I work as a technician for an optical company that sells direct to the consumer. I fix their optics, and have to take tech support calls for our products. Most of the people I talk with are level headed as they have the product in hand and want it to work, and we will explain it, and they will get it, and how to work it, and are on the most part appreciative. Thank god. However when the sales/customer service line overflows, I have to take those calls until the lines die down. These calls are the worst. However there is one customer that is a problem for my department and customer service. He lives in the Southwest and prefaces every call to us with the fact that he is "a disabled vet". Every interaction with his is a problem because he is an insufferable ass, and it was ALWAYS our fault. This has been going on for about 10 years, and he has never been happy with us bending over and lubing up our assholes for his shit. He just won't be happy with any answer anyone gives him However in speaking with the department manager not long ago, he decided to tell my supervisor what the problem was why he could never be pleased with us. In face, he had experience with the issue. Everyone in our company was on drugs. That is right, we were smoking the reefer, snorting to crack, huffing the glue. We dropped acid before our shifts, and were rolling on E at the start of everyday. So about 4 days after the last conversation with my supervisor, a box is delivered to the supe; unmarked. My supervisor opens it up. In the box is a deluxe drug test kit for around 100 people with a note from the customer described above ordering my supervisor to conduct drug tests for everyone in our company, and fire anyone who tests positive. Focus: For all you people who deal with retail or customers in general, describe your most absurd customer interactions.
I had a customer yelling so hard he had spittle flying out of his mouth. He, for some reason, had one of his shoes off and in his hand. He then poked me with his shoe right in the chest to emphasize his point. His point was he did not want to pay to replace an oil-pan because he stripped his drain plug beyond repair. Somehow that should have been covered under a manufacturer's warranty -- his car had over 130,000 miles on it, too. When he fucking shoe-poked me his wife just looked at him for a second then just laid into him, apologized to me and walked away. She still comes in for service on her vehicle, I hope he's taking a dirt nap on a silk pillow some where, but they're divorced now.
Anti-Focus: I used to work at a music rehearsal space somewhere really obscure in Cambridge. This place was really fucking hard to find... like on par with Narnia. Naturally one of the hardest parts of the job was giving people directions which I would fuck up on the regular. This one time we were expecting Peter Wolf from the J Geils band.. (their hit was "Centerfold"). He called up and I gave him pretty solid directions I thought, and then at the end of the conversation he goes "Oh, by the way, can I have your guys' #?" "The fuck? You called us dude." "...what was your name again?" "uhhh.." My tiny little brain couldn't appreciate the possibility that he got transferred by 411 or something. I sassed the guy who sang Centerfold... Center-fold.
When I was first working computer retail in 1988, management could pretty much do whatever they wanted to from obscene markups, reselling opened/promo software, package only deals, and merchandise credit on returns. I sold a guy a simple book keeping application that would run on his Apple II for about fifteen bucks. I explained the policies and he signed off on the invoice and seemed pleased. About two weeks later his baby's momma/book keeper stormed into the store, threw the box at me and demanded her money back. I asked for her receipt and she said she didn't have one. I pointed to the open box and explained that we couldn't return opened software. I also explained that if she was to find the receipt and there was a problem with the software then the best thing I could do for her was a merchandise credit. She started yelling at me calling me a "jew", insulting the store, its management, and giving me the finger all while holding a toddler. After she left I lit up a cigarette and chilled out behind the register because in 1988 we could still do shit like that.
I've worked in wireless sales for 3 years now. So I have had my fair share of absolutely ridiculous customers. Of course can I think of all the crazy as I sit to type this, well of course not, that would be too easy. At the moment the cell phone store I'm working at is located in a very small and poor town, so almost every single customer is completely off the deep end. The most recent one I've had is a guy came into my store and wanted to return his phone. I started talking with him and looking at his paper work and came to realize that he had purchased the phone over a year ago. Now our return policy is 15 days and it has to be within 60 minutes of use. So I start explaining this to him and he completely flys off the deep end. "What do you mean I can't return this phone! This is an outrage!" and I did my normal sir I'm very sorry for your inconvience bullcrap blah blah, but as you can see you signed this return policy a year ago. Then he continues to call me every single name in the book...AND THEN HE CALLS THE COPS. Oh yes people he called the cops because I wouldn’t return his year old phone. So the cops came, which makes me giggle and kicked him out of my store. Last year I almost had a same incident now that I think about it, I couldn’t return a phone because it was past the return date policy and the guy got so mad he threw his phone at me and screamed at me in a high pitch voice. I'm pretty sure I actually cried that day. Fuckers.
