Rudest Customer You've Ever Met

[TheRightToArmBears]

I work as a supervisor in the catering at a reasonably popular historic attraction (I have... less than kind things to say, so it's staying vague). Most of our customers are pretty elderly, but we get quite a lot of young families as well, which makes for an interesting combination- especially when we're invariably understaffed and full to capacity.

With elderly people, they seem to be at the complete extremes when it comes to how they treat you. They're either absolutely lovely, friendly people or total bastards. One lady screamed into my face (I mean into. I had to wipe saliva off my nose) because their table hadn't been cleaned before they sat down. This was the height of summer, we were absolutely rammed and short of a few staffmembers so it's not like we were sat around twiddling our thumbs, we were running around like madmen.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Worked at a gamestop because I knew the people working their enough to were they asked if I wanted a job as a temp. One dude around 35 was trying to buy Halo 3 and didn't have his ID. This is a issue because we are not allowed to sell M rated games without ID period. Of course he doesn't understand why we do this and throws a fit about it, with me thinking "I wonder if my manager would be mad if I said 'clearly you're proving to me right now your not mature enough for this game'."

 

[Gizmo1990]

I only have 1 and it is not that bad.

I used to work tech support for schools in my county. They were mostly primary schools. Now I have a lot of respect for primary school teachers as I can't stand children in any way or form so how they can teach 30 at the same time confuses me however the majority of them don't know fuck about IT.

Anyway 3 days before we rolled out a county wide patch for some software that all the schools used. As anyone who has worked tech support can understand, there were problems with some of them because nothing ever works perfectly every time you do it.

The school calls the help desk, a ticket is opened and my manager assigns it to me. I spend the next 3 hours screwing around on the schools server and I think I have fixed the problem. I call the school, explain who I am and that I have fixed the problem and that they will need to restart their machines for my fix to kick in.I even stay on the line and wait for some of the staff to restart and check that it is working for them. They say yes and that they will pass on to everyone that they need to restart and I then close the ticket. Then it all hits the fan.

About an hour later I get a phone call from the headteacher herself and she is practically screaming at me about how this program is still broken and that I had some nerve closing the ticket. She then starts saying that I am lazy, incompetent and stupid and that she want to talk to my manager. I pass her over and she spends HALF AN HOUR on the phone with him (he is barly able to get a single word in) telling him his team is full of fools and demanding that I fix the problem and then immediately be fired.

It was at this point that one of the office staff, having found out what she was shouting about walked in and pointed to the note on the headteachers desk explaining that a machine reboot would be needed.

Did the headteacher apologise? NO! She said (no longer shouting at least) that my manager should never have allowed the problem to happen in the first place and that from now on whenever her school had a problem that she should be contacted directly when it was fixed.

My manager then let me go home a few hours early, with pay (because the guy was a great boss) and from then on we (on the sly) made sure the other support team got all tech calls for that school.

 

[Little Woodsman]

Oooh, sooo many stories... dunno if I can pick the worst one...

I suppose I'll just share this one because the woman was being passive-aggressive rude to every employee who was in the store at the time. It was 1997, when I was working at a K-Mart. It was Christmas eve, and we had been very busy (big retailers like that are always insane on Christmas eve with people getting last-minute things they had forgotten) but people had overall been very nice all night. We were closing at 8 P.M. due to the holiday, so we made our closing announcements and were getting everyone cleared out.
And one woman just wouldn't leave. She kept walking slowly through the shoe department, taking two steps and slowly looking up and down the shelf, then taking two more steps and slowly looking again. I and co-workers approached her several times and asked if we could help her, to which she would always reply "No, I'm fine." When we informed her that the store was actually *closed* at that point she would just say "Yes, I know." Eventually the manager for the night sent everyone except myself and one female cashier home. This "customer" then spent another half an hour walking slowly through the shoes before finally taking the two or three items in her cart up to the front, paying for them and leaving (all of which she took her sweet time with as well). I'm thoroughly convinced that she was doing it just because she knew that we couldn't leave until she did and she wanted to ruin Christmas eve for as many people as she possibly could.

Worst instance I've observed as a fellow customer was in a toy store. It was a small store in a mall, just one girl who looked to be in her late teens on duty there at the time. An older man walked up to her and asked her to bring out the Hot Wheels (a type of small toy car, if anyone doesn't know) that were in the back. She explained that the store didn't actually have a stockroom and that all the merchandise was out on the shelves. He started shouting at her, saying that she was lying and he knew they had more in the back. When she explained that no, really they didn't have any more he started with the "I'm going to get you fired" routine. The poor girl was on the verge of tears when I intervened. I said to him "What you really need is a new hobby, because this one is clearly not relaxing you." The man then shifted his anger to me (which I was perfectly fine with) saying that he was going to get me fired too. The girl having transitioned to the verge of laughter rather than tears, explained that I didn't work there and the man stormed out. I asked the girl if she wanted me to contact mall security for her and she said that it was OK, she would just call security immediately if the other man returned.

