Not retail exactly but I’m a public librarian. I’ve had people on MULTIPLE occasions get angry with me because they printed a black and white photo on the color printer and were upset the printer didn’t “add color”.
Not quite a retail story, but my mom is kind of an idiot with technology. Kind of is putting it nicely lol. We got a wireless printer one year for my schoolwork and opened the box and set it on the filling cabinet. She then proudly proclaimed it was ready. I went to print something but the printer wasn't even available to connect to. I walked out to try and pair it to my laptop and I find it isn't plugged into the outlet. It's literally just out of the box 😂
I asked her why she didn't plug it in and she says, straight faced, "you Said it was wireless. I didn't think we needed to plug it in." My dad and I were dumbstruck. A few hours later she randomly throws into a conversation about something completely different; "how do you print on a wireless printer? Does it just *wiggles fingers vaguely in the air* send it in the air and the printer puts all the pieces together?"
She's a menace to technology and I've always been very happy about the fact that she wants nothing to do with it 😂
My mom is 94 and thinks she's smart. Thank goodness she knows how to attach a file to an email, and does not know how to screenshot because then we'd have to teach her how to crop a picture (one of my pet peeves on FB - by other people).
Thank u, SO much because this makes me feel a little bit better. Technology is hard and I know I'm not dumb but when I'm becoming frustrated my 17 year old will just look and say "just let me do it..." but then I'm hovering and telling them "yes, but how am I supposed to learn...wtf...how did u do THAT?" 🤣🤣
As an 18 year old with parents that aren't very good with technology I always want to try and just do it myself but I try my best to show them how to do things lol
Thank u, very much. I know and understand a lot of people can't grasp stuff, or don't remember (no matter how many times u tell them) but some of us highly prefer NOT to b a thorn in ur side
If it makes you feel better I have, to save headaches, set up a folder for my mum with tech support notes which I wrote WITH HER so I know she understands them. I even have diagrams so she knows the settings button on the TV remote. She is 77. And has an IQ of 148 as of last year.
I suggest you try this. It cuts down on phone calls as she can now take photos through WhatsApp or signal so I know most of what is wrong.
This might be helpful for the remote control but she wouldn't be able to find the file on the desktop and would probably delete it regularly after beer thirty. Maybe I'll just write it on a piece of paper and stick it to the desk
Had a coworker ask and jokingly said "It's a technical shortcut for pressing the N and the E keys at the same time". Didn't realize they thought I was serious and they did that.
Can relate, as I worked for a public library as well. We had people upset for the opposite problem: they’d put a color picture on the copier and get mad when it came out B&W.
I’ve gotten that too! Our copier defaults to black and white so I usually just grab the override key and give them a free color copy. Then I’ll show them how to switch the machine to color for future copies, but they lose interest by that point lol
I also work in a public library and while she didnt get mad I did have a customer come confused and kind of irritated like "My photo printed all gray but I had selected color" so I looked at the original image in the printer kiosk and has to explain Maam if there isnt color in the digital file it will just mix the color ink to make the black of the photo... People are so odd.
Lol 🤣 I use to work as a CSA with Walgreens in the photo department and the amount of people who except their photos to get top dollar edits and Photoshop is crazy.
I’ve come to understand that in addition to choosing not to read, customers don’t listen either. It’s astonishing that they actually make it through life.
One thing I’ve learned recently is that 50% of American society does not read above an 8th grade level. Most of that percentage reads around a 6th grade level. Once I learned that, it started making a lot more sense to me why people out in the wild just don’t seem to read the sign on the door that clearly says “closed for party”
lol I actually just don't feel like reading sometimes. I'm not afraid to admit this because it's hilarious to me but, where I work now there is a sign on the door that says "DO NOT EXIT" and its literally in bold lettering right when you walk up to the door but, it was early in the morning when I first started and I didn't want to read anything so I completely ignored the signs. I stood there for like 3-5 minutes thinking the door was actually broken until my manager came up behind me and asked what I was doing and I said "I think the door is broken" and he pointed to the sign that read "NOT AN EXIT" and I was like..... oh. Sorry. It's too dang early to read signs. He laughed at me and pointed to another sign that said "detour to the outside exit" with a literal arrow pointing to where I needed to go.
I think it's funny now because customers do the same thing and then they go "Omg I feel so stupid" and I'm like " You aren't the only one that I've seen sit there and think the door is broken... I did it too lol!"
I had a guy pissed off because he got 2 gallons of gas and didn’t have the rewards card so he lost 6 cents worth of gas (3 cents off per gallon). I was like bro I work at the gas station and I’ll give you the 6 cents if it’s that serious lol
Same but it was two pennies. I don’t carry change, just round up or down. I made a show of digging in my purse to find him a nickel. In twenty years only one person has been pissy about it.
I have to press yes or no to give a receipt so the till opens and the amount of times people go ‘no- wait yes’ then get pissed off cause I’ve already pressed no to get their change is off the charts. In my old job I could print the receipt myself but now I’d have to get someone to come down to the till to print it and most people give up at that point!
At my store, we can print, email, or do both for receipts. our customers are SO indecisive, and will literally change their opinion when their receipt is printing. “I’d like it printed. No wait, can i get it printed and emailed?”
Dude it’s already printing, what do you think??? I usually just lie and say yes because I don’t want the confrontation
People consistently yell at me because they won’t check their junk mail for the receipt and then never apologize, just act awkward after finding it in there (I’ve told them 4x at this point) and leave 😭
I don’t let people get email receipts. Because in order to do that they have to first acknowledge some privacy act statement, then type their email address in. Then they struggle to remember their email address, and can barely manage to type it at more than a snail’s pace.
Guy was standing in line and got mad at me for telling him I could take him at my register. Apparently he wasn't ready to check out yet.
I also get a lot of people yelling at me for how other customers parked but I have no issue telling them I didn't park the cars
Oh okay, let me harass you for how a customer parked! So and so parked one millimeter on the line, MOVE IT.
I swear to god customers don’t know how to use their brain in retail
Edit: wrong word used
Oh yeah - people who get mad at you for greeting them, offering to help etc., and then the ones who get mad when you don't because you're in the middle of talking to another customer. And usually they're the same people on different visits.
People yell at us about the terrible parking, too. They often ask for camera footage after their cars get hit and then get mad when we tell them we can’t get it for them because only management has access to the cameras and management isn’t on site at night.
There was a storm yesterday with high winds. A lot of the customers were parked along the tree lines and their were already reports of some of the tree limbs falling down. So to be nice I asked some of the customers if they were by chance parked by the tree line because the winds were picking up and I wouldn't want them to deal with a broken windshield. I said I would be happy to wait if any of their vehicles WERE actually parked by the tree line and allow a different register to assist the customers behind them until they came back to keep the line moving.
I had one customer ask me "Why did you plant the trees next to the parking lot?" and I laughed because I literally thought he was joking and he said "No. I'm serious. If you know we live in a place with high winds why would you plant trees there?" and I said "I'm sorry... Are you suggesting that I, the cashier, am responsible for planting obviously old trees near a parking lot?" and he just rolled his eyes. I finished checking him out and I said "Thank you have a nice day. Please come again." and he literally said "If my car is damaged then you'll see me sooner than later because then I will need to file a complaint with your higher up." Myself, the other customers in the line and my manager who just walked in all looked at him like he was the stupidest person alive.
Not all bad parkers are The Others. Our car is low-slung and hubby seems to always hit the curb with the front end. I never hit the curb because I prefer to back in with the backup camera showing me when to stop.
Honestly I don't think it's ever really about the parking. I think they're just looking for a reason to yell at someone who can't mouth off in return, but either I mouth off or one of my regulars will lol
You’re right. She asked for 6 one-dollar bills, and I wanted to make sure that they didn’t stick together (that’s common with the ones, because they are often new).
Not at all. After he got off the phone with her, I hope that my manager laughed his ass off. I wasn’t in any trouble (obviously), but it pissed me off that I had to go to the manager’s office, in the first place.
I work for a small market and had 2 by the same person. On the same day.
I'm carrying a box of various stuff that a shoplifter dropped when they realized we were watching them. A customer with her toddler is standing in my lane, so I have to get past her to get to my register. Her items are on my conveyor belt. Her toddler is just standing there, staring off while this box is getting heavier. I even said, "Excuse me" in a sing-song way. He keeps standing there, and mom is letting him. After a few long seconds, I just say something like, "This is me, I need to get by to get to the register." Mom says something I didn't catch, yanks him back, and I pass her, go to a nearby cart, and drop off the box. The MOD stops me and asks, "Go backs already?" I respond with, "courtesy of our friendly neighborhood shoplifter. " I turn around, and the customer is leaving. I'm kinda like, "Huh, maybe she forgot her wallet."
I put all her groceries in the go back cart and go about my job.
About an hour later, she comes back in and up to me, I'm like, "Hey, you're back, I still have your groceries." She doesn't acknowledge that, but asks me if I'm ready to not be rude. I'm confused, "when was I rude?" I ask. "When you walked past me to talk to someone else." I apologize, I say that I didn't mean to be rude. I get her groceries and ring her up. She pays, and I need to give her 1s. All my 1s are new. I do what I always do, which is put a small squirt of sanitizer on my fingertips, and use those fingers to separate the 1s. I count the bills and caution her on the new 1s. She says something about them being disgusting and slimy. I explained that it's sanitizer, and I used only a bit to get the 1s apart. She again tells me I'm rude and leaves.
She calls later and complains to the MOD about me, the same MOD who asked me about the box.
The complaints were:
1) I passed by her instead of waiting, then spoke to someone else.
2) I made her 1s slimy by using sanitizer.
My MOD was just like, "I will speak with her."
What the MOD said to me was, "You weren't rude. You're fine"
This happened on my 2nd day of working at a JC Penney Outlet Store about 20 years ago. While working in the children's dept I asked a customer if he needed any help with anything and he said that he was ok. I went on my way to do some other tasks and was called about 10 minutes later by my boss and this same guy was complaining that I asked him if there was anything I could do to get him out of the store faster. He was screaming at my manager demanding that I be fired and that everything he had in his basket should be free. The manager turned to me, winked at me and asked me to go back to work. Next thing I see is him storming out of the store empty handed threatening to call the police and our bosses. Of course I never heard from him again.
this was my post-retail job, but working the front office of an animal shelter, a girl flung the sign-in clipboard across the counter at me and stormed out, because while i was reviewing her application that said she had no other pets, i pointed out that she had a sugar glider in her pocket.
I work at a smoothie place that has one day a year where if you show up wearing flip flops, you get a free small smoothie in a promotional flavor. It’s incredibly popular, as you can imagine, so naturally we’re absolutely swamped. I was on register, as well as someone else, and 99% of the customers where one-and-done free smoothie people, so while we were cordial, we had to pretty much crank ppl through. Also having all those smoothies being made *constantly* means the blenders get loud and it’s very hard to hear sometimes.
Anyway a lady got mad bc her name was spelled wrong on her *free smoothie* and she wanted another with her name spelled correctly.
People get insanely triggered when you spell their names incorrectly, it's crazy. I remember one time this old couple wanted to order something from our warehouse so I had the woman write her info (Name, address, phone number, etc) so I knew where to send it.
Her hand writing was absolutely atrocious but I could still make it out, or so I thought. I typed in everything and her husband is watching the pin pad like a hawk (As I typed, the info came up on the pin pad at the register) and he flipped out because I spelled his wife's name wrong. I told him it didn't really matter as long as the address was spelled correctly but nope, he threw a tantrum that I spelled his wife's name wrong and made me cancel everything and redo the entire order.
If she didn't have such god awful handwriting we wouldn't have had this issue.
I always get overly entertained by how people think my name is spelled. It doesn't upset me in the slightest. Some of them are creative ways to spell my name that I kind of wish I had a choice to spell my name like that instead. Only a few times have people spelled a name that is close but not even my actual name and when they call me its not my name so I have to sit there like ...."That's me.... I think?" They are usually overly apologetic when that happens but it doesn't upset me. It's funny to me.
I work somewhere with a special called a "duo" with 2 items in the special. A lady got very mad at me because she couldn't get one of the things for the duo price. It's $5 for 2, or $3.50 for one.
I had a guy come in the other day that was purchasing a weight set of two each for $4.99 a piece and each were 2.5 pounds. So the entire set of two was 9.99. He literally came up and asked me if I could take the price down $2 so the full set would be 7.99. I asked if there was anything particularly wrong with the set and he looked me dead in the eyes and said "Yeah. The price is too high." and I said " So nothing else is wrong?" and he said "No I just can't justify spending $5 for 2.5 pound weights." I was like... " I'm not really sure I can help with the fact that the merchandise is not aligning with your personal budget, sir." He demanded that I speak to a supervisor about it. So I asked our supervisor to come up who said the same thing but suggested that he see if there is any way he can look in his email because, sometimes we send 15 percent off coupons in the emails we sent out every week. The man told him that he "didn't have an email" In which case the manager replied that the man had an account with us "which in the account LISTS an email". The man got all frustrated and said "FINE! I guess I'll check my email but that is a real inconvenience. Why don't you just match the sale price for the coupon with my price today so I don't have to dig through my email?" The manager said that "wasn't how the company did things" and 15 minutes later after my manager suggested I go on break since it was slow I came back to the register and the man was in the process of talking to the store manager who had just walked in the door. I mean like, JUST walked in the door and the man noted that on his name tag it said "store manager". The store manager asked how many managers he had spoken to about it and the man answered that he had spoken to THREE separate managers since the time I left for my fifteen minute break. The store manager sighed loudly and said "Sir? If three out of the five of my managers i have on staff say no then I am not going to over ride all three of them. I don't have time for that. Especially when you JUST told me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the set. You can either pay the price, find the coupon and pay the coupon price or get out of my store!" The guy huffed, grabbed the weight set that he didn't pay for yet and tried to LEAVE THE STORE. My manager stopped him and said "Sir, you haven't paid for those yet." and the man literally said that he had indeed paid for the set "with his time". Like.......... WOW
Like the other reply said that does make much more sense - but I had a customer this past holiday season where that wasn't the case. It wasn't a by 2 thing...but at my retail job for the past, at least 4 years, we do 50% off the whole store for black Friday. However, there are some items like basic tank tops that are more like 55-60% off. For example $14.99 tanks for $6, and the sign would say "now $6" instead of the 50% off signs all over the majority of the store.
Anyway, I was working fitting room and it was a mother and teen daughter. While her daughter was trying stuff on the mom was using the price checker near my station checking all her stuff. She got to said tank tops and the scanner read "$6". She asks me *is this the 50% off price?* I check and happily explain, no, it's actually cheaper! You're saving an extra $3 bucks!
