Workplace Stories/Rants v. "But the customer is always right!!!" - General

Title should say it all. I don't have any huge stories from when I used to work as a tech at Staples to get us started, but my one big complaint was that the amount of customers who thought that I had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things printers and ink was staggering. Plenty of times I'd go up to a customer at the ink wall and ask them if they needed help and if they know what model their printer was, and god help you if the customer didn't know what ink they needed and were in a rush. I got yelled at dozens of times for not immediately knowing what make and model of printer the customer had. And then when all is said and done and I go to ring them up, they'd yell at me for the price as if I could change it for them then and there. I hated that job and I'm glad I'm out of it.

A return of working retail? At my old job I had someone who refused to let me serve them because they thought I was gay.

Co-worker is a diabetic but won't stop eating sweets, despite having a (at the time) balanced blood sugar. "I'll just use more insulin later" aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I work for the security department at a university 3rd shift and let me tell you university students are fucking retarded. Most of the students we deal with in any capacity beyond "I locked myself out of my apartment" are either turbo sheltered babies who set off the fire alarm trying to cook pasta without water (happens at least every other week) or shitheads just here to drink or do drugs [sp]Had an OD on opioids two days before finals last spring, though he woke up after a few minutes of rescue breathing[/sp]. People joke about rent-a-cops but I have stories ranging from a girl afraid to get out of her car because deer were grazing nearby to a guy who slit his wrist and then jumped out a window.

My job is waiting till a bunch of packages arrive and putting those in storage. 4 hours in and 0 packages have arrived, and everyone during lunch mocks me for doing nothing. Whatever, I get paid I suppose

I have a co-worker who at certain points of the day HAS to speak their mind whenever the news comes on. Since we work with customers, nearly everyone can hear them. Doesn't help that it's mostly something homophobic, racist, and overzealous. It gets worse when the shit they say relates [B]to people walking in and using our facility.[/B] "I'd disown my kid if they were trans, gay, or bi!" "Gay people be nice, but they go to he'll anyway because it's not right." "Asian folk be nasty!" God I wish I had the balls to report them; even some of the customers are getting tired of their rants. Oh and there is a customer that always has something to complain about. Said person is infamous to anyone she speaks to and, at worst, gets insulted at for not giving them the answer they want. Was called retarded at one point for not tailoring every little nitpick she has about our programs and our facility. Her husband is a total saint though and I wonder how he feels with her BS. She's yet to cause a disturbance so there is no ground to ban her, so we HAVE to endure it all. Days when I have to deal with both of them I have to keep myself from exploding into a ball of rage and chewing them out.

[QUOTE=maddogsamurai;52557621]I have a co-worker who at certain points of the day HAS to speak their mind whenever the news comes on. Since we work with customers, nearly everyone can hear them. Doesn't help that it's mostly something homophobic, racist, and overzealous. It gets worse when the shit they say relates [B]to people walking in and using our facility.[/B] "I'd disown my kid if they were trans, gay, or bi!" "Gay people be nice, but they go to he'll anyway because it's not right." "Asian folk be nasty!" God I wish I had the balls to report them; even some of the customers are getting tired of their rants.[/QUOTE] Report them, they are horrible, unacceptable way to act for customer facing job.

At my first job, in mid-sentence my supervisor cuts me off and goes "Wait, wait! Milf!" and just glares at some woman through the plastic window of a door. He then says that the woman was older than me but younger than him so we both had an "equal shot".

[QUOTE=xZippy;52557958]At my first job, in mid-sentence my supervisor cuts me off and goes "Wait, wait! Milf!" and just glares at some woman through the plastic window of a door. He then says that the woman was older than me but younger than him so we both had an "equal shot".[/QUOTE] :pudge: I think your supervisor needs a supervisor. Also, I found out more about my co-worker. Not only are they an irresponsible diabetic, but they also: 1. Forgot to mention they're a smoker; which of course does wonders for diabetes. 2. Made a GoFundMe to help with finances on moving, held a party for their local fundraisers on the weekend, then called in sick Monday because they probably drank too much (and probably completely fucked over their blood sugar) 3. Was gifted really nice cuts of steak (probably 2 pound worth?) by a local butcher who does business with us. Ate it all in one night then called in sick again. 4. Are driving without insurance 5. Are driving WITHOUT A LICENSE 6. Has a warrant out for them in another state for unpaid tickets They're super nice, friendly and helpful, and I'd hate for them to see me type this, but [I]Jesus[/I], they do the dumbest shit. Latest breaking news is they're currently out for the week trying to pass a 6mm kidney stone.

