The Customer is always an Ass, Part 2

I work in a library. One day at the checkout desk some 50 year-old lard-ass thundercunt decides to storm the front:

Lady *Cuts in line* *Slams down a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets* "We do not allow books about witches and magic in our house. How could you let a little girl check this out!? She's only thirteen!"

Me "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but the book meets your daughter's reading level and is age appropriate, how am I suppose to know she isn't allowed to check it out. I'm sorry, but I don't know who your daughter is?"

Lady *incredulous* "That's no excuse! Why do you even carry this trash?! These books are proven to cause violence in young children? They have instructions on how to cast spells and summon the devil"

Me "Well, I'm sorry ma'am, but the library is a public institution and we have to represent the interests of the public equally. I'm sorry your child checked it out. Maybe she should be more honest with our staff. I can place an override on your child's card if you want? That means she will only be able to check out books when you are with her."

Lady *Not really listening to me, still pissed off* "Uhuh, yes, well can I speak to your supervisor?"

Me "She's at lunch right now, She should be back in about an hour."

Lady "Is that so? Well, I guess I can wait then"

Me "Okay. She'll be back shortly. I'm sorry for the trouble."

The bitch isn't moving, just leaning against the counter, obviously trying to cause trouble. The other people in line are starting to look a little pissed.

Me "Ma'am?" .... "I'm sorry but I need to help these other patrons, could you step aside?"

Lady "Out of the question young man, we are going to wait untill your supervisor gets here"

The guy behind her is looking pretty damn angry, and he's givin' me the vibe to tell her off. I cease polietness

Me "Listen Ma'am, I can't wait here for 45 minutes just so you and me can talk to my supervisor about the #1 New York Times Best Seller, which you seem to think will summon the devil. I'm sorry, but your obstructing the duities of the county, and I can have you removed from the library"

Lady *Turns beat-fucking-red* "Do not take that tone of voice with me you fucking little prick! I'll be having a long talk with your supervisor!"

Me *I'm more than a little flustered, in my 2 years of work, I'd never had a patron raise their voice, much less swear at me* "Yea, and I'll be having a long talk with the cops" *I pick up the phone and dial the fuzz*

Ten minutes later the whole thing had degenerated into your typical white-trash episode of cops. The bitch was yelling and fussing about how we carry "books about witch craft" and "How I called her a bitch" etc etc etc... The cops talked to some patrons, and my supervisor showed up and talked to the cops. Overall I was told I handled it very well. Thankfully.

I work in the Billing department of a large American telecommunications company, and some days I do floor support. (Walking around helping other reps with their more difficult calls.)

Another rep, who happens to be a friend of mine got a call from a lady who was very upset that we charged for a 2 hour international phone call, when she was sure she only talked on the phone for 20 minutes max. The rep had mentioned in passing to the customer that it could have been a number of issues, including the possibility that the handset was not actually hung up correctly, and did not disconnect the call.

The (unintended) insinuation that the customer was at fault, and for such a silly reason sent her into a frenzy. She became very irate, and yelled at the rep. All he could do was send off a request to have some records researched and determine if there was some sort of tech issue, but told her it was probable that the charge was valid, as there was no history of this issue on the account, despite the large number of long distance calls.

Knowing there was nothing else she could do, the customer decided she would have to wait for the results of the research, so she disconnected the call. .... or so she thought.

When I approached the rep, he was in hysterical laughter, as the customer had not correctly hung up her phone, and he could hear her talking with someone else in the home in the background.

I told him to leave a note on the account that she can't hang up a phone, and cancel the research.

I had a conversation with a customer today that left me both pissed off at the customer and the world for allowing such a bitter woman to exist.

I sell TVs at a major chain store, I began talking to this nicely dressed middle aged woman about the 50" plasma that she was standing in front of. Within the first couple minutes it's obvious she's here to buy the TV she's standing in front of and everything is progressing smoothly when she hits me with this mildly dumb question,

Woman: "Why is this TV on sale?"

Me: "Well ma'am almost all our televisions are on sale this weekend. We have some great prices today."

Woman: "You didn't answer my question, why is this TV on sale!"

Me: "Ma'am, it's Memorial Day weekend, one of our biggest sale days of the summer."

Woman: "That doesn't make any sense! Why is it on sale?!?!?!?"

Me: "This is one of our most popular televisions, sometimes we lower the price for short periods of time in order to encourage people to come in and purchase them, hoping that by selling more of them we can offset selling them at a lower price."

Woman: "You are a terrible salesman and a liar! Tell me why this TV is on sale!"

Me: "Kevin, you want to take over?"

So I passed her off to another salesman, apparently he never answered the sale question to her satisfaction, but managed to distract her with shiny objects and talk about what a horrible salesman I was. She ended up dropping about $4k on a TV.

Because retail employees can be a clanish and spiteful lot, my manager and the other salesman decided that instead of trying to explain the additional savings that come from buying a Television/Cables/Surround Sound System all at once as a package, they'd just skip it and charge her the tagged price.

Price of being bitter and rude? $474.

