“Service with a smile” is one thing. Service without laughing in a dumb customer’s face… That’s another.
This is based on an AskReddit thread. Link on the last page.
1. A lady came into the store and asked us if we sold “adult toys”. This was a toy store. We don’t sell those here.
-rottytops
2. I work at a hotel. A client walks in: “If I book a room, does it include the bed?” No sir, we only provide you with a chair so you can sit down and wait until check out time.
-rggrd
3. What’s the difference between a wired mouse and a wireless mouse?
-DeathisLaughing
4. Working at a small coffee shop that roasted their own beans/had their own brand. “Do you sell Starbucks here?” “No ma’am we roast our own coffee.” “Well, that’s just bad business!” Okay?
-NoDoThis
5. I went to dinner once at a Chinese restaurant in Missouri and a woman at the table next to ours yelled at the waiter: “Where is the other sauce?! We are supposed to get Sweet and Sour Sauce, but we only got one!”
-DeniseDeNephew
6. I work at an Italian place. We call our Italian menu items by Italian names with English descriptions. I get a lot of questions, but I don’t mind because I get paid to talk about food.
The conversation sort of went a bit Abbott and Costello. It’s not that the person asked a dumb question, but they kept asking it.
“Pollo e penne?” “Oh, that’s chicken and pasta with…” “Does it have meat in it?”
“The chicken pasta? Yes, pollo is Italian for chicken.” “Can I get the chicken but not the pollo?” “Pollo is just Italian for chicken, if you want the chicken, it’s really good…” “No, I like chicken but I don’t want pollo.”
-trebuchetfight
7. I work at a hotel and I had a guest call and ask me if it was normal that his room did not have a bathroom. He said he would need to be moved to one which did.
I informed him that of course that all of our rooms have bathrooms, and asked if he had checked the doors in the room. He had not.
-RepletesMaryJane
8. Customer screaming: “MY NEW CAR’S BACK WIPER DOESN’T WORK!!!”
I calmly walk outside to take a look at the back window.
“Sir, you don’t have a back wiper blade.”
-Proxy12345
9. Back when I did tech support, I received a call from a customer with a peculiar keyboard problem.
It seemed that he was having trouble with the shift key. When he typed a letter with the shift key pressed it gave him the upper case letter, but when he typed a number, it didn’t do that. Didn’t do what? Type the upper case number…
I had to break it to him gently.
-donut2099
10. This happened at one of the main shops in one of London’s biggest museums.
Woman: “Does this room go all the way to the back wall over there?” She pointed a finger out towards the end of the shop-floor, past all the shelves and merchandise.
“That white wall at the end of the room? Yes.”
“That is part of the room too?”
“Yes. This room contains all of itself.”
“Thank you.”
-ParrotChild
11. Worked on a Christmas tree farm over winter break in college. One time I had a lady ask me, “so, what are these trees made out of?”
-PM_ME_CRAFT_BEER
12. I’m a cashier at a grocery store, and one time I had a lady ask me if I could “tell everyone else to let her go first.”
Like, she expected me to force everyone who had been patiently waiting in line to let her cut them. It wasn’t like she only had 1 or 2 items either; her cart was packed.
-Arii797ros
13. Ran a lawn mowing service. New customer asks about the process. “Do you come to my house to mow it?” No. We pick it up and haul it to our special mowing centre then bring it back.
-RichardStrauss123
14. I was a UPS driver
Customer: What’s in the package?
Me: No idea. You ordered it.
-Bayarearedneck
15. “Yes, I understand I haven’t paid my credit card bill in 3 months. But why can’t I use my card?”
…”Because you haven’t paid your bill in 3 months.”
Rinse and repeat.
-nolooselips
16. “How do they get the mashed potatoes inside the french fries?”
-lusilab
17. I work at a gas station.
Customer: “Hey, the bathroom door is locked. Can I get a key?”
“There’s no key, if it’s locked there’s someone in there”
“How does it know?”
“How does… what… know… what?”
Customer: “How does the bathroom know someone is in there?”
“People…. people go in and then they lock the door while they’re using it.”
