Please Share Complaints Made About You

[SallySummerPop]

Hi,

I'm really sad that I've received a complaint against me today. Someone had complained that I lacked empathy in a meeting about their health. I feel others emotions and I am very empathetic but I struggle socially and I'm very aware of it, when I heard the complaint, it made me really punish myself and question if I'm right for the role. At the time of this meeting I was going through a really hard time mentally and so was probably being too process driven and not as sympathetic as I could have been but I meant well. Please share complaints you've received so I know I'm not the only one?

I was just 18 and working in a spar shop. A girl came in wanting to buy alcohol, I asked for ID, she didn't have any so I refused the sale. Her mother came in later to complain to the boss that I should have known she was 18 as I was in the same school year as her. The mother was furious and said I was lying when I said I didn't know her and it transpired she was at another local 6th form to me but apparently still not good enough.

She then further complained that one of the customers was talking to me while I was serving someone else...the people she was talking about were husband and wife and one was stood slightly back from the till. My boss didn't uphold her complaint but I felt so so angry that if someone would complain about it.

I once got threatened with disaplinary proceedings by my line manager because I didn't smile and wasn't happy enough. I worked in an office, not public facing. I also worked alongside people who openly bullied me (sent messages about me I could also see on a shared system) which i'd raised and hadn't been properly addressed. Needless to say I quit the job and used the experience as an example of how NOT to manage people.

Years ago, I did a placement in my old Primary school with my old Headteacher. I was also placed in a class with one of my past teachers. I was quite young back then and very shy. I was also a bit overawed by the Ht and felt a bit like a child again in his presence! I used to go home for lunch as i only lived a 5 minute walk away. However, I was great with the kids, I did really well , plenty of good ideas and interaction with the children, punctual and polite. My niece was at the school at the time and at the end of the placement, the Ht asked my sister to ask me to call in to see him. I did so and to my utter shock, he said he couldn't sign off my placement. His reasons?

I hadn't sat and chatted in the staff room at lunchtimes

The teacher I was with said I was a bit quiet.

and get this - ge was really angry that I hadn't said Hello to him if I saw him around the school and I hadn't acknowledged him once on the playground!

I burst into tears with the shock and tried to explain that embarrassingly I has felt a bit in awe of him still, but he wouldn't relent and sign it. I was so humiliated. It was a real kick in the teeth. It really coloured my view of him. I had always thought of him as lovely when I was there myself aged 5-11 and I had been really excited and nostalgic to return to my old school.
I returned to my previous placement who wanted to keep me and employ me! I had various other placements at that time and only positive experiences.

I'm a school attendance officer, had a complaint last week from a pupil that I'd gone to her house and I shouldn't have because she was coming in, I did point out that it was 11am and school started at 8.10am but didn't seem to make much difference 🤔

I once had a member of my team complain that I was always correcting her work. Well, yes, as copywriting lead that’s exactly what my job was - editing the team’s output and providing feedback.

Working in a supermarket a few years ago and a lady was buying specifically only spaghetti, mince, onion, a can of tomatoes, herbs etc. I cheerfully asked if she was making a spaghetti bolognese (obviously based on the ingredients.) She glared at me and later complained to my boss that I was nosy and should not comment on people’s purchases. I would understand if it was something intimate she was purchasing but it was only a bolognese!

Recently I've been told I was harassing someone and breaching their rights.... I wasn't

Not said this one before.

I openly mocked a Deaf person and humiliated them in public - I forced them to stop and look at me so I could face them in an intimidating manner, laughed at them and made a rude gesture at them where I thought nobody would see me.

A) they were lipreading
B) I was lipreading
C) they joked that they'd been wondering whether they should tell me to get a hearing test because they'd noticed my looking them straight in the mouth
D) my gesture was them asking if I knew BSL (their first language) and me replying 'I sign a little, I'm learning'.

Bloody White Knight syndrome.

A malicious complaint of bullying.

I was fully cleared and she was fired

When I was in my 20s I worked in a care home. A colleague complained to the manager that I was “too caring” towards the residents 😂

40 odd years ago I was working in the customer service cabin on Paddington Station. Early morning chaos after a particularly bad storm, many pissed off customers who still managed to be polite. Except one who stood and ranted at me for a full 5 minutes about cancellations because of trees on the lines. I waited for her to stop shouting and then said, in my most pleasant and polite voice, 'I'm so sorry, I nipped down to Bristol during the night, chopped down a few trees and made sure they were blocking the line just so I could have this fun filled Tuesday morning at work with people as rude as you'! She reported 'that rude and disrespectful northerner' and demanded I be taken off customer service 🙄

A not so funny one was when I was working in a nursery with 2-3 yr olds. I got called in the office one morning because a child had told his parent that I slapped his face, and that I'd done it more than once. I was mortified. (And very pissed off that my manager even asked me if it was true). After some investigation by another member of staff it turned out he was referring to me stroking his cheek at nap time. That could have ended very badly.