 

[happyninja42]

Hmm, probably a tie between:

1. A customer calling in when I was doing customer service for Cingular Wireless prepaid phones. He stated he was overcharged for a text that he didn't send. I checked his usage history for the time in question, and so nothing out of the ordinary. There were no duplicated time stamps, no unusual numbers, the numbers listed at that time were numbers he called all the time. So I told him that I couldn't refund the charge of 10cents ($0.10) because the system showed regular usage. He got mad and insisted that I give him his 10 cents, I again refused. He then proceeded to say the following:

"Gimme my money dawg!"

"I'm sorry sir I can't give you that refund, the charges are valid."

"GIMME MY MOTHA FUCKIN MONEY DAWG!!"

"Sir, please stop yelling at me, I'm sorry but I can't..."

"FUCK YOU!! GIMME MY MONEY!! I LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY DAWG!! GIMME MY MONEY!!"

".....*slowly process that someone actually said United States of Money un-ironically* "I'm sorry sir, but I can't give you that refund, the charges are valid, if you continue to cuss me out, I will terminate the call"

"FUCK YOU!!"

*click*

Example 2:

I was working at Books a Million, at the register, and I had a long line of people. No big deal, they were all relatively polite, and the line was moving along, but I had to ask each of them if they wanted a Books a Million member card. I had to ask, it was required as part of my job. But hey, no biggy, I'm a good enough salesman that my sales pitch was convincing to the people behind the person I was working on, and I got like 3 new card sales in a row. Then guy number 4 comes up, with a check, to buy a newspaper. He interrupts me mid-pitch, and is like "No, I don't want it, I don't want it." I pause for a second, as he threw off my mental routine, and then went into the next thing I was required to ask about. "Would you be interested in...." *he slams his palm down on the counter over and over, loudly. "NO!! JUST SELL ME MY DAMN PAPER!" I check my impulse to smack him on the head with the nearby heavy object, and just ring him up and get him out of the shop. About 2 seconds later, my supervisor comes up, asking me if I'm ok, because I clearly looked ready to beat someone up. Which is significant, because I generally don't get flustered by assholes. I've done customer service long enough that it rolls off me like water off a duck, but this guy, for whatever reason just hit my buttons.

Those are the two rudest customers I can think of offhand.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

With ten years of retail (pet-supply chain) and four years of being a pizza-delivery driver under my belt, I've got plenty of stories like this, but one always stands out as the worst.

I was running a register at the pet place one afternoon when a man comes up with a cart packed full of fish supplies- 55-gallon tank, decorations, the whole nine yards- as well as a bunch of other stuff, along with a bag with about half a dozen small fish. As I'm ringing him up, he tells me that he wants to leave the cart in the store as he has other things he needs to do, and that he'll be back to pick things up later. Now, the employees in the fish section fill the bags of fish with oxygen-rich air to help keep them from suffocating on the trip to the customers' homes, but generally in most cases that'll only last about an hour before problems can arise. I tell the customer this, and say that if he likes, we can keep the fish in a separate off-the-floor tank until he gets back.

He says no, he'll be back before that's a problem, and to leave the fish in the bag.

One and a half hours later, he still hasn't returned, and the fish are visibly starting to have issues. I decide that I'm not going to let innocent creatures die miserably for no reason and call someone from the aquatics department to come get the fish and put them in a tank so they don't suffocate. Half an hour after that, the guy finally returns for the things he bought and asks where the fish are; I tell him.

He absolutely explodes at me, standing there in red-faced rage yelling about how I didn't do exactly what he told me to, and then decides to return everything he bought (and lucky me, I get to do the return). And every half-minute while I'm processing the return, he tells everyone within earshot what a jerk I am.

Apparently he was too angry to see the dirty looks he was getting from other customers, and my manager had absolutely no problem with what I'd done.

 

[Chessrook44]

For about eight years, I worked as a ticket taker, then a cashier on the boardwalk at the beach where I live. Often times I would have people ask me, in shock, why they had to pay $8/$10/$12 to get onto the beach and what they were paying for, to which I would respond with the following shpiel, counting off each point on my fingers.

"Well you're paying to keep the beach clean, to keep the beach maintained, to keep the boardwalk clean, to keep the boardwalk maintained, to keep the beach safe, to pay for the lifeguards, to pay for us..."

