Customers Suck

I had a guy call to get directions to our store on 87th & Giles. I directed him to the one on 84th (which is actually a different store). He was all "84th? You said it was 87th!" I said, "no, sir, you said it was 87th". It wasn't even my company's store and he was complaning? No.

I work at a bowling alley, and there's an old man (the old ones are normally the rudest) who comes in every Sunday. He flashes his 'loyalty card' (that I've never seen before and I've worked there nearly a year) and says, "You know what shoe size I am by now". I was like, what. I've never seen this bloke before and he's just swanned in as if he owns the place!

Luckily, my brother (who also works on the control/shoe hire desk) knows how to deal with customers that are awkward like this, and got the biggest shoes we have (we call them BOATS because they're UK size 15) and says, "that's your size, isn't it?" I was facing away because I was laughing, when the old man says, "stop fooling around." My brother then proceeds to get out a child's size 13 (the size before a UK 1) and says, "Is that better?"

Tears were running down my face at the old man's expression. Well, it teaches him not to be rude, and we weren't exactly rude, just underplayed our intelligence.

(For the curious among you, he was a UK size 7)

I was working in a store during the morning on a Sunday and a man I'd never seen before decided to get a few items. I point out that I'd never seen him before, because usually we get the same customers in the morning on the weekends. But he was new.

I was currently zoning a few rows of items and putting up "on sale" signs above a few items like usual. I saw him walking up to the cash register and he put his items down on the conveyor belt. He bought laundry detergent, so it brought me to attention and I walked over to the register to check him out as fast as I could. At this time, I noticed he had reusable bags, but I was tired from the night before of staying up late and it didn't register very clearly in my mind.

I proceeded to check him out and began to put his items in our generic plastic bags. He flipped out.

"Ma'am, I have bags. I clearly brought bags and I want to use them, please..."

He said it in a very condescending tone and as if he was actually mad about the whole thing. He rattled on about it as well, where as my response was:

"Oh, okay. I'm sorry. It's not a big deal."

Now usually customers actually apologize for not showing me the bags or telling me that they have them before I start checking them out, so this was a major flip out. I went silent from then on and laughed a little bit quietly under my breath, because I couldn't believe how he had flipped out so bad over one tiny mistake that could be easily fixed. And he actually proceeded to look at his nails, like he was above me or something. And what guy does that???

I don't know what his problem was, but it was certainly entertaining for the moment. He thanked me quite briskly before he left and I said,

"You're welcome."

The other cashier told me she couldn't believe it either and would've completely ignored him after he did that. I just told her that I'd rather "kill them with kindness".

I have two jobs but the one I have the most issues with customers in is in a store that sells to trades people and serious DIYers.

We have an unusual setup, where the front of house has a row of catalogues where people look up the codes for the products they need, write it all on a list sheet and give it to us, we type in the numbers take payment and the order goes through, we go behind the counter into the adjoined warehouse and we have portable computers which tell up the locations of each item, then we bag it all up and bring it out front.

Most of our money comes from people who order stuff into the store and we have a next day delivery service that people use, which encourages people to plan ahead. Often people check online if something is in stock and they can order it for the next morning or come down and get it.

I have a regular customer who has never come in without having a shout at somebody and by the second time I served him I already knew what he was like from watching him insult my coworkers.

He came in, as he always does, and walks right up to the desk and before I can take any details he starts reeling off a load of numbers. When I asked for his account details he said "I'm a regular to this store, I'm on your computer" so I explained that we have millions of accounts and I need either his customer number or some details to find his account. He got stroppy with me but gave the the details.

I typed in the product numbers and one of the products he wanted 7 of we only had about 3 in stock. I apologised and told him we only had three and offered to order them in for before 12 the next day. He proceeded to tell me that we did have them in stock because he checked online.

I turned the screen around so he could see then I went to our website and showed him that he'd been looking at the stock for our main HQ warehouse not for our store. I apologised profusely, offering alternatives, saying I could get them ordered to his house free of charge etc because to be honest he scares the life out of me.

He started saying how our company was rubbish and how all of our staff are liars and con artists, he was saying how it wasn't good enough and that we should have what he wanted etc

I put through the rest of his order for him, and whilst he was waiting for his order I was coming up with places where he could find the product we wanted.

When my coworker came out with the order my customer started swearing at him too, saying how bad the service was and how he didn't even get an apology, as you can imagine my coworker was a little taken aback because he'd had no idea what was going on.