Back when I was a community care worker, someone complained about me being fat. I hadn't done anything wrong, I was just fat. It really upset me because wtf is that even about?? But then that same client went on to complain about another care worker being black "I should have been asked if I wanted a black person coming to my house!" and another care worker being French "She has an accent. I only want English-speaking people." I realised then that some people are just horrible, hateful human beings.

Oh just remembered another one. In my late teens I worked in a theme park.

Once I was in the log flume photo gift shop. The photos all displayed on monitor's behind me and families could purchase them as fridge magnets, keyrings etc

The rule was if people did something offensive in the photo we had to delete the photo off the screens immediately.

One day, 4 lads in their mid teens flicked the V’s multiple times. So I obviously had to delete the photo each time. Much to the absolute pure anger of one of the lads parents. Who not only verbally abused me there on the spot in front if a huge crowd but made an official complaint about me to the theme park management 😂
I can laugh about it now but at the time it was so upsetting!

I’m a social worker so I’m used to complaints, but one parent once rang my manager to complain that I couldn’t possibly know anything because I was barely out of school and she wasn’t being told what to do by some wet behind the ears 20 year old.

I was 43. I also looked 43 🤷‍♀️

A patient complained to the ward manager that I hadn’t brought her medication (nothing time-critical such as Parkinson’s meds or pain relief) in a timely manner. I had in fact been on my way to get her meds when the patient in the very next bed went into cardiac arrest, so I spent almost an hour attempting resuscitation, and she knew it! 😫

I mentioned this on a similar thread recently. Complaint to HR about a racial microaggression- I apparently accosted a random Chinese looking woman outside our office and demanded to know what the 2025 Chinese New Year animal was.

I had actually been chatting for 15 minutes or so to a long time friend of Chinese heritage who run’s our town’s Chinese New Year festival. I asked how it was going and she said she was relieved it wasn’t as busy as 2024’s Year of the Dragon. I then asked what 2025’s animal was.

I had a temporary line manager quizzing me in front of HR and my union regarding what had an informal agreement that I can be exempt from duty line verbal telephone calls and why I do not telephone parents. She had obviously been complaining about this. I am autistic and deaf. I literally had to point out that while I had located research on why Autistic individuals may struggle with telephone communication. I could not locate any research on why a deaf individual would struggle with verbal telephone calls.

i make the effort to network with the saff from the office and in the warehouse, and they compain about my mini chats (i dont smoke so no smoking breaks etc) but yet others can freely do x and not a peep is uttered, and this person was same level, as me in my team, yet for some reason i was the issue ?? go figure what took the biscuit was one team member used to cloak in have 20 mins breakfast and then still had their normal dinner break and when i said this, the answer was oh they work hard, its like even so , if you wanted me not chatting then you cannot justify the breakfast,

I was working the summer as a lifeguard at the local pool. It was rain, so everyone came to us instead of the beach down the road. We were at capaxity,on timed entrances and so on.

One woman complained that I would not let her use the giant floats we had for some sessions. I explained it was just too busy, and wouldn't be safe. She went to my manager, telling him the customer shoukd always come first. "No, madam," he replied, "at this pool, safety always comes first, and if you're not prepared to aside by that, we'd rather nor have your custom." (Fortunately she was standing with her back to me, so couldn't see my face.)

when I was young, my older co-worker told me I must be lacking confidence because I bleach my hair so I said I didn’t think she knew what she was talking about and she made a complaint that I didn’t take criticism well!

*ages only relevant because the idea that women only dyed their hair because they lacked confidence was reasonably widespread.

A customer once emailed head office whilst still on the tarmac, complaining about “my tone” when I refused to stop what I was doing and get him a coffee. I was in the middle of performing CPR on a passenger at the time.

As a teenage waitress, I had a man write in to head office complaining I hadn't offered him a bread roll.

I had a complaint from a parent that i told her son what to revise for homework as a revision and practice question exercise based on weaknesses in the mock exam (same as the rest of the class). She thinks he should just choose himself as he's been working very hard (at his girlfriend's house...).

He's currently failing.

I was told by a TA at school that I was rude, I said thank you.
That boiled her up enough to repeat our whole conversation in an email to HR in the hope of raising a grievance against me 🤯

I have since moved on and she is still weird to say the least 😁

Back in the day where people would print lots I was told off for using a ref pen to mark up edits in a paper, red was too aggressive.