Stories about customers

[gorillafuck]

I used to work in a survey center. I was one of those people that calls you and asks you if you want to take a survey, basically a telemarketer but instead of trying to get you to buy stuff I'd try to give you surveys. Annoying I know. And so one time I was making a call to I think Mississippi and this was how my exchange went.

Me: *I say the thing I say whenever anyone picks up, I forget how it goes*

Him: You say you're from New England?

Me: Yeah, this survey is coming from New Hampshire.

Him: Well I'm not gonna take no survey from a foreigner.

Me: Uhh, huh?

Him: I said I'm not gonna take no survey from a foreigner, I'm an American.

Me: Umm....I'm not a foreigner. New Hampshire is in the United States.

Him: Y'all up there are in the business of serving the Queen.

Me: uhhh.....

Him: uhhhhh? (mocking me)

Me: Umm, New Hampshire doesn't serve the Queen....

Him: My ancestors were patriots, we fought in the revolutionary war. Y'all are up there serving the Queen.

Me: Uhh.....

Him: Uhhh? (mocking me again)

Me: Well......you have a good day sir.

*we both hang up*


Do any of you have funny stories about customers at work?

[Sasha]

My job is dealing with intoxicated people, what do you think?

Most will put you of your lunch though as they cover things like crapping in the gallery or cinema or even worse puking in their underpants while taking a crap on the toilet with the door open, only to hoist up their pants when getting kicked out. Best I saw happend when we dumped saw dust on someone's puke, as we do to help clean up and prevent other customers slipping or walking it across the venue, anyway, some kid on XTC spots the saw dust and starts sprinkling it on his head like its fairy dust having tremendous blissful fun.

[Ele'ill]

Delivering appliances and watching people realize that the refrigerator with the doors and hinges off was still five inches too large to fit through a doorway- but we're supposed to make it happen 'or else'.

Had someone get up in my face during such an event and say that 'what you do is monkey work, I'm a publisher you don't want to mess with me I'll make you look so bad'

[Jimmie Higgins]

Had someone get up in my face during such an event and say that 'what you do is monkey work, I'm a publisher you don't want to mess with me I'll make you look so bad'Monkey Work? I hope you threw your own feces at him - that what I would have wanted to do. Ooh-Ooh-Ahhh-Eeeee-Eee-Ahhh motherfucker.

I wonder how many petty-bourgeois assholes that treat "underlings" like this without a second thought every realize that the only thing keeping them from getting their asses beat is the fact that people have to work paycheck to paycheck and can't just quit if an asshole treats them like that.

The worst part is, I never have had to deal with real ruling class people - it's usually some professional this or that who acts like they are the highest of elites and that the world revolves around them. So most of my enjoyable stories have to do with catching these snotty somewhat rich people acting like 8-year olds. I once broke up a slapping fight of two women in their 70s (who both speak like Yankee old-money) - I caught a professor taking a reserved parking sign down, crumpling it up and throwing it under a neighboring car to make it look like someone else did it - I caught a Berkeley Yuppie screaming hysterically and shrilly while threatening to beat up a couple of high school sophomores once.

[Ele'ill]

My initial thoughts were that I consider myself more of a threat as a working class writer than some 'publisher' in formal business attire having an infantile tempertantrum in their front yard because they couldn't perform the said 'monkey work' of using what we call a 'tape measure' in advance.

I have a million and a half stories from that job.

[synthesis]

My job is dealing with intoxicated people, what do you think?

Most will put you of your lunch though as they cover things like crapping in the gallery or cinema or even worse puking in their underpants while taking a crap on the toilet with the door open, only to hoist up their pants when getting kicked out. Best I saw happend when we dumped saw dust on someone's puke, as we do to help clean up and prevent other customers slipping or walking it across the venue, anyway, some kid on XTC spots the saw dust and starts sprinkling it on his head like its fairy dust having tremendous blissful fun.

I swear to God both of these things are going in a movie. No royalties, just letting you know.

[Quail]

I don't really have any interesting stories about customers, but when I worked in a shop, we had these really old tills so the chip and pin thing wasn't connected to the till and we had to swipe the card on the till after taking it out of the card reader. Customers were constantly accusing us of charging them twice, and they weren't very polite about it.

People also always used to go into the changing room, try some clothes on and leave them in a heap in the cubicle. Does it really take that much effort to put them back on the hanger and give them to me on your way out?

When I was a waitress, it always used to really piss me off when I was trying to pick up plates from a table, and when I obviously couldn't reach something, people would just sit there and watch me struggle, instead of just passing it to me.

