I’m working in a grooming salon when a father and his teenage son come in with a dog.

Me:
“Hi! Who do we have here?”

Father:
“This is Nugget. Can you please shave him?”

Me:
“Okay, do you have an appointment?”

Son:
“No. Please, it stinks!”

I end up able to take the dog, and when referring to the dog, I ask the sex of the dog, as some customers get upset if you say the wrong pronoun.

Son:
“You can look underneath and check!”

The son holds up the dog and then puts the dog down, and he starts playing with his belt as I’m talking to the dad. 

Son:
“I don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl; I need to check!”

Luckily, the dad stopped him before his pants went down, but after they left, I decided to go on break!

I work the evening shift at a hotel in the housekeeping department. I generally run around with towels, shampoo, etc., for guests. This evening, I get a call from the reception saying that some guests can’t get the bathroom lights turned on. I knock on the guest’s door.

Guest:
“Finally! It’s broken! I’ve tried everything, and I can’t get the lights to work!”

Me:
“Okay, may I come in and have a look?”

Guest:
“Come on, come on.”

We use a card in a main switch by the door which turns everything on. The card is in the switch and other lights are on in the room. 

Me:
“You’ve tried the light switch, yeah? Is it broken?”

Guest:
“What light switch? I already put the card in the door; what else could it be?!”

Me:
“Umm, there’s a light switch just there.”

I point towards the light switch.

Guest: “Where?!”
I lean forward with my arm raised out straight. The guest is standing not two centimetres from the switch and I lean forward and turn it on. The light in the bathroom comes on. 

Me:
“This switch.”

Guest:
*Clearly embarrassed* “Well, they should mark them better! You can leave now!”

It was the only switch on the wall in the entire room.

The grocery store where I work has a loyalty program that grants customers a discount on gas if they buy so many dollars in groceries. I work at customer service and handle problems customers have about anything that goes wrong anywhere in the store in person and over the phone. I answer a call.

Me:
“Hello, thank you for calling [Company] customer service. This is [My Name]; how may I help you?”

Customer:
“Yes, my husband was just up there and got gas from your gas station and he didn’t get his discount.”

Because of our fuel program, our pumps have prompts that many customers who don’t get gas at our store regularly do not know they have to follow. It is a common problem for them to try and pump gas immediately, which causes the pump to overlook the discount.

Me:
“Did your husband get any discount at all?”

If they use their loyalty card, they get a generic discount no matter what, and it tells me if they even scanned their card.

Customer:
“The receipt says we paid $3.45 a gallon.”

I am hoping the gas station didn’t change their price on me!

Me:
“Okay, so he did use his loyalty card… Now, did—”

Customer:
“—of course, he used his card!”

I ignore her interruption.

Me:
“Did your husband follow the prompts on the screen? Because what can happen is he might have scanned his card and then went to pump his gas. If he did that, the pump would have defaulted to the generic discount every customer automatically gets when they use their card at our pumps.”

Customer:
*Yelling into background* “Did you follow the prompts?”

Husband:
*From the background* “Of course, I f****** followed the d*** prompts! I didn’t get my twenty-cent discount!”

Customer:
*Still to the background* “He said that if you… Here you talk to him.”

Husband:
“I don’t want to talk to them; I want my d*** discount!”

There is a fumbling with the phone.

Husband:
“Hello?! Yes, I didn’t get my twenty-cent discount. My receipt from the gas even says I should have gotten it but I didn’t! How are you going to make up for this?!”

Me:
“Sir, it sounds like you did not follow the prompts. What it should have—”

Husband:
“—of course, I followed your f****** prompts. Your d*** pump refused to give me my discount!”

I then explain to him, in detail, step by step, what should have appeared on the screen and the actions he should have taken to get to his discount.

Husband:
*Frustrated* “I did all those d*** things and it didn’t even tell me how much I could have saved. It skipped from how I want to pay to me pumping for gas without my discount.”

Me:
“It sounds like to me that after you selected your form of payment you went directly to pumping your gas.”

Husband:
“Of course, I did!”

Me:
“When you did that, you skipped the last prompt that asked you how much of your discount you wanted to use. Pressing 1 would have been the full amount, 2 would have been to change the amount, and 3 is for the generic discount that you got. If you skipped this step it would have defaulted to 3, so it wouldn’t use any of your points without your permission.”

