Working in customer service is no joke, my friends. It takes a serious amount of mental energy to look other humans in the face and smile, day in and day out, no matter how they treat you in response.
You meet some very lovely people. You also meet way too many people who are entitled, angry, stupid, prejudiced, or some combination of all three.
These 17 people surely have had more than one moment when they’ve wondered if a customer might be crazy, but here are the instances that most stick out in their minds.
17. When you just can’t take it for one more minute.
When I walked into the apartment I shared with a friend, and it was covered in vomit because her dog ate a pillow and had puked it up.
Two days earlier.
The living room was covered in dog puke and she had just sat there in the middle of it. She thought it was funny.
I called a moving company on the spot and arranged for the first appointment they had, and put my stuff in storage while I found a new place.
That was my last roommate.
16. I wonder how many times they had to say it before she went away.
A customer came to pay for some lessons and I swiped her card upside down so I had to swipe it again. She caused a scene stating I charged her twice. I just sat there with a monotone “I only charged you once” every time she took a second to breath
15. Some people just aren’t worth the time.
I work in a somewhat popular restaurant, fast causal style (think chipotle, panda express, panera) and it was my first shift as a line cook by myself. I had already worked in the kitchen and can do every position there, but it was my first time doing it by myself. Well it was a busy night for us, and we were short staffed. By the time we had slowed down, I had been exhausted and hot as hell. I had been standing over 8 burners for about an hour and was taking my lunch. I sat in the office and the AC was blasting and it was well needed. My coworker who was cashiering that day, and she took her lunch 15 minutes after mine started. She saw me in the office and demanded I get out of “her spot”, told me being a cashier is harder than a line cook because she has to deal with the public. when i told her i wasn’t moving she told me to fuck off and was a bitch the rest of the night. It took about everything in me not to slap her, but instead i told my coworkers who told the MOD, and soon after she was fired for stealing.
14. This lady called THE COPS.
While working the front desk of a hotel one day, a woman handed me her debit card for payment. With our software, we insert the card and it takes a minute to process in the reader and load the number properly into the software. As I’m waiting for the reader to get finished with the process, I start making her (classic magnetic strip style) key cards for her room.
I hand her card back, along with two key cards and she just screeches, “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO!!???”.
Baffled and confused, I just said: “Uh….pardon?”
To which just just repeatedly yelled “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO!!!??”
“Uh..I’m just giving you the keys to your room Ma’am. All I need is a signature and you’re all good to go”.
She then called 911. Not even the non-emergency number, 911.
I had no idea what the hell was going on.
I tried to ask her what she was doing and she just said “I’m not saying another word to you until the police get here!! I KNOW MY RIGHTS!”
ok…..?
She then went outside the lobby and waited for the police to arrive.
She some minutes later comes back in with an officer, points to me and says “THAT’S HER! SHE’S THE ONE!” (I was the only person working…).
Long story short, it comes to light that she thought me making her key cards for her was me swiping her debit card multiple times and charging her “thousand of dollars”.
The officer comes behind the desk. Asks me to repeat the process I did with the key card reader and asks her if that was the noise that she heard.
She yells “YES!! YOU SEE!”.
He then tells her that that was the sound of the key card maker and not the me swiping her debit card.
She just stood there staring for a second before getting red in the face, grabbing her belongings, leaving the keys and unsigned folio for the room with me, and stormed out while yelling “I DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS BULLSHIT!!!”
She then called a few hours later about the single approval hold for the room that was put on her card….accusing me of trying to “steal from her again”……
13. The stories I could tell about people returning their food.
A customer once sent back her steak tartare because it was, and I quote, “severely undercooked”.
12. Some people really are just living right on the edge.
People are nuts.
I worked in a restaurant about a decade ago that had a lovely patio. Middle aged man orders lunch, no problems, he pays with a credit card. I place the little payment booklet thing (I have no idea what the proper name is) on the table, and as he opens the booklet the wind blows his receipt out of the booklet. He immediately starts freaking out because “all of his credit card information is on there”, so I explained that no only the last four digits are on there.
He demands to speak to the manager, which that was still me I just also waited on tables, and it ended with him screaming that I am stealing his identity, that he would be calling the cops, and that he knew the owner (spoiler alert, none of those things happened).
Shrugged it off and went back to work.
11. That’s…what horns are for.
I’ve been going to my local high schools running track to jog and exercise since lockdown. Well to park your car you have to go through a drive way that’s designated with arrows as one way (there’s an exit on the other side of the parking lot). Anyway the soccer moms in town are notorious for parking their cars in this drive way and making it hard to get into the actual parking lot. As I pull into the drive way one of these women thinks that it’s a brilliant idea to put her car into reverse as I’m entering. I couldn’t swerve out of the way because there was an SUV parked right at the mouth of the entrance taking up half the available space.
So I reacted and honked my horn. She proceeded to panic, throw the car into drive and run it into a small boulder that lines this drive way. It ripped the passenger side air deflector clean off.
According to her I’m now “a fucking asshole” that honks her horn for no reason.