By the time I finished they usually got the idea and paid. Never had a problem once I got my shpiel out.

Once however, I got someone who tried to get on for free.

At the time, we had a deal going on with the rail system where you could buy a package deal, getting a train ticket and a voucher you could turn in with us to get a beach pass to get on. This woman walked up and told me (a cashier at the time) she had bought the package from one of the machines in such-and-such town, but it hadn't given her the voucher, and I should let her on anyway because she paid. Well, no voucher, I wasn't buying and sensed a scam, and said no. She fought with me for a few minutes until one of my supervisors conveniently biked up. She proceeded to argue with him for ten, fifteen minutes before finally marching off to the next booth down... where I saw her walking onto the beach shortly after.

About a week later, I was subbing for someone on lunch at another booth, when the SAME woman walked up and, not seeing me, tried the exact same story to the ticket taker... except that the station she had supposedly bought it at had changed to another city. I spoke up with a "Well hello there" and she immediately recognized me, yelled that I had no idea what I was talking about and the people at the other booth let her on and I should have let her on, and then she proceeded to walk off, her giving me a nasty glare while I gave her a smug smirk for catching her at her game. Never saw her again, but it was a big boardwalk.

 

[renegade7]

When I worked as a TA in college, one of my responsibilities was grading papers.

There would always be someone who would get a grade back they weren't happy with. It was worse when I was in undergrad because they were people I actually knew. I think the funniest was this girl who was in a sorority who got a grade on a test she wasn't happy with, and started IMing me on Facebook (half-drunk, it seemed) ranting about this grand conspiracy of professors and (her words) "straight-laced sheltered judgmental assholes with nothing better to do than make themselves feel smart by putting other people down. It's MY decision if I'm in a sorority and you have to deal with it". Lady, first of all, I don't know who you are and I don't care if you're in a sorority, nor do I know why you would think that influenced how I graded your objective computation-only chemistry test (as in, do the calculation and fill in the blank), and it says far more about you than you can possibly know that your idea of the relationship between professors and the student body seems to come out of a Van Wilder movie.

Then she texted me nudes. Seriously. When that didn't sway me (and it wouldn't have even if she was anything special to look at), it was just a storm of all-caps messages insulting me and threatening me (remember that her original purpose in this conversation was to make me think she was hard-working and diligent and deserving of reconsideration).

 

[RaikuFA]

So many.

Back in 2011, I had this black guy come in and throw a tantrum over me not giving him a coupon. When he demanded to see a manager, he said I called him the n word. I got written up for it. Later that week on Black Friday, he came in again demanding another coupon from my coworker who was a sweet old lady (that was expired because he was 5 hours late) fucker pulls out a knife demanding it be used, she uses it and runs off crying. Manager ripped up my write up and told us all to keep an eye out for him.

Went and got Skyrim and pizza that BF so I felt better. The coworker did as well.

 

[SebastianVelcro]

So I work at a Subway and we get all sorts of customers every day.
Some are super cool and fun to chat with, others..... ech...
It was the middle of the lunch rush and I'm making sandwiches, nothing special, but this one guy, oh this one guy...
He tells me he wants lettuce, tomato, olives, green peppers, and sub sauce. I start putting the stuff on his sandwich and he decides he wants to put ALL the veggies on the sub. At this point I had only put the lettuce on the sub. Since he said he wanted all the veggies (including spinach) I removed a bit of lettuce. When customers ask for lettuce and spinach we do a half half mix. The customer got really pissed about this though and started fucking yelling like a madman: NO, DON'T REMOVE MY LETTUCE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I try to explain to him how the sandwich recipe works and how if we put too much lettuce the sandwich just wont close properly as it will be over-filled. He barks at me more and orders me to put the all the lettuce back. Guy wants a shit ton of lettuce, not my problem if his sandwich will be too full when he tries to eat it. A lot of people order extra veggies (never this much though) so I thought whatever, not a big deal. I finish the sandwich and wrap the thing. Of course it was insanely full and I couldn't close it properly. In this scenario, we just double wrap the sandwich. Most people don't care as they ordered extra shit and knew the sandwiches would be super full. If you order double meat and double veggies in a sandwich it's just not possible to fit it all properly, so it gets messy. People love that messy shit. They know when they order extra stuff their sandwich risks over-filling and they are fine with that. This customer though...
He goes and sits down with his sandwich and unwraps it. Some of the veggies had fallen out of the sandwich, of course, and the meat was sliding out. Just like I told him it would if he put that much freakin' lettuce and spinach in his sandwich. Then the guy had the gull to come back to the counter and go in front of all the other customers in the lunch rush and complain about it. I think he spent a good 10 minutes yelling at the staff and telling them how much they sucked at their job before the manager finally calmed him down. In the end he just sat back down pouting and eating his sandwich.

