If You Swear, We Won’t Care

(I am in my sixth year of a fast food job, where I am on really good terms with the general manager. He speaks “Sarcasm” more fluently than I do, and that’s hard to do! The phone rings.)

Me: “Thank you for calling [Restaurant]; this is [My Name] speaking. How can I help you?”

Customer: “My f****** food is f****** late, you f****** [slur]!”

Me: “Sir, if you will give me your name, I can look it up and see what’s wrong.”

Customer: “It’s [Customer]. Hurry the f*** up!”

Me: *looks it up* “Sir, I took your order ten minutes ago, and told you it would be over an hour as we are very busy and had a large order for a local business. At minimum, our delivery times are quoted as ’30 to 45 minutes’ at all other times.”

Customer: “You did not take my order, you lying [slur]! And it was a f****** hour and a half, you f****** [slur]!”

Me: “Sir. If you keep being verbally abusive, I will hang up.”

(The general manager is watching me from the office, curious.)

Customer: “I’d like to see you hang up on a customer, you f******–“

Me: *hangs up*

Manager: *amused* “Did you really just hang up on a customer?”

Me: “Yep! And 3… 2… 1…”

(The phone rings.)

Me: “Thank you for calling—”

Same Customer: “DID YOU JUST HANG UP ON ME!?”

Me: “I don’t know. Did it sound like this?” *click*

(The GM looks half appalled and half like he wants to laugh. The phone rings again, and the GM picks up in the office.)

General Manager: “Thank you f—”

(All I could hear was yelling… through the phone, across the entire restaurant! CUSTOMERS were looking up from their meals in the seating area! Thankfully, it was too garbled to actually make out words… or the customer was having an apoplexy. The general manager listened for all of ten seconds and then hung up on the customer. He proceeded to void his purchase — which was going to be cash on delivery, so no refund needed to be made — and split the extra-large into fresh slices to put in the pizza warmer from which people can buy by the slice. Thankfully, the customer never called back again or came in, and the general and district managers were very good friends, so no one got in trouble.)