Being a barman can be a lot of fun. Being basically paid to get drunk, socialise, get people drunk and flirt with girls is great at times, it sometimes makes up for having to put up with the shit with working in a club. Dealing with aggressive drunks however, is never fun. I was working on the upstairs bar on my own, it was pretty quiet, maybe only a dozen people there in all, mostly friends apart from a couple of cute girls and two loud guys. The two guys were creeping one of the girls out. Even from across the room I could see that this guy was making the girl very uncomfortable so naturally I became Captain Save-a-ho. While I was idly chatting away to her this fuck stain comes up to me claiming that I didn't put any Jack Daniels in his JD and coke. He, of course was wrong and told him if he has a problem go down stairs and talk to my manager who will gladly resolve this situation. Somehow he interpreted that as a challenge and offered to "Take this outside". I was baffled, well and truly. Who in their right mind would try and start a fight with a barman? It's one of the more stupid things you can do in a club. What did concern me was the empty glass in his hand and that he looked angry enough to use it. I'm no fighter, so that idea was just a non starter, he was too angry to be talked down at this point and his friend was too drunk to talk sense into him which left me with one other option "You want to take this outside?... come the fuck on then!" to be fair he looked as shocked as I was feeling, did my bluff succeed? Did the notion that I was ready and willing to fight him make him reconsider? No. No it didn't. But that was exactly what I wanted. He followed me out of the club, one thing he didn't notice was me talking to the bouncers explaining the situation so when he went to take a swing at me, he was already restrained before his fist was cocked. Watching him plead his case to try and get back in to the club certainly made the cigarette I was smoking all the more enjoyable. Recently I've started putting customers who piss me off on time outs and tell them to sit on the naughty step if they've done something to annoy me. Fuck, if you act like a child, I'm gonna treat you like one. Works though.
I work in materials testing as a metallurgist which doesn't normally lend itself to particularly crazy customers, however our listing as a testing laboratory does bring in the occasional weirdo. I had some guy who said he was a Vietnam veteran who wanted some information on the implant that the government put in his head for some "experiments." He said the experiments were over so he wanted the implant deactivated. He felt that a strong magnetic field would be effective. I told him that we didn't have any equipment that would help him but he might be able to convince a scrap yard to let him stand underneath their electromagnet for a while. I asked him to call me back and let me know how it went, but I guess that maybe the government wasn't through with him because I never heard anything.
Oh boy, I work as a cashier at a major book retailer in Canada. Sometimes there is a huge discrepancy between the Canadian and US prices and it's printed on the back of the book in plain sight, so I get a lot of shit from that because for some reason customers think that I (or even my managers) have the power to change the prices on the books. "Why is the Canadian price so much more expensive than the American price. We're nearly at par!" "It was at that exchange rate when we bought it from the publisher." "Can I pay for it in American?" "Sure, but we still have to charge you the Canadian price on the book." "I want to pay in American for the American price!" At this point I've had customers swear at me, call me stupid, and/or tell me they'll never buy from our company ever again. Fine. If they don't storm off I get my manager because there's nothing else I can do and I won't try to 'splain things I'm not that well-informed in. Though I've asked my managers to explain it to me and I've done a little research, myself: "We buy and sell books in Canadian dollars. We do not profit from a strengthened Canadian dollar. A majority of our suppliers are based in the US. These suppliers add an extra charge, sometimes 10-15% more, on items shipped to Canada due to the extra cost of doing business in Canada like freight, minimum wage etc." "Prices on the books often reflect a rate of exchange that existed six months ago and longer. Even when the Canadian dollar, which closed Friday at $1.03 (U.S.), is at par or higher than its U.S. counterpart, publishers and booksellers argue that it doesn't automatically follow that Canadians would pay the same price or lower. That simple equation doesn't take into account the higher costs of doing business in Canada, which is one-tenth the size of the U.S. market." Sources: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/pricing/p ... artnb.html http://www.thestar.com/article/277648 Don't even get me started on having to charge customers 5 cents for a plastic biodegradable bag. Sometimes I hate Toronto...