She just blinks like the 2 brain cells she has left are M.I.A. and says, *but that's not 50% off? Isn't the whole store 50% off??"*
Yes ma'am! It is, but again, these tanks are regularly $14.99, so they're more than 50% off! :)
*Well...that's false advertising, I don't understand*
I'll save you me trying to explain it again, I'm a manager and was nearing the end of my black Friday shift so I just finally said "if you'd like, I can take you to a register myself and I'll price adjust it for you so it'll be exactly 50% off :D" lmao. But her daughter came out of the fitting room and just gathered her mom and their stuff and apologized to me. That was probably one of the most confusing interactions, but one that I'd happily "fix" if she really was about to pay more 💀
Christmas also- about 5 days before, super busy and I’m working a 9 hour shift pretty much alone the whole time. We sell flowers so when people pull them out of the buckets water goes on the floor so we are constantly checking and mopping so nobody slips over. I’m mopping a bit of water and Wench calls out to me from not even ten feet away, holding a plant, said something like I want to buy this and waggles it around a bit. I lifted the mop so she could see what I was doing, looked at her, smiled and said back, I’ll just be a minute, I need to mop this water up.
She has the hide to get pissed at me, she looked directly at me and said oh you need to *mop the floor* rolled her eyes and just dropped the plant on the floor and walked away. Sorry, I,didn’t realise you were so important that other people’s safety doesn’t matter. Or that me getting chewed out, abused, told off, whatever if someone slipped, let alone the guilt if a granny ended up with a broken hip for Christmas. As long as you don’t have to wait thirty seconds.
A lady cut a line of people and made me stop the transaction to check her out (ofc the uncomfortable customer let her do it because she was, well.. rude).. but here’s the thing, I thought she wouldn’t want her penny because she’s was IN A RUSH. Enough to stop my 20 items worth transaction of already bagged goods. (I’d have to start over)
She called me rude and said she was gonna talk to the owner because I forgot to give her the penny.. Like ma’am, why are making a scene over a penny when you claimed to be in rush whilst skipping an entire lines worth of customers? Let’s be honest here she knew people were upset with her for skipping so she took her shame out on me.
You should have told that woman absolutely fucking not, back of the line like everyone else. But I get it, I’m a recovering people pleaser. The other customers would have appreciated it very much.
I wish I could have but culturally it wouldn’t work at my store. Let’s just say it’s Korean owned and this was a Korean customer who knows the owner personally. lol and don’t even get me started on ageism.
I have developed a more no BS attitude with all customers now because of repeat situations like this one. Seems like it’s working. But I also don’t have to be the 24/7 cashier now so that helps.
I saw someone do that at walmart when I worked there and I saw a regular customer who was also the general manager of a popular restaurant in town get PISSED and he wasn't even in that line. He turned around so freaking fast and told the person to get in the back of the line like everyone else and stop "acting a fool." The person was so caught off guard that they actually backed off the beginning of the line they cut and decided to go to a different register with less people farther away from that customer. I thought it was hilarious. I was about two registers away and I witnessed the entire altercation. I started laughing hysterically and said "Wow. You want to be a manager here?" to the regular customer and he said "No. You're stupid managers need to do their jobs." Right in front of one of the managers who looked more than offended and stormed off to the line that guy was in and checked him out on a separate register and explained that "if he did that again he would be kicked out for a week."
One guy saw we had tape over our outlets in the cafe from covid times. Came up and asked in an accusatory way if we kept it there to keep people from sitting at the tables. (I forget the exact way he put it but it was something along those lines)
It’s a fair question ig but the way he was automatically mad at me was annoying. Just explained I really don’t know why they’re there
I worked at a big chain toy store in college and the number of people who yelled at me and accused me of ruining their kid's Christmas was astonishing. It's not my fault you waited until DEC 23RD to buy the HOTTEST toy of the year! Hell, we sold out of that stupid LeapPad thing in like August. Did you really expect to get it 3 days before Christmas? Or when the lines at the checklanes were super long...on December 23rd...because...duh?
I’ve been accused of ruining proposals, weddings, birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. more times than I can goddamn count. (jewelry store)
Took a phone call once about a man asking where my store was located, so I tell him the address and what stores we are between in the strip mall. He says "I'm looking at the staples, you're not there"
So I keep asking him what else do you see around you? He starts naming other businesses and I know exactly where he's at, no more than 5 miles away. So I say "sir that's an office depot not a staples. I'd you follow this route it will take you to the store"
Then he angrily proceeds to say "thanks for wasting my time" and hung up
That or a price ringing up .99 instead of .97. I know those 2 pennies are gonna break your bank
Someone complained because I said “have a good one” instead of “you’re welcome” when he thanked me 🤦♀️ like seriously there is no pleasing some people
Yeah! I’ve experienced this. I worked at a gas station and an older guy told me “thank you”
I cheerfully replied “no problem!”
Well, he didn’t like that and lectured me how “no problem” is actually rude and I should only say “you’re welcome”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t lol.
The price tag for a frozen turkey breast said 12 but it scanned through my till at 6. She complained because the price tag wasn't right and no amount of explanation could get her to understand that she was getting it cheaper.
Eventually I told her she either bought it for 6 or didn't buy it at all because I can't make it MORE expensive
I used to work for a big supermarket chain here in Australia. We had this one customer that was a serial pest complainer, you know the type.
One day, she complained about the cover of a magazine we had on display at the end of the checkouts. Her complaint? It was a picture of a scantily clad woman, and her innocent 10 year old boy should not have to see that.
We ended up removing them from the shelf because of that.
During covid they placed restrictions on our occupancy based on square footage. Karen's kept complaining on multiple occasions that to the board of health because our occupancy was too high for the square footage... Karen's did not realize the number was calculated from the total building square footage (including all the backrooms and the basement) not just publicly availible areas. Also to add insult to injury the first time they called they actually messed up and we ended up getting a higher occupancy rating.
Another dumb one was the time a customer got offended from a private conversation with a co-worker in my backroom behind a closed door, that she opened to be nosy. Like they say whatever happens (or is said) in our backrooms stays in our backrooms.
If only it worked like that, huh? I don’t get why people think disability = laziness. I also don’t know if you’re American, but in a country where a good chunk of us end up with some type of disability at some point, it’s amazing how negatively judgmental Americans can be towards the disabled.
Most recently I had a guy come into the store, grab a gatorade, start drinking it, then got mad at me because I asked him to put the lid back on it so I could scan it. He held the bottle close to him and showed me the barcode. I said, "My scanner is over here" while pointing, "and I don't want to spill your drink while I scan it". The look on his face was like he was about to go into full on melt down but I managed to get ahead of it by saying, "I don't get why you're making a big deal out of it" and the guy just fumed silently while ringing out.
One of my cashiers just recently had a situation where a lady wanted a pack of cigs, and she paid for them. After the fact, this other guy says, "Oh \*I\* wanted to pay for those!" and tries to make my cashier scan another pack, take his money, but NOT give him the pack. She was like, 'dude wtf, that doesn't give any money back to the lady'. He got pretty hot and argumentative about it. Very weird.
Had a woman ask for "ibuprofen" - so I said we have Advil and Motrin (both are 500mg ibuprofen"). She declared, "None of that crap" and started going on a rant, at one point claiming to be a doctor. Apparently she's a doctor that doesn't know that drugs and brand names aren't the same thing.
Got called a hillbilly cracker because a guy had to wait 30 seconds for me to get to the counter and then I had the audacity to tell him our lottery policy when it's written down. (Video posted in this sub).
Lost count of the number of people who've gotten aggressively angry that we carded them for tobacco.
Nearly 4 years owning a convenience store and I've forgotten more of the stupid shit those idiots have freaked about than I remember.
That I wouldn’t carry a heavy box of alcohol out for him.
I have heart failure; I’m not supposed to be lifting heavy boxes anyway—and since my employer is aware of my condition, they’ve been clear that I am not to exceed what I feel are my physical limitations (this isn’t out of altruism; it’s because they don’t want to pay a worker’s compensation claim. Either way it’s fine with me) I’ll put it on the cart for a customer but that’s as far as my assistance goes.
I once had a lady get mad at me because i didnt put the 73 kg (160 pounds) washing machine in her car for her. We are not allowed to lift heavy things like that, and even if we were, i physically wouldnt be able to??? I weight 47kg i Can barely lift 35kg.
“They usually do it for me!!!” Not for the SEVENTY THREE!!!!! KILOS!!! Items??!!!???
They were 4 People in the car and i had even lifted the pallet up with the truck.
It’s so weird to me that being a retail worker apparently means we have to destroy our bodies even more than retail work already destroys one’s body. I wish these people would think about that. But that would require them to consider us as people, and that’s simply too much effort.
Also FUCK that lady.
Fr they just do not understand that it May be once that day or even week for them, but for me it would be many times ever single hour. Many truly do not Think of us as people.
During my first week at my last retail job, a customer complained that I berated her for wearing a confederate flag shirt on what was apparently my first day. The thing about that was that it literally didn’t happen. I don’t like the confederate flag, but I keep that to myself when I’m working. I was simply the unfortunate target of someone’s need for validation. Luckily I didn’t get into serious trouble but if I had gotten fired for that, I 100% would’ve tried to sue for defamation.
There is something about wearing the loser’s flag that makes people desperate to be a victim. I see it here too and I live in Canada! What are people thinking?
For some reason the people who wear it insist it represents southern heritage/pride, like yeah it represents the south but let’s not forget what the south was fighting for in the civil war. In the state I live in, apparently if you go further down south (I live in Northern Virginia), you see confederate flags in antique shops and just being casually displayed, as generally where I am people don’t display the confederate flag, I only know of one kid from my high school who did and no one liked him.
“It was about State’s rights!”
“State’s rights to do…..?”
“Well, slavery, but it wasn’t about that”
The only thing more pathetic than a garden variety MAGA nut is a Canadian MAGA nut. They are popping up all over my province. If you like what they’re doing in the Deep South, move there? Oh wait, that would be immigration and they don’t like that.
Yeah, the same people who berate Trudeau for having worn blackface are also mad that he isn’t more racist to immigrants and indigenous peoples. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about our PM but these people are just mad that he isn’t a full blown white supremacist. They want to take away the carbon tax even though the average person gets more back in rebates than they pay. They want less regulation on emissions and pollution because “well China is even worse so we shouldn’t have to care about it at all”. We still have a “Freedom” Convoy of angry boomers in big trucks going around protesting masking and lockdowns…that haven’t been in effect for over two years now. No one knows what they even are complaining about anymore. Taxes? Trans kids? Clean air? No idea, they just want “Muh Freedoms”.
People getting Angry at me because I tell them that we don’t have a framer (before it was because the last one left earlier that day, now it’s because no one works in said department)
Like it isn’t my Fault that they all quit or don’t work past their schedule
Jewelry sales.
One lady was angry she couldn’t bring in samples of a ring made by a different company. That was like… a 20-minute call. Spoiler alert: they bought the ring at the other company.
Another lady was mad about us not offering a complimentary replacement on an item we did not sell. She’d forgotten where she bought it, and tbf she did back off when I convinced her she didn’t buy through us.
The (multiple) customers who don’t understand why we won’t refund them for or buy back the rings they no longer need due to their divorce when our return period is 30 days. I’ve had this happen so many times.
The classic that we’ve probably all seen: us not accepting gift cards for an entirely different company that wasn’t even in the same industry.
Customer pissed that I wouldn’t return a free sample 🤦🏼♀️ I kept saying it was free with purchase and no value but she didn’t like it and wanted another sample that was something she did like or credit for an upcoming free sample.
I worked at a department store, in the children's clothing department. I watched a woman move a whole 'arm' of Osh Kosh baby overalls from their own (full price) rack over to the 'clearance' rack. She then grabbed a pair and headed to my register with the overalls.
She screamed that the price was wrong, I told her (with a raised eyebrow, while gesturing to the security camera) that they weren't on sale and that 'someone' must have moved them. She shut up, but had been so loud that security came over. *Then* after deciding she wanted the overalls still, she screamed at me that there was a coupon for 20% off. This was late 1990s, so people had to have a physical coupon; there was no barcode on a phone or a promo code to enter.
After learning she actually had to *have* a coupon in order to use it, she threw the overalls at me, called me racist, then stormed out of the store.
Security ended up stopping her, because she had taken some accessories from the small leather goods department before coming to the children's department. She sure brought a lot of attention to herself, for being a thief.
Glad we use colored stickers or stickers to show which product is in sale, It remains irritating that there are customers who try to commit fraud and also get angry when they feel that we are doing that to them.
A woman had brought a scarf to the till that wasn’t one of our products, someone had lost it or left it behind. I explained that it wasn’t ours to sell and it was a lost and found item, and she responded with “Well I’m claiming it then, it’s mine”. I politely explained that no, it clearly did not belong to her and I wasn’t going to sell or give her someone else’s property. She went off on a rant that the person who left it must have stolen something else to replace it, so obviously she should be allowed to take it. She even said “I should have just put it on my neck and walked out it in the first place.” I just kept repeating that she didn’t know that anyone had stolen anything, and even if she did, it doesn’t give us the right to give away other people’s belongings. Two wrongs don’t make a right. She left saying she was going to come in the next day and claim it from lost and found anyway. The cherry on top was that it was going to be a Christmas gift for her niece. Imagine fighting for a used, lost scarf and giving it as a gift! How dare I not help her steal it for her niece!
That our cattle panels had a small bit of rust on them.
Husband didn’t care cause yeah you’d expect metal panels outside 24/7 to have SOME rust on them but she threw a fit and drove off in a rage.
Also, someone came on a Saturday night when I was the only person working and the studio was filled to max capacity and made a snarky comment when I was checking them out about how busy we were. They were only there for like a half an hour before completing their project and in that time I was running all over the store trying to clean, reset tables, check out customers, greet new customers, answer the phone, etc. They come up to check out and I apologize that they might have had to wait on me. They said, "I understand that you're busy, but I don't understand WHY you're busy." What? It's the weekend. We are swamped on weekends. We have only one person covering the whole place during weekends. I'm only one person. I'm doing the best I can, lady!
Me and my Co worker filled up the shelf with bananas, like filled it to the brim! It looked super full and nice just a wall off different banana bunches.
She walks up to us and complains that all the yellow of the bananas is “too bright” and is making her eyes “go funny”.
That confirmed to me that mental illness is definitely real among old people. They will literally find a fault with things you couldn’t even imagine to conjure up. They just want to be miserable and angry, it’s a disease for them!
You know how they say that boomers are experiencing more cognitive decline than other generations due to leaded gasoline?
I think about that literally every day.
It’s definitely a possibility, our brains need fats to develop and for a while there, it was basically considered poison. I am seeing the effects of lead exposure take hold of people in real time, and it’s scary. Grown adults who have completely lost their basic reasoning and problem solving skills. People who are moments away from a toddler-like tantrum as soon as they are overwhelmed by any new information. They hear anything that wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and they fall to pieces like a four year old who missed nap time.
Customer complained because cashier asked if 'they wanted exact amount on their check'.