5 second pause.
“Ohhhh!”
-SenorBeef
18. Worked as a pharmacy tech in the US, once had an older customer ask me why medicine was cheaper with insurance than without. He didn’t understand the concept of insurance and kept saying “that’s very odd, I’ll have to look into this…”
-lacedwithlilacs
19. I work at a drive-thru and a guy asked if he could have his food to go…
-I_Stand_Correct
20. I currently work at Jimmy Johns. The same man comes in at least once a month and asks us if we have apple pies. When we tell him no, he becomes irate and questions us.
-ZilaneZaldron
21. “Can you aerate that for me?” He wanted me to stir his apple juice. Technically his word choice was applicable, I guess, but wtf, dude?
He had a straw ready in his hand and he could damn well have aerated that juice himself. I admit it took me 2 seconds of staring at his serious face before I reached for a straw, unwrapped it, and stirred his drink. I did it all without breaking eye contact with him, and he was satisfied.
-becauseusoft
22. A customer walks into our tiny bike shop jammed packed full of bikes. Bikes are hanging in the window, off the ceiling on the walls, all over the floor. There is not a square foot of space in the shop that is not occupied by a bike or various parts of one.
“This is the bike shop right?” Yes.
“Do you guys sell bikes or fix them?” Both.
“If I brought my canoe in could you fix that?”
I asked him: Is canoe the name of your bike or is it a boat?
“It’s just a canoe for the lake. Do you guys fix them?”
…We’re a bike shop.
“Yeah. But…
-Fink_Kedat
23. Working as a tech support manager for a dial-up company in the mid-1990s. A customer called to ask why his email wasn’t working, and made me stay on the phone with him while he walked through it to prove it.
Lo and behold it didn’t work. He wasn’t online. Why? It was dial-up and he was talking to me on his one phone line.
-CrazyOtto87
24. “Where can I find the Kentucky jelly?” Eventually I figured out he was looking for KY Jelly.
-Eatsandyoungman
25. A customer once asked me if I was sure I wasn’t pregnant. I had to inform her that I am just fat.
-gotsa-87
26. Customer: Where’s the sugar?
Me: What?
Customer: I ordered sweet corn, this is just corn.
-literalmirmaid
27. I had a customer ask whether i was thinking of being transgender just because I’m a man whose hair is long.
-Storytellerbobfan
29. I was working at callcenter, trying to get people to pay their old bills. Naturally some responded angrily.
“So this is what you do all day? You just call people who haven’t paid their bills?”
“Yes.”
“So if I paid my bills, idiots like you would be out of a job?”
“If everybody paid their bills, then yes.”
“Ha ha! Good. You just messed up by telling me this. I’m going to pay my bills right away. When you’re unemployed then see how you like getting calls about your bills!”
The futility of eradicating a job that relies on the existence of poor people by making me poor escaped this genius.
-Lon-Abel-Kelly
29. Customer: “How do I use this?” He holds up a candle.
Me: “Oh, it’s just a candle.”
Customer: “But how do you use it? Do I have to light it?”
Me: Tries to act like he’s answering a normal question.
-leopoldhendricks
30. I worked at Victoria’s Secret and a customer came in to return her wedding lingerie. She said she “only wore it once”. There were markings in the panty area and an empty condom wrapper in the bag.
-PotatoMuffinMafia
31. When you get hired at Disneyland, other Cast Members warn you that people will ask you, “When is the 3 o’clock parade?”
You assume they are joking and exaggerating, but then it actually happens, and you have to tell the Guest that it is at 3 o’clock without a trace of sarcasm or exasperation.
-TheFriendlyCM
32. Are these donuts sugar free? Fool, they’re deep fried and glazed.
-poochymane
33. CPA here. I had a client and his new wife come in to drop off their tax returns. He asked, “Can I claim my wife as a dependent?”
I started to reply, “No, but . . .”
He blurts out, “What good is being married if you can’t get a tax deduction for your wife?”
I stayed very quiet while mentally listing the reasons. She was less than pleased.
-Gavroche15