I used to work at a ghetto ass liquor store and the quotes and stories me and my buddies had from that place were awesome. Crackheads trying to barter with us for liquor with clothes he stole from homeless people? Check Homeless guy drunk/drugged out of his mind flashing people at our back dock/keg loading door? Check...said homeless guy freaking out banging on the dock door (keep in mind he is outside) screaming "Let me out, I'm locked inside" check. Homeless guy attacking another homeless guy with a weedwhacker because he wouldn't buy him a $1.25 steel reserve? check. Propositions from homeless/crackhead women booze for sex? you better believe it. That job was awesome. We used to play the "guess how much she weighs game". Whenever we'd get female customers we'd each guess how much we thought she weighed when she walked in then card her no matter how old she looked to see what weight she put on her drivers license. The person who got the least amount right bought the case of beer for after hours. Most of them were pretty close to what we would guess but when you would get someone who lied by a lot, we guessed 200-215 and her license said 130, it was hard to keep a straight face and we'd start cracking up as we were trying to ring them up leaving them utterly confused.
in the three years I've worked at a datacentre, we've had three major outages. Huge suck every time they happen but you notice a funny phenomenon The less a customer matters, the more likely they are to stir shit up Generally someone who colocates a 1U server (pays us about $60/month) will raise hell and threaten to leave at the mildest inconvenience. It's confusing how entitled they feel, vs the guys colocationg 2-3 cabinets (at 800 per cab a month not counting bandwidth commit) just take it (and the financial reimbursement we give anyone when we have an outage) and are generally understanding.
I just got an interesting, and really fucking presumptuous email. The email was in German, which in a way I can forgive as our company advertises in a couple of German trade publications. However attached were several pictures of a rock that he wanted to know if it was a meteorite. But seriously we are an optical company, and he wants to have us evaluate a rock to see if it was a meteorite? Why would he send an email in another language asking us to evaluate a rock? It is definitely not a meteorite by the way, and told him, crushing his hopes of selling it for 25,000 Euro.
I work in a bowling alley, so I naturally deal with alot of drunk people. My favorite incident was after one of those 21+ moonlight bowls, the way it works at my alley is that you got 40 continuous frames of bowling, and once those are up, you're finished. What this means is that the last people finished are always the most drunk, because they spent more time drinking than bowling. There was part of a wedding party bowling one night (we also hold wedding banquets...it's kind of a weird place) and they were the last to finish. A big guy in his 40s walks to the counter and throws his street shoes on it. They *used* to be white shoes, but they were caked entirely by about an inch and a half of mud and/or shit. He says "alright guys...I am way too drunk to get these bowling shoes off, so I'm going to leave my shoes here and bring your shoes back tomorrow and pick mine up. I come here all the time, it's cool." I told him we couldn't let him do this and so he started screaming at me, threatening to sue me and the company. At this point the girl I was working with called security. The bride came up and calmed the guy down and convinced him to take off the bowling shoes. He sat on the ground, cross-legged like a four year old and threw the shoes around. After he got his shoes on the bride started walking to the bathroom. He followed her in. He was not the groom. The security guy came in and he was just talking to us, when he looked over and said "Why is there a guy coming out of the women's room?" This was still less interesting than the time a dead guy was found on our golf course.
I get requests to determine if a random rock is a meteorite on a fairly regular basis. I normally refer these guys to one of our competitors. I get the sneaking suspicion that they're doing the same to me.
A few years back I worked for customer service for a cellphone company, I had to deal with jerk/people who didn't know what they were talking about on a regular basis. I remember one time getting a person who said he was promised a $100 credit last time he called in. I looked through the notes, and nope.. The last time he called us was three months earlier. He wasn't entitled to a credit. He abruptly hung up. Five minutes later I get him again, same spiel. He lies even more, I tell him again, he hangs up. This time I added a high priority note about it. Sure enough the guy ended up speaking to a colleague of mine 3 cubicles down.. Five minutes later. Most of the bad calls had to do with some redneck going over their minutes a big deal, roaming in Canada, etc but expected us to credit it all. I'm not going to credit a cent if they are going to be rude. I hated that job The people expecting a free phone with no contract were annoying too