Just want to let you all know by the way that if you ever shop at Staples, as much as the management drives it into the EasyTech's heads that we needed to get sales on their "Liquid Armor" screen protector liquid, it's snake oil. Up to 99% rubbing alcohol and adds no hardness or scratch resistance to the screens, and yes, it's been tested. My generally nice manager would hound on me because my sales on Liquid Armor were low, but as long as I could prove that I was still at least offering it there was nothing he could do about it. I'm not gonna go for the hard sell on something that I know is bullshit and was ultimately a mistake on the company's part for selling it.

I worked at a coffee shop during college. I'll pop in here once in a while and tell some stories because people get fucking entitled about their coffee let me tell you. During my first week, I was serving a huge line of customers when this guy just blasts in through the front door, comes directly to the front of the line, and drops money on the counter. I had no idea who he was but the second I try to ask him what he wants he starts yelling at me, yelling at the man I was serving, and yelling for the manager by name. What had happened was, this man was a regular customer who expected the staff to recognize him by his car and make his special-order coffee in advance so he can walk to the front counter and pay exact change with no tip and walk back out without having to wait or talk to anyone. Apparently this man had run up and down the management chain bitching to anyone and everyone who would listen, generally just being a massively self-entitled cunt, and he had gotten what he wanted by order of high management. We called this man "Honey Boy" because he took his super special snowflake coffee with a spoonful of "fuck you stock this ingredient just for me". But it's my first week, right? I didn't even know this guy existed. Nope, unforgivable. This grown-ass man is having a fit of honeysteria because management didn't mention him while they were training me. He wanted me gone. Apparently the 30 seconds it had taken another employee to make his coffee and the subsequent ten minutes he'd spent arguing with my manager had cost him time and money equivalent to my entire employment so fuck me. Honestly speaking these visits to our shop and the resultant arguments were definitely the only activity Honey Boy saw on a regular basis. He had that aura about him, ungroomed as he was, looking like someone had dropped a ball of pizza dough on the floor of a barber shop before scooping it into a faded and unwashed tank top in a failed attempt to emulate modesty. This is how this man chose to appear in public on every visit, I'm talking weekdays at 11AM, and he's going to bitch at us for a thirty second wait. Well shit good luck on your open-heart rocket science, Mr. President, don't let us slow you down. So you can bet that I remembered him from then on. I'll never forget him as long as I live. Godspeed, Honey Boy, you have left a legacy.

We charge CD's at £2.50 each at the charity shop I work at. A woman handed me a CD and said "Would it be okay if you give me a discount for this? I've seen this very same CD at PoundLand." ...Get it at fucking PoundLand then? :v:

[QUOTE=Steam-Pixie;52558438]We charge CD's at £2.50 each at the charity shop I work at. A woman handed me a CD and said "Would it be okay if you give me a discount for this? I've seen this very same CD at PoundLand." ...Get it at fucking PoundLand then? :v:[/QUOTE] £2.50? I did a brief stint at a charity shop as a volunteer and we sold ours at 50p per disk

[QUOTE=Mr Kotov;52558484]£2.50? I did a brief stint at a charity shop as a volunteer and we sold ours at 50p per disk[/QUOTE] Then again that happened about 3 years ago, so who knows they might be cheaper there now.

Our CDs were also really obscure and half the time scratched to shit so that may be why.

Someone at the thrift store I used to work at donated used hypodermic needles. Sometimes people donated kitchen garbage too.

I work at a deli in a grocery store, and I once had a customer ask me what kind of music I wanted. I was very confused, and he was getting more upset with me and telling me to pick something already so I just said "jazz, I guess". He whipped out a harmonica and started playing it. Still the weirdest experience I've had working retail.

I used to be a dishwasher at a shitty resort down the road. Worked 2 summers. Never called in once, and I always covered whenever one of my bosses (memeber of the family who owns the place) asked me to for someone else. This year, I had to call have my girlfriend call in (she works there too) because I had an emergency hospital visit and didn't have my phone with me. This was early this summer, and now I haven't been put on the schedule in 2 months. I've essentially been fired. They haven't told me anything. No calls, letters, etc. they won't respond to my texts or calls.

I work at a cashless store, we are the only one in the country out of all the franchises. We have posted signs, but people still immediately go for cash. We explain that to flabbergasted customers like 5 times a day, sometimes to someone who thinks they are going to school us on US law [URL="https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx"]so we printed the law and keep it up front.[/URL] It's really the worst when it's a kid or an adult without cards of any kind, cause that sucks for them, or if they're the smartass type they get indignant and no one's happy after that.