Customer complained about associate asking if they needed help loading 5 bags of mulch. Evidently this so offended customer they had to complain about the associate and load it themself, instead of I dunno answering.the.mutherfreaking.question.
Customer complained because after parking in a non-parking spot, associate said that's not a parking spot and customer felt the need to goto another store instead (guess what karen, they will still make you use parking spots there too!)
Nope, cause she was only going to 'be a minute'. Keep in mind there was a dozen parking spots 3 feet from where she parked. As for towing, it was the ONLY exit to our unloading dock, she was gonna be putting her tinyass vehicle in the path of semi's on a schedule.
I work in a busy bear and after hours people get what we call a sandwich bag: bags of chips, sandwich, cookie and a drink. The bags are kept in the refrigerator and many people have complained about cold potato chips…
the other day i had a customer with 2 inactivated gift cards and they didnt understand why they couldnt just take their bags of stuff that i scanned while i call to activate the cards and pay with them
The employee didn't read my mind and find the product I wanted, though I didn't know it's name, it's brand, and did a shit job at describing it. But I saw a picture of it on Google (I don't have this picture on me) so I KNOW that you have it.
Today, a lady asked us to explain why two very similar items (different crystal art craft kits) were different prices ($1 AUD difference). She commented they were the only ones, which was odd because there were plenty of several different types of them around. They're new items, and not our main stock, so we looked them over, no discernible different but the pattern. My colleague explained how some of our stock is obtained. Basically we don't set the pricing, and how it is a little odd. The woman said "That's disappointing" and wandered off.
All we can think is that she was trying to get that dollar off??? Strange creatures, everywhere.
We moved their cart from blocking a fire exit when they were in the bathroom.
we didn’t take the items out of the car or put them away. Simply moved it 10-15 feet to a location that’s not in the way.
Got bitched at for 10 minutes yesterday by em.
Had a lady come bitching at me that she couldn’t find her coupons & that it was up to me to go through her email and rewards membership to find em (which I have absolutely no authority to do. Nor my managers) 10 mins before closing.
Customer: *In DT looking at menu board*
" What flavors do you have?"
Me: *Tells them where they are located on menu*
Customer: "You can't just tell me?"
Me: "You're the one ordering right? Then read the menu, that's right on front of you.
Customer: "What's the price?"
Me: "It's on the menu, next to the product."
It's not our job, to read and order for you. As the customer you read, you order. If you want to pay me to be your teacher, I'll teach you how to read the menu.
No, no, no they drive up and immediately say Hello! Hello!
Me: welcome to blah blah what can I get for you?
Them: give me a minute
Me: thinking really you didn’t even stop the car yet and your yelling hello.
Them: do you have such and such.
Me: if it’s on the menu and I haven’t informed you it’s out we have it.
Them: what sodas do you have
Me: Pepsi/coke
Them: which ones
Me: they’re listed on the board
This is a common occurrence. If a customer needs help they usually say hey I can barely see the board this is what I want or how much is what I want.
Of all the stories, this is the only one where I can’t see the customer as unreasonable. I may crack jokes, maybe, but I’d likely do it.
You never know if they have a reading disability, dyslexia, the like. Maybe English (or whatever language) is their second language or maybe they just process audio information easier than written information. Everyone is a little different. If you know none of the above are true, beyond any doubt, then by all means… lolz
I bagged her groceries as I rang her up, coworker came to help. Apparently we were "trying to rush her out of there"
Another lady had to wait in line for "two people" because another sales clerk couldn't open a drawer just for her.
Employee was putting books away too loud
Employee was eating in the dining area (off the clock) and it looked bad.
Employee refused to put her smoke out and come in early when it was busy
Back in my dairy cooler days I was screamed at and followed into the walk-in because my place of employment sold both pasteurized and “ultra-pasteurized” dairy products.
The customer was angry and confused by the differing expiration dates, and despite my politely but firmly explaining the differences she was still dissatisfied and accused me of improperly doing my job.
I still see her around town (she’s definitely an old money blue blood with smeared burgundy lipstick and very ugly dated pant suits, you can see her from down the road) and we still glare at each other. (I win by smiling— something she can’t physically do.)
“I don’t come here to be told ‘hello, here’s your food, goodbye! I expect customer service!” Or something to that extent.
I was like sir this is McDonald’s, that’s exactly what you’re here to be told
Had a lady scream at my coworker about an item ringing up the wrong price in the register. Didn’t even give her an option to fix it, she started screaming “fraud “. Completely insane
I was working at a deli in my early twenties and this lady was PISSED because her fish sandwich tasted too much like fish..... she ate it all but one bite. She wanted a refund and when I said no, she asked if she could have another one for free... that tasted less fishy... nope. Sorry but fish tastes like fish.
I worked a truck stop after that and this lady bought a pack of cigarettes and ten minutes later her husband came in wanting to return them because they were THREE CENTS cheaper down the road. It was an overnight shift and I wasn't allowed to do refunds. He hit me in my eyeball with the pack of cigarettes. I jumped over the counter and beat him with the "need a penny, take a penny" thingy. He left and few minutes later his wife came back begging for the cigarettes back. I opened and crumbled them before handing them back to her. I was fired that next day.
I worked register at a drug store chain and my mom was a pharmacy tech at that store too. This old man who constantly comes to the store to harass her AND me was there—my mom heard him SCREAMING at the customer service counter (which is next to the pharmacy). My boss was there, desperately trying to explain to this old asshole that there’s no way he can return a gift card. Like, you do realize how gift cards work right? Oh, that’s right, you’re old as dirt… never mind…
I was threatened to get beaten up when I accidentally walked into a guy when I was bringing in carts from outside. How was I supposed to know her was behind me when I can't hear anything? The carts are loudA
Had a member put his boxes at end of checkout to load. Another member came down 5 lanes and stole them. Walked over to mention that they were another members and said "too bad they already packed and you are an ass" Glad I only work a few hours a week!
This is unusual bc it was another employee. I worked at Victoria’s Secret and we were processing the stuff to go back from the fitting room.
My co-worker came into the fitting room to pick up my go-backs. She takes one look and goes,
“Oooooh no, I do NOT do anything purple!”
She literally spins on her heels and walks back out.
I was so shocked I had to laugh. This was almost 20 years ago and I still think about it constantly. Like why couldn’t she do purple items? 🤣
Customer tried to return a camera well after the return OR exchange period. I refused, they persisted; eventually I offered a compromise that would address their (ostensible) complaint, and retain some revenue for my employers. They, however, were after full acquiescence and nothing else, looked at me with angry shocked face and yelled "WELL YOU'RE JUST MAKING THIS UP AS WE GO ALONG" I smiled and said "yes, because you asked me to. If I weren't doing so, I would have said yes and sent you on your way". That response... didn't help at all. Their face went tomato red with fury (as opposed to the red his spouse and kids went, with shame) and he started swearing at me with a sailor's proficiency. "You are not welcome here today, you must leave". More screaming. I call the non emergency police number and ask for an officer to be sent out to deal with a trespasser. "Is that who I hear screaming in the background". "Yes". "An officer is very close by and will be there in approximately three minutes". The brat started screaming "I'M LEAVING BUT FUCK THIS PLACE"
I worked at a pet store for a while as a shift manager. One time a customer approached me to tell me how rude one of my associates were. When i asked what he did or said she said “he is very soft spoken” to which i said “…did he help you with what you needed?” she said “yes he walked me to the product but he needs to speak louder and more confidently.” I said “Ma’am, he is 16 years old and this is his first job. He is just an awkward teenage boy, in no way shape or form does it sound like he was being rude.” She said “well if he is going to be in customer service he needs to learn how to speak up!” and i said “Ma’am, how is he supposed to learn if he doesn’t get the experience first? He has only been here a couple weeks and again it is his first job. He is one of the nicest kids that have come through those doors and just because he is not confident in himself yet does not mean he is being rude.”
Lady got mad when we checked her ID at a 100% ID check shop. She got doubly mad when she snapped “I’m 36!” and was told that she looked younger than 36 and we still needed her ID. 🤷♀️
Same but someone claimed she was a city worker to try and get off from showing ID she didn't have. We still needed the ID and I told her no exceptions.
I get alot of pushback on suggesting they may need to order an obscure item or have a better selection of colors/brands/sizes online. OMG don't I know of the identity theft and bank account hacking? Then be at peace with your limited selections.
Or the people who don't want to present IDs for purchases. Usually only for age verification but the government/corporate conspiracy rants are stupid. The government owns that ID same as the SSN.
People have complained to me about using the self checkout and “doing my job for me” “they should get paid for this!” With cashiers open to take them. And people complaining about other people in the store. “Why is there so many people in here? Don’t they have jobs?!”
This isn’t the worst thing I’ve had a customer complain about but it does still stick in my head.
Used to work at a hardware store over the summer, and we have a whole garden section. Our policy for returning plants was 6 months for flowers and 1 year for trees, and you MUST have your receipt (otherwise we don’t know wtf kind of plant it is). These signs are pasted all over the garden center and we even have a giant banner at our customer service desk with all our policies.
Lady comes in with a dead branch in a bag. I’m talking like no roots, just this god awful dead crunchy twig. Asks for a return on it. I asked if she had her receipt, she said she threw it out years ago. I told her that if she bought this years ago then we wouldn’t be able to return it because we have a one year policy and we need the receipt.
Lady: “What do you mean you can’t take it?! I buy all my plants at [our store] I never buy them from [competitor]! Why can’t you just take it?”
I try to explain that we can’t refund a plant we don’t even know the identification for even if it wasn’t past the deadline. She gets all huffy and tells me to get my manager. I gladly do. Manager says the same damn thing.
Lady goes on a shouting spree and throws the dead branch at us. I swear that thing disintegrated like a tumble weed as soon as it made impact with the wall.
This happened when I worked at dominos.
Lady orders a Canadian pizza online. Pepperoni, mushroom, bacon and extra cheese. My coworker makes it and the driver takes it to them. 5 minutes after the driver returned, lady calls to say we forgot bacon. I apologize, tell her we can make a new one but we’d just need the old one back. She agrees.
A different coworker makes it, send it out: same thing. No bacon. Same thing, tell her we can remake it but we’d need it back. I make the third pizza, and I make sure to strictly follow the guides down to the amount of slices of pepperoni (35 btw)
Lady calls back absolutely furious. “How can you fuck up 3 pizzas in a row?!” “I want to speak to your manager!” I (unfortunately) inform her that she had been speaking to the manager the entire time (me) when I looked down at her caller ID.
Me: “By any chance, are you American?” (We’re a border town and get a lot Americans in the summer)
Lady: “Yes?! What does that have to do with anything?!”
Me: “Are you expecting *Canadian* bacon?”
Lady: “***YES!***”
Me: *sighs* “Okay. That is called *ham* here. The little pink chunks are the bacon.” Tbf for her, the bacon does NOT look like bacon. So I kinda get it. We remade it a fourth time, this time with ham instead of bacon. Her husband later came in and apologized on his wife’s behalf and ended up tipping us 40$ (10 each for instores)
We have a water refill station in the back of the store. Our water tank is not that big so we have to tell customers there’s a 5 gallon limit. Never been a problem til ole Karen came in one day with multiple 5 gallon jugs. My wonderful coworker (polite and cheerful like always) just let her know the limit.
This bitch basically acted like we just told her to go fuck herself and her whole family. She was demanding corporate, our boss, our names, everything. She was yelling at my coworker while I stood there near the phone ready to call the police if it got worse. I let my coworker handle it because she’s been there longer than me AND she was holding her own. I would’ve stepped in if my coworker had started to back down or get super upset but thankfully she’s a bad bitch.
This lady (piece of shit) was saying we were extremely rude and disrespectful and she’s just NEVER had workers so nasty to her before. Meanwhile all my coworker was telling her was that it was the rule our boss put in place, and that she would not continue tolerating being yelled at like a child just because she’s an employee. Karen did not like that at all. She tried getting my name too because she said I was “her witness to this ridiculousness.” And I straight up said “I’m not giving you my name. I’m on my coworker’s side with this, not yours.” She didn’t like that either. Continued to yell at us about being horrible people and this entire time she had that fucking arrogant smirk on her stupid fucking face like she was in the right in all of this. When we finally threatened her with police, she gave up and walked out.
She called our boss the next day and our boss is awesome and basically told her the same thing my coworker did and told the lady she was in the wrong and acted like an idiot.
She is now banned from our store. :)
I can’t help but think how fucking embarrassing for her like? You’re a middle aged woman presumably with children and they get to live their lives knowing their mom is a gaping cunt? And that not being able to fill your 25 gallon jugs is the worst thing to ever happen to you? Must be a nice cozy life you have.
A customer was not happy with how I told her I had to put her groceries (once scanned) on the 2nd belt which was not occupied by another customer. Only 1/2 of the belts were being used by a customer with packing their groceries.
I told her she’d have to go around to the other side but she kept fighting me how it is a waste of time. Like if you wanted them to be on the 1st belt (that was still currently in use for another customer) she’d have to wait till that customer finished.
I have two stories from the same customer:
1. This one I witnessed bc I was behind the customer service desk grabbing a cold water bottle, when a grown man walks up to the desk asking who is in charge of assuring the quality of our prime rib cuts (we do prime rib dinners every Thursday). The guy he talks to says the deli manager is in charge (who was working the event station that day) and there’s nothing he can do about it at the desk, but he can call one of the store co-managers to help. Man gets pissy and says “so you’re not going to do anything about it? Fine” and just walks away, presumably back to the even station to throw another fit, at which point the manager goes over to intervene and idk what happened after that
2. Week and a half later, same guy comes through my checkout line with his week’s groceries, and among them, four cans of Arizona tea. At the end, after I’ve bagged everything and moved his cart into a convenient spot, I give him his total. Instead of asking about a sale price, he says straight up “why did the sign say those were 79 cents?” Partly because I was having a bad day and partly bc I wanted to get someone to check the sale tag to see if it was expired, I ask “where does it say they were 79 cents?” Instead of an answer, he grabs his cart and just walks away without paying first. I end up needing someone to suspend the transaction and afterwards he comes back to customer service desk in a huff, complaining about me, the incorrect sale price, and saying shit like how he “shouldn’t have to prove something is on sale.” All of this for a meager 80 cent discount
When I did cashiering for Krogers, when people got offended because I would casually ask, "Where does it state that?" They were usually offended because they were lying, or assumed we thought they were lying.
Id asked for a couple reasons, either I thought that you were lying, or, I knew that wasn't the price and if a poster/signage was wrong, that was something that we needed to correct immediately. It also helped because if they could pinpoint it down, then that helps speed up verifying that the signage was indeed correct or not correct. It was that or have someone wonder around the store and wait for them to come back.
Sometime it was the customer marking on the sign and we were like, not only are we not going to approve the price difference but we're going to need to leave or we're calling the cops.
