The company I work for was a small mom-and-pop shop running literally out of the owner’s apartment, processing everything manually and individually, and keeping stock in the storage area… about thirty years ago, long before I joined. Nowadays, 99% of our business is through the website and EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) for our bigger clients, doing more orders per day than we used to do per month in the early days, but it seems like some customers still think we’re bending over backward for every last dime.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Company]. This is [My Name] spea—”

Customer: “What the h*** is this email?!”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, is this in regard to a specific order?”

Customer: “Obviously!“

Me: “I’ll need an order number to look this up, then, sir.”

Cue a lot of rambling insults before I finally get an order number to look up.

Me: “I think I see now. You’re referring to the ‘attached PO’ email?”

Customer: “Are you new, or just an idiot? Yes! We have always done business like this, and you have the nerve to try to tell me otherwise?!”

At this point, after the repeated indirect and direct insults, I am allowed to hang up on him, and TECHNICALLY this call should be going through his representative and not straight to the order-management team anyway, but it’s a slow morning and I’ve been practicing my Politeness Judo.

Me: “Sir, it has been our policy to require all order information to be entered correctly on the site since I have been here, and I just recently had my third anniversary. We do not, and have not for a long time, set up orders for you.”

Customer: “That is literally your job!”

Me: “No, sir. My job is to check the orders for errors when they come in, make changes when requested, and invoice them when they go out. We cannot accept orders with notes that say, ‘Set up per my PO.’ We require you to input the information at the time of order entry.”

Customer: “Now, you listen to me. I have been working with your company for a decade, and I have never been treated like this! I’ll have your neck for this!”

Me: “‘Have my neck’? That’s a new variant; I like it! But sir, with the amount of automation in our processes now, this policy is as much for your benefit as ours. If I had not seen your note and flagged the order for review, our warehouse would have picked the—” *double-checks* “—single battery you have listed and shipped it to your default receiving address as entered; the other twenty thousand dollars in product would be lost to the ether, and none would go to the end-user as requested.”

Customer: “Do you have any idea how much time and money you’re costing me?!”

Me: “I do apologize, sir, but if all the information had come through correctly the first time and been able to process fully, this order would have shipped out yesterday morning. Also, due to too many companies sending conflicting information between orders, emails, and POs, we have implemented this policy to ensure that you can 100% confirm your order information before it reaches us, rather than leaving it up to individuals here having to copy and paste everything and cause further errors. As I stated, this policy has been in place for years; we are just now also sending out standardized emails after our most recent round of updates to our software and website to every order that comes in this way.”

Customer: “If you’re not going to work with me, I’m pulling my business from you! Once your boss finds out how much you’re losing the company, you’ll be on the street in no time flat!”

Me: “I’m terribly sorry you feel that way, sir, and I can certainly put you through to your sales rep regarding the status of your account. However, I can also see that you have placed a total of four orders over the past two years, one of which was canceled after entering. While we absolutely value your business, I don’t think we’re going to change our entire model to accommodate that.”

Sadly, I’m not privy to the conversation they had with the sales team; I was told there was an excessive amount of cursing and threats, though. By the end of it, it had gone from the sales rep, to the manager of the sales department, up to the owner of the company, who terminated them as a client. MAN, it’s good working for a place where management has your back against hostile customers!

A new assistant recently started working with us, and for the first week, she was fine. She fit in with the rest of us, worked well, and was friendly.

After a week, she announced:

New Assistant: “I’m pregnant! I’m going to leave to take my maternity leave after my first six months are up. That way, I get my maternity pay.”

Manager: “I don’t think so. You have to work your six months before you get pregnant.”

New Assistant: “Oh… I thought I could just do six months, and then I’d be entitled to it.”

Manager: “Nope.”

She went home that evening and never came back.

I’m a cashier at a gas station. It is September 2022. I am vaccinated but still choose to wear a mask for two reasons. One, I handle money from hundreds of customers daily and [contagious illness] is still around. Two, unfortunately, due to two pregnancies and a lack of vitamins, at age thirty-one, I’ve had to have my teeth removed.

I’m working the register when a customer comes in.

Me: “Welcome to [Store]. How can I help you today?”

