I am informed that a customer complained about me because when she first visited our store, I was “standoffish and ignored her.” My associates and I work on commission; therefore, we take turns dealing with customers on a rotation. When the complaining customer came in, I happened to be with another customer, so I let my coworker have this particular woman. She left without buying anything.

A few days later, she comes back in and looks at the same item.

Customer: “Can I still get the discount you were offering a few days ago?”

Me: “That sale is now over, but if you paid with the store credit card, I can offer you an equal discount.”

Customer: *Getting mad* “So, I missed the sale and now you’re punishing me?”

She decides to buy the item anyway. A different coworker takes the sale and rings her up. I grab one of the brand cases for the item she is purchasing and hand it to my coworker so he won’t waste her time scrambling around looking for it. She pays and walks out.

I get a phone call not fifteen minutes later from the same customer.

Customer: “You gave me the wrong case! I was supposed to get a box, too.”

Wanting to defuse the situation:

Me: “I apologize for the mix-up. We can switch out the cases at your convenience, and we will make sure you get the ‘right’ packaging.”

She came back, and I switched out the cases for her. No big deal.

My general manager got a scathing customer complaint about how rude I was and how I LIED to her about the case mishap and how I gave her a “cheap” case. (Because it wasn’t in a box? Some of this particular brand’s cases come in boxes and some don’t. They all have authenticity certificates inside, as well.) She complained that everyone at the store is always nice and I was a b****. She then apparently asked for me to be fired.

All because of a cardboard box.

I work at a restaurant that closes from 3:00 to 5:00 pm for a break and to get ready for dinner. A customer comes up at 3:05; we stop seating at 2:45.

Customer: “Hi, we were just wondering if we could get something!”

Coworker: “I’m sorry, we actually closed at 3:00.”

Customer: “Yeah, I see that.”

I’m thinking, “Okay, so why are we having this conversation?”

Me: “We do reopen at 5:00 for dinner.”

Customer: “Yeah, we’ll be gone by then.”

Me: “Sorry about that!”

Customer: “It’s okay, we understand. You don’t want our business!”

I’m already annoyed at this point. I’ve been working our stand at a local farmer’s market since 8:30, and I am trying to help get us through the end of the lunch shift so I can take a break before working dinner. I turn to the customer, put a huge fake smile on my face, and raise my voice.

Me: “It’s really not that. It’s just that we’re closed! Have a great day!”

Customer: “It’s okay. You just haven’t figured out how to stay open those extra two hours!”

I just stared at my coworker, who then shut the door. I’m so done with people who act like this, and I don’t understand why they do. What does it get you? Do they think that if they treat us like s***, we’ll suddenly hop to and obey their every command? It’s tourists like these that make people have such a bad attitude toward all of them.

Tours at our tourist attraction leave every thirty minutes, with a loud announcement about two minutes before a tour leaves.

Two women walk in about ten minutes before a tour leaves, pushing a baby stroller.

Tourist: “What time is the tour?”

Me: “In ten minutes. There will be an announcement as long as you’re inside the building.”

Tourist: “Cool, thanks.”

The women go outside for a smoke. They’re out there for over thirty minutes. The tour goes by and they miss it because they didn’t hear the announcement outside.

Tourist: “Where is the tour?”

Me: “It left already; there was an announcement.”

Tourist: “I didn’t hear it!”

Me: “Well, there’s another one leaving in ten minutes. As long as you’re inside the building, you’ll hear it and you can go on it.”

Tourist: “All right, thanks.”

The women go back outside for another thirty-minute cigarette break and then walk back inside. You guessed it…

Tourist: “Where’s the tour?”

I then get yelled at because we “didn’t tell them that the tour was leaving.”

They storm out with a two-year-old in tow, yelling:

Tourist: “I didn’t drive three hours to put up with this bulls***!”

My boss looks at me.

Boss: “Guess they’re driving three hours after putting up with our bulls***.”

Around 2013, we were well-known for our large catalogs. That’s right. We were well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, but d*** it if we weren’t going to mail each and every single one of our past customers a four-hundred-plus-page catalog full of consumer electronics.

One year, the powers that be decided to put out a sourcebook on top of the catalog. It had a wealth of information on every single product we had in a certain, specialty, professional product category. It had little tips and tricks of the trade and suggestions and it was written by highly knowledgeable industry veterans. It came in two volumes of well over eight hundred pages each.

A lady came into the store, yelling at us:

Customer: “You’re clogging up my mail slot with your waste of paper!”

She practically threw the box with the sourcebooks at me because, of course, we had to mail them out in boxes. I apologized abjectly, groveling before her, promising we wouldn’t send her any more crap in the mail. Anything to stop the yelling.

The best part? She stormed out before I could get her name and address, and the address label on the box had been torn off, so I had no idea who exactly I was supposed to take off the mailing list.

I wonder what happened a few months later when the new catalog showed up.

Related:
A Catalog Of Errors, Part 9
A Catalog Of Errors, Part 8
A Catalog Of Errors, Part 7
A Catalog Of Errors, Part 6
A Catalog Of Errors, Part 5

I have a relatively new starter working the drive-thru. 

Worker: “[My Name], there’s a weirdo trying to order. Can you take him?”

Me: “What’s he doing?”

Worker: “I don’t know. I asked him what he wanted, and he just started calling me a Karen and saying something about a Sienna. I don’t even know if a Sienna works here.”

Confused, I take the headset.

Me: “Sorry about that. Can I take your order?”

Customer: “I have a code.”

Me: “Oh, perfect. What’s the code?”

Customer: “Kilo-Sierra seventy-seven.”

I realised what my worker was confused about and processed the order. I regaled her with it after the customer got his food, but she started moaning about how it didn’t make sense because our codes were like “pins with letters” and “kilo sierra is too long”. I explained that he was using the phonetic alphabet, and she stared at me completely blankly before saying he was probably an [ableist slur] and went off to do something else.

She’s got her probationary review next month, and I’m of the mind to make the manager aware of her language.