I am a hostess at a breakfast restaurant and have no cash drawer; however, customers frequently ask me for change or help paying their bill. I’ve learned to not argue and just take their bill or cash to the nearest server for help when this happens.

Customer: *Handing me a twenty-dollar bill* “Can I get four fives for this?”

Me: “Sure! Just give me one moment—”

Customer: “No, wait. I need one ten and two fives and—” *hands me a ten* “—two fives for this.”

Me: “Of course!”

I take the ten and the twenty to the nearest server and hand him the twenty.

Me: “Can I get four fives from you?”

He trades me and I walk back to the woman, handing her the same ten and two of the fives.

Me: “Here’s the ten and two fives for the $20 and—” *handing her the other two fives* “—two fives for the ten. Have a nice day!”

I work at the front desk at a hotel on the night shift. We have a cupboard where guests can buy food. It has some frozen meals, but we don’t carry frozen pizza. A few guests ask once in a while, but, usually, guests will just order a pizza if they want one or go to the store that’s literally right next door and buy one.

One night, I come in, do my standard shift opening duties, and a guest comes down to the cupboard and asks if we have any frozen pizza. I tell him sorry, we do not, but [Pizza Chain] is up the street and if he doesn’t care for that, there are three other chains that can deliver to our hotel until 1:00 am. Or, the store next door is open twenty-four hours. He goes upstairs disappointed. 

About an hour later, when all is quiet, I take my dinner — leftover homemade pizza — to the break room, heat it up, and go back to the office where I can eat and also be available to jump onto the front desk if need be.

But, as I pass by the front desk to get to the office, I see the same guy standing at the counter and I put down my food and go see what he needs. It goes downhill from there.

Guest: “I thought you didn’t have pizza!” 

Me: “We don’t. That’s my personal pizza I brought from home. What can I do to help you?” 

He gets super upset and starts demanding that I either, a) give him my pizza, or b) pay for his pizza that he was going to order.

Me: “I can do neither of those things, but, if you have a problem, you can always contact my general manager or sales specialist and suggest we put frozen pizza in the pantry.”

Guest: “That’s a useless option, since I don’t stay here all the time, and I never will anymore because you don’t have freaking frozen pizza!”

I work in customer service and answer emails when customers have questions about their orders.

Customer: “I can’t check out on your site; it keeps adding up more items and kicking me out of my account.”

Me: “Have you tried logging in first? Once logged in, you can save your items and check out.”

Customer: “Yes, I have done that. It keeps duplicating orders and I can’t figure this out. Here is a screenshot of my cart. I only want one CD for $14 but the total is $28! And it is not for the sale price of $7!”

She attaches the screenshot that clearly shows her quantity is two and she did not apply the coupon code.

Me: “Ma’am, you will need to update your quantity in your cart. There is either a ‘remove item,’ or ‘update quantity’ button. You then enter in the coupon code and click ‘apply.’”

Customer: “I have tried that. It won’t work. Your site is screwed up. I am doing this right; you are wrong!”

Me: “I just checked the site, added the same things you want, and did it fine. If you are having issues, you can either try another browser, or give us a call and place this over the phone.”

Customer: “No, I shouldn’t need to switch browsers! I am not going to pay to call and place the order. You need to fix this; your site is acting up.”

I respond to one more email, saying, “Sorry, but if you don’t want to do either of those things, I can’t help you,” and then I go home for the night. But the emails continue.

Customer: “Please see my other emails and respond and help!”

And…

Customer: “I just tried it again and now I have five copies, not at the sale price, but I keep adding more items and the coupon does not work. Your site is broken!”

Also…

Customer: “I keep trying to start over and log in but I am getting more items. Why aren’t you helping me?! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Then — imagine that — she tries my first suggestion and it works, and her final email comes.

Customer: “As I suspected, the problem was not lack of user knowledge, but rather lay with the browser. I succumbed to having to install Firefox and, voila, guess what, not a single problem encountered! The complexity of the issues outlined by me provided sufficient evidence that the issue was clearly of a technical nature! Nevertheless, thank you for your correspondence.”

I think I need to ignore more customers and let them figure it out themselves!

I am in a bookstore in the religious section looking for a particular translation of the Bible. Another customer is watching me, and when I pick up a translation, the other customer comes up and takes it out of my hands.

Other Customer: “Oh, you certainly don’t want that one.”

Me: *Taken aback* “And why not?”

Other Customer: “That’s not a real Bible.”

I am curious as to what she means.

Me: “And just what is a real Bible?”

Other Customer: “Only the King James Bible is the real Bible; after all, if it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”

Me: “…”

I am one of three assistant directors at our company who report to our lead director. We have a team of about twenty employees who all four of us oversee. At the end of the day, each employee submits their production numbers and data which we report for our entire office. 

Today, my role is to take everyone’s numbers at the end of the shift. An employee on their first day has not been properly tracking their production. I turn to our lead to ask how to record that.

Me: “Hey, [Lead], [New Guy] didn’t record his info correctly. How do you want me to report his numbers?”

Lead: “Have you gone over the training with him again?”

It has been roughly ten seconds since the new guy has told me he did not properly record.

Me: “Um, no, I’m just trying to fill out tonight’s report and I need to know what I should put in for his numbers.”

Lead: “Why haven’t you done that yet? If someone isn’t doing their work properly, you need to make sure you go over the training with them again!”

Me: “I understand that, but right now I need to get this report filled out and sent in in the next few minutes so this issue is pressing.”

Lead: “What I don’t understand is why you haven’t gone over the training with him again?!”

It has now been roughly thirty seconds since I noticed this problem. Our training for new hires usually takes over an hour and even a quick refresher would take at least twenty minutes.

Me: “That’s not really what I’m asking. I need to know how—”

Lead: “You should know how to train new people. Stop being defensive and do your job.”

They stormed out of the room.

I ended up having to contact our project manager to figure out how to report the discrepancy in the numbers. Later, I checked with the other assistant directors to find out who had trained the new hires that morning. It was the lead director.