO/perfume, had food stains, scuffed, you name it...

I worked in a pub and once had a regular who was high as a kite on coke try to throw the cigarette machine at me. It was less scary than it sounds because we all knew it was bolted to the floor. His friends were asked to take him home and not bring him back for a month and once he'd apologized. We had a nice note through the door the next day and when he came back after a month, he was never an issue again and actually helped when we did have issues with other customers. I think the sheer embarrassment and piss taking by his friends sobered him up really quickly.

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.

Oh the trans Pennine language barrier! I, a Lancastrian, was teaching in Leeds and there was a planned bus strike for Friday, my form were debating how they'd get to school so I told them they would have to 'leg it'. After about half an hour of amazement and so on it transpired that in Yorkshire that meant truant whereas in Lancashire it meant walk!

Give him time-he most likely will
He's so used to getting his own way all the time,that when life doesn't deliver,he has a screaming tantrum
I cannot tell you how many shops they've boycotted just because the staff couldn't deliver the impossible for him

I once worked at M&S, and I found most of the customers to be insufferable snobs. My favourite was when I was on the food side as a cashier ringing a woman's shopping through, and she was loudly chatting to her friend about her finances. She started talking about HOW MUCH her mortgage was and then stopped and looked me dead in the eye and said "I guess someone like you won't ever have to worry about having a mortgage". I guess cashier trash will never get on the property ladder! And I actually did have a mortgage.

I completely agree that the parents in all of those examples, are batshit crazy. However I think you're in the wrong job by the sounds of your hostility towards the job itself

I worked in a pharmacy years ago. A man came in complaining about horrendous diarrhoea and stomach cramps he'd had and how on earth could we sell diabetic sweets if they did that? I showed him the back of the packet, which had in bold 'Excess consumption can have a laxative affect'.
I said 'Oh dear, now many did you eat?' He said 2. I said, oh, maybe you are sensitive to them if 2 sweets caused that. He shouted 'not 2 sweets, I ate 2 packets of them!'. 😂