I'm a chef by trade which means I don't have to deal with the public for the most part. This is the job of the front of the house staff and I for one am grateful of almost never having to deal with customers. This is due to the only customer I've ever had to deal with, a man by the name of Price. Price was a professor at Columbia, he taught who gives a fuck. He was in his early 60's and might have been the most pretentious person I've ever met, the kind of guy who would drop opera references when describing a baseball game and he spoke with an affected accent that was like listening to Donald Sutherland trying to speak with an English Upper Crust/ Belgian Street Pimp accent. As pretentious as he was it was nothing compared to how much of a massive alcoholic he was. He would start the day by coming in at 11am to drink a bottle of overrated 80 dollar Merlot. He already smelled of scotch by the time we would unlock the door for lunch service, so this was not his first drink of the day. He would finish the bottle in about 15-20 minutes and then go to teach a class at 11:30. When he would come back he would then order by the glass whatever wine our Sommelier would pitch him. At one point the Sommelier came back and told me that he could pass him a glass of Mad/Dog at 15 dollars a glass and Price would rave about it, so long as he was told it was French. Anyway, Price would drop about 200 dollars a day on his alcohol tab. He also would dine in for lunch and dinner at least 5 times a week. He did this every single day I was there. He would say that he was independently wealthy, and I had to believe him, because he paid in cash. Apparently Price had been coming there for well over a decade. He would get shitfaced on good wine every single day over that time, and this was definitely taking it's toll on his health. The only time he missed time was when something would happen to his health and he would end up in the hospital. I really had no problem with this, or really with Price for that matter. He was a pretty nice guy, although completely limited in conversation. It would always start about the meal or wine he just ingested and this somehow the conversation would turn into another of his longwinded tales of his travels to Europe or "The Orient" or whatever and how he was really into fucking 13 year old prostitutes (boys and girls) while drinking absinthe or paint or whatever. He was a pretty wild guy in his youth, and this was the end result. I never once thought he was full of shit, but I did tire of his stories. His pretentiousness definitely overwhelm Around the middle of my externship Price just stopped showing up. This was a man you could set your watch by, and yet he did not come in for over a month. Then one day I see him come in, this time he's about 30 pounds lighter and now walking with a pronounced limp while using the benefit of a cane. Apparently he had gotten very ill, and that the time in the hospital he lost weight. He had apparently gotten very ill and almost died in the hospital. He assured me that he would gain it back as he ordered my crawfish etouffee and ordered his usual bottle of Merlot. Price finished the bottle well before his dish was served. He didn't even bother using the glass and drank it in huge gulps straight from the bottle. This was unusual, because he always drank from a glass and had a quirk where he never wanted to drink from the same glass. He had about 5 bites of his lunch and turned flush white and limped with his cain to the bathroom. For about an hour he was in the bathroom when I told the waitress to go see if he was okay. I was worried that I fucked up the dish so bad that he died. No such luck, he was just a little sick and needed some extra time. He came out, paid his check and left the restaurant. After he left I noticed the worst odor I have ever smelled was permeating from the men's room. It smelled like death just took a shit and smeared it all over the walls of the bathroom. I was positive he dropped a deuce on the floor or something, so I inspected the men's room. Other than a few specs of water on the sink, the men's room was pristine. However, the smell was just awful. I couldn't figure out what it was, but after the lunch service was over, me and a dishwasher cleaned the entire rest room from ceiling to floor with some high grade pine cleaner. Now the place smelled like shit, but with a strong undertone of a forest. Price came back later that evening. It had begun to rain earlier and Price came in dripping wet. Not that he cared, he was there to get shitfaced so lack of an umbrella was not going to stop this man. Again, he stunk of scotch so he had been drinking for a while now. He sat down in his usual seat and began his ritual of badgering the Sommelier on what new wines the restaurant was serving and what meal he should pair it with. About 10 minutes go by and I begin to smell the death shit come through the doors of the kitchen. About 5 minutes later the maitre de comes in and says to me that he thinks Price stepped in horse shit, because he had something wet and muddy all over his shoe and asks me to talk to him because he was embarrassed to confront him on the matter. Sure, why not, I speak to him every day, and by this time I was the person who he normally would gab to during his drunken lunches. So I go out and see Price sitting at the side of the bar, and as the maitre de had told me, there was something dripping from his shoe that looked a lot like grey mud. It was obvious that this was the source of this awful smell, but I also notice that it's all over his pant leg as well, as if he rolled in a pile of grey horse shit. Anyway, I go up to Price and tell him that he's got horse shit on him. He looks at me like I'm crazy. He has no idea of what I'm talking about. I finally asked him if he notices a horrible smell coming from his person? He still has no clue, so I point out his leg and how he has stuff dripping off of his person. He excuses himself and goes to the bathroom. Great, I think. Now I'll have to clean the bathroom again. He comes out a few minutes later and has cleaned off his shoe. I go back to the kitchen and in another 5 minutes the maitre de comes in again and tells me to come out once again. I go outside to the bar and Price is sitting in his normal spot. However, the shoe that was dry and clean just moments earlier was again DRIPPING GREY MUD. I finally go up to Price and ask him what the hell is wrong? He then said to me calmly in his most affected voice: "Dear boy, no worries. I just got a colostomy bag from the hospital, and forgot to screw it back on correctly when I emptied it earlier." If you haven't figured it out yet, he was dripping partially digested shit from an open valve that came from his intestines onto a floor of a place that served food and was so drunk that he didn't think it was a problem. That was the last time I ever dealt with a customer in a restaurant.