Working service jobs really sucks in my experience. People treat you like absolute crap.

[Rusty Shackleford]

(paraphrasing)

a woman came in yesterday looking for some cleats. i asked her what size she wore and took her to the womens footwear section.


i show her some and accidentally pointed at a basketball shoe and she said "you dont know what you are doing, dont you?" in the most non chalant you-are-a-dumbass voice.

i apologized and said it was a mistake and began to try to help her find shoes and then she says

her "in my line of work, you cant make mistakes"

me "oh id imagine so, im assuming you are a medical technician"

her "people die"

...she was wearing scrubs and felt that it was necessary to point out that her job involves death and that my mistake of pointing to a basketball shoe instead of a softball cleat was akin to doing a heart transplant on someone in for a check up while drunk and high.

so it turned out she wasnt interested in the womens ones so i told her the youth ones would likely fit her as well. (she was relatively small)

i walk her over to there and i show her some shoes but the size she needed wasnt there. i apologize and then the turned a box around(mind you this wall of shoes is messy as fuck) and voila it was the right size.

she then says

her "you dont know what you are doing"
"can you get someone who knows what they are doing over here"
"maybe he can help"

i said yeah i can get him for you

the guy that basically knows everything in the store just went on lunch but he comes up walking by and she says "can he help me"

this whole time, i was being nice as hell but i felt the urge to just yell at her. she was being the rudest. basically insulting me over and over.



yeah i made a few mistakes but miss "im impatient and i dont make mistakes because im better than you" just had to go on and on about my 2 mistakes. cutting me off when i was trying to explain things.


fucking pissed me off and ruined an until then good day.

:cursing:


qN6TXY3WC4Y

[Pavlov's House Party]

i had a woman tell her daughter she had to keep having good marks in school or else she'd end up serving people behind a counter like me, to my face. i'm in college:crying:

another one was on st jean baptiste (its like the st patricks day of quebecers) when some really drunk dude wanted to buy ice to keep his beer cooler cold. the key to the ice box is attached to a big novelty plastic key so people dont steal it, and i had been waiting for him to come back in for like 4 minutes so i assumed he stole it (normally takes like 30 seconds to open the box and get back inside), when the drunk fuck stumbles in holding the giant plastic key saying "THIS FUCKING KEY DOESNT FIT IN THE LOCK"

[Sasha]

I swear to God both of these things are going in a movie. No royalties, just letting you know.

i have a ton of stories like those, also, messing with drugged out people is so much fun.
at first one of my female bouncer colleagues her identical twin was working the bar, that always seriously messed up the heads of drugged out customers... :lol:

[Princess Luna]

I don't have any stories myself, but my mother used to work at a Mcdonald's and told me some pretty bizzare stuff , the best one was a old woman who wanted to order kentucky fried chicken and got pissed off when she was told they didn't have it.

[Bright Banana Beard]

I have to clean the customer's room TWICE.


IT IS GODDAMN CLEAN YOU FREAK! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK IF YOU GOING TO NEGATIVELY PUBLISHING OF ME. FUCK YOU, YOU CRAZY FECKLESS!

[Jimmie Higgins]

Do people know the website "Yelp"? It's big with yuppies who feel slighted by waiters when they go to fancy restaurants and then they go online and berate the shop and/or the service worker. Anyway, not like people don't have bad customer service interactions, but for the most part it's taking out problems with the business (or sometimes people who are angry because they don't know how capitalism really works and buy into the whole "customer is always right" myths about the importance of the consumer) on some overworked waiter or POS worker.

Anyway, I wish there was a similar website for workers to anonymously evaluate bosses and employers... and hell, bad customer interactions too. "Mr. Smith is the worst customer I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with...":lol:

But seriously, how awesome would it be to have a website that anonymously lets workers blow-off steam about Walmart or Starbucks or just some local employer. It would probably help angry but isolated workers feel more confident and less alone when they see that some semi-illegal policy they put up with is actually something that many people are also angry about and is something that businesses regularly do. There could be links to unions, IWW, Labornotes and radical groups on the website as well as other basic resources for how to protect your rights on the job.

Anyone know about programing and want to set this up?:p

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

http://notalwaysright.com/ x

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

But seriously, how awesome would it be to have a website that anonymously lets workers blow-off steam about Walmart or Starbucks or just some local employer.

http://www.retail-sucks.com/

http://www.walmartsucks.org/

[Magón]

Working at a Mechanic shop, and dealing with all sorts of people through the day. I have so many stories to tell, that they're not even funny, they're just sad.