10. Man people do NOT have the right to put their hands on employees.
I worked at arcade/bowling alley combo that served food like a full restaurant. My position had me deliver the food and take the dirty dishes to the back. So, there’s a group of like 6 people bowling and they ordered our sampler platter that had a little of everything from the appetizers menu; I bring this platter out and set it down asking if there was anything else they needed. Without really looking this woman says “We’re good.” I begin to turn around and this woman grabs my arm and yanks me towards her like I was her kid and says “Where the fuck are my chicken wings.” In disbelief of what was happening I paused looking at her then the platter eventually saying “They’re right there ma’am” in this little basket on the platter. She lets go and with a skeptical expression says “Hmm, ok” as if she really didn’t believe the wings were there. If I didn’t hate working there and my shift was any farther from being over in 10 minutes I would’ve spoken to a manager, but I didn’t care enough to stay to get it sorted and just wanted to leave.
9. Some people can NOT read the room.
Had a new boy in the office who had no idea of what personal hygiene consists of. Not a great start. He was loud and obnoxious, not even good at his job. Then one day, at the smoking shelter, he starts talking about catching rabbits in traps. He’s pointing to the fields around the building and saying he’s going to ask for permission to put traps out there.
We laughed. For all the shit he talked, not one of us took him seriously.
When we go back inside he heads straight to the cubicle of our office manager. This cubicle is adorned with pictures of rabbits. Some are her pets, some are just rabbits she thinks are cute. She has statues, rabbit pens and pencils; nobody in their right mind would have asked this woman in this cubicle about going trapping rabbits.
He did.
I was surprised he made it to the end of the day. I was not surprised when he didn’t return the day after.
8. Yeah, that’s not how this works, lady.
A woman claimed to have left her money at home while I was working one day after she ordered two sandwiches.
They take about ten minutes to cook. I said that’s ok, when you come back they will be ready. She said she wanted the sandwiches first and that she’d be right back after she and her daughter ate because they lived right around the corner. I said if you live right around the corner you’ll be back before the sandwiches are done, but I can’t give you food before you pay.
She lost her shit on me. It was wild she left with no food and didn’t come back
7. This is definitely a fighting reason.
A couple sat down at the movie theater 15 minutes into the movie. The lady sits right beside me and is holding a full conversation at full volume with the man barely acknowledging her.
I politely ask her to lower her voice as it is distracting. She stares forward for 2 minutes before leaning over: “Maybe if you weren’t listening to my conversation, you wouldn’t be distracted.”
I was too livid to even respond and the movie was ruined.
6. Talk about a little man’s complex.
20 years ago, girl tried to fight me in a bar. All I did was look at her funny. (Unintentionally. I was going to the bar for a round of drinks and forgot the order, happened to be looking at her when I was lost in thought). Anyway, she challenged me outside. I couldn’t believe it. I’m 6’1 220 and she was small.
Anyway the bouncer heard her and kicked her out. She was still in the sidewalk an hour later when we left. Followed me to my car pushing me and punching my back.
It was surreal.
5. How is this a semi-adult person?
There was a girl in my class who was such an idiot, and she would outwardly disrespect the professor all the time.
This one time while the professor was talking she started to whistle.
He like stopped class in disbelief and asked her why she was doing it and why she was being disruptive and she said it’s a thing she does without even thinking, and then whistled again and was like “See?!”
4. THAT is definitely not magical. Lol.
Used to work at Disney World, its 9am and a lady comes into our Guest Services demanding a refund on her Turkey leg because it taste weird.
We ask her details to process the refund, turns out she bought it 3 days ago and was carrying it in her bag since…
3. What planet does HE live on?
When I was a professor, I had someone leave a midterm to go fuck their girlfriend.
He raised his hand about 2 minutes into the exam, said he needed to let his gf into his dorm room, could he leave. It was a series of essays, not a lot you could blatantly cheat on, so I told him “you are an adult, you can do whatever you want, but you only have 75 minutes to take this exam, so use your time wisely”. Guy left. Comes back 5 minutes before the end of class. High fives a friend. Scribbles something. Hands it in.
He failed it. I mean, he didn’t answer most of the questions. When I handed it back he was SHOCKED. He interrupted my lecture to argue with me, telling me I said he could leave. Yeah, you can leave, but that doesn’t mean you automatically pass a test. Then he cried. Like loud, head on the table sobs.
He dropped my class and called me a c*nt. I don’t like people.
2. Yeah wtf is happening is the only response.
Disney World attracts some of the most bizarre humans on the planet.
I know a girl who works there and she was on her lunch break when a couple came over and started berating her–a grown ass adult–for not eating her carrots.
1. Too many people pretend to forget that, I think.
In high school i took Philosophy and we were talking about dogs and their souls or something.
One girl argued that essentially ownership shows if something has a soul and followed up with “people own dogs, a person has never owned another person”.
Everyone just kinda looked at her because apparently she forgot that slavery happened.
As someone who waited tables for several of her younger years, I am having flashbacks!
What’s the story like this that sticks out in your mind. Share it with us in the comments!