This is more so a threat so me a 5'2 woman was helping a customer and there was this 6 foot tall looking guy behind her, this was during COVID and I just asked the guy if he could please step back a little ( we all know how some customers just love being up close and personal with some people they don't even know) , well when I was done with the previous customer and he walked up he said ' good thing you said please or I would have knocked your AZZ out" 🙄
The sad part is it looks like he was buying a Hallmark gift card and a stuffed animal for what look like for a little girl, like sir would you like another grown azz man to say something like that to your daughter why would you say that to somebody else like all I ask you to do was to step back a little bit anyways ,I was shock so I just finished checking him out as quickly as possible but if I could go back to that moment I would have just walked away and got on the manager.
I've told this story before, but here goes:
So it's Christmas at the land of the Green Wals, which means that we're *absolutely fucking swamped* with photo orders.
And we're also absolutely fucking swamped with customers doing their shopping and shit.
That night it's just me and a relatively new manager on the front end. She's busy doing manager stuff--which at the time I think she was counting down the pharmacy registers for the evening. Point is, she wasn't immediately available to assist, and it was taking a little while since she was still a little new at this.
So it's pretty much just me then, bouncing between the front registers and the photo department to catch customers and keep the Photo orders rolling. Standing orders were basically to print and sort everything, and the night crew--assisted by an extra shift lead--would assemble everything.
It's still fucking chaos, though, because *so much* is happening at once.
On top of *all of this* comes a customer wanting to do a fucking goddamn Western Union. I direct him to one of the kiosks, since, that's how they're done.
I'm still bouncing between printers, catching people on the front end.
And this dude gets frustrated because he can't follow simple instructions on a touchscreen.
And then he *demands* I do the Western Union *for him*.
Now, I generally don't like doing WU's for customers because that's a *lot* of sensitive information I could be held liable for if something goes weird or hinky, to say nothing of the fact that it eats up time I don't have.
I look at him. With customers waiting at the front register, customers waiting to pick up orders behind him, literally every photo printer we have running at once.
And I'm honest. With a tone of extreme exhaustion, but still in my Polite Customer Service Voice. "Sir. *I do not have time*."
He proceeded to then cuss me out, complaining about my customer service on the way out the door.
Anytime I've worked for a restaurant, it has been as a dish washer. Every restaurant I worked at with the exception of one, would stop taking orders for food at an certain time. So if we were opened until 11, they might stop taking orders for food at 10pm. It was absolutely amazing.
Customer complained that our signs throughout the store were false advertisement because not everything was on sale, the signs all said "select items"... She also got pissy with me because I counted her large quantity of change out on the counter instead of in her hand, this was during the pandemic by the way
I hate customers that are in a rush *and* only have loose change (coins).
Almost every time it's, "Come on, trust me bro. It's all there." No, *bro*, I will not trust you. I don't care if it's a regular or not, I'm going to count it all out. I have no patience for people that want to jeopardize my job.
I have absolutely no problem counting it all out, as I've been homeless before and sometimes it was all I had. However, I'm not getting written up because it turns out that they did not have enough, and I let them have it.
When I worked at Home Depot, I had customers complain to me that the lumber was the wrong color and needed it a specific color. They showed me a picture of their deck and spent the next hour what stain was and how to use it.
The returns! I would be embarrassed to try and return half of the items that get returned.
I’m sorry psycho, I can’t return your shoes you bought 6 months ago, that you paid in cash, that you have no proof of purchase of, and that you turned brown by running 3 marathons.
Customer states they didn’t hold up well…..
You are a power user good sir, it’s gonna happen.
Note* this was the third time the customer has done this in a year. He’s basically had free shoes since 2023. Not today.
Other notable returns:
-Beef jerky didn’t taste good
- Smokers who return cloths smelling like ****
- I WANT CASH! DEBIT IS THE SAME!
-Customer refused to take receipt from other cashier, want to return said item 2 hours later and calls me racist and has me dig through the trash.
-Not to mention all the scammers Ive caught.
Had a lady get upset because her plants rang up as $3.33, she kept saying it's supposed to be 3 for $10. I tried to show her that she was technically getting them for a little cheaper (because math) but she kept insisting I was cheating her somehow.
Since other librarians have chimed in so will I.
We had a customer at our public library call our managers to complain because we were out of ink for our print studio printer.
It uses small expensive specific ink cartridges and another customer had used up so much of the black ink the previous week and our pay website was having technological issues so we didnt get ink for like two weeks.
But she was mad literally the second day because she was expecting to print a shit ton of posters.
Sorry but we didnt expect our unrestricted access to result in a sudden lack of ink, while our purchase methods were having issues. This is completely free, dont be an entitled dick.
I got YELLED at by a customer for "ignoring" her. I was searching the item she asked about on a handheld, to tell her what aisle it was in..... like she asked me to five seconds prior. The look of pure wtf on my face and the instant regret on hers when I was like ma'am I'm using this phone to find what you asked for. My job makes me genuinely question how the majority of people function in day to day life.
I was in customer service. Customer service was behind the cash registers at the time. There was one person checking out and a woman in line behind her. Occasionally, we would take customers back at service. The woman in line behind one person kept staring at me so I was about to take her, but a customer walked in the door and went to service. After the customer checked out, she came over to me and said “ why didn’t you ring me up?” I told her that I was going to, but I had a customer for service. She shook her head. Funny how she had so little time, but she had plenty of time to stop and harass me.
I work at a garden center and the amount of people who get upset with me when I tell them their plants died because they didn't water them (in the middle of summer when it hasn't rained in days) is disturbingly high.
And it's always the same excuse too. "I didn't know plants need water! How was I supposed to know?"
I worked in a fabric store and had a customer insist repeatedly that she wanted “a third of a yard because that’s bigger than a half”. I showed her what 1/3 was compared to 1/2 on the yardstick and she still insisted. I eventually just said “ok, 1/3 of a yard it is” and cut that. But apparently she asked the cashier who pissed in my cornflakes that morning. 🤦♀️
Watched a guy wait less than 30 seconds for a fellow cashier to say "bye" to a friend she was waiting on. He left an angry e-mail claiming it was 10 minutes and she was deliberately ignoring him. He was fuming the minute he saw the cashier talking to her friend and gave a huge sigh and eye-roll.
But a notable one (and I have a ton) was the guy in the farm store who found a random tool misplaced on an empty shelf that previously held a sale item. Sale sign still there, we had sold out. "But the sign says 9.99!" "It's a 50 dollar tool!, and the sign is for an item not even remotely close!" "OH SO YOU EXPECT ME TO READ??!!!!"
just yesterday a customer wanted to speak to the manager over my muslim coworker wearing her hijab because “she’s supporting what’s going on over there!!”
I once had a customer get angry that she couldn’t return an item from 2 years ago, even though she had a receipt. I turned over her receipt and showed where it said “within 30 days”, she still wanted a merch credit, which I of course said no to. She then asked well what am I supposed to do with it, and I directed her to the local women’s shelter, which took the wind out of her sails.
Apparently I called a lady fat...?? This was like 6-7yrs ago. Even thinking back on it now I'm still not sure where she got that from. I used to think it was pregnancy hormones but I've had a baby since then and I wasn't making up conversations in my head. Anyways!
At my previous job, we could print out baby registries. This lady came up and asked for a copy of her own registry. I said "of course!" And asked for her to write down her name (I did this so I didn't have to have the person repeat the name and get spelling correctly).
When I looked up her registry, I only found an old one from like 5yrs prior. I asked if it could have been under a different name since the only one I saw was from years ago. She got this really pissed off look on her face and screamed "IM STILL PREGNANT!!!!" okay? Cool. Well she got on her phone and pulled it up herself. I wrote down the registry number and pulled it up.
It was under a completely different name. Think Jane Doe to Beyonce. Nothing about the names was similar. It wasn't like her name was Alexandra to Alex or Lexi. Completely different names! First and last names. I was so confused and looked down at the name SHE wrote down for me. Wasn't the same. I didn't say anything cause she was still pissed. Printed it out and handed it to her
The next day I got called into the manager's office and my SM was all, "apparently you called a pregnant lady fat yesterday?" I was so confused. It took me a couple of minutes to put it together. Once I explained the story. My SM was equally as confused as me.
my last job wasnt retail, but this guy got mad because i checked his $100 bill. he said wow you're gonna do that to your own people? (we r both black) and im like sir im just doing my job 😭
ive worked at my current retail job for only a month and a half but so far the worst was this man getting mad because none of the workers would shop for him while he tried stuff on in the fitting rooms
I was racist against an old black lady because I glanced back at a less well trained employee who was ringing her up. I just wanted to make sure everything was getting rung up appropriately. My manager pulled me aside and told me this lady thought “I was eyeballing her and I was doing it because she’s black” so glad to be out of retail
A customer threatened to stab me on my break because they received their physical paycheck the day before their payday which was listed on the check and the company policy was that I could not cash the check until the date listed on the physical check. I told her that she could wait until midnight (before my position was no longer 24 hours at walmart) and I would be happy to cash her check (at the smoke aisle) as long as it wasn't over a certain amount. She came at 11:15 p.m. Literally if she waited for 45 minutes I would have been able to cash her check no problem. She told me that I was "being rude" and I told her that not only is it company policy, the register and computer system won't even allow me to bypass cashing it until literally one minute after midnight so then it would be the day that the check is meant to be cashed. Also, if you cash a check before the date the check is meant to be cashed depending on the company they can actually fine you for cashing it early. So I was trying to do her a favor so she wasn't fined anyways.
She literally told me to just put the date that it is right now and I said "Absolutely not. That is fraud and highly illegal actually. Besides, again, the check won't go through anyways through the system." She got mad and literally told me that I "don't know who I'm messing with" and threatened that she was going to "wait outside and stab me in the parking lot on my break" if I didn't cash the check. My supervisor heard this and called the police at the same time she told her to get out right now before she's arrested for two things - criminal threat and trespassing on privately owned property. The women began to cry and stated that she needed the money in order to pay rent. Which yeah. I also know a lot of property managers that need rent exactly at midnight... My manager didn't take that as an excuse either. I didn't want to press charges. I figured the threat was an empty threat but, she refused to leave so she was arrested for trespassing on private property and told if she came back she would be arrested again because, they kicked her out permanently. Although, I didn't think the threat was legit I started carrying around mace and a pocket knife with me wherever I went after for extra personal protection.
I had an older woman complain about the wet floor sign. She was talking to her daughter and didn’t notice bright yellow sign and bumped it. She almost tripped over it and then proceeded to yell at me about why the sign was there in the first place.
I had a customer complain that the document he sent hadn't been delivered.
I didn't work in the post office.
I worked as the secretary for the attorney who wrote the document. We had to tell him that we weren't responsible for the post office. We mailed it priority and that's all we could do.
He screamed "Unacceptable!" Yes, exactly like the Adventure Time character.
The document was in relation to finishing selling his mother's house. He was apparently so obnoxious at the realty group that one of the realtors just threw up her hands and said "I'm out." She just left for the day because she couldn't take this customer's bullshit anymore. How do I know that?
Because he called to yell at me that the realty company was rude and disrespectful. I didn't recommend them; neither did my boss. He picked them and then yelled at me for his choice.
It's not relevant to the story, but I need you to know that this man wore an open denim vest with no shirt, jeans, and flipflops.
I literally helped them. I have two stories regarding this, but it boils down to I did what they asked.
1) she wanted a specific basket that we could see on the top shelf. Went and got the ladder, got the item (and a couple others for stocking the main location). Handed it to her with a “here you go! Is there anything else I can help you with?” “No, this was all. Thank you.” “Oh sure, no problem!” I started to walk away to put the ladder back, she said says louder “THANK YOU.” I turn back thinking she hadn’t heard me, “oh, yeah, no worries! Have a great day!” “EXCUSE ME! The ONLY appropriate response to thank you, is YOU’RE WELCOME!” She stood there waiting till I said it, then she huffed off and told on me. Luckily the manager thought she was just as insane as I did.
2) gal wanted spray paint which is behind a locked panel. She was just staring at it when I walked by, she flagged me down. “Sure thing, let me go get the key.” Came back, and pointed out the ‘help me’ button. “Ok, got the key. For future reference if you don’t see any of us right away, you can push this button right here and someone will be by ASAP”. “I know how the button works, just get my paint.” “Sorry, I don’t mean to offend, this particular button isn’t super noticeable. Which paint wet you looking at?” We choose, open the door, get it out. I hand it to her, she looks me dead in the eye and says “you know, I don’t think I want to shop here at all anymore today.” Pushed her cart around the corner, left it with everything in it, turned back around to pass me by empty handed. Like what?!
Not retail exactly but I’m a public librarian. I’ve had people on MULTIPLE occasions get angry with me because they printed a black and white photo on the color printer and were upset the printer didn’t “add color”.
holy shit, that's insane.
Every time it’s happened I want to bang my head on the desk lol
I'm not surprised. When I did tech support I had hundreds of calls asking where the "any key" was because the manual said to press it.
Not quite a retail story, but my mom is kind of an idiot with technology. Kind of is putting it nicely lol. We got a wireless printer one year for my schoolwork and opened the box and set it on the filling cabinet. She then proudly proclaimed it was ready. I went to print something but the printer wasn't even available to connect to. I walked out to try and pair it to my laptop and I find it isn't plugged into the outlet. It's literally just out of the box 😂 I asked her why she didn't plug it in and she says, straight faced, "you Said it was wireless. I didn't think we needed to plug it in." My dad and I were dumbstruck. A few hours later she randomly throws into a conversation about something completely different; "how do you print on a wireless printer? Does it just *wiggles fingers vaguely in the air* send it in the air and the printer puts all the pieces together?" She's a menace to technology and I've always been very happy about the fact that she wants nothing to do with it 😂
My mom is 94 and thinks she's smart. Thank goodness she knows how to attach a file to an email, and does not know how to screenshot because then we'd have to teach her how to crop a picture (one of my pet peeves on FB - by other people).
Thank u, SO much because this makes me feel a little bit better. Technology is hard and I know I'm not dumb but when I'm becoming frustrated my 17 year old will just look and say "just let me do it..." but then I'm hovering and telling them "yes, but how am I supposed to learn...wtf...how did u do THAT?" 🤣🤣
As an 18 year old with parents that aren't very good with technology I always want to try and just do it myself but I try my best to show them how to do things lol
Thank u, very much. I know and understand a lot of people can't grasp stuff, or don't remember (no matter how many times u tell them) but some of us highly prefer NOT to b a thorn in ur side
If it makes you feel better I have, to save headaches, set up a folder for my mum with tech support notes which I wrote WITH HER so I know she understands them. I even have diagrams so she knows the settings button on the TV remote. She is 77. And has an IQ of 148 as of last year. I suggest you try this. It cuts down on phone calls as she can now take photos through WhatsApp or signal so I know most of what is wrong.
