If anybody has worked a job in the service industry they've encountered a nasty customer. Many times they can ruin a day, or make a worker feel dehumanized as a result. These stories are a handful of the millions of stories that people come across in these vitally important jobs. Content has been edited for clarity.
Incredibly Petty
“I was 15, and dealing with standard teenage girl woes. I also had a portion of the back of my head shaved, not bald, but fuzzy.
I was working at a craft store and I had a bride-to-be and her mother come to my till with various candleholders. They tried to pay with a ‘buy one get one free’ coupon, despite having 50+ items.
I explained that the item only worked on one item and you got one free. The bride threw an epic tantrum and her mother stopped her and put a hand on her shoulders and said, ‘Don’t worry honey, she looks like a boy from the back and ugly from the front.’
I cried in the back room. The comment still bothers me.”
The Worst Customer
“Back in my Old Navy days, I was working the register when the Worst Customer and her daughter came through. She was terrible; she argued all the time about the price of everything, tried to use expired coupons, wanted to pay with her GAP card (this was before the Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic cards could be used at either store, yes I’m old), yelled about not being able to use her GAP card, belittled the fitting room attendant (best use of the Old Navy headsets was warning other employees about problem customers), trashed the denim wall, etc…
Anyways, she comes through my co-worker’s register so I overhear their conversation and towards the end of the transaction, this woman turns to her daughter and says, ‘See honey, this is why you go to college. So you don’t end up an uneducated Chinese girl working at Old Navy.’
Firstly, what on earth is wrong with this woman. Secondly, the cashier ringing her up was on a full-ride scholarship at my University and halfway through her 3rd year as a Bio major. Thirdly, again I repeat, what on earth is wrong with this woman?
Happily, the Manager on duty overheard this as well, walked to the register and cancelled the transaction. He then turned to the woman and told her to get the out of his store and never come back.”
Serve Yourself
“I was a waitress in college at a family restaurant. If you’ve ever waited tables, you’re probably familiar with the church crowd rush. For those not familiar, the church crowd rush is the busiest time of the week, full of some of the rudest people and worst tippers. On this particular day, I was working a double and was nearing the end of my shift when my last table was sat. These people ordered waters, lots of lemons, and extra sugar packets (to make their own lemonade), requested tons of free bread with extra butter and constantly had me running around for extra something.
Anyways, they ordered their meals and extra sides, so I rang them up as meals with three sides to saved them about $2 per meal. When the check came, I explained this to the matriarch of the table. She didn’t understand it and demanded I take off the ‘extra charges’ and ring it up as they ordered it. She told me that if I couldn’t even get a receipt right I probably couldn’t do much else right and would never amount to anything, which is why I was a server to begin with. I walked away, rang up the receipt the way she wanted it (which was an extra $8), dropped it off and said, ‘Here you go, I rang it in the “right” way rather than the smart way.’ I refused to change it back.”
At Least I’m Beautiful On The Inside
“When I first started working for a supermarket, I was 19, had recently moved back in with my parents, and had a horrible case of acne which didn’t go away until I turned 21. I started out working as a bag boy as you might imagine. One day I was helping a particularly nasty old woman in her 80’s, I knew she needed help with her cart and groceries, so I took her groceries to her car. I tried being nice, talking to her, and when we reached her car she just said, ‘God, you’re hauntingly ugly kid.’
I responded with, ‘I just started taking medication to try to work with my obvious acne issue.’
You’d think she’d be embarrassed, but her response was,’Good. No one likes you with that face.’
I put her cart a few cars down from hers, left it, and went back inside. A rude hag like that can handle her own groceries.”
Worst Experience Bar None
“Customer at work the other day snapped at me for seemingly no reason. I asked him a few questions (do you have a tab opened at the bar already? Would you like to start a tab with me, or pay as you go? etc…) when he yells at me, ‘IS THAT TOO COMPLICATED FOR YOU?’
I gave him a look of disgust, served him without saying a word, and refused to accept his tip. I’m well aware that there are people in this earth that think less of me for working in a bar, but it still comes as a shock when someone acts so high and mighty when I’m just trying to do my job correctly.”