Except the time a guy came into the shop, all demanding and confident in his car skills, telling me his radiator was leaking, and probably ready to burn up. But when I checked it out, the radiator was fine and it was just antifreeze seeping out.

[Triple A]

I used to mock telemarketers.
No more, Zeekloid, no more.



I have a funny story when I was working on a kind of a summer job serving beers to people. Most of them were clearly drunk so it was an hell of an experience. The funniest thing was a single guy that bought 24!!!!!!!!!!!! beers.
Of course he didnt drink 'em all and shared about half with the people that were selling the stuff.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I used to work in a survey center. I was one of those people that calls you and asks you if you want to take a survey, basically a telemarketer but instead of trying to get you to buy stuff I'd try to give you surveys.

That's a terrible job. I did it once. I lasted 2 and a half days I think. The survey was around 30 minutes long, and we were expected to tell people it was "very brief" to keep them on the phone. When they started questioning the length, we were supposed to tell them they were almost finished, even when they weren't. It was fucking painful.

I know some people that did that for years. Someone else I know has been doing collections over the phone for a decades or more.

:(

[Jimmie Higgins]

http://notalwaysright.com/ x


http://www.retail-sucks.com/

http://www.walmartsucks.org/Cheers!

I was thinking of something with a Yelp format where you could search by industry or chain or boss. Never the less, I enjoyed reading the stories anecdotes - though a walmart site arguing for unionization (or even just sabotage) rather than litigation would be nice.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

One time, this surveyor called me and told me he was from New England. Being that he's a foreigner, I wasn't going to take his survey. I mean, I'm American! He tried telling me New Hampshire is part of the United States, but I could tell he was only serving the interests of his queen. He had a bad habit of going "uuhhhh" so I mocked him. I tried telling him of my glorious ancestors and how they fought against the queen. All he could say was "uuhhhh" and then the bastard hung up on me.
Keep it in 'Murica!

[The Man]

One time, this surveyor called me and told me he was from New England. Being that he's a foreigner, I wasn't going to take his survey. I mean, I'm American! He tried telling me New Hampshire is part of the United States, but I could tell he was only serving the interests of his queen. He had a bad habit of going "uuhhhh" so I mocked him. I tried telling him of my glorious ancestors and how they fought against the queen. All he could say was "uuhhhh" and then the bastard hung up on me.
Keep it in 'Murica!

:lol::lol::lol:

[Aeval]

The shop I work at gets a really weird mix of customers, we get we also get the local kids coming in stoned out of their minds trying to buy fags and steal chocolate, incredibly old Yorkshire people who come in and either telling you their life stories or start ranting about immigrants, and there are also quite a few genuinely mental people here who just come in for something to do, and finally we also get all the guardian readers coming in to buy their organic lentils (who are some of the rudest people I've ever met). So you end up with the classic thing where one of the not too stable people comes in, ranting about how they are being followed by MI5 and the like, you know they'll be fine if you're polite and let them get what ever it is off their chest, the tiny hippie who's come in to buy some Kilimanjaro coffee beans, however, doesn't, and makes the unfortunate mistake of blanking them, all hell breaks loose, they start screaming that she's a c*nt, some local guy sticks his oar in and makes things even worse, the kids, who had previously been trying to stick cans of Carlsberg down their trousers, now start joining in...


Some times it's pretty funny though, this weekend some of the kids were baiting one of them so they picked up a stick and twatted them :lol:

[La Comédie Noire]

(paraphrasing)


a woman came in yesterday looking for some cleats. i asked her what size she wore and took her to the womens footwear section.


i show her some and accidentally pointed at a basketball shoe and she said "you dont know what you are doing, dont you?" in the most non chalant you-are-a-dumbass voice.

i apologized and said it was a mistake and began to try to help her find shoes and then she says

her "in my line of work, you cant make mistakes"

me "oh id imagine so, im assuming you are a medical technician"

her "people die"

...she was wearing scrubs and felt that it was necessary to point out that her job involves death and that my mistake of pointing to a basketball shoe instead of a softball cleat was akin to doing a heart transplant on someone in for a check up while drunk and high.

so it turned out she wasnt interested in the womens ones so i told her the youth ones would likely fit her as well. (she was relatively small)

i walk her over to there and i show her some shoes but the size she needed wasnt there. i apologize and then the turned a box around(mind you this wall of shoes is messy as fuck) and voila it was the right size.

she then says

her "you dont know what you are doing"
"can you get someone who knows what they are doing over here"
"maybe he can help"

i said yeah i can get him for you

the guy that basically knows everything in the store just went on lunch but he comes up walking by and she says "can he help me"

this whole time, i was being nice as hell but i felt the urge to just yell at her. she was being the rudest. basically insulting me over and over.



yeah i made a few mistakes but miss "im impatient and i dont make mistakes because im better than you" just had to go on and on about my 2 mistakes. cutting me off when i was trying to explain things.


fucking pissed me off and ruined an until then good day.