Husband:
“Well, that is too d*** confusing… So, you are telling me I am s*** out of luck?”

Me:
“I understand it can be confusing. Next time, to make sure you get the discount, I advise asking an attendant for assistance and they would be more than happy to assist you. Your points are still there for the next time you want to fill up. However, to make up for your frustration and confusion, you can come into the store and I’ll give you back the difference of what you should have saved.

Husband:
“YOU ARE THE F****** STORE?!”

Suddenly, he is yelling into the background.

Husband:
“YOU CALLED THE D*** STORE! I TOLD YOU TO CALL THEIR CORPORATE OFFICE!”

His wife says some things too soft for me to hear.

Husband:
“YOU AT THAT STORE DON’T DO S*** TO HELP CUSTOMERS! I HAVE HAD THIS PROBLEM BEFORE AND CUSTOMER SERVICE NEVER DOES S***! EVEN THE MANAGER REFUSES TO DO ANYTHING! I WANT YOUR CORPORATE PHONE NUMBER!”

I am an assistant department head of customer service, but because the head isn’t in that day I am acting department head and directly beneath the managers. What I am offering to give him can’t be any more than six or seven dollars. It isn’t that much money to make a customer happy for something that wasn’t our fault to begin with.

Me:
“Sir, I am sorry to hear that happened to you in the past. However, I am here until ten tonight and if you come in and ask for me I will be more than happy to assist in giving you the difference in what you could have saved.”

Husband:
“YOU GUYS DON’T DO S***! I WANT YOUR CORPORATE NUMBER!”

Me:
“I am sorry to hear you feel that way. Our corporate number is on the back of your loyalty card. If you don’t have it near you, it is [number].”

Husband:
“Good.”

Before I realize he has hung up on me:

Me:
“Have a wonderful day.”

I talked to my manager so he knew my story if corporate ever called him about this particular customer. He told me I handled it the best I could have and nothing more could have been done on our end.

I work at the front desk at a hotel. A guest is checking in but the debit terminal at the computer is out of order.

Manager:
“Hello, and welcome to the hotel. Do you have a reservation with us?”

Guest:
“Yes.”

Manager:
“Okay, we have you in for one night. The total will be $150; how do you wish to pay today?

Guest:
“Debit, please.”

Manager:
“Okay, sounds great. Unfortunately, my debit terminal is out of order so we will have to use this other one just next to us.”

The working debit machine is literally a three-step side shuffle away.

Guest:
“RACIST!”

They stormed out, and to this day we still don’t know what happened.

I work in the photography department of a tourist attraction. We take guests’ pictures on a green screen and then offer them for sale at the exit. A woman opts for our full package which includes the soft copies of the image sent to an email address.

The whole transaction is done on a screen in front of the customer which includes the till and emailing system. I switch from the till tab to the emailing tab.

Me:

“If you type your email address in here we will send all the pictures to your email address, too.”

Customer:

*Frowning* “You want me to put my email in there? Everyone’s email addresses are just up on the screen there. I don’t want mine on there.”

I am confused for a moment until I realise she is talking about the till screen which I just exited. For some reason, under all the cashiers’ names to log in to our till are our email addresses. It is an unnecessary feature but no one who works there is really bothered that a customer may glance at our email addresses as we always close the tab pretty quickly after putting transactions through.

Me:

“Oh, don’t worry, madam; those are employee email addresses to identify our accounts. Customer email addresses will not display on the screen.”

Customer:

“Well, that’s an awful system! You should change that!”

She really emphasises the “you” as if she expects me to change the system of a multinational company’s computing system. 

Me:

“Uh, okay, well, if you do want your digital copies, just type your email here.”

The customer turns around and glares at the family waiting behind her to view their pictures.

Customer:

“What, with all these people watching?!”

Trying not to sigh audibly or roll my eyes, I pick the screen up and turn it towards the wall. She enters her email and leaves without a thank-you.

Next Customer:

“I really didn’t care what her email address was.”

To be honest, her concerns weren’t outrageous, but the way she went about voicing them was weirdly disproportionate to the situation!