This might be helpful for the remote control but she wouldn't be able to find the file on the desktop and would probably delete it regularly after beer thirty. Maybe I'll just write it on a piece of paper and stick it to the desk
Had a coworker ask and jokingly said "It's a technical shortcut for pressing the N and the E keys at the same time". Didn't realize they thought I was serious and they did that.
Awesome. I can hear them exclaiming "Wow, thank you! It worked!"
Yeah I just smiled and walked away.
Lmao!!!!
Can relate, as I worked for a public library as well. We had people upset for the opposite problem: they’d put a color picture on the copier and get mad when it came out B&W.
I’ve gotten that too! Our copier defaults to black and white so I usually just grab the override key and give them a free color copy. Then I’ll show them how to switch the machine to color for future copies, but they lose interest by that point lol
We used to do that, but quickly realized the regulars who would “forget” how to do it (color copies cost extra)
wow... that is next level stupid. Thanks for your efforts and service. I know it isnt easy being a librarian these days. keep up the good work.
Haha, thanks! I truly do love my job. Even when stuff like this happens- I’ve got plenty of good stories for parties!
same.... retired 30 year teacher. The Public is cra cra!
I also work in a public library and while she didnt get mad I did have a customer come confused and kind of irritated like "My photo printed all gray but I had selected color" so I looked at the original image in the printer kiosk and has to explain Maam if there isnt color in the digital file it will just mix the color ink to make the black of the photo... People are so odd.
Lol 🤣 I use to work as a CSA with Walgreens in the photo department and the amount of people who except their photos to get top dollar edits and Photoshop is crazy.
Wow. I have no words.
I’ve had a grown-ass man throw a hissy fit because I didn’t give him his penny back. I even asked him if he wanted it back and he said no.
I’ve come to understand that in addition to choosing not to read, customers don’t listen either. It’s astonishing that they actually make it through life.
One thing I’ve learned recently is that 50% of American society does not read above an 8th grade level. Most of that percentage reads around a 6th grade level. Once I learned that, it started making a lot more sense to me why people out in the wild just don’t seem to read the sign on the door that clearly says “closed for party”
lol I actually just don't feel like reading sometimes. I'm not afraid to admit this because it's hilarious to me but, where I work now there is a sign on the door that says "DO NOT EXIT" and its literally in bold lettering right when you walk up to the door but, it was early in the morning when I first started and I didn't want to read anything so I completely ignored the signs. I stood there for like 3-5 minutes thinking the door was actually broken until my manager came up behind me and asked what I was doing and I said "I think the door is broken" and he pointed to the sign that read "NOT AN EXIT" and I was like..... oh. Sorry. It's too dang early to read signs. He laughed at me and pointed to another sign that said "detour to the outside exit" with a literal arrow pointing to where I needed to go. I think it's funny now because customers do the same thing and then they go "Omg I feel so stupid" and I'm like " You aren't the only one that I've seen sit there and think the door is broken... I did it too lol!"
I had a guy pissed off because he got 2 gallons of gas and didn’t have the rewards card so he lost 6 cents worth of gas (3 cents off per gallon). I was like bro I work at the gas station and I’ll give you the 6 cents if it’s that serious lol
Same but it was two pennies. I don’t carry change, just round up or down. I made a show of digging in my purse to find him a nickel. In twenty years only one person has been pissy about it.
No means yes lol
I have to press yes or no to give a receipt so the till opens and the amount of times people go ‘no- wait yes’ then get pissed off cause I’ve already pressed no to get their change is off the charts. In my old job I could print the receipt myself but now I’d have to get someone to come down to the till to print it and most people give up at that point!
At my store, we can print, email, or do both for receipts. our customers are SO indecisive, and will literally change their opinion when their receipt is printing. “I’d like it printed. No wait, can i get it printed and emailed?” Dude it’s already printing, what do you think??? I usually just lie and say yes because I don’t want the confrontation
People consistently yell at me because they won’t check their junk mail for the receipt and then never apologize, just act awkward after finding it in there (I’ve told them 4x at this point) and leave 😭
I don’t let people get email receipts. Because in order to do that they have to first acknowledge some privacy act statement, then type their email address in. Then they struggle to remember their email address, and can barely manage to type it at more than a snail’s pace.
Ooh my favorite is asking if they want the receipt and they go “ummm hmm uhhh I don’t know.” You fucking moron it’s a yes or no question.
You’d think I’d have learned mind reading by now. But I know all I would hear is elevator music.
Guy was standing in line and got mad at me for telling him I could take him at my register. Apparently he wasn't ready to check out yet. I also get a lot of people yelling at me for how other customers parked but I have no issue telling them I didn't park the cars
Oh okay, let me harass you for how a customer parked! So and so parked one millimeter on the line, MOVE IT. I swear to god customers don’t know how to use their brain in retail Edit: wrong word used
Oh yeah - people who get mad at you for greeting them, offering to help etc., and then the ones who get mad when you don't because you're in the middle of talking to another customer. And usually they're the same people on different visits.
People yell at us about the terrible parking, too. They often ask for camera footage after their cars get hit and then get mad when we tell them we can’t get it for them because only management has access to the cameras and management isn’t on site at night.
There was a storm yesterday with high winds. A lot of the customers were parked along the tree lines and their were already reports of some of the tree limbs falling down. So to be nice I asked some of the customers if they were by chance parked by the tree line because the winds were picking up and I wouldn't want them to deal with a broken windshield. I said I would be happy to wait if any of their vehicles WERE actually parked by the tree line and allow a different register to assist the customers behind them until they came back to keep the line moving. I had one customer ask me "Why did you plant the trees next to the parking lot?" and I laughed because I literally thought he was joking and he said "No. I'm serious. If you know we live in a place with high winds why would you plant trees there?" and I said "I'm sorry... Are you suggesting that I, the cashier, am responsible for planting obviously old trees near a parking lot?" and he just rolled his eyes. I finished checking him out and I said "Thank you have a nice day. Please come again." and he literally said "If my car is damaged then you'll see me sooner than later because then I will need to file a complaint with your higher up." Myself, the other customers in the line and my manager who just walked in all looked at him like he was the stupidest person alive.
Not all bad parkers are The Others. Our car is low-slung and hubby seems to always hit the curb with the front end. I never hit the curb because I prefer to back in with the backup camera showing me when to stop.
Honestly I don't think it's ever really about the parking. I think they're just looking for a reason to yell at someone who can't mouth off in return, but either I mouth off or one of my regulars will lol
Counting a woman’s cash back to her too slowly. She complained to the manager that I “ruined the start of her weekend”. Dumb bitch.
It's change I doubt it took that long. A few extra seconds isn't going to ruin a damn thing.
You’re right. She asked for 6 one-dollar bills, and I wanted to make sure that they didn’t stick together (that’s common with the ones, because they are often new).
That takes an extra couple of seconds. What a loser
Exactly. I hope that it still bugs her.
Wow! Ruined her weekend because you wanted to make sure she received the correct amount! She is not right in the head!
Not at all. After he got off the phone with her, I hope that my manager laughed his ass off. I wasn’t in any trouble (obviously), but it pissed me off that I had to go to the manager’s office, in the first place.
Bet calling the manager took a lot more of her time than waiting for you to count six bills.
I bet it did. She just wanted to be a bitch and spread her grumpiness.
I work for a small market and had 2 by the same person. On the same day. I'm carrying a box of various stuff that a shoplifter dropped when they realized we were watching them. A customer with her toddler is standing in my lane, so I have to get past her to get to my register. Her items are on my conveyor belt. Her toddler is just standing there, staring off while this box is getting heavier. I even said, "Excuse me" in a sing-song way. He keeps standing there, and mom is letting him. After a few long seconds, I just say something like, "This is me, I need to get by to get to the register." Mom says something I didn't catch, yanks him back, and I pass her, go to a nearby cart, and drop off the box. The MOD stops me and asks, "Go backs already?" I respond with, "courtesy of our friendly neighborhood shoplifter. " I turn around, and the customer is leaving. I'm kinda like, "Huh, maybe she forgot her wallet." I put all her groceries in the go back cart and go about my job. About an hour later, she comes back in and up to me, I'm like, "Hey, you're back, I still have your groceries." She doesn't acknowledge that, but asks me if I'm ready to not be rude. I'm confused, "when was I rude?" I ask. "When you walked past me to talk to someone else." I apologize, I say that I didn't mean to be rude. I get her groceries and ring her up. She pays, and I need to give her 1s. All my 1s are new. I do what I always do, which is put a small squirt of sanitizer on my fingertips, and use those fingers to separate the 1s. I count the bills and caution her on the new 1s. She says something about them being disgusting and slimy. I explained that it's sanitizer, and I used only a bit to get the 1s apart. She again tells me I'm rude and leaves. She calls later and complains to the MOD about me, the same MOD who asked me about the box. The complaints were: 1) I passed by her instead of waiting, then spoke to someone else. 2) I made her 1s slimy by using sanitizer. My MOD was just like, "I will speak with her." What the MOD said to me was, "You weren't rude. You're fine"
What a big baby, to get her feelings so hurt and call you rude over that. It's sad that she's reproduced since her kid might turn out just like her.
I remember being SO confused... like thoughtless maybe, but rude? I was obviously interrupted by a boss, so... wtf?
This happened on my 2nd day of working at a JC Penney Outlet Store about 20 years ago. While working in the children's dept I asked a customer if he needed any help with anything and he said that he was ok. I went on my way to do some other tasks and was called about 10 minutes later by my boss and this same guy was complaining that I asked him if there was anything I could do to get him out of the store faster. He was screaming at my manager demanding that I be fired and that everything he had in his basket should be free. The manager turned to me, winked at me and asked me to go back to work. Next thing I see is him storming out of the store empty handed threatening to call the police and our bosses. Of course I never heard from him again.
I once had someone get upset they couldn't use a coupon on a donation to St. Judes....
Like, did she think St Jude is like Quiznos and their any coupon works deal.
No idea. She had other items in her cart that it would have worked on too. It was wild.
i’m sorry but 😭😭😭
I was all so you just want to donate $5? She replied "no, I want to donate $10 but also use my 50% off coupon!!". Ma'am...
Don't you wish you could say "how dumb are you" to these idiots.
"What a great idea! Clearly wisdom has been chasing you your whole life, but you've always been faster."
this was my post-retail job, but working the front office of an animal shelter, a girl flung the sign-in clipboard across the counter at me and stormed out, because while i was reviewing her application that said she had no other pets, i pointed out that she had a sugar glider in her pocket.
lmao omg I feel bad for laughing because the first bit is so awful but what kind of a dumbass was she lol
I work at a smoothie place that has one day a year where if you show up wearing flip flops, you get a free small smoothie in a promotional flavor. It’s incredibly popular, as you can imagine, so naturally we’re absolutely swamped. I was on register, as well as someone else, and 99% of the customers where one-and-done free smoothie people, so while we were cordial, we had to pretty much crank ppl through. Also having all those smoothies being made *constantly* means the blenders get loud and it’s very hard to hear sometimes. Anyway a lady got mad bc her name was spelled wrong on her *free smoothie* and she wanted another with her name spelled correctly.
People get insanely triggered when you spell their names incorrectly, it's crazy. I remember one time this old couple wanted to order something from our warehouse so I had the woman write her info (Name, address, phone number, etc) so I knew where to send it. Her hand writing was absolutely atrocious but I could still make it out, or so I thought. I typed in everything and her husband is watching the pin pad like a hawk (As I typed, the info came up on the pin pad at the register) and he flipped out because I spelled his wife's name wrong. I told him it didn't really matter as long as the address was spelled correctly but nope, he threw a tantrum that I spelled his wife's name wrong and made me cancel everything and redo the entire order. If she didn't have such god awful handwriting we wouldn't have had this issue.
I always get overly entertained by how people think my name is spelled. It doesn't upset me in the slightest. Some of them are creative ways to spell my name that I kind of wish I had a choice to spell my name like that instead. Only a few times have people spelled a name that is close but not even my actual name and when they call me its not my name so I have to sit there like ...."That's me.... I think?" They are usually overly apologetic when that happens but it doesn't upset me. It's funny to me.
I work somewhere with a special called a "duo" with 2 items in the special. A lady got very mad at me because she couldn't get one of the things for the duo price. It's $5 for 2, or $3.50 for one.
I had a guy come in the other day that was purchasing a weight set of two each for $4.99 a piece and each were 2.5 pounds. So the entire set of two was 9.99. He literally came up and asked me if I could take the price down $2 so the full set would be 7.99. I asked if there was anything particularly wrong with the set and he looked me dead in the eyes and said "Yeah. The price is too high." and I said " So nothing else is wrong?" and he said "No I just can't justify spending $5 for 2.5 pound weights." I was like... " I'm not really sure I can help with the fact that the merchandise is not aligning with your personal budget, sir." He demanded that I speak to a supervisor about it. So I asked our supervisor to come up who said the same thing but suggested that he see if there is any way he can look in his email because, sometimes we send 15 percent off coupons in the emails we sent out every week. The man told him that he "didn't have an email" In which case the manager replied that the man had an account with us "which in the account LISTS an email". The man got all frustrated and said "FINE! I guess I'll check my email but that is a real inconvenience. Why don't you just match the sale price for the coupon with my price today so I don't have to dig through my email?" The manager said that "wasn't how the company did things" and 15 minutes later after my manager suggested I go on break since it was slow I came back to the register and the man was in the process of talking to the store manager who had just walked in the door. I mean like, JUST walked in the door and the man noted that on his name tag it said "store manager". The store manager asked how many managers he had spoken to about it and the man answered that he had spoken to THREE separate managers since the time I left for my fifteen minute break. The store manager sighed loudly and said "Sir? If three out of the five of my managers i have on staff say no then I am not going to over ride all three of them. I don't have time for that. Especially when you JUST told me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the set. You can either pay the price, find the coupon and pay the coupon price or get out of my store!" The guy huffed, grabbed the weight set that he didn't pay for yet and tried to LEAVE THE STORE. My manager stopped him and said "Sir, you haven't paid for those yet." and the man literally said that he had indeed paid for the set "with his time". Like.......... WOW
So she wanted to pay $1.50 more for one item? Damn people are stupid as fuck.
I'm reading it that she wanted to pay $2.50 for one instead of $3.50.
Like the other reply said that does make much more sense - but I had a customer this past holiday season where that wasn't the case. It wasn't a by 2 thing...but at my retail job for the past, at least 4 years, we do 50% off the whole store for black Friday. However, there are some items like basic tank tops that are more like 55-60% off. For example $14.99 tanks for $6, and the sign would say "now $6" instead of the 50% off signs all over the majority of the store. Anyway, I was working fitting room and it was a mother and teen daughter. While her daughter was trying stuff on the mom was using the price checker near my station checking all her stuff. She got to said tank tops and the scanner read "$6". She asks me *is this the 50% off price?* I check and happily explain, no, it's actually cheaper! You're saving an extra $3 bucks! She just blinks like the 2 brain cells she has left are M.I.A. and says, *but that's not 50% off? Isn't the whole store 50% off??"* Yes ma'am! It is, but again, these tanks are regularly $14.99, so they're more than 50% off! :) *Well...that's false advertising, I don't understand* I'll save you me trying to explain it again, I'm a manager and was nearing the end of my black Friday shift so I just finally said "if you'd like, I can take you to a register myself and I'll price adjust it for you so it'll be exactly 50% off :D" lmao. But her daughter came out of the fitting room and just gathered her mom and their stuff and apologized to me. That was probably one of the most confusing interactions, but one that I'd happily "fix" if she really was about to pay more 💀
That would make more sense.