I got really angry at my customer and started to shout at him saying that I'd gone out of my way to help him and that I'd apologised countless times and how he has no right to talk to us the way he was, especially when he turned on my coworker etc etc

Even though i thought I may have wet myself, my boss wasn't mad at me and another coworker said that if i wanted to tell the customer where to go next time that he'd cover for me and say I was nothing but polite.

This lady came in today and bought a bunch of office furniture. She point blank refused to pull her car up to make loading it easier, so they had to drag flat bed halfway across the parking lot. (We are in a shopping center, not a standalone.)

Then, one of my co-workers was wrapping plastic wrap around her filing cabinet so the drawers would stay shut. She got mad at him because the wrap was too thin and he needed to go find wider plastic wrap to use. She was a total you know what and she had literally every employee but the managers doing shit for her. Some people...

A few week ago a customer called, told me they ha a 8.5 x 11 brochure, print to bleed that needed tri-folded.

I explained we can't print to bleed and, very snippily, she went 'no one can' and I asked if she was aware I would need to cut the white border off an she said yes.

She completely misrepresented the brochure to me. It couldn't fold as an 8.5x11, so I had to hand score and hand-fold every brochure. My arm cramped up, it took two hours, and someone else had to come help me.

They came back, complained about the folding and the color of green. It was BAAAAAAD. We had to do a refund and one of my managers was slightly rude to her.

This girl called today on the phone asking about a change of major and why she was still getting a hold from her old major department. I asked her if she had turned in the form to us; she had. So I went to search for her file and found the copy we normally keep of every form a student turns in. The form had not been turned in first to the department that she belonged to before changing to us, which is the major requirement before it can be signed by the Dean of the college.

So I explained to her that she needed to get those signatures from the Nursing college first, because the holds she had that did not permit registrations where from theirs. She ended up getting angry and sighing heavily while repeating over and over what I had just said in a mocking tone.

Me being me, I replied yes, yes, yes to everything and told her at the end that she had to come and pick it up herself 'cause I wasn't going to mail it to nobody because of "protocol" bitch never showed up.

Had a customer last night who was a repeat customer. First he left his beer on my counter without telling me, then walked away for 20 minutes, then was confused I called his number (I found in the bag) to ask if he had left it behind.

Then he spent 20 minutes on a store laptop searching for a picture on Google for a project he needed me to do that he hadn't yet mentioned to me, just the other guy in the store. I was incredibly swamped and he wanted to sit down with me ASAP to work on updates to a flyer we designed. (We do not do sit down consultations when we have multiple customers because only one person works in my department.)

So I was helping another guy first and this customer keeps butting it with really rude things to say about the promotion his company is doing and how Warren Buffet living in Omaha "does nothing to benefit him".

Then he goes over the updates with me. A lady comes over and he pretty much won't let me up to help her because "he's in a rush". He was "in a rush" since he had first come in 45 minutes before!

After I finally get the updates done and emailed to him, he calls back and spends fifteen minutes on the phone with me discussing updates that took, maybe, 3 minutes to complete. He kept repeating himself, not knowing what he was talking about, and telling me not to change things. Like I'm going to go through and change all the other shit you didn't tell me to change.

So fucking annoying.

The drunk ones are usually the ones that suck in some way. Across the street from the motel I work at, there's a restaurant with a fairly large bar in it so when night comes, some of the locals will go wandering looking for a cheap place to crash for the night. Unfortunately, they usually choose us to come to since we're right across the street from it. There's another bar just down the street so sometimes those ones come to us as well.

The mellow ones aren't too terrible, they're pretty tolerable and only slightly annoying. It's the ones that are so fucked up drunk that they can't even speak clearly that like to cause trouble when things don't go how they want to. Usually when they come in, it ends with them making sexual comments about me or threatening me. Most of them leave pretty quickly when I threaten to get the cops involved. But some of them won't take no for an answer and will continue harassing me until I'm forced to actually call the cops.

There was one time I remember that I had rented a woman a room for a lower price than our usual rates out of sympathy because she got me with the whole "I'm homeless" thing. She came in later, screaming at me for really no reason and threatening to sic her boyfriend on me if I didn't start being a "proper employee". She also had the nerve to start yelling at me because she thought I was a prostitute. She eventually got escorted out by an officer when I got tired of dealing with her. I don't think she was a drunk one though, just a jerk. I really despise it when people like that decide to take advantage of another person's kindness. I gave her sympathy and she repaid me by threatening to get her boyfriend to kick my ass.

