I work in a drive-in restaurant as a waitress. The following conversation takes place over a headset while taking an order.

Me: “Thank you for choosing [Restaurant]. My name is [My Name]. May I take your order?”

Customer: “I would like a number one burger.”

Me: “Would you like that with mayo, mustard, ketchup, or the works?”

Customer: “Yes.”

I pause for a moment but press the works on my order pad.

Me: “And would you like to make that a combo today?”

Customer: “No. But I do want onion rings and a large cola.”

I ring the items up and press the combo button to save the customer money. A few minutes later, I take the order out to the customer and read the ticket off to her as we are supposed to.

Customer: “I didn’t want the combo! I told that dumba** that when I ordered it!”

After trying to explain the reason why she got the combo, she refused to accept meal and drove off, nearly running over my foot as she backed out of her parking spot.

A lady calls in and asked if we had a “Litter Genie.” Litter Genie is a brand name for a garbage can specifically made for litter. I say yes, go and check the price, and come back and pick up the phone.

Me: “They’re $23.”

Customer: *Condescendingly* “No! You’re mistaken! They’re several hundred dollars.”

Me: “Oh, I think we’re talking about two different things. Litter Genie is a brand name for a garbage can for cat litter.”

Customer: “No! I’m asking about one of those automatic litter boxes that cleans itself!”

Me: “Oh, okay. Yes, we have those. Let me go back and check the price.”

I go all the way to the back of the store and check.

Me: “Okay, we have one for $140 and one for $160.” 

Customer: “What are the brands and models?”

Me: “I don’t know, but they’re pretty much the same.”

Customer: “I don’t want ‘PRETTY MUCH THE SAME.’ I’m looking for something specific!”

She starts describing it to me. Before she can finish, I politely cut in because I know exactly what she’s talking about.

Me: “I know what it is, ma’am. Hold on. I can’t check right now because I’m with another customer.”

I ring out my customer, go back, and come back to the phone. When I pick up, she starts screaming at me about how I “ripped her head off” and I’m being uncooperative, and she starts cussing up a storm at me.

Me: “Ma’am, I’m sorry if I came off as rude but I didn’t mean to. I’m trying my best to cooperate with you, but the automatic litter box cleaners we have are all the way at the end of the store so I have to keep running back and looking.”

Customer: “I didn’t say, ‘AUTOMATIC LITTER BOX CLEANER.’”

At this point, I’m really confused.

Me: “Uhm, yes you did ma’am.”

Customer: “NO, I DIDN’T.”

Me: “Ma’am you asked me if we had a Litter Genie, but a Litter Genie is a brand name of something else. So you asked what models of automatic litter box cleaners we had.”

Customer: “NO, THAT’S WHAT YOU SAID, NOT ME.”

Me: “With all respect, you asked me to look at automatic litterboxes—” 

She starts screaming and swearing and calling me rude, uncooperative, and incompetent. I ask her to stop swearing at me and being rude, and that just makes her even angrier. I start getting very flustered and confused because I’m multitasking while she’s screaming at me so I hang up on her.

I go and tell my manager about it so I can warn him about the angry customer. While I’m telling me the story, he’s giving me this stone-cold look.

Me: “What? What’s wrong?”

Manager: “Next time that happens, tell her to hold and give her to a manager. I’m one of the most profane people when I’m on the phone so I don’t see what the problem with that is. But never hang up on a customer! That’s grounds for immediate dismissal, but I should have told you about that beforehand, so I’m not going to make you go home… THIS TIME.”

I’m a very sensitive person and I have a hard time accepting that I’ve made a mistake since it makes me feel very guilty and inadequate. But I accept his scolding and apologize and explain that I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to hang up on people who were being belligerent, even though I’m really confused that he is on the customer’s side about this. I feel as though I’m about to start crying, but I take a deep breath and go back to my register to greet my next customer with a smile.

At the end of my shift, my manager approaches me.

Manager: “Before you leave, I need you to read and sign the code of ethics.”

A middle-aged man has swiped his credit card to make a purchase of about $500. He’s already been fairly rude throughout, and I’m trying my hardest to be polite.

Me: “Okay, sir. Now I need to see your card and ID.”

The customer flips over his ID, so I can read the name. 

Me: “Okay, now I need to see your card.”

Customer: “Why do you need to see that?”

Me: “To be sure the names match, sir.”

Customer: “What card?”

Me: “The one you swiped.”

Customer: “I’m not dumb.”