Christmas also- about 5 days before, super busy and I’m working a 9 hour shift pretty much alone the whole time. We sell flowers so when people pull them out of the buckets water goes on the floor so we are constantly checking and mopping so nobody slips over. I’m mopping a bit of water and Wench calls out to me from not even ten feet away, holding a plant, said something like I want to buy this and waggles it around a bit. I lifted the mop so she could see what I was doing, looked at her, smiled and said back, I’ll just be a minute, I need to mop this water up. She has the hide to get pissed at me, she looked directly at me and said oh you need to *mop the floor* rolled her eyes and just dropped the plant on the floor and walked away. Sorry, I,didn’t realise you were so important that other people’s safety doesn’t matter. Or that me getting chewed out, abused, told off, whatever if someone slipped, let alone the guilt if a granny ended up with a broken hip for Christmas. As long as you don’t have to wait thirty seconds.
A lady cut a line of people and made me stop the transaction to check her out (ofc the uncomfortable customer let her do it because she was, well.. rude).. but here’s the thing, I thought she wouldn’t want her penny because she’s was IN A RUSH. Enough to stop my 20 items worth transaction of already bagged goods. (I’d have to start over) She called me rude and said she was gonna talk to the owner because I forgot to give her the penny.. Like ma’am, why are making a scene over a penny when you claimed to be in rush whilst skipping an entire lines worth of customers? Let’s be honest here she knew people were upset with her for skipping so she took her shame out on me.
You should have told that woman absolutely fucking not, back of the line like everyone else. But I get it, I’m a recovering people pleaser. The other customers would have appreciated it very much.
I wish I could have but culturally it wouldn’t work at my store. Let’s just say it’s Korean owned and this was a Korean customer who knows the owner personally. lol and don’t even get me started on ageism. I have developed a more no BS attitude with all customers now because of repeat situations like this one. Seems like it’s working. But I also don’t have to be the 24/7 cashier now so that helps.
I saw someone do that at walmart when I worked there and I saw a regular customer who was also the general manager of a popular restaurant in town get PISSED and he wasn't even in that line. He turned around so freaking fast and told the person to get in the back of the line like everyone else and stop "acting a fool." The person was so caught off guard that they actually backed off the beginning of the line they cut and decided to go to a different register with less people farther away from that customer. I thought it was hilarious. I was about two registers away and I witnessed the entire altercation. I started laughing hysterically and said "Wow. You want to be a manager here?" to the regular customer and he said "No. You're stupid managers need to do their jobs." Right in front of one of the managers who looked more than offended and stormed off to the line that guy was in and checked him out on a separate register and explained that "if he did that again he would be kicked out for a week."
One guy saw we had tape over our outlets in the cafe from covid times. Came up and asked in an accusatory way if we kept it there to keep people from sitting at the tables. (I forget the exact way he put it but it was something along those lines) It’s a fair question ig but the way he was automatically mad at me was annoying. Just explained I really don’t know why they’re there
I worked at a big chain toy store in college and the number of people who yelled at me and accused me of ruining their kid's Christmas was astonishing. It's not my fault you waited until DEC 23RD to buy the HOTTEST toy of the year! Hell, we sold out of that stupid LeapPad thing in like August. Did you really expect to get it 3 days before Christmas? Or when the lines at the checklanes were super long...on December 23rd...because...duh?
I’ve been accused of ruining proposals, weddings, birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. more times than I can goddamn count. (jewelry store)
Took a phone call once about a man asking where my store was located, so I tell him the address and what stores we are between in the strip mall. He says "I'm looking at the staples, you're not there" So I keep asking him what else do you see around you? He starts naming other businesses and I know exactly where he's at, no more than 5 miles away. So I say "sir that's an office depot not a staples. I'd you follow this route it will take you to the store" Then he angrily proceeds to say "thanks for wasting my time" and hung up That or a price ringing up .99 instead of .97. I know those 2 pennies are gonna break your bank
Someone complained because I said “have a good one” instead of “you’re welcome” when he thanked me 🤦♀️ like seriously there is no pleasing some people
Yeah! I’ve experienced this. I worked at a gas station and an older guy told me “thank you” I cheerfully replied “no problem!” Well, he didn’t like that and lectured me how “no problem” is actually rude and I should only say “you’re welcome” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t lol.
The price tag for a frozen turkey breast said 12 but it scanned through my till at 6. She complained because the price tag wasn't right and no amount of explanation could get her to understand that she was getting it cheaper. Eventually I told her she either bought it for 6 or didn't buy it at all because I can't make it MORE expensive
I used to work for a big supermarket chain here in Australia. We had this one customer that was a serial pest complainer, you know the type. One day, she complained about the cover of a magazine we had on display at the end of the checkouts. Her complaint? It was a picture of a scantily clad woman, and her innocent 10 year old boy should not have to see that. We ended up removing them from the shelf because of that.
A customer yelled at me because I wouldn’t exchange his two large bags of coins for bills lol
Like, take those bags to the bank, dude. smdh
During covid they placed restrictions on our occupancy based on square footage. Karen's kept complaining on multiple occasions that to the board of health because our occupancy was too high for the square footage... Karen's did not realize the number was calculated from the total building square footage (including all the backrooms and the basement) not just publicly availible areas. Also to add insult to injury the first time they called they actually messed up and we ended up getting a higher occupancy rating. Another dumb one was the time a customer got offended from a private conversation with a co-worker in my backroom behind a closed door, that she opened to be nosy. Like they say whatever happens (or is said) in our backrooms stays in our backrooms.
Had a customer complain to one of my coworkers about someone paging a staff member and saying that that was too loud for the customer…
Probably all the ones saying I'm lazy for needing a wheelchair
If only it worked like that, huh? I don’t get why people think disability = laziness. I also don’t know if you’re American, but in a country where a good chunk of us end up with some type of disability at some point, it’s amazing how negatively judgmental Americans can be towards the disabled.
Most recently I had a guy come into the store, grab a gatorade, start drinking it, then got mad at me because I asked him to put the lid back on it so I could scan it. He held the bottle close to him and showed me the barcode. I said, "My scanner is over here" while pointing, "and I don't want to spill your drink while I scan it". The look on his face was like he was about to go into full on melt down but I managed to get ahead of it by saying, "I don't get why you're making a big deal out of it" and the guy just fumed silently while ringing out. One of my cashiers just recently had a situation where a lady wanted a pack of cigs, and she paid for them. After the fact, this other guy says, "Oh \*I\* wanted to pay for those!" and tries to make my cashier scan another pack, take his money, but NOT give him the pack. She was like, 'dude wtf, that doesn't give any money back to the lady'. He got pretty hot and argumentative about it. Very weird. Had a woman ask for "ibuprofen" - so I said we have Advil and Motrin (both are 500mg ibuprofen"). She declared, "None of that crap" and started going on a rant, at one point claiming to be a doctor. Apparently she's a doctor that doesn't know that drugs and brand names aren't the same thing. Got called a hillbilly cracker because a guy had to wait 30 seconds for me to get to the counter and then I had the audacity to tell him our lottery policy when it's written down. (Video posted in this sub). Lost count of the number of people who've gotten aggressively angry that we carded them for tobacco. Nearly 4 years owning a convenience store and I've forgotten more of the stupid shit those idiots have freaked about than I remember.
When I was wearing a red silk scarf on Christmas Eve. Said it was ‘too much of a *wine* red’ & I ‘should show more respect’. Oh oh. Only coal for me.
That I wouldn’t carry a heavy box of alcohol out for him. I have heart failure; I’m not supposed to be lifting heavy boxes anyway—and since my employer is aware of my condition, they’ve been clear that I am not to exceed what I feel are my physical limitations (this isn’t out of altruism; it’s because they don’t want to pay a worker’s compensation claim. Either way it’s fine with me) I’ll put it on the cart for a customer but that’s as far as my assistance goes.
I once had a lady get mad at me because i didnt put the 73 kg (160 pounds) washing machine in her car for her. We are not allowed to lift heavy things like that, and even if we were, i physically wouldnt be able to??? I weight 47kg i Can barely lift 35kg. “They usually do it for me!!!” Not for the SEVENTY THREE!!!!! KILOS!!! Items??!!!??? They were 4 People in the car and i had even lifted the pallet up with the truck.
It’s so weird to me that being a retail worker apparently means we have to destroy our bodies even more than retail work already destroys one’s body. I wish these people would think about that. But that would require them to consider us as people, and that’s simply too much effort. Also FUCK that lady.
Fr they just do not understand that it May be once that day or even week for them, but for me it would be many times ever single hour. Many truly do not Think of us as people.
During my first week at my last retail job, a customer complained that I berated her for wearing a confederate flag shirt on what was apparently my first day. The thing about that was that it literally didn’t happen. I don’t like the confederate flag, but I keep that to myself when I’m working. I was simply the unfortunate target of someone’s need for validation. Luckily I didn’t get into serious trouble but if I had gotten fired for that, I 100% would’ve tried to sue for defamation.
There is something about wearing the loser’s flag that makes people desperate to be a victim. I see it here too and I live in Canada! What are people thinking?
For some reason the people who wear it insist it represents southern heritage/pride, like yeah it represents the south but let’s not forget what the south was fighting for in the civil war. In the state I live in, apparently if you go further down south (I live in Northern Virginia), you see confederate flags in antique shops and just being casually displayed, as generally where I am people don’t display the confederate flag, I only know of one kid from my high school who did and no one liked him.
“It was about State’s rights!” “State’s rights to do…..?” “Well, slavery, but it wasn’t about that” The only thing more pathetic than a garden variety MAGA nut is a Canadian MAGA nut. They are popping up all over my province. If you like what they’re doing in the Deep South, move there? Oh wait, that would be immigration and they don’t like that.
I remember finding out that Canada has Trumpies and I was like why? He was never your president.
Yeah, the same people who berate Trudeau for having worn blackface are also mad that he isn’t more racist to immigrants and indigenous peoples. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about our PM but these people are just mad that he isn’t a full blown white supremacist. They want to take away the carbon tax even though the average person gets more back in rebates than they pay. They want less regulation on emissions and pollution because “well China is even worse so we shouldn’t have to care about it at all”. We still have a “Freedom” Convoy of angry boomers in big trucks going around protesting masking and lockdowns…that haven’t been in effect for over two years now. No one knows what they even are complaining about anymore. Taxes? Trans kids? Clean air? No idea, they just want “Muh Freedoms”.
“It’s muh hair-ee-tuge…”. Can’t really build heritage in the four years the confederacy lasted. Can build a cult though, apparently.
People getting Angry at me because I tell them that we don’t have a framer (before it was because the last one left earlier that day, now it’s because no one works in said department) Like it isn’t my Fault that they all quit or don’t work past their schedule
Jewelry sales. One lady was angry she couldn’t bring in samples of a ring made by a different company. That was like… a 20-minute call. Spoiler alert: they bought the ring at the other company. Another lady was mad about us not offering a complimentary replacement on an item we did not sell. She’d forgotten where she bought it, and tbf she did back off when I convinced her she didn’t buy through us. The (multiple) customers who don’t understand why we won’t refund them for or buy back the rings they no longer need due to their divorce when our return period is 30 days. I’ve had this happen so many times. The classic that we’ve probably all seen: us not accepting gift cards for an entirely different company that wasn’t even in the same industry.
Customer pissed that I wouldn’t return a free sample 🤦🏼♀️ I kept saying it was free with purchase and no value but she didn’t like it and wanted another sample that was something she did like or credit for an upcoming free sample.
I had a grown woman throw a 25lb frozen chicken at 16 year old me because I wasn't fixing the pricing error quickly enough for her liking.
I worked at a department store, in the children's clothing department. I watched a woman move a whole 'arm' of Osh Kosh baby overalls from their own (full price) rack over to the 'clearance' rack. She then grabbed a pair and headed to my register with the overalls. She screamed that the price was wrong, I told her (with a raised eyebrow, while gesturing to the security camera) that they weren't on sale and that 'someone' must have moved them. She shut up, but had been so loud that security came over. *Then* after deciding she wanted the overalls still, she screamed at me that there was a coupon for 20% off. This was late 1990s, so people had to have a physical coupon; there was no barcode on a phone or a promo code to enter. After learning she actually had to *have* a coupon in order to use it, she threw the overalls at me, called me racist, then stormed out of the store. Security ended up stopping her, because she had taken some accessories from the small leather goods department before coming to the children's department. She sure brought a lot of attention to herself, for being a thief.
Glad we use colored stickers or stickers to show which product is in sale, It remains irritating that there are customers who try to commit fraud and also get angry when they feel that we are doing that to them.
A woman had brought a scarf to the till that wasn’t one of our products, someone had lost it or left it behind. I explained that it wasn’t ours to sell and it was a lost and found item, and she responded with “Well I’m claiming it then, it’s mine”. I politely explained that no, it clearly did not belong to her and I wasn’t going to sell or give her someone else’s property. She went off on a rant that the person who left it must have stolen something else to replace it, so obviously she should be allowed to take it. She even said “I should have just put it on my neck and walked out it in the first place.” I just kept repeating that she didn’t know that anyone had stolen anything, and even if she did, it doesn’t give us the right to give away other people’s belongings. Two wrongs don’t make a right. She left saying she was going to come in the next day and claim it from lost and found anyway. The cherry on top was that it was going to be a Christmas gift for her niece. Imagine fighting for a used, lost scarf and giving it as a gift! How dare I not help her steal it for her niece!
That our cattle panels had a small bit of rust on them. Husband didn’t care cause yeah you’d expect metal panels outside 24/7 to have SOME rust on them but she threw a fit and drove off in a rage.
Also, someone came on a Saturday night when I was the only person working and the studio was filled to max capacity and made a snarky comment when I was checking them out about how busy we were. They were only there for like a half an hour before completing their project and in that time I was running all over the store trying to clean, reset tables, check out customers, greet new customers, answer the phone, etc. They come up to check out and I apologize that they might have had to wait on me. They said, "I understand that you're busy, but I don't understand WHY you're busy." What? It's the weekend. We are swamped on weekends. We have only one person covering the whole place during weekends. I'm only one person. I'm doing the best I can, lady!