This makes me very angry. People treat service workers like shit because they know they can get away with it. But here's a little fan fiction:

Her: In my line of work, you cant make mistakes.

You: I don't see how you wanting to feel important about yourself has fuck all to do with shoes. I mean comparing nursing to shoes is like comparing apples to oranges. You're trained extensively for hundreds of hours, going over protocols and scenarios before you are allowed anywhere near a patient. You're also paid a decent wage and have the added incentive of performing a extremely useful service.

I on the other hand have no formal training what so ever in the shoe department, in fact a thorough training program is prohibitively expensive for an $8/h service job. Instead they expect you to learn as you go along and sometimes get mentored by a fellow employee. Unfortunately because you are both competing for the same hours, most people are concerned with saving their own asses and are actually quite contemptuous of noobs.

Not to mention people have the notion that just because we get paid low wages, the job must be easy. Not so, there are many subtle intricacies to any low wage job, for instance could you tell me where to find a size 7 men's dress shoe with a raised heel in one of the more economic brand names ($60-100) range?

Most of the time this works out just fine, most people are decent, empathetic beings who understand what it's like being the "new guy" and don't mind inconveniencing themselves just a little to help someone else, these are what we call adults. Then you have the narrow minded, small brained jerks who have been spoiled by a lifestyle of instant gratification and can't delay their own pleasure for more than 2 seconds for fear the wave of ennui they have been running from their entire lives will foam up around their ankles and drown them in despair, these are what we call children. And like children we bear their temper tantrums and help them along, even if they are ungrateful and snotty, because we realize they don't yet understand how to act like grownups and think beyond themselves.

Now I very politely apologized and offered to further help you, even though frankly you are being a little childish right now and don't deserve it.

[gorillafuck]

That's a terrible job. I did it once. I lasted 2 and a half days I think. The survey was around 30 minutes long, and we were expected to tell people it was "very brief" to keep them on the phone. When they started questioning the length, we were supposed to tell them they were almost finished, even when they weren't. It was fucking painful.I had to say that stuff, too.

[El Rojo]

i used to work in a petrol station, and the exec drivers always used to treat us like shit. one time the credit card machine broke and some fat white guy in ralph lauron cloths, you know it, a jumper tied round his neck totally lost his rag and started shouting at us about how we were fucking usless. i just stood there watching him trying to look nonchalent, but it was really horrible

[eyedrop]

Why the hell do people just leave shopping carts out on a random place after the counter? What is wrong with people? Who raised such people?

To me thats completely unthinkable, kinda like spitting on the floor inside when you're a guest somewhere.

[Fulanito de Tal]

i used to work in a petrol station, and the exec drivers always used to treat us like shit. one time the credit card machine broke and some fat white guy in ralph lauron cloths, you know it, a jumper tied round his neck totally lost his rag and started shouting at us about how we were fucking usless. i just stood there watching him trying to look nonchalent, but it was really horrible

I didn't get the story. Why don't you try writing in ENGLISH.

jk....except for I really didn't understand it.

[Sasha]

Why the hell do people just leave shopping carts out on a random place after the counter? What is wrong with people? Who raised such people?

To me thats completely unthinkable, kinda like spitting on the floor inside when you're a guest somewhere.

dont know about shopping carts but when i worked in a clothing store i saw an definitive national-cultural aspect; dutch/european people mostly (not always but most do) refold clothing they took from an stack to look at. Americans dont refold, they walk away assuming the magic fairy living in every clothing shop waves her wand and they refold themselfs. Now Israeli's, they intentionaly mess up your stacks in front of you and then stay extra long to watch you refolding them taking sardonic pleasure in seeing you working (for them). That country is culturally really fucked up.

[Fulanito de Tal]

Americans dont refold, they walk away assuming the magic fairy living in every clothing shop waves her wand and they refold themselfs.

:lol: My roommate does that with no remorse. It's like she enjoys being able to unfold clothes and not have to refold them.

[eyedrop]

:lol: My roommate does that with no remorse. It's like she enjoys being able to unfold clothes and not have to refold them.

I reckon you spray cold water in her face every-time you see her do that. I know I couldn't watch that with someone I know without telling them to stop their bullshit.