Felt Like Justice
“I worked for a catering company in college as a work study program. After a few years, I was able to move up to a manager position. One day we were hosting an alumni event. The college department that ordered the food however greatly underestimated the amount of guests there were going to be hosting. They ordered food for 200 people but about 400 showed up. So obviously half way through the event we ran out of food but since they refused to order more food there was nothing we could do.
At one point a 30-something year old man approaches one of my staff in the back room and starts cussing her out for there being no food left. I then approached him as he was talking to another guest and asked if I could speak with him about the incident. He pretended like he had no idea what I was talking about and continued his conversation. Fine, thought it was over and I told my staff to send him my way if he ever tried to talk to them again. Later on he approaches me, again when no other guests can see him, and yells at me saying, ‘How dare I approach him as he is trying to network with other alumni’. I explained that if he had a problem with the event to come to me as I could explain the situation and any problems were my responsibility, not my staffs. He stops, stares at me, says ‘You see this suit? This is a 1000 dollar suit. You couldn’t even make that much in a month’ and proceeds to walk away.
At that point I snapped. He wasn’t wearing a name tag so I approached the head of the event and asked for his name and explained the situation. She looked appalled and said she would talk to him about the incident. As we were cleaning up later, after the women spoke with him, he cornered me as I was exiting the bathroom. Told me he ‘would make me pay for embarrassing him and that I was a worthless piece of human garbage’. I laughed, told my boss about it and moved on. He still didn’t realize I had his name.
The next day the guy calls me supervisor to try and get me fired. My supervisor backs me but asks for the guys name. He says his name is ‘Joe Frazer’ (obviously a fake name but whatever) and that if my boss doesn’t handle the situation, he will come personally take care of me. My boss laughs, hangs up, gets this guys name from me and calls the police. Turns out the guy’s business just went under in the 2008 economic crisis, he was at the event ‘networking’ aka looking for a job. Probably will be selling his amazing $1,000 suit soon to cover bills, ha. He didn’t find work and is now banned from the campus as well. Felt like justice to me.”
Aggressively Wrong
“Woman comes through the checkout line at my department store with her daughter. Woman is probably mid-30s, daughter early teens. They’re buying a bunch of clothes, a few really grandma-y home decor pieces: the usual. We’re very busy right now, and they have The Look (retail workers know what I’m talking about), so I’m trying to get them out of here as quickly as possible. That seems fine to them, as they have completely ignored me thus far and are too busy looking bored on their phones to acknowledge my existence.
I can’t remember her exact total, but it was something like $61.78. I see her going into her wallet and know she’s going to pay in cash. What’s more, she’s decided that she’s going to give me exact change. On a busy day, when she has The Look. This never turns out well.
So she hands me three 20s and a dollar. Ok, cool. Now she’s digging through her coin pouch. She — as a solid half of exact changers do — turns to her daughter to solicit coins from her, because she doesn’t think she has enough but is now on a rampage to make sure that she’s giving me exact change. So mom scrounges money from daughter and hands it to me in a big pile. It’s not three quarters and three pennies: no, that would be too easy. So I sift through the pile of a couple quarters, nickles, dimes, and pennies, and discover that she’s handed me 93 cents.
She has The Look, but she’s handed me the wrong amount of money. I know this is going to get ugly, but I have no choice to plow forward. ‘Are you sure you want to give me this much?’ I ask quite politely. ‘You only need to give me 78 cents.’
‘Yes,’ she snaps. ‘I need to get rid of the change.’
Ok, fine. Have it your way, lady. So I punch in the amount into the register and, of course, it spits back to hand her some money back. So I pop open my drawer and start to sift out 15 cents to hand back to her. Now, of course, she’s confused. ‘Why are you handing me money?’ She says. ‘Didn’t I give you exact change?’
‘No, ma’am, you gave me 15 cents extra.’