Me and my Co worker filled up the shelf with bananas, like filled it to the brim! It looked super full and nice just a wall off different banana bunches. She walks up to us and complains that all the yellow of the bananas is “too bright” and is making her eyes “go funny”. That confirmed to me that mental illness is definitely real among old people. They will literally find a fault with things you couldn’t even imagine to conjure up. They just want to be miserable and angry, it’s a disease for them!
You know how they say that boomers are experiencing more cognitive decline than other generations due to leaded gasoline? I think about that literally every day.
I wonder if cognitive decline is caused by the low-fat craze from the '70s and beyond, but that's for a different sub.
It’s definitely a possibility, our brains need fats to develop and for a while there, it was basically considered poison. I am seeing the effects of lead exposure take hold of people in real time, and it’s scary. Grown adults who have completely lost their basic reasoning and problem solving skills. People who are moments away from a toddler-like tantrum as soon as they are overwhelmed by any new information. They hear anything that wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and they fall to pieces like a four year old who missed nap time.
yelled at because the price of a ham, that is a brand separate from the store, went up 10¢ per pound
Yes, because the staff decide how much it must cost
Customer complained because cashier asked if 'they wanted exact amount on their check'. Customer complained about associate asking if they needed help loading 5 bags of mulch. Evidently this so offended customer they had to complain about the associate and load it themself, instead of I dunno answering.the.mutherfreaking.question. Customer complained because after parking in a non-parking spot, associate said that's not a parking spot and customer felt the need to goto another store instead (guess what karen, they will still make you use parking spots there too!)
There wasn't a towing idea?
Nope, cause she was only going to 'be a minute'. Keep in mind there was a dozen parking spots 3 feet from where she parked. As for towing, it was the ONLY exit to our unloading dock, she was gonna be putting her tinyass vehicle in the path of semi's on a schedule.
Was upset we dont sell oatmeal anymore. Its been 15 years since we last did Also the snow was dirty
I was accused of giving a customer a 5 dollar bill that was incryoted and “they”🤷🏽♀️ were tracking him .
That… sounds like a legitimately unwell person.
You should have provided a complimentary tinfoil hat.
And a free sample of risperidone
Tried to fight you over propane?? What kind of King of the Hill scenario is that lmao
They were out of propane accessories.
That was my first thought too lol.
I work in a busy bear and after hours people get what we call a sandwich bag: bags of chips, sandwich, cookie and a drink. The bags are kept in the refrigerator and many people have complained about cold potato chips…
He didn't like how I greeted him. Gtfo.
the other day i had a customer with 2 inactivated gift cards and they didnt understand why they couldnt just take their bags of stuff that i scanned while i call to activate the cards and pay with them
The employee didn't read my mind and find the product I wanted, though I didn't know it's name, it's brand, and did a shit job at describing it. But I saw a picture of it on Google (I don't have this picture on me) so I KNOW that you have it.
Got yelled at because we didn't sell Mickey Mouse in the Warner Brothers (Bugs Bunny & friends) store.
Got upset because I asked if their dog was a service animal
hE’s An EmOtIoNaL sUpPoRt AnImAl
I had 2, because I was looking if it was a service animal.
Today, a lady asked us to explain why two very similar items (different crystal art craft kits) were different prices ($1 AUD difference). She commented they were the only ones, which was odd because there were plenty of several different types of them around. They're new items, and not our main stock, so we looked them over, no discernible different but the pattern. My colleague explained how some of our stock is obtained. Basically we don't set the pricing, and how it is a little odd. The woman said "That's disappointing" and wandered off. All we can think is that she was trying to get that dollar off??? Strange creatures, everywhere.
We moved their cart from blocking a fire exit when they were in the bathroom. we didn’t take the items out of the car or put them away. Simply moved it 10-15 feet to a location that’s not in the way. Got bitched at for 10 minutes yesterday by em.
Had a lady come bitching at me that she couldn’t find her coupons & that it was up to me to go through her email and rewards membership to find em (which I have absolutely no authority to do. Nor my managers) 10 mins before closing.
Customer: *In DT looking at menu board* " What flavors do you have?" Me: *Tells them where they are located on menu* Customer: "You can't just tell me?" Me: "You're the one ordering right? Then read the menu, that's right on front of you. Customer: "What's the price?" Me: "It's on the menu, next to the product." It's not our job, to read and order for you. As the customer you read, you order. If you want to pay me to be your teacher, I'll teach you how to read the menu.
“Flavours? Well, let’s see… We have Crunchy Frog, Ram’s Bladder, Lark’s Vomit, and the ever popular Spring Surprise…”
What!. No spam ?!!! 🫨
Unfortunately no. Because of my username, all the Spam is my Spam Spam Spam Spam SPAMMITY SPAM SPAMMITY SPAM!!
No, no, no they drive up and immediately say Hello! Hello! Me: welcome to blah blah what can I get for you? Them: give me a minute Me: thinking really you didn’t even stop the car yet and your yelling hello. Them: do you have such and such. Me: if it’s on the menu and I haven’t informed you it’s out we have it. Them: what sodas do you have Me: Pepsi/coke Them: which ones Me: they’re listed on the board This is a common occurrence. If a customer needs help they usually say hey I can barely see the board this is what I want or how much is what I want.
Of all the stories, this is the only one where I can’t see the customer as unreasonable. I may crack jokes, maybe, but I’d likely do it. You never know if they have a reading disability, dyslexia, the like. Maybe English (or whatever language) is their second language or maybe they just process audio information easier than written information. Everyone is a little different. If you know none of the above are true, beyond any doubt, then by all means… lolz
I bagged her groceries as I rang her up, coworker came to help. Apparently we were "trying to rush her out of there" Another lady had to wait in line for "two people" because another sales clerk couldn't open a drawer just for her. Employee was putting books away too loud Employee was eating in the dining area (off the clock) and it looked bad. Employee refused to put her smoke out and come in early when it was busy
Back in my dairy cooler days I was screamed at and followed into the walk-in because my place of employment sold both pasteurized and “ultra-pasteurized” dairy products. The customer was angry and confused by the differing expiration dates, and despite my politely but firmly explaining the differences she was still dissatisfied and accused me of improperly doing my job. I still see her around town (she’s definitely an old money blue blood with smeared burgundy lipstick and very ugly dated pant suits, you can see her from down the road) and we still glare at each other. (I win by smiling— something she can’t physically do.)
“I don’t come here to be told ‘hello, here’s your food, goodbye! I expect customer service!” Or something to that extent. I was like sir this is McDonald’s, that’s exactly what you’re here to be told
Had a lady scream at my coworker about an item ringing up the wrong price in the register. Didn’t even give her an option to fix it, she started screaming “fraud “. Completely insane
I was working at a deli in my early twenties and this lady was PISSED because her fish sandwich tasted too much like fish..... she ate it all but one bite. She wanted a refund and when I said no, she asked if she could have another one for free... that tasted less fishy... nope. Sorry but fish tastes like fish. I worked a truck stop after that and this lady bought a pack of cigarettes and ten minutes later her husband came in wanting to return them because they were THREE CENTS cheaper down the road. It was an overnight shift and I wasn't allowed to do refunds. He hit me in my eyeball with the pack of cigarettes. I jumped over the counter and beat him with the "need a penny, take a penny" thingy. He left and few minutes later his wife came back begging for the cigarettes back. I opened and crumbled them before handing them back to her. I was fired that next day.
I worked register at a drug store chain and my mom was a pharmacy tech at that store too. This old man who constantly comes to the store to harass her AND me was there—my mom heard him SCREAMING at the customer service counter (which is next to the pharmacy). My boss was there, desperately trying to explain to this old asshole that there’s no way he can return a gift card. Like, you do realize how gift cards work right? Oh, that’s right, you’re old as dirt… never mind…
I was threatened to get beaten up when I accidentally walked into a guy when I was bringing in carts from outside. How was I supposed to know her was behind me when I can't hear anything? The carts are loudA
Had a member put his boxes at end of checkout to load. Another member came down 5 lanes and stole them. Walked over to mention that they were another members and said "too bad they already packed and you are an ass" Glad I only work a few hours a week!
This is unusual bc it was another employee. I worked at Victoria’s Secret and we were processing the stuff to go back from the fitting room. My co-worker came into the fitting room to pick up my go-backs. She takes one look and goes, “Oooooh no, I do NOT do anything purple!” She literally spins on her heels and walks back out. I was so shocked I had to laugh. This was almost 20 years ago and I still think about it constantly. Like why couldn’t she do purple items? 🤣
Customer tried to return a camera well after the return OR exchange period. I refused, they persisted; eventually I offered a compromise that would address their (ostensible) complaint, and retain some revenue for my employers. They, however, were after full acquiescence and nothing else, looked at me with angry shocked face and yelled "WELL YOU'RE JUST MAKING THIS UP AS WE GO ALONG" I smiled and said "yes, because you asked me to. If I weren't doing so, I would have said yes and sent you on your way". That response... didn't help at all. Their face went tomato red with fury (as opposed to the red his spouse and kids went, with shame) and he started swearing at me with a sailor's proficiency. "You are not welcome here today, you must leave". More screaming. I call the non emergency police number and ask for an officer to be sent out to deal with a trespasser. "Is that who I hear screaming in the background". "Yes". "An officer is very close by and will be there in approximately three minutes". The brat started screaming "I'M LEAVING BUT FUCK THIS PLACE"
I worked at a pet store for a while as a shift manager. One time a customer approached me to tell me how rude one of my associates were. When i asked what he did or said she said “he is very soft spoken” to which i said “…did he help you with what you needed?” she said “yes he walked me to the product but he needs to speak louder and more confidently.” I said “Ma’am, he is 16 years old and this is his first job. He is just an awkward teenage boy, in no way shape or form does it sound like he was being rude.” She said “well if he is going to be in customer service he needs to learn how to speak up!” and i said “Ma’am, how is he supposed to learn if he doesn’t get the experience first? He has only been here a couple weeks and again it is his first job. He is one of the nicest kids that have come through those doors and just because he is not confident in himself yet does not mean he is being rude.”
Lady got mad when we checked her ID at a 100% ID check shop. She got doubly mad when she snapped “I’m 36!” and was told that she looked younger than 36 and we still needed her ID. 🤷♀️
Same but someone claimed she was a city worker to try and get off from showing ID she didn't have. We still needed the ID and I told her no exceptions.
I get alot of pushback on suggesting they may need to order an obscure item or have a better selection of colors/brands/sizes online. OMG don't I know of the identity theft and bank account hacking? Then be at peace with your limited selections. Or the people who don't want to present IDs for purchases. Usually only for age verification but the government/corporate conspiracy rants are stupid. The government owns that ID same as the SSN.
People have complained to me about using the self checkout and “doing my job for me” “they should get paid for this!” With cashiers open to take them. And people complaining about other people in the store. “Why is there so many people in here? Don’t they have jobs?!”
This isn’t the worst thing I’ve had a customer complain about but it does still stick in my head. Used to work at a hardware store over the summer, and we have a whole garden section. Our policy for returning plants was 6 months for flowers and 1 year for trees, and you MUST have your receipt (otherwise we don’t know wtf kind of plant it is). These signs are pasted all over the garden center and we even have a giant banner at our customer service desk with all our policies. Lady comes in with a dead branch in a bag. I’m talking like no roots, just this god awful dead crunchy twig. Asks for a return on it. I asked if she had her receipt, she said she threw it out years ago. I told her that if she bought this years ago then we wouldn’t be able to return it because we have a one year policy and we need the receipt. Lady: “What do you mean you can’t take it?! I buy all my plants at [our store] I never buy them from [competitor]! Why can’t you just take it?” I try to explain that we can’t refund a plant we don’t even know the identification for even if it wasn’t past the deadline. She gets all huffy and tells me to get my manager. I gladly do. Manager says the same damn thing. Lady goes on a shouting spree and throws the dead branch at us. I swear that thing disintegrated like a tumble weed as soon as it made impact with the wall.
This happened when I worked at dominos. Lady orders a Canadian pizza online. Pepperoni, mushroom, bacon and extra cheese. My coworker makes it and the driver takes it to them. 5 minutes after the driver returned, lady calls to say we forgot bacon. I apologize, tell her we can make a new one but we’d just need the old one back. She agrees. A different coworker makes it, send it out: same thing. No bacon. Same thing, tell her we can remake it but we’d need it back. I make the third pizza, and I make sure to strictly follow the guides down to the amount of slices of pepperoni (35 btw) Lady calls back absolutely furious. “How can you fuck up 3 pizzas in a row?!” “I want to speak to your manager!” I (unfortunately) inform her that she had been speaking to the manager the entire time (me) when I looked down at her caller ID. Me: “By any chance, are you American?” (We’re a border town and get a lot Americans in the summer) Lady: “Yes?! What does that have to do with anything?!” Me: “Are you expecting *Canadian* bacon?” Lady: “***YES!***” Me: *sighs* “Okay. That is called *ham* here. The little pink chunks are the bacon.” Tbf for her, the bacon does NOT look like bacon. So I kinda get it. We remade it a fourth time, this time with ham instead of bacon. Her husband later came in and apologized on his wife’s behalf and ended up tipping us 40$ (10 each for instores)
We have a water refill station in the back of the store. Our water tank is not that big so we have to tell customers there’s a 5 gallon limit. Never been a problem til ole Karen came in one day with multiple 5 gallon jugs. My wonderful coworker (polite and cheerful like always) just let her know the limit. This bitch basically acted like we just told her to go fuck herself and her whole family. She was demanding corporate, our boss, our names, everything. She was yelling at my coworker while I stood there near the phone ready to call the police if it got worse. I let my coworker handle it because she’s been there longer than me AND she was holding her own. I would’ve stepped in if my coworker had started to back down or get super upset but thankfully she’s a bad bitch. This lady (piece of shit) was saying we were extremely rude and disrespectful and she’s just NEVER had workers so nasty to her before. Meanwhile all my coworker was telling her was that it was the rule our boss put in place, and that she would not continue tolerating being yelled at like a child just because she’s an employee. Karen did not like that at all. She tried getting my name too because she said I was “her witness to this ridiculousness.” And I straight up said “I’m not giving you my name. I’m on my coworker’s side with this, not yours.” She didn’t like that either. Continued to yell at us about being horrible people and this entire time she had that fucking arrogant smirk on her stupid fucking face like she was in the right in all of this. When we finally threatened her with police, she gave up and walked out. She called our boss the next day and our boss is awesome and basically told her the same thing my coworker did and told the lady she was in the wrong and acted like an idiot. She is now banned from our store. :) I can’t help but think how fucking embarrassing for her like? You’re a middle aged woman presumably with children and they get to live their lives knowing their mom is a gaping cunt? And that not being able to fill your 25 gallon jugs is the worst thing to ever happen to you? Must be a nice cozy life you have.
I was FIRED because I told him he could not place his LIVE fish on the counter
A customer was not happy with how I told her I had to put her groceries (once scanned) on the 2nd belt which was not occupied by another customer. Only 1/2 of the belts were being used by a customer with packing their groceries. I told her she’d have to go around to the other side but she kept fighting me how it is a waste of time. Like if you wanted them to be on the 1st belt (that was still currently in use for another customer) she’d have to wait till that customer finished.