Anybody ever have a customer with an appearance you can only describe as sad? Once had an obese woman walk into Staples with disgusting, matted hair almost all the way down to her feet. She smelled awful but I had to go over and help her, and in the end she was nice enough, but I can't imagine what kind of squalor she had to be living in to get to the state she was in. Like I said, sad.

That coffee place I worked for also sold donuts. They were made fresh everyday and whatever donuts didn't sell would be thrown away at the end of the night. This resulted in a lot of angry and indignant customers who thought this meant they should be able to get free donuts at the end of the day. I got in so many arguments about the fact that I can't give out free food. On more than one occasion I had someone threaten to dig them out of the dumpster. One guy claimed he was legally allowed to do that, and if he got sick eating our trash donuts we were liable and he could sue us.

I work at a family cafe in a fairly small sized town, so we don't have too many nightmare customers, luckily. But it's mostly old people and they can be a mixed bag. Some of them seem like they've never ordered food at a cafe before and seem to have no idea how it actually works. Too many times to count, we've brought out lunch/coffee/desert for someone but they either didn't hear us or were away from the table, and someone else just takes it. Then, of course, that person gets upset when they don't get their food because someone just took an order they never even asked for. It's baffling and it happens almost weekly. Also one time we had this schlubby middle-aged guy in a tight suit come in with his way too young looking date. While she was off in the toilet, he told one of our waitresses (a lovely older lady who's worked here for quite a while) "Just remember that I pay for your fucking salary" out of nowhere. She was really upset by that :frown: There have been a few others but I think that's mainly it. Some people get very huffy and puffy if we run out of scones or something, but we're fortunate to have very nice regulars. I'm thankful I don't work retail, even if I hate the service industry.

[QUOTE=The golden;52558375]Cranky lady called me a "fucking psychopath" because we had no curry powder in stock. I'm not even from that department... -- Another older cranky lady called management down to complain about our "corporate lies" after I told her that we hadn't moved the dairy section and it had, in fact, been in the same spot for nearly 20 years. -- Man took a shit in the changing room. Why. -- Grumpy man comes up to me to complain about our recently completed renovation. Screams in my face: "You tell your fucking piece of shit company to go FUCK ITSELF!! YOU KEEP MOVING EVERYTHING AROUND AND IT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT". Was tempted to ask him if he would like to speak to security instead. -- Man asks me where we keep the bleach and ammonia. Uhhh... ? That'll be it for now. I've got more but I'd be here all day.[/QUOTE] ....WalMart Associate? Because that explains it perfectly.

[QUOTE=ShimTaco;52560610]I used to be a dishwasher at a shitty resort down the road. Worked 2 summers. Never called in once, and I always covered whenever one of my bosses (memeber of the family who owns the place) asked me to for someone else. This year, I had to call have my girlfriend call in (she works there too) because I had an emergency hospital visit and didn't have my phone with me. This was early this summer, and now I haven't been put on the schedule in 2 months. I've essentially been fired. They haven't told me anything. No calls, letters, etc. they won't respond to my texts or calls.[/QUOTE] I hate this kind of shit so much. Florida has really fucked up "right-to-work" laws that basically allow managers to fire people for completely fucked up reasons regardless of how little actual cause they have. This is flagrantly abused and there's basically nothing you can do about it.

Customers who change their mind 5 times a day on where they want downlights or plugs. Oh and "you'll do it for free, right?" all the time. I'm not doing shit until you make up your mind. We've been doing a radio station and they kep all this ugly ass tile which 80% of them are broken and these old ass rapid start downlights which they always make us go back out there to replace bulbs when they're too fucking cheap to get new ones. Then of course they want to upgrade everything to high tech shit after all this pain.

Another time, a woman tried to recreate the whole "I spilled hot coffee on my lap, time to sue" thing with us. She was already notorious for having filed numerous frivolous lawsuits in the past, some of which had paid out but most hadn't. She spilled her coffee and then slammed on the gas "out of pain" and crashed into our building. She then called the police and an ambulance and went to the hospital. She went out of her way to try to drum up a ton of media attention, pretending to be much more hurt than she actually was. She had a "superficial" first degree burn on her inner thigh according to the news story I read but her statements made it sound like she'd had a brush with death that would leave her scarred for life. I came into work while the police were still there. They and my manager were in the office and they called me in to see: Turns out we had a surveillance camera pointed right at the drive-thru window where the woman was and it caught the whole thing. She received her coffee, pulled off the lid, literally upended it into her own lap, screamed, then hit the gas and very intentionally like hand-over-hand steered into the corner of our building. I've never seen cops laugh that hard. We watched it on repeat like five times. :v:

I work for one of the biggest customers you can get in IT and communication. Their representative sends a replacement because of holidays.. he's 60 years old. When he can't find specific equipment he just goes: [QUOTE]Team, Your inventory report, it is attached THNX![/QUOTE] Kill me now

Happened literally yesterday. I work at a restaurant, I was working double shifts so at this point I was working 12 and a half hours with only a 20 minute break inbetween. One of my coworkers is a girl who is about 5 feet tall. Very innocent looking, super cute, you get the picture. There was a table with 5 people at it, 3 guys and 2 girl. One of the guys comes to the restaurant more often so I kinda knew him. They were all drinking and having a good time, the guy who comes in more often wanted to know the name of my coworker, and I told him I wouldn't give that to him. So later on he asks a few times more, and then he added that he wanted a threesome with her and his girlfriend, to which I also told him that wasn't happening. 15 minutes later I come to their table, he was talking with one of his female friends, and she said to him 'just go talk to her', to which he replied 'Nah, I'll just rape her.' I happened to be standing less than a feet away from him, so I turned to him and said 'you're not going to say these things here, not at my restaurant.' so he mockingly says 'oh really? What did I say then,' so I told him what he said, and he gave the generic 'whatever if you say so' answer. His friend didn't hear what he said, so he went on a huge rant about freedom of speech and how he could say whatever he wanted, and that I wasn't allowed to speak against him. After a while I went to his table, the dude ordered another drink, and his friend says 'he would like to say something to you,' but the guy himself said 'no, I don't.' They argue at the table, and I cut it short by saying 'Look man, if you have a problem feel free to talk to me, We'll work it out.' He got so angry he stormed away from the table, to a private area. His friend followed him to talk to him. When I returned to the table with his drink, his other guy friend tells me: 'I don't know what he said to you, but if he offended you or hurt your feelings, I'd like to say sorry on his behalf.' At this point I tell all his friends what he said, everyone is shocked, second guy friend leaves to join the other 2 guys. Later they come back, they tell me that they're going to work it out when they're all sober. The raper-guy left, his friends thank me for my service and said I handeld the situation correctly. I really hope the guy doesn't come back, I was so angry at him Also I hope you guys don't think I'm trying to be a white knight here, I just wanted to get this off my chest

That's not being a white knight, that's being an upstanding citizen and good person. I'm glad you helped that scumbag's friends see what kind of person he really was.

One night a woman came in near closing time and complained that she would have her groceries checked out by a male - I was doing front end stuff (sometimes cashier) and the closing cashier was a guy as well. Head cashier ends up checking her out, and afterwards checked her store card to see how much she had spent in the past year at any store in the chain, came up to less than 100 bucks so my head cashier basically said that she doesn't get to dictate our scheduling, and if she wanted choice then maybe she should have come in earlier. But more importantly since she had spent so little money we couldn't give less of a fuck what she thought. ------- One morning I was going out to the bottle return room to fix a machine that was jammed, I heard a commotion outside the walmart next door (its connected to our building). I thought it was someone arguing with their spouse or something, but then the guy turns towards me. He points directly at me and says "That'll teach you pieces of shit to cast a hex on my milk". At this point I think I'm going to get stabbed by crazy guy. I duck into the bottle room to hide, hoping he'll turn around: he did. Police came a few minutes later, he had threatened to blow walmart up. Which is what the "that'll teach you" was about, and he was brought to the psych ward. ------ Another time a coworker and I were cleaning out where we stage bags full of bottles and the bins for glass bottles, and bringing them to the bottle trailer. Well, ontop of one the bins is a mouse. Except this mouse is drunk. My theory is that it had been in a glass bottle, this bottle was picked up by one of the regulars (and not cleaned) who then put it the machine. It being on the top of the bin suggests that the bottle didn't have a long fall and was cushioned somewhat by the other bits of glass - and thus this mouse survived. Anyway, so we call the night manager over and his first instinct is to start playing with it (he had gloves on). Like, he took slefies with it, tried doing snapchat filters, we watched it attempt to walk on a piece of cardboard but it was too drunk to walk straight. So he brings it outside and then says he called an uber for it. A few months later this manager was fired for going to the bar on his break :(, he was fun. I have a picture of that mouse though, I'll have to find it.