There's also been quite a few customers who have yelled at me because the motel doesn't have room service. People from other States and countries automatically assume that just because we're close to San Francisco, we'll have room service. They only wish they were staying at a motel as classy at that. When they find out we don't, they yell at me like it's my fault we don't have room service.

People that come into the store RIGHT on 7 o'clock (which is when we close). It wouldn't be so bad if they rushed in to buy just a handful of items, but lately, we've had people come into the store with their kids, grab a trolley and proceed to load it up. It's like, you seriously couldn't find time to do your shopping between 8am and 7pm? Most of them are locals who regularly come in, so they know when we close.

Nothing aggravates me more than those people.

yesterday a girl came in to get her hair colored. She had a friend with her and they were both really nice to me. The girl just said she wanted her hair darker, nothing else, just darker. So I brought out a color book and we picked out a pretty auburn color. Dyed her hair. She said it was really pretty, liked the color, her friend loved it. She gave me a tip and everything.

A couple hours later, she comes in and tells my boss she hated it and she had brought her friend along so that I would dye her hair to match her neutral brunette friend.

I wanted to die.

@ Rocket Queen
I dislike that, too. Fortunately, our lights do turn off at 15 minutes after we close and we CANNOT turn them back on, so we are allowed to slightly "rush" customers (for their own safety, of course, so they don't trip in the dark store). It's nice.

---

Chick came into work the other day for a four thousand dollar job. When I asked her for a time, she wouldn't give me on, just as soon as possible. It was bout 28,000 pages to print and our machine prints 55 impressions per second. she showed up at 3.30 and said she needed everything by four. I still had 300 of one 7 page stapled double-sided document to print and 300 of another one.

So we give her everything we have and she comes back the next morning, bitches that we didn't have it done and then complained that a document I specifically asked her if she wanted stapled and she said no wasn't stapled. She got 1000 dollars back on her order because at OfficeMax, you are not allowed to not let the customer be right.

Corporate seriously freaks out. I had a lady come in once who wanted 30 D/S brochures on cardstock, trifolded. I had several jobs I was working on. I can't fold cardstock with a machine ... I have to hand-score it and then handfold it and it's not a very precise thing so I usually won't do it. She was just a walk in customer who said "I didn't even know you guys were on a first come, first serve basis." I explained I have five other orders I was working on and she was like "oh, are they waiting in the store". No, lady, but they came in earlier and their jobs ARE due at a certain time and if I take an hour to do your stupid brochures (which we'll only make, like, twenty bucks on) I'll lose several hundred dollars and piss of several other regular customers.

She asked me to call a manager and I did. He backed me up. The lady left, called corporate, complained, they called my manager and bitched him out. 'You couldn't do 30 D/S color copies for a customer?' 'Of course we could,' he said, 'if the customer had wanted 30 D/S color copies and not 30 D/S color copies with hand-scoring and hand-folding.' Our district manager called the next day to give us shit about it, too.

I literally work in a store where the customer is always right.

At work, we're only allowed to put two flavors in one pint of ice cream. It's a dumb rule, designed to get people to buy more pints because they want more flavors, but it's a rule. I can't change it, obviously. There is this one customer though who acts like I have a personal grudge against him because I won't let him have a scoop of each flavor in a pint. One, that would taste nasty, and two, ITS A RULE.

He complained about me to my manager on numerous occasions (and she verified that it's a rule, not me being a bitch). It's kind of become a running joke in the shop, because he's a regular and always complains about me to whoever is working, even though it was at least 2 months ago when we had our pint incident.

I also had a girl who came in and was angry that we couldn't make her an ice cream cake on the spot. Packing the layers, icing it in increments (so the cake won't melt) and decorating it is a two day process, at least.

Technically, the faculty is not a "customer" but we do work for them and have to do what they tell us, so yeah, same shit.

I work very close with the Graduate Program Director, an 80+ old man who thinks I only work and am not a student (even when I have repeated time after time that my hours start and end at a certain time because I have to go to class or do homework). Well, two days ago he and the department chair had a meeting with graduate school for a new program for applications; I had already attended the session, so I was up to date with everything. I went to his office, told him that he had the meeting and that I could not be there because my hours end at that time.

