A customer approaches the register and orders a small smoothie. Our smoothies are ridiculously sized, starting at twenty ounces for a small and up to forty ounces for a large! As such, corporate is very picky that we get customers to pick a specific size either by ounce or saying small, medium, or large. I ring the small smoothie through, make it myself, and hand it over to the customer at the end of the line. Up until now, the guy has been a pretty standard customer. He looks at his smoothie and doesn’t take it, however.

Customer: *Politely* “Oh. I ordered a regular size.”

Me: *Double-checking the ticket* “I have you down for a small. Is the size not what you expected? We can ring you up for something different. We don’t have a ‘regular’ size here. We do small, medium, and large.”

The man becomes completely incensed.

Customer: “No! I always order regular! You do make that size. I have my receipt right here!”

He waves it around a little before setting it on the counter and pointing angrily at it. As he points, he reads it for the first time and sees that he did order a small. Slowly, he looks at our menu board that also lists our sizes. The man just totally deflates and ends his sudden anger.

Customer: “Oh.”

To his credit, he took the smoothie he ordered and didn’t say another word!

I worked for a long time at a specific smoothie place near campus. We had a lot of regulars who would make weird requests that didn’t really fit the recipes that we had to follow, but if they agreed to pay for an added charge, it was usually fine with my extremely benevolent manager.

Some people, though…

I’d been working there for almost two years almost daily when this extremely pregnant lady that I had never seen before in my life came in and ordered one of our seasonal smoothies which is made with dairy. She asked for almond milk, which is a normal request, so I put that in instead of dairy for no extra fee. However, when her ticket was printed, she freaked out and began screaming at me because she didn’t want the dairy gone; she wanted to replace all of the water with almond milk with no extra charge.

I’m pretty sure most people know that milk in general costs more than water and is thicker, so it would not only make the smoothie incapable of blending, but it would also cost the store like five bucks of almond milk, since that particular smoothie had thirty-two pumps of water in it, without readjusting for the thickness of almond milk.

I thought I’d misheard her.

Me: “Ma’am, we have water in all our smoothies; they won’t blend without it.”

This lady LEANS over the counter, gets RIGHT in my face, and quietly says, “Come here,” before SCREAMING at me.

Customer: “I COME HERE EVERY. DAY. THEY GIVE ME MY G**D*** ALMOND MILK EVERY. DAY.”

First of all, b****, no. I am here every g**d*** day. I’ve NEVER seen you before in my LIFE. You’ve NEVER ordered that. Second of all, I’d leaned in close because I am hard of hearing and her screaming in my ear so close sent me reeling backward. I’m awful with confrontation, so my legs were shaking horribly, but I went to the owner in the back and asked if I could fulfill her request. He isn’t normally on premises and said yes just to get her to leave.

I began to make the smoothie the way the customer had asked. It didn’t blend. One of our several-thousand-dollar blenders broke and began smoking. We only had four in the shop to begin with, and it was the busiest day of the week. She kept screeching that we were doing it wrong and causing a scene until it finally blended with almost a half-gallon of almond milk in it. She spent like thirty minutes yelling at us that day.

The next day, she tried it again, and this time, my normally benevolent manager was in and had our backs. The customer was banned from asking for that smoothie again without paying for all the almond milk. She’s lucky we didn’t charge her for the blender.

We have new smoothies in two flavors. This is my first day back, so I haven’t tried both.

Customer: “Have you tried the new smoothies?”

Me: “I’ve tried the chocolate one, but the veggie one should be good, too!”

Customer: “I’m having trouble deciding, but I’m going to have one of those.”

Me: “Okay!”

Customer: “The chocolate one is fine.”

I ring him up and make and serve his smoothie. When we get to the counter, however, there is an issue.

Customer: “Is this mine?”

Me: “Yessir!”

Customer: “Oh, you must have misunderstood me! I wanted the veggie one!”

I remade it because of our satisfaction guarantee; all the while his child was throwing our checkers pieces everywhere while he did nothing.

We have a family of regulars: two adults and three young children. These children have sensitive teeth and can’t drink smoothies with ice in them, so they ask to leave it out. Without ice, a smoothie will not fill the cup because about half of the content is ice. Ice is both to keep it cold and to thicken the smoothie.

Every time they get their smoothies, they complain, even after we explain it to them. When they call my manager, he says the same thing. Corporate says that if we wanted to add ingredients to fill the cup, they would have to pay for them.

The last time I saw them, they took a photo of the cup. I don’t know what they did, but I’m surprised they came back about ten times expecting different results.

I work at a juice/smoothie bar that offers absolutely huge forty-ounce drinks and is kind of pricey. I’ve just handed a customer one such drink — forty ounces of pineapple and strawberry smoothie — when the drink slips out of his hands and hits the floor.

It breaks open everywhere, including the main walkway of the store. The guy says nothing but starts trying to wipe the entire flood of smoothie with a single napkin he has.

Me: “Oh, no! Sir, you don’t have to do that! We’ll clean that for you!”

The man stiffens and stands up suddenly at my words. He puts his headphones back in, turns on his heel, and walks straight out of the shop!

Me: “Wait, sir! Let us make you a new one! It’s really okay!”

The man kept walking and straight-up ignored even my boss chasing after him out of the store and partway down the block trying to give him a new smoothie! Obviously, the guy was having a bad day and that was the last straw, but what a way to be out almost $10 of smoothie!