I work in the deli section of my store.

Customer: “Excuse me, are you all out of pita bread?”

Me: “Oh, the pita bread isn’t in this department. It’s going to be on the last aisle, number eleven.”

Customer: “You mean I have to walk all the way to the far end of the store?!”

Me: “Yes.”

Instead, she turned around and walked back out the front door and left.

Customer: “Did those chips ring up for $1.79?”

I check.

Me: “No. They rang up at $3.79.”

Customer: “Your stupid digital coupons never work! Every time! They just never work!”

He now has his phone out and is gesturing at the coupon in the store app. I notice something important.

Me: “Sir, you need to ‘clip’ it first.”

The coupon has a button saying, “Clip to card,” which I point to. He presses that and I void the order because the system won’t recognize a digital coupon that was added after the order was started.

The whole time while I do this and re-ring him up, he keeps grousing about how our digital coupons never work, it’s just a waste of his time, and we need to fix our system. I ignore his ranting, give him his new total, and tell him that the coupon has gone through. He pays.

Me: “Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

Customer: “The coupons just never work.”

Customer: “Excuse me, your cheese island is infested with rats!”

Me: “What?! You saw a rat over there?!”

Customer: “No, I didn’t see the rat itself, but its droppings are all over that thing!”

Me: “Show me where you saw them.”

The customer points to an empty section of the cheese island, where a bunch of small, black, spherical objects are sitting on the metal. They’re obviously bits that have come off the rubber matting we line the display shelves with.

Customer: “See right there? Rat s***!”

Me: “Oh, no, that’s actually part of this rubber matting right here. Sometimes little pieces come off of it.”

Customer: “Bulls***! That’s obviously rodent feces!“

Me: “I assure you it is not, ma’am.

I pick up some of the little balls of rubber and rub them between my fingers

Me: “If that’s what it was, it would crumble or smear when I do this.”

Customer: “Well, if you’re so sure it’s not rat s***, then put it in your mouth.”

Me: “Excuse me?!”

Customer: “PUT. IT. IN. YOUR. MOUTH.”

Me: *Crossing my arms* “Absolutely not.”

Customer: “See?! You won’t do it! Because it’s rat s***!“

Me: “No, because it’s rubber, and I don’t put rubber in my mouth. That, plus the fact that it’s been sitting on a non-food-contact surface along with God knows what for God knows how long.”

Customer: “You’re just making excuses because you know it’s rat s***! This whole place is probably full of rats and you don’t even care!”

Me: “Would you put rubber in your mouth? If you just picked it up off some random place?”

Customer: “Of course, I would. Everybody would. You’re just covering up the fact that your store is a plague-ridden s***hole and all you people are disgusting, incompetent pigs!”

Me: “Well, if that’s how this conversation is going to go, I can’t help you. Good day.”

I walked back behind the counter to the sound of the woman’s shrill screeching before she goose-stepped her way to the customer service counter. Later on, the store manager told me she threatened to bring the health inspector, the police, and a news crew into the store to document our supposed misdeeds… unless he agreed to give her certain discounts. He told her that if she tried that, he’d have the cops she brought in to haul her out of the store in cuffs, and he told her never to come back. And he told me to clean the bits of rubber off the cheese island.

I work at an upscale deli and restaurant. I am bubbly and cheery to every customer. I like most of my regulars but there is this one that is always a jerk.

He comes in pretty often around lunch. He’s probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He always wears scrubs. He’s aggressive and demands free food because “we messed up his order last time,” even though I know we didn’t. He tries to pull this with every employee.

He answered his phone once when I was in the middle of taking his order and, presumably, he was talking to someone else in the medical field, because he angrily sighed and said:

Customer: “Just give her fat a** [specific quantity of medicine]—”

He continued to chat on the phone while also trying to whisper his order with me. He got frustrated juggling the conversations when I had to ask standard questions like, “Here or to go?” and, “What kind of bread?”

He once wanted to try our avocado and jicama salad, except he couldn’t pronounce “jicama.”

Customer: “I’ll have that avocado and whatever salad.”

I tried to be helpful and educational as quite a few customers can’t pronounce it.

Me: “The jicama?”

Customer: “Yeah, the avocado and s*** salad.” 

The icing on the cake is when I am on the counter by myself. It’s a slow day and one of my managers is in the back. She’s new also and was hired at the same time as I was.

I haven’t seen this customer for a month, thank goodness, but in he comes, swaggering up to the counter. I greet him as I greet all my customers and get his order ready. As I’m packing up his salad, he asks:

Customer: “I haven’t been in in a while. Did you miss me?”

I don’t like the look he’s giving me, basically leering, and I feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to answer “yes” and give him ideas. I answer with a safe:

Me: “I miss all my customers!”

Customer: “You’re full of s***. You know that, right? So full of s***.”

I stop what I am doing and glare at him. I am so stunned that I don’t know what to say, except:

Me: “I don’t think so.”

Customer: “Oh. I was just kidding.”

He spoke in a flat tone, obviously not meaning it. I rang him up with a chilly disposition and complained to my boss later.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t heard him say that and we couldn’t ban him. He still came in from time to time, but I wasn’t as cheery talking to him. I low-key wanted him to complain to my managers so they could tell him, “What do you expect from telling people they are full of s***?” He never did and I left the job a while later. I saw him once at the grocery store I started working at, but he didn’t have scrubs and was wearing faded and worn-looking clothing. Maybe he got fired for having no bed-side manner?

Customer: “So you guys don’t have any coleslaw or chicken salad?”

Me: “Yes, we do have those. They’re in the cooler on the end of aisle one.”

Customer: “So, which one’s aisle one?!”

Me: “The… first… one?”

Customer: “Well, how the h*** was I supposed to know that?!” *Stomps away*