[praxis1966]

See, stories like these are the reason I recommend anyone in still in the prime of their youth go to work as a bouncer in a nightclub or bar. The primary benefit of doing so (and I know from first hand experience) is if anybody decides to get lippy, you just chuck them out the front door. If, in the process of doing so, they decide they wanna play, you're well within your rights to crack 'em alongside the head a couple of dozen times. Though bouncing is in a lot of cases just as low paying as retail or food service, the violence serves as welcome catharsis, lulz...

I'll never forget, for instance, the first physical confrontation I got into working as a bouncer. I wound up kicking the snot out of some Marine Corps douche bag (I could tell because he was wearing a tank top and had the Marine Corps crest tattooed on his shoulder) for smacking his girlfriend around. Then, one of my coworkers threw him down the flight of stairs that were outside the front door...

[Sasha]

yeah, you see, where i bounce that kind of behavior is not really apriciated (hence why i like to work there), sure if we have an cock like the one you describe we take him down to the floor and if then doesnt give up offcourse your knee will always seem to land on some sensitive bodypart but the reall chucking down stairs or busting head is a no go, esp because the cop station is straight opposite the venue and they dont want us to behave like they do.
on the other hand it makes you develop just some more refined ways of engagement, a well aimd thumb to the troath is so much more ellegant than an fist to the eye. :D

[praxis1966]

See, on that particular occasion, I really didn't have much of a choice. What you have to keep in mind is that the club I was working in at the time was fucking huge. There were times we had 65 bouncers on the clock at once... It's the kind of place where if there were 3,000 people in the building it looked empty.

The point I'm trying to make is that you can, if you're not careful, get isolated someplace because it's not one huge dance floor; it's a big ass building that's subdivided into what amount to a bunch of smaller clubs/bars. Anyway, it all started when I was coming back to my post from someplace else (I think I had gone to the bathroom or something). This woman was standing there with no shoes (health code violation) and the coworker I mentioned before is standing there and says, "Stay here and keep an eye on her. I already told her to put her shoes on, so if she doesn't find them in like the next two minutes, kick her out," and then proceeds to walk the fuck off.

So I'm standing there as she's looking around, and I guess she gets frustrated or whatever. So she turns around and starts yelling at her boyfriend, "What'd you do with my shoes asshole? They were right fucking here!" He yells back, "I didn't touch your shoes, you stupid fuckin' *****!" So she smacks him, and he smacks her back twice before I can even move. Without thinking, I jump in between the two of them and put them both in a headlock, one under each arm. He manages to escape and sneak in a punch so I let her go and proceed to destroy his ass... This whole process takes roughly 1 - 2 minutes or so before the same coworker hears the DJ (who was in a booth above us) get on the PA calling for assistance and the coworker comes running in from the next room. By then everything was over, but the coworker puts the guy in a full Nelson and proceeds to take him out front and chuck him down the stairs just for good measure.

The funny bit is that besides the DJ, I thought I was the only employee in the room when everything got going. Turns out, one of the bar backs (who like me was a trained martial artist) was standing behind one of the bar stations watching the whole thing go down. I didn't find this out until the next day when he tells me his version of events, "So then he swings on you and you're all (feigns back-knuckles, punches, blocks and knife fists)... It was fuckin' awesome!" And I'm like, "You saw it? Why the fuck didn't you step in?!" So he says, "Aw man, you looked like you were doin' fine to me. If I thought you were in trouble I'd have hopped over the bar quick like."

[eyedrop]

Generally i don't like bouncers as I can't count the times I've been too "drunk to enter" because me and a pal have jokingly held hands and caressed each other asses outside a club.

[La Comédie Noire]

By then everything was over, but the coworker puts the guy in a full Nelson and proceeds to take him out front and chuck him down the stairs just for good measure.

I hope he wasn't hurt too too badly.

[Quail]

they walk away assuming the magic fairy living in every clothing shop waves her wand and they refold themselfs..
I used to hate that so fucking much. It doesn't even take much effort to put the clothes back on hangers or whatever. :cursing:

[ʇsıɥɔɹɐuɐ ıɯɐbıɹo]

Not really a customer story (I'm a dishwasher and don't often interact with customers) but one time some dude puked in the mens room so my manager got me to help clean it.

Worst part is what he said.

"Hey I can tell what he had for lunch, see the pink, it means he had a strawberry milkshake, and those little pieces of beef and bread means he had a burger...

Oh god I almost lost my own lunch.

[praxis1966]

I hope he wasn't hurt too too badly.

IMO, a man who strikes a woman (especially when that man has 6 inches and 50 lbs on her as in this case) deserves what's coming to him. In this case, he got up and walked away, albeit in a daze, so I doubt he was.