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People Who Work in Customer Service Share the Ridiculous Complaints They’ve Had to Deal With

If you’ve worked a customer service job before, you know the deal: most people are reasonable and friendly but there is a certain percentage of folks out there who just like to be DIFFICULT.

I’ve worked in restaurants and I did catering for a long time so I feel the pain of all the people out there who have to deal with customers every day.

Ugh!

Take a look at these stories about annoying customers from folks on AskReddit.

1. Which side are you on?

“A few years ago I was cashier at a retail store. A pregnant woman came up and said that she was trying to leave but couldn’t get into her car because a truck was parked very close to her. I paged the driver of the truck up to the cash desk.

The truck driver, a middle aged woman, came up, and she and the pregnant woman got into an argument because truck lady didn’t want to leave her shopping to go move her truck. I didn’t get involved and continued to cash out customers, and eventually truck lady moved her car so the pregnant lady could go home.

Later as I was cashing out the truck lady, she asked to speak to my manager. Afterwards my manager told me that she was complaining about me because at some point she said it looked like I nodded, so I was clearly siding with the pregnant lady.

My manager said “I told her I’d talk to you about it, so here I am talking to you about it” and just left it at that.”

2. Weirdo.

“I worked at a shoe store and I had a guy come in and ask where he could get some books packed up for free and shipped. I said I wasn’t sure and that maybe Staples would do it because they have a UPS area there.

He said he already tried there and then he called me a fat *ss (I wasn’t fat. Just very pregnant) because I couldn’t be bothered to get off the ladder to help him.

I was like dude. I sell shoes. I don’t know what you want from me.

He storms out of the store and like 3 years later I’m still super confused about the whole situation.”

3. I’m appalled!

“A lady ordered a sandwich and then cancelled her order because she thought it took too long.

Someone else from the party she was having called and made an order. We made it and delivered it without issue. Same lady calls back APPALLED that we would allow one of her guests to order from us after she made it very clear she wanted to cancel her own order.

It’s not my business if other people at her party want to order food and I had no idea it was her party anyway. I told her it was very common for multiple deliveries to go to the same house party, why wouldn’t we make them sandwiches?

She then told me I would obviously never amount to anything in life and she was going to make a formal complaint against me. It was such a weird complaint. It was probably 10 years ago but it still bugs me sometimes.”

4. Make up your mind.

“Restaurant with open kitchen, so customers and us cooks can converse freely. Customer wanted crispy fish. Made it really crispy.

Not done enough. I cooked a new one, literally like 15 minutes on the fryers; I cooked three or four other orders around it.

She then complained that it was too hot and she didn’t want it.”

5. Get outta here.

“Worked at a coffee shop that wasn’t Starbucks.

Frappuccino is a trademarked word for Starbucks blended coffee drinks. When customers would ask for frappuccinos we would just put in the order as what we called it and let them know the name for it at our store so they would recognize it when the barista called it out. Had a women get so upset she was screaming, all over the word frappuccino.

According to her it was the traditional Italian word for a blended coffee drink (it’s not) and we obviously thought she was stupid to tell her otherwise and how dare we insult her like that. Tried to calm her down and just say we called them something else but it would be a similar drink…didn’t even correct her about the rest.

She continued to flip out and literally looked up and called our corporate customer service line in front of us, holding up the rest of the line, to have them tell her the same thing.

She then started screeching to demand to talk to the president of our company, and started knocking stuff off our counter top. That’s when we called security to escort her out of our store.”

6. It’s too cold.

“I was a lifeguard for 2-3 years in high school. Everyday I would get people complaining about the pool temperature as if I could do something about it.

“Ma’am, the pool does not have a heating system, I’m sorry. Larger bodies of water hold their temperature longer, which is why it’s so cold”. And they would complain ALL. THE. TIME.

“This is your job, you need to fix it!” I’m sorry lady. This isn’t the 4 Seasons Hotel, this is a community pool. It was never young people, always the old ladies who would come in at 5 am to do water aerobics.”

7. Have you heard of tax?

“I worked at Subway in high-school and a customer demanded to speak to a manger because her $5 footlong was not exactly $5.

I tried explaining to her that sales tax is normal and $5.35 is the price of anything after tax that is $5 she continued to yell and cuss at me. She even specifically stated she does not have to pay a tax.

It was at that moment I accepted that there was no being rational with some people…”

8. Nothing better to do.

“When I was at DirecTV I received a call from a man whose sole purpose was to complain that this is the United States and there should not be a Spanish option in the automated call tree.”

9. You can’t win with some people.

“Customer was sent a bill in an envelope with a plastic window part for the address and called to complain that our company was single handedly (her words) destroying the planet by sending so much plastic through her door.

Turns out she’d had several letters as she was significantly behind in payments and there was a previous complaint on her records where she had insisted all correspondence must be by post.

Literally could not win with the woman.”

10. Huh?

“We couldn’t get a $5 coupon to scan so we just took it off in another way and she ranted and raved because she didn’t like how it was going to look on the receipt.

Legit yelled at one of my cashiers for this. I’ll never understand.”

11. That’s pretty rude.

“The best is always people who aren’t using your services or paying you for anything but demanding your time and attention.

Work at a vets office part time and every shift someone calls in asking about some random medication or another vet clinic when we insanely busy (we see roughly 40-50 pets a day) and demand that I look up phone numbers and pricing for other clinics, people act like smart phones and the internet aren’t at their disposal.

The best was one time this lady called because she found a wild rabbit and wanted us to give it an exam. Explain to her to put the rabbit back outside as it could have a number of diseases and it’s not safe to keep a wild animal in your house, also we don’t see anything other than cats and dogs.

She then demanded I look up a vets office that did take wild animals, told her “ma’am, we are very busy and this is a personal issue and you aren’t a client. I will not do research for you. Have a great day.”

She then left us a one star yelp review and tried to write a complain to the better business bureau.”

12. Get over yourself.

“I worked at a campus coffee shop in college. It had multiple locations, and my position was to fill in for people who didn’t show up.

One morning I ended up having to open a location I had never been to by myself. A woman came in to buy her regular coffee and yelled at me because I had put the milk and sugar out on the wrong side of the room.”

13. Too late, buddy.

“Ah I got a great one.

So I have a small retail business with my mom that’s strictly brick and mortar. Normally our return policy is within 21 days for store credit. During the holidays we extend it so that anything purchased between black Friday and December 24th can be returned up until the end of January.

A few years ago this guy came in around the end of April trying to return Christmas gifts on DRY CLEANING HANGERS. When I told him I wouldn’t take it back, even for a store credit, he blew up on me and cussed me out in front of other customers in the store.

He then proceeded to leave a 1 star review and bash the store saying how he’s “never been treated like that before at a store”. How tf do people like that exist?”

How about you?

Have you ever had any really bad customer service experiences?

If so, please share them with us in the comments. Thanks!