‘Oh for goodness sake,’ she snaps again. She reaches over the counter and pries the money out of my hand and reaches into her wallet for another dollar. She then hands me another dollar and three quarters. ‘There, you do that and give me 42.’
What? She is making zero sense to me. ‘Excuse me?’ ‘You take that, and give me 42 back.’ She finally huffs a sigh and reaches forward, grabs the three quarters ((again, prying them right out of my hand.)) ‘Ok,’ she says. ‘Clearly this is too much for you, so I’m not going to bother. Nobody knows how to do change anymore. No wonder you’re working here instead of in school. They don’t take the mentally unstable at college. Just forget it. Keep the change. Jesus Christ. Unbelievable, your generation is everything wrong with society’ With that, she leaves me with $62, grabs her bags, and storms out. Her absorbed-in-her-iPhone daughter trails after her, glancing at me in confusion but saying nothing. The next customer who walks up looks after her as they leave and then looks at me. She couldn’t believe it either.”
He Ended Up Quitting
“It was my first day at my job at a Subway about 3-4 years ago.
She said, and I quote, ‘You are truly the ugliest guy I have ever seen.’ She then requested that I turn around while someone else made her sandwich. I quit that job on the first day, I will not have ANY of that.
Yes, I am about average when it comes to appearance, but Jesus Christ, that still hits hard.”
“Who Do You Think You Are?”
“I work at Walmart. It isn’t much, but it’s some spare cash for a rainy day. I bumped into a guy while stocking freight as I go to apologize, he screams, ‘Whoa, who the eff do you think you are!’ Before I can say anything he says, ‘Nobody, that’s who! Just some sad sack that has to stock groceries!’
I quietly apologize for bumping into him, not wanting to stay in that situation and as I’m walking away, he says, ‘Are you proud of what you do because it nothing, just like you.’ There was a dead silence as I walked away.
Later that night as I’m leaving to head home, I spot him in the electronics department. I watched him take a a game from the display and take the disc out of it, hiding it just so and walking away calmly. So I tell the asset protection guy about it (he was watching a guy in the apparel section). I point out the game case and the guy and he starts the hunt.
Fast forward about 10 minutes. I had just checked out and was heading out the door when lo and behold the guy’s walking out of the AP office and he was crying.
I held back a laugh and as I passed him I said, ‘You proud of what you did? Heh, who’s the nothing now?’ It was incredibly satisfying.
The next day I ask what game he tried to take and it was apparently a copy of Call of Duty: World at War.”
Fight Me
“I work at a marina in a pretty wealthy area. I was stuck working Thanksgiving on a guard shift (just to make sure nothing crazy happens), and we have an annual turkey 5k race in my town that passes my marina’s parking lot. Well some guy decided to park his car in the spots that are reserved for the managers/marina owners (probably to cheer someone on or something).
So I go up to the guy politely with a warm smile, ‘Hey sir, do you mind moving your car? These spots are reserved, could you park across the street maybe?’
He fired back at me, ‘Are these people coming in today?’ and I said I wasn’t sure, maybe, who knows. So he starts his car and says, ‘You definitely went to a great college to get such a great job.’
And I snapped. I’m not sure why, I’m a year away from my electrical engineering degree. I think it was the way he said it.
I said, ‘That’s a big game you talk, why don’t you get out of your overpriced SUV and say it.’ (Mind you I’m 6’6 and built like hybrid viking bear). He said ‘Fight me prick’, which I returned back. As he pulled away I noted an Outer Banks sticker on his SUV.
Flash forward to a few months ago I’m picking up some dinner and while I’m walking into the place I see the same SUV outside! And when I walk in, there he is! Without skipping a beat I walked over to him while he was waiting for his order, aimlessly scrolling on his smart phone and I smiled and said, ‘Hey jagoff, remember me?’ He looked up, gulped, and looked back down at his phone, ignoring me the entire time. I got my dinner order and as I was walking out I pointed at him, and said ‘You’re such a spineless coward.’
Oh and turns out the guy was a member of my marina. WAS. The upper management doesn’t take kindly to the rudeness of some of these boat owners. So anytime they give an employee a problem, they get booted.”