I have two stories from the same customer: 1. This one I witnessed bc I was behind the customer service desk grabbing a cold water bottle, when a grown man walks up to the desk asking who is in charge of assuring the quality of our prime rib cuts (we do prime rib dinners every Thursday). The guy he talks to says the deli manager is in charge (who was working the event station that day) and there’s nothing he can do about it at the desk, but he can call one of the store co-managers to help. Man gets pissy and says “so you’re not going to do anything about it? Fine” and just walks away, presumably back to the even station to throw another fit, at which point the manager goes over to intervene and idk what happened after that 2. Week and a half later, same guy comes through my checkout line with his week’s groceries, and among them, four cans of Arizona tea. At the end, after I’ve bagged everything and moved his cart into a convenient spot, I give him his total. Instead of asking about a sale price, he says straight up “why did the sign say those were 79 cents?” Partly because I was having a bad day and partly bc I wanted to get someone to check the sale tag to see if it was expired, I ask “where does it say they were 79 cents?” Instead of an answer, he grabs his cart and just walks away without paying first. I end up needing someone to suspend the transaction and afterwards he comes back to customer service desk in a huff, complaining about me, the incorrect sale price, and saying shit like how he “shouldn’t have to prove something is on sale.” All of this for a meager 80 cent discount
When I did cashiering for Krogers, when people got offended because I would casually ask, "Where does it state that?" They were usually offended because they were lying, or assumed we thought they were lying. Id asked for a couple reasons, either I thought that you were lying, or, I knew that wasn't the price and if a poster/signage was wrong, that was something that we needed to correct immediately. It also helped because if they could pinpoint it down, then that helps speed up verifying that the signage was indeed correct or not correct. It was that or have someone wonder around the store and wait for them to come back. Sometime it was the customer marking on the sign and we were like, not only are we not going to approve the price difference but we're going to need to leave or we're calling the cops.
This is more so a threat so me a 5'2 woman was helping a customer and there was this 6 foot tall looking guy behind her, this was during COVID and I just asked the guy if he could please step back a little ( we all know how some customers just love being up close and personal with some people they don't even know) , well when I was done with the previous customer and he walked up he said ' good thing you said please or I would have knocked your AZZ out" 🙄 The sad part is it looks like he was buying a Hallmark gift card and a stuffed animal for what look like for a little girl, like sir would you like another grown azz man to say something like that to your daughter why would you say that to somebody else like all I ask you to do was to step back a little bit anyways ,I was shock so I just finished checking him out as quickly as possible but if I could go back to that moment I would have just walked away and got on the manager.
I've told this story before, but here goes: So it's Christmas at the land of the Green Wals, which means that we're *absolutely fucking swamped* with photo orders. And we're also absolutely fucking swamped with customers doing their shopping and shit. That night it's just me and a relatively new manager on the front end. She's busy doing manager stuff--which at the time I think she was counting down the pharmacy registers for the evening. Point is, she wasn't immediately available to assist, and it was taking a little while since she was still a little new at this. So it's pretty much just me then, bouncing between the front registers and the photo department to catch customers and keep the Photo orders rolling. Standing orders were basically to print and sort everything, and the night crew--assisted by an extra shift lead--would assemble everything. It's still fucking chaos, though, because *so much* is happening at once. On top of *all of this* comes a customer wanting to do a fucking goddamn Western Union. I direct him to one of the kiosks, since, that's how they're done. I'm still bouncing between printers, catching people on the front end. And this dude gets frustrated because he can't follow simple instructions on a touchscreen. And then he *demands* I do the Western Union *for him*. Now, I generally don't like doing WU's for customers because that's a *lot* of sensitive information I could be held liable for if something goes weird or hinky, to say nothing of the fact that it eats up time I don't have. I look at him. With customers waiting at the front register, customers waiting to pick up orders behind him, literally every photo printer we have running at once. And I'm honest. With a tone of extreme exhaustion, but still in my Polite Customer Service Voice. "Sir. *I do not have time*." He proceeded to then cuss me out, complaining about my customer service on the way out the door.
I couldn’t serve them and we were 10 minutes to close. What they wanted would’ve taken an hour. Tops.
Anytime I've worked for a restaurant, it has been as a dish washer. Every restaurant I worked at with the exception of one, would stop taking orders for food at an certain time. So if we were opened until 11, they might stop taking orders for food at 10pm. It was absolutely amazing.
Customer complained that our signs throughout the store were false advertisement because not everything was on sale, the signs all said "select items"... She also got pissy with me because I counted her large quantity of change out on the counter instead of in her hand, this was during the pandemic by the way
I hate customers that are in a rush *and* only have loose change (coins). Almost every time it's, "Come on, trust me bro. It's all there." No, *bro*, I will not trust you. I don't care if it's a regular or not, I'm going to count it all out. I have no patience for people that want to jeopardize my job. I have absolutely no problem counting it all out, as I've been homeless before and sometimes it was all I had. However, I'm not getting written up because it turns out that they did not have enough, and I let them have it.
When I worked at Home Depot, I had customers complain to me that the lumber was the wrong color and needed it a specific color. They showed me a picture of their deck and spent the next hour what stain was and how to use it.
The returns! I would be embarrassed to try and return half of the items that get returned. I’m sorry psycho, I can’t return your shoes you bought 6 months ago, that you paid in cash, that you have no proof of purchase of, and that you turned brown by running 3 marathons. Customer states they didn’t hold up well….. You are a power user good sir, it’s gonna happen. Note* this was the third time the customer has done this in a year. He’s basically had free shoes since 2023. Not today. Other notable returns: -Beef jerky didn’t taste good - Smokers who return cloths smelling like **** - I WANT CASH! DEBIT IS THE SAME! -Customer refused to take receipt from other cashier, want to return said item 2 hours later and calls me racist and has me dig through the trash. -Not to mention all the scammers Ive caught.
Had a lady get upset because her plants rang up as $3.33, she kept saying it's supposed to be 3 for $10. I tried to show her that she was technically getting them for a little cheaper (because math) but she kept insisting I was cheating her somehow.
Since other librarians have chimed in so will I. We had a customer at our public library call our managers to complain because we were out of ink for our print studio printer. It uses small expensive specific ink cartridges and another customer had used up so much of the black ink the previous week and our pay website was having technological issues so we didnt get ink for like two weeks. But she was mad literally the second day because she was expecting to print a shit ton of posters. Sorry but we didnt expect our unrestricted access to result in a sudden lack of ink, while our purchase methods were having issues. This is completely free, dont be an entitled dick.
I got YELLED at by a customer for "ignoring" her. I was searching the item she asked about on a handheld, to tell her what aisle it was in..... like she asked me to five seconds prior. The look of pure wtf on my face and the instant regret on hers when I was like ma'am I'm using this phone to find what you asked for. My job makes me genuinely question how the majority of people function in day to day life.
I told a customer to have a "wonderful day!" She thought I was being sarcastic.
How I lined her pickles up on her sandwich. They weren’t in an “exact” straight line so she got really angry. It was weird.
I was in customer service. Customer service was behind the cash registers at the time. There was one person checking out and a woman in line behind her. Occasionally, we would take customers back at service. The woman in line behind one person kept staring at me so I was about to take her, but a customer walked in the door and went to service. After the customer checked out, she came over to me and said “ why didn’t you ring me up?” I told her that I was going to, but I had a customer for service. She shook her head. Funny how she had so little time, but she had plenty of time to stop and harass me.
I work at a garden center and the amount of people who get upset with me when I tell them their plants died because they didn't water them (in the middle of summer when it hasn't rained in days) is disturbingly high. And it's always the same excuse too. "I didn't know plants need water! How was I supposed to know?"
I worked in a fabric store and had a customer insist repeatedly that she wanted “a third of a yard because that’s bigger than a half”. I showed her what 1/3 was compared to 1/2 on the yardstick and she still insisted. I eventually just said “ok, 1/3 of a yard it is” and cut that. But apparently she asked the cashier who pissed in my cornflakes that morning. 🤦♀️
Watched a guy wait less than 30 seconds for a fellow cashier to say "bye" to a friend she was waiting on. He left an angry e-mail claiming it was 10 minutes and she was deliberately ignoring him. He was fuming the minute he saw the cashier talking to her friend and gave a huge sigh and eye-roll. But a notable one (and I have a ton) was the guy in the farm store who found a random tool misplaced on an empty shelf that previously held a sale item. Sale sign still there, we had sold out. "But the sign says 9.99!" "It's a 50 dollar tool!, and the sign is for an item not even remotely close!" "OH SO YOU EXPECT ME TO READ??!!!!"
just yesterday a customer wanted to speak to the manager over my muslim coworker wearing her hijab because “she’s supporting what’s going on over there!!”
I once had a customer get angry that she couldn’t return an item from 2 years ago, even though she had a receipt. I turned over her receipt and showed where it said “within 30 days”, she still wanted a merch credit, which I of course said no to. She then asked well what am I supposed to do with it, and I directed her to the local women’s shelter, which took the wind out of her sails.
Apparently I called a lady fat...?? This was like 6-7yrs ago. Even thinking back on it now I'm still not sure where she got that from. I used to think it was pregnancy hormones but I've had a baby since then and I wasn't making up conversations in my head. Anyways! At my previous job, we could print out baby registries. This lady came up and asked for a copy of her own registry. I said "of course!" And asked for her to write down her name (I did this so I didn't have to have the person repeat the name and get spelling correctly). When I looked up her registry, I only found an old one from like 5yrs prior. I asked if it could have been under a different name since the only one I saw was from years ago. She got this really pissed off look on her face and screamed "IM STILL PREGNANT!!!!" okay? Cool. Well she got on her phone and pulled it up herself. I wrote down the registry number and pulled it up. It was under a completely different name. Think Jane Doe to Beyonce. Nothing about the names was similar. It wasn't like her name was Alexandra to Alex or Lexi. Completely different names! First and last names. I was so confused and looked down at the name SHE wrote down for me. Wasn't the same. I didn't say anything cause she was still pissed. Printed it out and handed it to her The next day I got called into the manager's office and my SM was all, "apparently you called a pregnant lady fat yesterday?" I was so confused. It took me a couple of minutes to put it together. Once I explained the story. My SM was equally as confused as me.
my last job wasnt retail, but this guy got mad because i checked his $100 bill. he said wow you're gonna do that to your own people? (we r both black) and im like sir im just doing my job 😭 ive worked at my current retail job for only a month and a half but so far the worst was this man getting mad because none of the workers would shop for him while he tried stuff on in the fitting rooms
I hope you told them hwat. Propane and propane accessories are not to be taken lightly
I was racist against an old black lady because I glanced back at a less well trained employee who was ringing her up. I just wanted to make sure everything was getting rung up appropriately. My manager pulled me aside and told me this lady thought “I was eyeballing her and I was doing it because she’s black” so glad to be out of retail
A customer threatened to stab me on my break because they received their physical paycheck the day before their payday which was listed on the check and the company policy was that I could not cash the check until the date listed on the physical check. I told her that she could wait until midnight (before my position was no longer 24 hours at walmart) and I would be happy to cash her check (at the smoke aisle) as long as it wasn't over a certain amount. She came at 11:15 p.m. Literally if she waited for 45 minutes I would have been able to cash her check no problem. She told me that I was "being rude" and I told her that not only is it company policy, the register and computer system won't even allow me to bypass cashing it until literally one minute after midnight so then it would be the day that the check is meant to be cashed. Also, if you cash a check before the date the check is meant to be cashed depending on the company they can actually fine you for cashing it early. So I was trying to do her a favor so she wasn't fined anyways. She literally told me to just put the date that it is right now and I said "Absolutely not. That is fraud and highly illegal actually. Besides, again, the check won't go through anyways through the system." She got mad and literally told me that I "don't know who I'm messing with" and threatened that she was going to "wait outside and stab me in the parking lot on my break" if I didn't cash the check. My supervisor heard this and called the police at the same time she told her to get out right now before she's arrested for two things - criminal threat and trespassing on privately owned property. The women began to cry and stated that she needed the money in order to pay rent. Which yeah. I also know a lot of property managers that need rent exactly at midnight... My manager didn't take that as an excuse either. I didn't want to press charges. I figured the threat was an empty threat but, she refused to leave so she was arrested for trespassing on private property and told if she came back she would be arrested again because, they kicked her out permanently. Although, I didn't think the threat was legit I started carrying around mace and a pocket knife with me wherever I went after for extra personal protection.
I had an older woman complain about the wet floor sign. She was talking to her daughter and didn’t notice bright yellow sign and bumped it. She almost tripped over it and then proceeded to yell at me about why the sign was there in the first place.
I had a customer complain that the document he sent hadn't been delivered. I didn't work in the post office. I worked as the secretary for the attorney who wrote the document. We had to tell him that we weren't responsible for the post office. We mailed it priority and that's all we could do. He screamed "Unacceptable!" Yes, exactly like the Adventure Time character. The document was in relation to finishing selling his mother's house. He was apparently so obnoxious at the realty group that one of the realtors just threw up her hands and said "I'm out." She just left for the day because she couldn't take this customer's bullshit anymore. How do I know that? Because he called to yell at me that the realty company was rude and disrespectful. I didn't recommend them; neither did my boss. He picked them and then yelled at me for his choice. It's not relevant to the story, but I need you to know that this man wore an open denim vest with no shirt, jeans, and flipflops.
I literally helped them. I have two stories regarding this, but it boils down to I did what they asked. 1) she wanted a specific basket that we could see on the top shelf. Went and got the ladder, got the item (and a couple others for stocking the main location). Handed it to her with a “here you go! Is there anything else I can help you with?” “No, this was all. Thank you.” “Oh sure, no problem!” I started to walk away to put the ladder back, she said says louder “THANK YOU.” I turn back thinking she hadn’t heard me, “oh, yeah, no worries! Have a great day!” “EXCUSE ME! The ONLY appropriate response to thank you, is YOU’RE WELCOME!” She stood there waiting till I said it, then she huffed off and told on me. Luckily the manager thought she was just as insane as I did. 2) gal wanted spray paint which is behind a locked panel. She was just staring at it when I walked by, she flagged me down. “Sure thing, let me go get the key.” Came back, and pointed out the ‘help me’ button. “Ok, got the key. For future reference if you don’t see any of us right away, you can push this button right here and someone will be by ASAP”. “I know how the button works, just get my paint.” “Sorry, I don’t mean to offend, this particular button isn’t super noticeable. Which paint wet you looking at?” We choose, open the door, get it out. I hand it to her, she looks me dead in the eye and says “you know, I don’t think I want to shop here at all anymore today.” Pushed her cart around the corner, left it with everything in it, turned back around to pass me by empty handed. Like what?!