Dude, I used to work at a Subway, and I know that feel.

I remember one guy biting my head off because I accidentally put mayo instead of mustard on his tune melt. Thankfully, the lady next to him ripped him a new one and called him an asshole while I was trying to figure out why anyone would get pissed about mayo being on a tuna melt.

I remember another time when there was a tomato shortage because of a nasty storm hitting florida and the guy got mad at me because our tomatoes sucked and that was all we had. I tried telling him the reason, but that didn't work. He eventually calmed down enough for me to finish making his sandwich, but not enough to not shut up about his damn tomatoes.

I have a lot of shitty customer stories from my time there. That's not to say I didn't have awesome ones. I remember one guy wanted to know when my final shift was since I was leaving, and he bought me a 12 pack of beer. He was awesome.

I think it's funny that he didn't like the mayo even though we mix the tuna with a shit ton of mayo.

 

[SebastianVelcro]

Edit: Messed up posting again, sorry folks

 

[SebastianVelcro]

There was that one time some guy had sex in our parking lot, and then another time when somebody would take shits in our soap dispensers. They may not be rude, but are really inconsiderate.

I do not miss working at a pool.

Who in the world would go through the trouble of pooping in a soap dispenser? I've never even thought of doing something like that. Why would you even do something like that? for a quick laugh? What even!?

 

[Malbourne]

I tend to assume rude customers are just having a bad day, but it's probably a mindset I can afford because the worst one I had was a gentleman who became miffed when the computer shut down. It was a big box store with draconian technology, so those sorts of things happened. Still, he cut me off when I tried to explain that a receipt wouldn't print until the computer started up again in five minutes. He became more miffed and cancelled his purchase, but when he asked for a voided receipt I had to tell him the computer was the only way to get it. He searched for a manager and she told him the same thing, but he was still upset. I believe he left the store before the computer started, so he never received a receipt verifying that his purchase had been voided.

 

[Abbyka]

This was years ago back when I was working two jobs. One of my jobs I was working at a sub shop(not subway, a place called Jersey Mikes). You know how sub places have pretty much the same set up, the sneeze guard between you and the customer to protect all of the sub ingredients from sneezes, coughs, and general grossness that people are prone to do. Well, the sneeze guard also tends to work as a sound barrier if you're short as hell and don't speak loud enough. This didn't seem to cross the mind of this 4 foot tall old woman who came in. I had to keep asking her to repeat herself. I was very polite about it, I knew it wasn't her fault the sneeze guard was making her hard to hear. But she didn't seem to be willing to pay me the same respect of knowing this was also not my fault. On the third time I had to ask her to repeat herself she started yelling obscenities at me and calling me stupid. Told me my mother must have dropped me on my head as a baby and should have "used a damn wire hanger to get rid of me". By this time I could actually hear her because she was trying a hell of a lot harder to be heard. The manager had to take over making her sandwich because he could tell I was about to start crying. I pretty much quit on the spot once she left and the manager came to see if I was alright. At the time I was in a very emotionally abusive relationship so having her say all of that affected me a hell of a lot more because I always went home to hear some of the same things.

Needless to say you should ALWAYS treat everyone with respect because you don't know what they're going through when they're not at work.

At my other job not too long after this I had probably the grossest thing ever happen on my shift. I worked at an arts and crafts store(Rag Shop, no longer in business now). I was a keyholder which is basically LIKE a manager but not with the same pay benefits. I was basically just able to open and close the store but was still just an underling. Anyways, part of my job was to clean the store, which was always a constant task since people are disgusting creatures who have no respect for minimum wage workers. While roaming the aisles looking for anything out of place something caught my eye. One of the clear glass vases in the candle aisle was FULL of some kind of liquid. To my horror it wasn't just any liquid. It was piss. And it was QUITE LITERALLY FULL. I had to take it into the bathroom to dump it out and rinse it(because protocol stated I couldn't just put this back on the shelf OR throw it away, it had to be put in a box by the registers to be marked damaged). The worst part is it was still warm. And this wasn't even the first time someone decided the bathroom wasn't good enough for them either. Previously a couple of weeks before this incident someone took a huge dump in the middle of the aisle and smeared it from one aisle to another, spreading for about five aisles. Luckily this didn't happen on my shift, so I wasn't the one who had to clean it. But the smell took FOREVER to go away. We never figured out who did it, but this is by far worse than the old woman.