Either Be Nice Or Get Out
“When I worked at Starbucks, I got treated like dirt, the one that still gets me had a great ending.
I had some dried up trophy wife ask what I’d recommend. I said I usually go chai and to my face she says, ‘That’s too expensive, you can’t afford that or you’d not be working a skill less job.’ I told her that I wouldn’t help her and called up the next person. She got all huffed up and tried to force me to make her drink because she needed it. Took about 15 minutes till she left yelling threats with about a skinny caramel macchiato paid for by her husband.
Pro tip, being a prick to a barista gets you decaf and as many calories as we can fit; so don’t do it.”
“Figure Something Out”
“I was working drive thru at Taco Bell on day and a guy had stopped at least 4 feet away from the window. I have to lean out pretty far anyway because I’m 4’10, and I tell him his total and reach for his money and can’t reach it (he’s barely extending his arm). I say so and ask him if he can help me out a bit, he doesn’t even look at me and tells me, ‘I don’t work here, figure something out.’ I had to lift myself over the edge of the window sill and dangle out of the window to reach his money. I know I work fast food, but I’m still a person!”
Aloha Annoying Woman
“I’m what is delicately called a ‘non-traditional’ student. Mostly because I’m interested in a lot of things, and so found it very difficult to settle on a major. Instead of going into debt to get a degree that wouldn’t necessarily prepare me all that well for the work force and would probably put me on track for a career I’d end up dissatisfied in, I decided to run off and mess around on my own for a few years, you know, for funsies.
Wound up in Hawaii, waiting tables to support myself in this endeavor, and mention to some customers my plans to get back to school so that I don’t have to, you know, wait tables for the rest of my life. (For the record: some people are really good at waiting tables and can make it a rewarding and lucrative profession, much respect to them, but I am not one of them, hence my desire to not do it anymore.) The wife of the pair barely looked up from her drink while dismissing me with ‘You won’t go back.’
I’m already enrolled for the fall semester, so that old lady can go off herself.'”
This Man Deserved To Be Kicked Out
“I’m a lifeguard and we have to make sure anyone with who needs a life jacket has a Coast Guard approved one.
Anyway I saw a man with his kids and both had water wings on. I came up and said, ‘I’m sorry sir, but your kids can’t wear those. We have life jackets that they could wear.’
He asked me why.
I explained that floatation devices needed to be coastguard approved at our pool.
He got all ticked off and said, ‘IS YOUR BLUBBER COASTGUARD APPROVED!?!?’
I smiled at him and said, ‘Yes sir, we had someone in here the other day for tests.’
My manager saw and actually kicked the guy out but that guy has made me really self conscious about my weight ever since…”
Who’s the loser now Karen?
“The other night at my job, a customer’s debit card would not work. They kept insisting it was my fault and I was obligated to serve them their food for free. I disagreed after a few minutes of repeatedly trying their card. The lady started screaming at me, telling me I’m a ‘fat worthless loser, and should get a real job.’ She then proceeded to throw her soda at me.
BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE I BEAT THE LAST OF US ON SURVIVOR LEVEL DIFFICULTY WHEN I GOT HOME FROM WORK. Who’s the loser now Karen?”
Okay Karen
“There was a woman in a beach store that I was working at. I wouldn’t give her the clearance price she saw on another bathing suit for the one her granddaughter was wearing out to purchase. I wished her and her granddaughter a great day at the beach. She coldly responded with, ‘I do not wish you well in life.’ “
You Didn’t Need To Say That
“One day I was at the register at Office Max during back to school ringing out this white ‘gentleman’ (for context I am not white). He came up and the sale was going smoothly until I handed him his change. He looked me in the eye and said:
‘No matter what you try to do in this life, you’ll always have to work harder than everyone and still get nowhere. That’s just going to be your role and you’ll never change it.’
It came out of nowhere for me and it’s really affected how I try to do things in my day to day. I still have no idea why he said it. But he had the saddest look on his face. It more one of extreme pity. I don’t know why it hurt so much, but it did.”