Me: *Totally shocked* “Sir… I never said you were.”

Customer: “Yeah, but you’re talking to me like you are! You need to say credit card. I have a lot of cards! See?!”

The customer holds his ID and credit card literally two inches from my face.

Customer: “See? See?! Is that good enough for you?”

Me: “Yes, sir. Just trying to protect your identity.”

I quickly total out, and the man casts an annoyed look to the customer behind him.

Customer: “Can you believe they hire cashiers this stupid?”

Me: “Here you go, sir. Have a splendid evening.”

Customer: “Yeah, whatever.”

I take a deep breath and look nervously at the customer behind him.

Customer #2: “Oh, good girl! You handled that really well. I may be dumb, but at least I’m not an a** like that guy!”

When I was a stroppy teenager, still not financially independent of my parents, my mother used to accompany me on my shopping trips for clothes. This was consistently one of the most acutely embarrassing experiences of my life because she never understood men, particularly teenage boys.

It was bad enough that every time we were buying trousers for me, she would announce in a strident voice that “he’s rather big in the bot,” but the stupidest ever was shoe shopping.

My mother found one of the ugliest shoes I’d ever seen and decided she was going to buy it for me. She thrust it at a young man who was not much older than me — this was a Saturday, and in those days, practically the entire staff of a shop in our town was school students earning their pocket money — demanding that he find the other one.

The poor guy was already overwhelmed by being one of a very few people in a heaving shop, he was being run ragged, and he was not having a good time of it. He rushed off to find the matching shoe, and when he came back I could see that, while similar in shape and colour, the details were different; the trim was different, the treads were different, etc.

Me: “It’s the wrong shoe.”

Mother: “It’s perfectly adequate; stop fussing.” *To the worker* “We’ll have these, then.”

Me: “But they don’t match; they’re not the same shoe!”

Mother: “They’re close enough, you silly boy. Stop making a fuss and upsetting the staff.”

By this time, the shop worker has noticed that yes, indeed, perhaps the shoes don’t actually match, so he really shouldn’t be selling them as a pair. Overwhelmed as he is, he thrusts the shoes in the direction of a colleague, who happens to be female.

My mother crows in her posh, overbearing Karen voice.

Mother: “Oh, don’t go giving them to a silly girl. Just sell me the shoes!”

Fortunately, the girl is on top of her game and competent, and she asks ME which is the shoe I want.

Me: “I don’t really like either of them, but this one was the one we were getting.”

Female Worker: “Don’t worry; it gets better.”

And she twirled off to go and get the proper mate for the shoe.

I wondered at the time what she meant when she said, “It gets better,” but I got my head round it a few years later, when I finally was able to do my own shopping.

When I started working for this company I was a customer service rep, but after a year, I learned how to work the kitchen and have been back there ever since. On this day, the customer service rep has called in sick and I’m the only person available to cover.

Me: “Thank you for calling—”

The caller is talking to people in the background.

Me: “Um… hello?”

Customer #1: *To me* “Yeah, you need to hold on a minute; I’m talking to someone right now.”

A little bit later:

Me: “Thank you for calling [Store]; will this be for delivery or carry-out?”

Customer #2: “I want a [pizza].”

Me: “Okay, will this be delivery or carry-out?”

Customer #2: “Neither, I just want a [pizza]; how much and how long?”

A little bit later:

Me: “Thank you for calling [Store]; will this be for delivery or carry-out?”

Customer #3: “Carry-out.”

Me: *Gets customer’s information* “All right, what can I get for you tonight?”

[Customer #3] screams into the phone to someone in their house.

Customer #3: “What you want?”

Someone screams something in the background. This back and forth screaming match lasts the entire order.

A little bit later, I am talking to [Customer #4], a woman standing at my counter with a phone in her hand.

Me: “Hi, how are you doing today?”

[Customer #4] holds a finger up and mouths, “One moment,” while chatting away on her phone, so I speak to the next person in line.

Me: “Can I help you, sir?”

Customer #4: “Well, that’s rude. Do you not see me standing here?”

A little bit later:

Customer #5: “Can you turn on [Local Sports game]?

Me: “Yeah, sure.”

The remote changes the channel on all of the TVs. There is no way to change just one.

Customer #6: “What the h***? My kids were watching something. This is a family restaurant; don’t you think this is inappropriate?”

At the end of the night, my manager finds me on my hands and knees in the dining area scrubbing marinara sauce out of the carpet.

Me: “Now I remember why I quit being a CSR.”