The customer pays for gas and a pack of cigarettes and then comes out with this gem.

Customer: “You know, you shouldn’t be bothering with the mask. You look like a Trump. No, even better, a Biden! You’re going to lose customers looking like that.”

Me: “Sir, it’s more of a personal choice. I don’t mind continuing to wear them. Have a great day!”

I don’t even wear proper hospital-grade masks. I wear fabric ones with prints — currently Halloween-themed — so I don’t look like a germophobe, though a proper mask would protect me better.

Also, I currently have a coworker out sick for the next five days with — you guessed it!

At this point, I assume the interaction is over, but of course, I’m not that lucky as the customer comes back in a minute later.

Customer: “I swore I bought [Cigarettes], but apparently not. I’ll take another pack.”

I ring him up without comment, only asking for ID again and wishing him a great day yet again. He walks all the way to the door before turning and practically yelling at me.

Customer: “You know, I should put in a complaint about you, Miss Biden. You’re just showing that your company supports him!”

Me: “Sir, as I’ve said, it’s a personal choice. Please, have a good day.”

Customer: “You’re what’s wrong with America!”

Me: “Okay, sir. You can leave now.”

The customer did leave, thankfully. I still think he came back in just to harass me again. I get the [health crisis] is over, but seriously, me wearing a mask affects nobody but me. I’ll never understand why people think they have a right to comment on another person’s appearance, ever.

Related:
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 28
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 27
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 26
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 25
An Ugly Side Of Society Has Been Unmasked, Part 24

I answer a phone call from a customer who has ordered a computer online and wants an update on when it will arrive.

Me: “Did you have your order number so I can look it up?”

Customer: “I don’t have that at the moment, but the order is under [Customer].”

Our system tends to crash when searching by name only, as it then searches through every order ever placed, so when we do that, we try to narrow down the search by the date, as well, to prevent the crash.

Me: “Okay, I can try looking it up that way. I’ll just also need to know when you placed the order.”

Customer: “Just a moment while I check my account… I ordered it on September 7th.”

The current date is August 15th.

Me: “That was September 7th?”

Customer: “Yes, September 7th.”

Me: “Of last year?”

Customer: “No, this year.”

Me: “It’s still August; we aren’t in September yet. Do you mean August 7th?”

Customer: “Let me double-check… Oh, I see. I ordered it on August 23rd.”

Me: “That’s next week; it’s only August 15th today.”

Customer: “Oh, then I don’t know when I ordered it.”

It is almost closing time, and I am about to take some rubbish out to the dock while my manager is starting on the closing duties, which include counting and removing the cash from the tills.

Manager: “On your way out the back, could you check around for a man and a kid? If you see them, let them know we’re about to close. They came in a few minutes ago while I was on the phone.”

I don’t see them, so I continue to put the rubbish out and do a couple more things before I hear the manager announce that the store is closed. As I leave the dock, I see the man and girl coming around a fixture with their back to me. They both are craning their necks as if they are trying to see down to the counter area. The man suddenly crouches and ducks into an aisle, with the girl following behind doing the same.

I slam the door with a loud bang.

Me: “Hi. Just letting you know we’re closed. If you have any purchases, please take them to the counter.”

They are both startled, look at me wide-eyed, stand up, and start heading to the front of the store. I go through the centre of the store, keeping an eye on them from a safe distance. I run to the door after they rush out to close and lock it.

Manager: “What was that? It looked like you were chasing them out. What did you do to them? They looked terrified!”

Me: “They were trying to hide down the back. I scared them when I came out of the dock, and they took off.”

Manager: “Why would they hide?”

Me: “They probably thought you were alone.”

Manager: “But why hide? I don’t understand.”

I point to the bags of cash she’s putting into a satchel. She looks down and then looks up.

Manager: “No way. That can’t be right. You’re too suspicious.”

I shrugged but pointed out that they had been positioning themselves in the perfect spot to hide near the door through which she would be taking the money. She looked wide-eyed as it clicked.

I stopped working there not long after. [Manager] lasted until the head office started trying to force her to work in the store for hours on her own. The area was too dangerous for anyone to work alone.