Having wasted away working at a chinese takeout place for five of the longest and shittiest years of my life, I'm glad to have at least one decent story to share:

Fridays were always the busiest for us, seemingly endless streams of shitty white trash customers, retarded special orders, substitutions noone in their right mind would ever ask for, general mayhem and whathaveyou. Working in the back of the house (kitchen), I was generally spared most of the customer based insanity directly, though one night was different... (It should be stated at this point, that I, for quite some time, did indeed pull front of house duty, and had direct interface with the customers. I knew how it could be, and had already had by back broken time and time again with the often retarded diatraibes of our clientelle.)

While passing by the front counter on a speedy mission to refill stock of something in the kitchen, I was hastily pulled aside by a waiting customer. Upon seeing him beckon me over, I sized this guy up, humoring myself by trying to predict what complaint, request or comment he may have. He appeared to be the standard aging hippie archetype, as was common in our neck of the woods (semi-affluent, rural Vermont).

"Vegan," my mind sang.

Indeed, and damn, I couldn't have been more correct. Over the next 10 minutes or so (in the heat of a rush, phones ringing off the hook, the entire front of house staff trying to shuffle past me, being yelled at in 2 different languages) I was forcefed this bastard's personal politics concerning his choice to be a vegan, how it was "so hard and frustrating to get a decent meal when he went out," a story about how the last chinese place he had tried for a special order had screwed up, and how pissed he was about it, and how I should take special care with his order to make sure it fit with his culinary lifestyle choice. I spent the entire monologue session in attempt to intercut that I hadn't taken his order, wouldn't be the final step in preparing his order, and that I had to get the fuck back to work if he ever wanted his order, as the rest of the restaurant was falling down around my ears. Each attempted interjection was met with a hand in my face and a fucking passive/aggressive "I understand what you're saying, but..." Finally, released from this shitstorm, mildly disoriented from the sheer amount of methane contained in the man's gripes, I head back toward my station. I get about 3 steps from the counter and I hear: "and if you could push that through quick, I'm in a hurry."

*SNAP*

The 20 or so orders I had left there before being waylaid had quadrupled, and I was being screamed at to get them done, as fast as humanly possible. I took a moment to glare toward the counter, and the doting hippie-fuck, mindfully watching me as the kitchen was an open design, found his order in the stack, and set about making this douchebag's broccoli in garlic sauce, sans flavor. Underpaid-restaurant-asshole-man emerged from the pit of my soul, as I decided the best way to make a vegan broccoli dish that night would be to "take extra care" to fucking *scrub* each and every piece of broccoli in the dish with a nice slab of raw flank steak sitting in the back. The sadness of having only the creativity for such a passive victory haunts me to this day, but the memory always serves a smile.

I worked at PJ hell for a while too. One story about a sucky customer..

I personally took the order over the phone, and as we had a few orders ahead of his, AND I was the only driver, I told them it'd be 45 minutes to an hour. They agreed, I hung up. I wound up taking all 4 orders at once, since all of them were on the way to mr 45-60 minutes, we had the electric hotbags, and they all wound up coming out of the oven rather close together anyway. Keep in mind I was always rather anal of keeping track of how long it took me to get there from the time the order came in. I looked at my watch when I pulled up to his house - 41 minutes, pies were still steaming hot. I see him outside, I get out and start walking up to the door, and start to say "Hey how are you tonight?" he launches into a tirade about how "the idiot on the phone promised it would be 30 minutes!" and "it's been an hour and a half! I already sent my kids to bed! How could you do this" blah blah. I just told him that I was the "idiot" he spoke with, I promised him 45 to 60 minutes, it'd now been 42 minutes. He says he talked to my manager and the manager said it would be free - no problem, I whip out my cellphone and call my manager. Manager laughs and says they called and CANCELLED it and to bring it back, I tell them this. Guy tries to grab my phone, I pocket it and tell him he's NOT using my minutes, he's not getting it for free, and I'm going back to the store, have a good night. Oh yeah, I was also a manager too. This is all after I'd shown the guy my watch, the time on the ticket, etc. He accused me of altering the time on the computer. Asshat finally breaks down when he realizes I'm leaving with his food, and apologizes and says maybe it really wasn't an hour - I tell him "You think I didn't know that?". He pays for the pies, plus a $3 tip, and tells me I'm doing a good job. I responded with a "Whatever, have a good night". Apology not accepted, btw. I put a note in the computer not to deliver to him ever again, and since the order had already been cancelled out of the computer and written off, the other manager and I just split the cash

I was always nice when I worked in customer service, however one time I had a costumer freak out at another customer. Some lady wanted to return a "broken" DVD player without paying the restocking fee, on top of that, when we tested it, it worked fine. She came in claiming that she had no picture or sound on her TV. After like 15 minutes of arguing about the return we finnaly realized the problem is that she had no RCA hook up and was trying to run it through another VCR but didn't set the channel on the VCR (or something like that).

After sugesting she get an RFU adapter she freaked the fuck-out. At this point, the 6'4-ish 350+lbs somoan man behind her picked up the DVD player and tossed it towards the door, she turned around and said nothing to him with her mouth wide open. He looked down at her and said "In 5 seconds I'm tossing you too, now move."

She picked the DVD player up on the way out and I never saw her again.