I work at a local, small-batch gelato place. During a fairly busy evening, a man comes up to the counter and orders a small gelato. While I’m scooping it for him, he says the following:

Customer: “I bet there’s a whole bunch of air in the bottom of that cup.”

Me: “Sorry?”

Customer: “It’s a money-making scheme. You probably just coat gelato over the top of the bowl and leave a whole bunch of air in the bottom.”

Me: “Actually, we use flat spatulas to scoop the gelato so that it fills up the entire cup.”

The man ignores what I say and proceeds to reach over the glass and grab the cup from my hands as I’m scooping it. He then uses his tasting spoon — used — to scoop all of the gelato out of the cup and onto the glass. He holds up the now empty cup.

Customer: “See? There’s nothing in there.”

Definitely one of my worst customer interactions.

Back in my university days, I have three extremely immature housemates. The worst part about living with them is them constantly throwing tantrums, or worse, breaking things. For example, one day, I come home to find them randomly punching holes in a bedroom door because “it’s funny!” We are clearly on our landlord’s bad list and there is little chance of getting any deposit back.

One morning, I come downstairs to the living room and see a huge greasy stain on the wall. Instantly, I’m confused as to why the h*** that is there. One of my housemates is there watching TV, so I decide to ask.

Me: “Err… why is there a huge stain on the wall?”

Housemate: “Oh, yeah, I bought a burger last night and I didn’t like it, so I threw it at the wall!”

Sadly, I’m not shocked by this, as they are literally so immature that this has become normal behaviour.

Me: “Why didn’t you just throw it in the bin?”

Housemate: “Because I didn’t like it!”

Me: “Really? That’s your excuse? The bin is literally two metres away. You couldn’t have thrown it away like a normal person?”

Housemate: “I DIDN’T LIKE IT!”

At this point, I gave up having any kind of rational discussion with him and just walked away. Thankfully, I’m not in contact with a single one of them anymore. Also, no, we didn’t get our deposit back!

I work at a dry cleaners, and we clean the clothes onsite. I’ve worked here for several years, and we have a fairly easy redo policy if the customer is not happy with the result. Unfortunately, the next town over is a wealthy community, and we have to deal with several rude, entitled customers.

One evening, a woman storms in with a sweater. I can see that the paper identification is still attached from when we cleaned it.

Customer: “Smell this! This is not clean!”

Me: “That’s okay; I’ll have them reclean it for you for free. Just sign here.”

Customer: “No, you need to smell this! It’s disgusting.”

Me: “Your word is enough. There will be no charge for us to redo it. I just need a signature.”

The customer thrusts the sweater at my face.

Customer: “I want you to smell this, now!”

Me: “I can’t. I’m anosmic. Now, please—”

Customer: *Cutting me off* “I don’t care what f****** religion you are! You will smell this now!”

Me: “Ma’am, ‘anosmic’ means I have no sense of smell. You could cram a dead fish in my face and I still couldn’t smell it. Now sign here so we can clean this for you.”

She just gave an angry grunt and didn’t say another word to me as she signed the form. I printed her claim ticket, told her when it would be ready, and told her to have a nice day.

Sometimes, I think I’m the only person in my apartment complex who actually picks up after their dog. Every time I walk her, we have to navigate a gauntlet of poop so we don’t track it inside.

I always take my dog down to the corner of our street, a little way down from the door to our building, because there’s a receptacle there specifically for pet waste so it makes everything easier. I’m standing there waiting for my dog to do her thing when I see a man come out with his dog. He stays on the grass fairly close to the building door, telling the dog to go potty. I am absentmindedly watching and waiting for them to go inside, since my dog is very distractible and I know she won’t go until they leave. After a few minutes, the dog does her business, and predictably, I do not see the man pick up after her. 

But karma strikes! As they approach the building, I see the dog jump up the steps and the man pull her back, as he is vigorously wiping his shoe on the step while not-so-quietly grumbling to himself.

Man: “Wait, [Dog], I stepped in s***. F***. Can’t believe I stepped in f****** dog s***.”

After a minute or so of this, he went inside. Gee, random dude, I wonder why you stepped in s***. It’s almost like this is a preventable problem. But I guess we’ll never know.

I do video game console refurbishment. Because I don’t want to deal with people too much directly, I tend to only work with consoles I’ve bought. However, I’ve made exceptions for friends and family on occasion. A friend’s friend hears about this and asks if I’m able to fix one of their systems.

Client: “Yeah, I got a PlayStation that won’t turn on. I bought it from a dude on Craigslist for like fifty bucks.”

Me: “Cool, which PlayStation?”

Client: “A PS4.”

This raises a red flag. Normally, a PS4 would go for at least $150; the only time it would be sold that low is if you knew the other party.

Me: “Sure, go ahead and bring it over.”

He drops it off and it looks legit. At first. I plug it in to test, and sure enough, it won’t power on. I go to pop it open and see a MASSIVE pile of cockroach bodies. From what I can tell, it was the sheer amount of dead bugs causing issues. I go and message the guy.

Me: “Good news is I think I found the issue. Bad news is that because of what it is, I’m charging extra.”

I also attach a picture of the situation. I expect the guy to get upset, saying it’s just a few bugs.

Client: “Oh, s***, that’s disgusting. How much is it overall?”

Me: “$75, but if there’s another issue, it might be more.”

Client: “Go ahead and do it.”

I clear out the bugs and then do a check of the hardware. Aside from a couple of wires being replaced, it looks fine. When I test it again, it turns on and acts normal. I give the guy the news and tell him it’ll just be the $75.

Client: “Awesome! I can come by tomorrow to pick it back up!”

When he comes by, he pays and hands me a gift card to a major coffee chain.

Client: “Hey, thanks for being willing to deal with that at all. I probably would have just bagged the system and brought it back as a biohazard or something. So… thanks.”

We ended up becoming really good friends. He even got me a load of various parts for systems at a flea market he stopped by. He also got me a toy cockroach that sits on my work desk.

This story is part of our Best Of November 2020 roundup!

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