When I was younger, I used to work as a clerk at a video store. Now before anyone starts with any "Hey ya'lllllllll!! SaintBastard worked a cash register at Video Depot! Hyuk-Hyuk!" Shutthefuckup. It's not original, I've heard it before, and most importantly, it's not funny. That's right jackass, not one damn person is laughing. 'Cept God. At you. And it's wasn't a bad job. The pay was decent and I barely did any work. Vampires did more during the day than I did. But there's one thing that bugged the SHIT out of me. See, as a part of a community effort, the place beside us hired... tards. And not your average, minimum-wage, garden variety dumbfuck either. I'm talking about a full fledged helmet wearing, drool rag donning, 46-years-old-but-still-will-throw-a-fit fucktard. Apparently, the management over there had to hire so many of these dopey bastards to work their more menial jobs. It was some sorta... Retard Outreach Program. And it wasn't so bad most of the time. They would stick them all in the back of the dish room, that way no one could tell the slobber from the water. But for the last two weeks I worked there, the silly fuckers seemed to be everywhere. I think they had hired too damn many of them. And they kept making their way over to our store. I swear, every damn place you turned there was a fucking curled hand staring right back at you. And don't get me wrong either. I have nothing against the goofy lil' bastards. I mean, I love retards. You ride with them anywhere, you always get great parking, and the chicks just flock to a wheelchair and droopy mouth. But I'm coming out of the bathroom one morning, just as I'm opening the door, and BAM! ...a fucktard. There he was, all four feet of him, glasses so goddamn thick that if he looks at a map, he can see people waving, and with that goatee. Let me tell you about this goatee. It didn't even go all the way down to his chin. It stopped. Two inches high. Yet it went all the way around his salivating little mouth. Now...get a mental of that. Yes. A perfect motherfucking circle. Every time I saw him, I just wanted to punt a field goal with his ass. And then we had Becky. She's two fucking feet tall, and three hundred sagging pounds. Just looking at her made my cholesterol go up. The girl looked like a frickin' weeble. And of course...they all just LUUUURRRRVVEEE me. They all had to tell me about their damn weekends. "'Elloooooo Misser SaintBastaaaaaard!!! Gueees what I's did 'is wee'en'." "Hmmm...Fell in love with a de-clawed cat?" "HA-HA HEE-HA *stomps foot* Hur-hur-hur-heeeeeee HA!! Yer so funi Misser SaintBastaaaard!!" I guess it was cute at first, in a tard kind of way, but having to listen to this crap every start of every damn week? It was enough to make you want to hand one of them a knife and ask them "whose special". I blame it on the damn town. It’s not like the community's was doing this because they were so nice. Hell. They were probably doing it because they were tired of these silly fuckers spending all damn day walking down Main and Elm, and trying to tell everyone that's at a red light about "ther wee'ennnnnn!!!!" It wasn't kindness. The street sweepers were just tired of picking up random piles of human shit every twenty-three feet. Or maybe I'm just bitter that they were payed better than me. Either way.
I just want to say: if your meal isn't what you expected and I quote "not fit for a dog", don't eat it all and then ask for a refund. Complain straight away then we can either replace it or refund it. But if you've eaten it all then you just look like a cheap fucker looking for a free meal. And don't expect high class food in a pub. "I don't usually complain" is a big red flag that you complain a lot. "I'm not having a go at you love", yes you are, but I couldn't give a shit I don't cook the food. And one piece of dodgy salad is no reason to be a bitch, especially when you're eating 2 small meals between the four of you. In my opinion, complaining should include: this food sucks, this is why. I don't want a life story on complaining in restaurants, and spend half an hour listenning to you when I could be spending that time sorting out your fricken complaint, getting you what you're due, and telling the chef's where they fucked up so they won't do it again.
Alright, I'm going to set the bar here: This might be the craziest caller we'll get on this thread, but I would be jubilant if anyone proves me wrong. "I hope they play this tape in court, ma'am."