I worked at a restaurant a few years ago, and a couple came in with an elderly woman in a wheelchair who didn’t seem to be coherent at all. I was in the South, but am from the Midwest, so I greeted them with a:

Me: “Hi guys!”

The man immediately informed me:

Customer: “There are women present!”

I knew I was in for a treat.

They ordered sweet teas, and when I brought them, the man complained that the Sweet’n Low packets were caked up, like they had gotten wet. I politely got him new packets from dry storage, even though I knew he was full of s***. 

Their food comes, and of course, his steak isn’t done right, so he sends it back and asks for hot sauce. This was not a great steakhouse, but a steakhouse with decent steaks nonetheless, and we only had two kinds of hot sauce.

Customer: “You ever been to Vegas? They got dozens of hot sauces there! I can’t believe you only got these two!”

I apologize and go about my work until they’re ready to pay.

I come out of the kitchen to see the man talking to a manager. They motion me over, and the man proceeds to tell me that he was just talking to my manager about:

Customer: “She could have provided better service to us.”

It was about 2 PM, and they were the only customers in the place. I couldn’t have ignored them if I tried. Then he left me less than a $2 tip on a $65 meal and got a discount because of his complaining. I was super p***ed they left, and that same manager who gave in to them tried to comfort me by saying:

Manager: “Yeah, some customers are just always like that.”

The same people tried to come in the next week and sat in my section. I refused to serve them and explained the situation to a different head manager. He personally cooked their food, did most of the serving, and they still tried to get their meal for free. [Manager] banned them.

Me: *To my manager.* “So, when they complain about my service, it’s “some customers are just like this,” but when it’s complaining about management’s service, they get banned?”

Manager: “Yeah, it’s the start of a pattern, so I just told them we don’t have the bandwidth for their type of customer and suggested they go to a more expensive establishment.”

I was initially angry at my manager, but glad he made the right choice in the end.

UPDATE: The story has been updated with details from the OP.

Our office supply store was open until midnight on the last two nights of the financial year calendar. Apparently, the store thought someone might come in at 11:59 and would use it as the last chance they had to deck out their entire office with new laptops and chairs or some such.

 After about 9 PM, the store was pretty much a complete ghost town. By 10 PM, the store was the cleanest it’s ever been since it was built.

The phone rang at about 11:30 PM.

Caller: “Are you still open?”

Me: “Until midnight.”

Caller: “I wanna buy [item].”

Me: “Yeah, we have that in stock.”

Caller: “You do?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Caller: *Deep sigh.* “I’m going to get out of my pyjamas, get dressed, and come down to the store.”

Me: “Uhm, sure. It’ll be at the front counter whenever you’re here to collect it.”

He turns up and tells me again:

Caller: “I had to get out of my pyjamas, get dressed, and come down to the store to pick this up.”

It’s about 11:50 PM by this point, and so I just told him how much it’s going to cost.

Caller: “Uh… discount?”

Me: “Why?”

Caller: “For being your last customer of the evening!”

Me: “No, that’s no reason for giving out a discount. Also, we weren’t closed yet. There might be other customers, you know.”

Caller: “But I had to get out of my pyjamas, get dressed, and come down to the store to pick this up!”

Me: “Next time, feel free to come in your pyjamas.”

He paid full price for all his “troubles”.

I was young, maybe fifteen years old or so, and would pick up the odd babysitting gig for extra money.

I took a night for a household that was on my paper route. They asked me to be there on a Saturday for 8:30 PM, and I arrived a few minutes early. The parents were still getting ready, and they asked me to watch the kids while they prepared to head out. They left the house at about 9:15 PM.

Before they headed out, the wife gave me some very specific instructions. I could have a snack… two Oreos on the counter. Nothing else. She said she poured a glass of milk for me and left it in the fridge… it was right next to the plastic milk jug, with a piece of tape on it showing the level. She told me she’d check it when she got back, and if I took any extra milk, I would have to answer for it.

The kids were okay, went to bed without any fuss, and the parents returned home at 12:20 AM. The mom paid me for three hours, about ten minutes after they arrived.

Me: “Excuse me, but this isn’t right. I got here before 8:30, and it’s now almost 12:30, that’s four hours, not three.”

Mom: “We didn’t leave until 9:15, and we got home at 12:15. I’m only paying you for three hours.”

Me: “But I was watching the kids from 8:30…”

Mom: “That doesn’t matter, we were home, and you weren’t in charge, we were.”

I took the money and rode my bike home.

A couple of weeks later, they did pretty much the same thing. 

Two things are important: first, the wife was a neat freak. I’m guessing now she had OCD. Everything was lined up perfectly. One of the kids spilled his drink, and I was looking for some paper towels. The cleaning supplies under the sink were perfectly lined up. Same with the pantry… every jar and can was in a row with the label facing directly to the front. 

Second, this was in the mid-1970s, and all canned food had paper labels.

So, the third time they called me in to babysit, they were late leaving AGAIN, and I knew that I was going to get shortchanged for the time I was there. I was steaming.

So I went into the pantry and tore the labels off each and every can. All of them. She had a shelf for Campbell’s soups, another for canned veggies, another for canned fruits…and I scrambled the unlabeled cans.

When they got home, sure enough, she tried to short me.

Me: “You know what? Keep your money. I don’t want it, and I am never babysitting for you again. And as of today, I’m stopping delivering your newspapers as well. So, if you want to read the paper, you’re going to have to go buy it at a corner store.”

I stormed out.

I wish I could have seen the expression on her face when she opened the pantry door…and saw shelf after shelf of bare metal cans.

Customer: “Can you staple these sheets together?”

Me: “How many is that?”

Customer: “Five sheets.”

It’s barely anything, so I just staple them together for her for free.

Customer: “Thanks!”

She walks away, and I consider that a good deed for the day. 

That is, until I’m called over to the copiers. This same lady has placed the stapled-together sheets into the copier and hit copy. The machine was jammed to f***.

Me: “Ma’am, why would you run five stapled-together sheets together through a copier?”

Customer: “I thought it would save me money! Get my sheets out! They’re my only copies and your copier has f***ed them up!”

No good deed goes unpunished…

I work at a department store in the women’s shoes department. Our customer base mainly buys clearance items and rarely spends more than $40. Every day, I watch as customer after customer asks if they can use coupons, get an extra few percentage points off the price, or get any discount possible.

One customer took the cake over every other one. She was buying eighteen pairs of clearance shoes. As I work off commission, and this was a pretty large sale, I basically ran around the stockroom to gather these shoes.

I brought them all out neatly stacked in their boxes and rang them up at the register for her.

Me: “Your total is $236.”

Customer: “Can I use my 20% off coupon?”

Normally, h*** yeah, you can use that coupon, but on this day, we were having a sale.

Me: “Ma’am, since all clearance shoes have been marked down 80%, and are roughly $10-20 per pair, coupons are prohibited.”

The customer goes from silent to screaming:

Customer: “Then get me your manager! If I’m asking for something and you can’t do it, then you get a manager who can, idiot! You shouldn’t be allowed to work here if you don’t even know that!” 

My manager finally came, and when she re-explained that coupons weren’t allowed for this particular sale, the woman still bought all eighteen pairs for $236, but…

Customer: “I want someone else to ring it up. I don’t want you to make any commission on the sale!”

Little did she know the other salesperson rang it up using my ID number, dumb b****.

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Commission Impossible