Customer: “Give me an extra sauce.”

Me: “Yes, ma’am, but I have to charge you an additional 28 cents.”

Customer: “I come here all the time! Just give me the f****** sauce!”

(I’ve worked there for three years both day and night shift and have never seen this lady.)

Me: “I’m sorry. I can’t give you the extra sauce unless you purchase it.”

(The lady digs in her purse and pulls out some change. I hand her the sauce.)

Customer: “Can I have a cup of water?”

Me: “We charge for our cups as well. It would be 28 cents.”

(I’m trying to hold back a smile as the customer glares at me.)

Customer: “Have a good f****** night, b****!”

(I smile at her politely.)

Me: “Thank you, ma’am! I hope you have a wonderful evening as well!”

(It’s an extremely busy Saturday, as usual, and even though we have all four tills open, there’s a massive queue. Everything goes smoothly however, until a family of five enters the line. The father starts immediately to complain about absolutely everything. I try to be extra nice to smooth things over.)

Customer: *uses a lot of profanities* “How slow are you people?!”

Me: “I’m sorry, Saturdays are really busy days for us. What would you like to order?”

(The kids want our most popular meal, which comes from our hamburger kitchen, and the wait for the burgers is minimal. The parents want kebabs from our other, significantly smaller kitchen, which is backed up for at least 15 minutes.)

Customer: “So, for how long do I have to wait until I get my darn food?!”

Me: “The hamburgers will take only a couple of minutes, but unfortunately the kebabs will take a while. If you’re in a hurry today, I recommend that you change our order to only hamburgers.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! You’re so f****** slow! We are really in a hurry. We need to be at the cinema in the city center in half an hour! You need to be faster than this!”

(I’ve done my best to be polite, but now I lose my composure.)

Me: “Sir, you saw how long our line was when you entered our facility. You had to know that the service would be a tad slower today and frankly, it is not my problem that you are late for your movie, especially since you insist on having kebabs, even though the line is really long and you’ll have to wait. Maybe you shouldn’t have come here at all, if you were so keen on making it to the movies!”

(The face of the customer was priceless and the rest of the transaction was made in silence. I was chagrined by my outburst and told my manager what I did, in case the family wanted to give feedback, so that he would know that I was the culprit. The manager just shrugged and said that things like that happen, and as long as I don’t do it again I wouldn’t get more than a verbal warning!)

Customer: “I would like the #1 Combo”

Me: “And your beverage?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Your beverage?” *points at cup*

Customer: *frustrated* “YES.”

Me: “What would you like to drink, sir?”

Customer: “STOP ASKING! I’VE ALREADY TOLD YOU I WANTED A DRINK!”

(I am a customer in this story. I’m queuing for ice cream at a mini fast-food stand in a well-known flat-pack furniture shop. Ahead of me is a father and mother with two children, an older girl around 10 years old and a younger boy. The system is that you buy tokens and cones from a cashier, and then put the tokens in an ice cream machine to make your own soft-serve in the cones.)

Cashier: “These cones are smaller than our usual ones. You have to wrap a napkin around them so the machine registers them. Okay?”

Father: “Yeah, yeah.” *hands the stuff to his wife and she takes the kids to the ice-cream machine while he gets their furniture*

Me: “One ice cream, please.”

Cashier: “Sure.”

(The cashier hands me my change, my token, and the cone, and repeats the information about the small cones and to be sure to use the napkin.)

Me: “Okay, thank you!”

(I follow the mother and children to the ice cream machine.)

Mother: *repeatedly trying to use the machine* “What is wrong with this stupid machine?”

Little Girl: “You have to wrap the napkin around the cone, mammy.”

Mother: *ignoring child* “[Father], the machine isn’t working!”

Father: *coming over* “Let me try.”

Little Girl: “You put the napkin around the cone, daddy.”

Father: *also ignoring child* “Piece of crap machine.”

Little Girl: “Daddy, you have to put the napkin around the cone!”

Father: *raising his voice, sarcastic* “I heard you the first time! Thank you for your input!”

Mother: “Forget it.”

(The father takes the tokens and cones back to get a refund, while the kids’ faces fall. The mother turns to me.)

Mother: “The machine is broken. Don’t bother.”

Me: “Are you sure? The–”

Mother: “You’re seeing me walk away, aren’t you?”

(The mother grabs the disappointed kids and stalks off to wait for the father. I step up, wrap the napkin around the cone, pop the token in the machine, and voila! Ice cream! I take the ice cream and go look for my own parents, and immediately walk past the waiting mother and children.)

Little Boy: “Look, mammy. Why did hers work?”

(Feeling bad for the kids, I walk off quickly so they don’t have to watch me eat my ice cream. I find my own parents, and we go to our car with our new furniture. As we’re walking, another car screeches out in front of us rudely and dangerously, and drives past: it’s the same family, and the smart, ignored little girl and the disappointed little boy both look out the window to see me still eating the delicious ice cream. Wherever you are, little girl, I hope your parents’ total lack of listening skills aren’t getting you down. You were right!)

(I work at the local fast food place in town. We are doing a promotional, limited time burger. I am currently not working and am going through the drive-thru with my boyfriend.)

Me: “Hi. Can I get a [promotional burger] with ketchup and mayonnaise instead of the usual sauce?”

Cashier: “I’m sorry. We can’t put that sauce on that burger.”

Me: “I’ve ordered the same thing several other times and never had an issue.”

Cashier: “No, the system won’t process it.”

Me: “Can you just put it through as sauce packets and ask the kitchen staff to put it on the burger?”

Cashier: “No, I can’t do that either.”

(I know we can do that at our restaurant as I get requests from managers all the time to add things to burgers that wouldn’t go through the system.)

Me: “Can I just get the sauce packets separately then?”

(The cashier puts it through but when we receive our order, I have not received my sauce. I take it into the store and try to get the attention of the staff but none of them are interested. Fed up, I go behind the counter, open up my burger, and add the sauce myself.)

Me: “It looks like we can add this sauce to the burger, huh?”