He left with the chair and when I was getting ready to leave the office, he calls me on the phone asking me why I'm not there and insists that I should be there. I sad no because my hours end there and fuck no I'm not going to work extra hours.

Next day he comes and bombards me with questions because he doesn't know how to fucking pay attention murder.

I got a tad lippy with a "customer" yesterday.

I work at an office supply store with a 'shipping site' inside. It means we send the packages, nothing more. This guy comes in with a door tag and is ranting and bitching about how he told 'us' that he wouldn't be home and where is his package. I tried to explain to him that I'm not the shipping company and I don't work for them, but I'd direct him to a store for them. He's like 'are they even open right now, you're as bad as these people'.

So I said 'sir, do you want me to get a manager because I really don't appreciate the way you are speaking to me right now'.

He stormed out. I told my manager who was like 'you shouldn't do that but he doesn't even know where he is, so he won't call to complain'.

Gah, fucking people.

@ Kurtni
I hate people who think that 'instant gratification' is just ... their right. Um, no, I'm not saying that it's going to take me three hours to get this job done 'cause I'm a lazy cunt, it's 'cause I have three other jobs and that one is going to take a good chunk of time on it's own'. Grrrr....

It has always pissed me off when a customer can see you're having a really effing hard night or you're just really loaded down, and they have the nerve to stand there and ask you for this or that or whatever the hell they need that 10 other employees who AREN'T busy could get them. It pisses me off when customers ask you to "smile" or cheer up, when obviously they fucking KNOW they're the reason you've got an irritated hurry-up-and-get-tf-out-of-here look on your face, lol. You work with the general public in fast food and let me tell you to smile 6 hours into your shift.

When I worked at Wendy's, this old man always came in every single day and wanted free shit, all the time, and eventually they ended up just giving him what he wanted because otherwise he caused a scene in front of the other customers. He really...ugh.

Dude, I work at a call center for a certain store known for selling electronics and multimedia and for their little sharply dressed team of technicians (I didn't say names. Am I good? ) Some customers just suck. Bad. (Of course, the job itself sucks for a LOT of other reasons, and I'm probably gonna quit soon, but I'll not get off topic.)
I can't think of any particularly great stories, but I did have a guy the other day who didn't seem to understand that commercials are not reality. Like I told him it'd be about a week before his sharply dressed technician could come to his house to fix his computer and he's like "well how come in the commercials it shows all the cars and vans and people just jump out at you ready to fix your computer" or something ridiculous like that. It annoyed me, but also amused me.

I know I have better stories than that though. I guess I'll post them when I think of them.

What is the #1 rule for working in America's #2 store? NEVER hang up on a customer. Ever.

I worked for tech support for 8 months and this f*cker called TWO minutes before my shift ended (I work the night shift. So I was ready to go home) and right off the bat decided to be a massive dick.

"Thank you for calling _____'s Concierge Services. My name is Kristen, badge number 260851 may I please have you phone number beginning with the area code?"

"555-555-1234 (Not actually what he gave me)."

"Hm, it looks like that isn't in our system. Could you have maybe given us another phone number?"

"No, why would I do that? This is my only phone number. Why does it matter?"

This wasn't the phone number that was showing up on the caller ID on the phone.

"Well, sir, we look up members through their phone numbers-"

"Okay, fine, I'll wait so you can look me up." Super dick tone.

"....... Your phone number isn't pulling up a file. Could I perhaps have your first and last name or your membership number?"

"Oh so now you need my name? Don't you have it on file?"

"Sir, I need to look you up so I can open a case for you."

"I know I'm being rude, but, that's because you aren't making sense. Can I talk to someone who knows how to do their job?"

"Look, sir, this is my LAST day. You are my LAST call. I slipped and slammed my head into the counter in the bathroom, I'll probably need stitches, but my god I wanted to finish my shift. So just LET me do my damn job and give me your membership number so I can HELP YOU."

-click-

That's your average day working in a call center. I HATED that place.

Our self-serve copiers are for customers to make their own copies, then pay after.

The only way to track them to print a receipt is for the machine to ask them, after each copy job, if they are ready for their receipt.

Some lady was all pissed off. 'Well no one just makes one copy!'

I was like, 'yes, ma'am, about 50% of my customers who use those machines only make 1-3 copies.'

'Well, I guess I'll just deal with it since I don't have a choice.'

No, you don't.