Customer: “Excuse me. Do you have coffee here to drink?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am, there’s a hot coffee dispenser just to the left of the door you walked in through.”

Customer: “To drink?”

Me: *Pointing* “Yes, ma’am, just there by the door behind you.”

She repeatedly mimes bringing a cup to her lips.

Customer: “Like a cup?”

Me: *Pointing again and losing patience* “Yes, ma’am, ready-made coffee, hot and in liquid form, for you to drink right this second. Just turn and head a few short steps toward the door you’ve only just come in, and you’ll see the coffee dispenser ready to pour hot coffee into a cup just for you.”

The customer looked unsure for a couple of seconds before finally turning her head to see the coffee station and getting her coffee to drink in a cup. Apparently, she desperately needed it.

I am working at a gas station. The place is small and pretty run down so sometimes the pumps don’t work correctly. In this situation, I accidentally put someone’s gas on the wrong pump. This is generally an easy thing to fix with the “move pump” button at the register. Of course, this time around, that button is not working for some reason and I see the lady waving me down from outside. I wave her back inside so that I can explain what happened.

Me: “I’m so sorry about that. It seems I put your gas on the wrong pump. I can fix it for you. Did you pay with cash or card?”

We are pretty busy at the time, so it is hard to remember. The pumps don’t specifically tell you how people paid; as I said, they are pretty old and outdated. They just show an amount.

Customer: “It was cash.”

Me: “Okay, easy fix, then!”

I simply pop open the drawer and close it again so that I can re-ring the gas at the correct pump. 

She goes outside and pumps around $40 worth of gas. It dawns on me when she’s coming back to use the ATM that she paid with a card, not cash, the first time around. Since I canceled the pump and re-rang it as cash, my drawer is now $40 short and the money will go back to her card. So, basically, she will be getting this gas for free if she does not pay for it again. If she had said it was a card transaction, I would have simply instructed her to pull around to the right pump and it wouldn’t have been an issue.

Me: “Ma’am, now that I think about it, you paid for your gas with a card, right?”

Customer: “Yes, I did.”

I immediately know that this is going to be an issue. People don’t understand that a pending charge is not the same as an actual charge on her account. It will be refunded in about an hour or so, depending on the bank.

Me: “You told me you paid with cash, so the gas you pumped was rung up as cash. That means it won’t charge your card. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but your gas hasn’t been paid for yet. So, I have to charge your card again or you give me cash to fix the drawer.”

She immediately gets irate.

Customer: “What do you mean, I haven’t paid yet? You charged my card! I can pull it up right here on my phone!”

She pulls up the bank app, and yep, there’s a pending charge. I try to explain to her that the charge will not actually go through because she never pumped the gas from that transaction. I even print the receipt from the gas she pumped showing it as paid with cash. She doesn’t believe me. At this point, I have not been rude and have been nothing but apologetic to her. I understand that it is a weird situation for both of us, but with the system I have, there aren’t many options.

Customer: “I want a manager now!”

I explain that there is no manager here, just me, but that I can call the owner and maybe he could explain it better. He is an immigrant who speaks English but has a hard time explaining things in depth. I dial the number as she’s staring me down. She’s on the phone with her bank while loudly explaining to everyone in the store that there was fraud on her account and that the cashier is trying to steal her money.

Thank God, the owner answers the phone. I start trying to explain the situation and the customer keeps shouting, “You need to tell him this is your fault because you put it on the wrong pump!” At this point, I shout back because I am over being screamed at for something that was both our fault. Plus, I don’t like being accused of being dishonest or a thief when I do everything I can for my customers.

Me: “You shouldn’t have lied and said you paid with cash when you didn’t! And I’m not giving you $40 of free gas! Call the cops if you want to! We have your plate on surveillance as well as everything else you said to me! Yes, I put it on the wrong pump! But that doesn’t mean I’m paying for your gas!”

I put the owner on speakerphone so she can hear what he has to say.

Owner: “We can not give you free gas! You pay, you have to pay again. Your card will get the refund! I promise you.”

She goes out to her car to scream at the bank for a few minutes. I keep watching her making sure she doesn’t drive away. I guess the bank tells her the same thing that I told her — that it is only a pending charge that will go away. She comes back inside with her card.

Customer: “Just charge the d*** card again! Guess I can’t pay my bills now!”

I’m hoping that the next time a customer service rep asks her a question, she will actually listen and respond correctly. And yes, I recognize the fact that I made a mistake, but so did she. If she had just called her bank calmly and asked if what I was telling her was the truth instead of screaming at me, I wouldn’t have had to shout at her. Thinking about her still makes me mad to this day.

I submitted this story about the trouble I had with a certain delivery company.

I have had trouble with delivery companies for many years. I can’t even count the number of complaints I have filed over the years. They don’t like to drive down my long driveway in the rural area I live in, so they keep leaving my packages on a neighbor’s front porch. My packages always come back from her house smelling terrible.

Our local postal carrier is also guilty of leaving packages at her house. After NUMEROUS complaints spanning several years and begging them to just leave an official slip letting me know I have a package waiting for me at the post office, I finally get them to understand the problem… or so I think.

One day, I get a notice that a package has been dropped off in the green car next to my mailbox. I go up to the post office and demand to speak to the postmaster.

Postmaster: *In a nice way* “Oh, you again. Here to pick up a package?”

Me: “I wish. Your carrier left this note in my mailbox that they left the package in a green car parked next to my mailbox.”

Postmaster: “Oh, that was probably so you wouldn’t have to drive all the way down here. I guess it was lucky you left your car unlocked.”

I speak louder and with more anger in my voice than I probably should.

Me: “I don’t own a green car.” *Pause* “As a matter of fact, I don’t know anyone who does own a green car. I have no idea who was even parked up on the main road next to my mailbox and the other mailboxes there.”

There are a few seconds of silence.

Postmaster: “Oh, umm… Yes, I see. That… that is not good, is it? I… Well, of course, we will replace the package, and—”

Me: “You can’t. It was a collector’s item I got off of eBay. But you sure as heck will refund the money I spent and have a little talk with the mail carrier. Grant you, this is a rural community and we tend to be laxer about certain things, but I can’t see how opening the doors of random cars is legal.”

The postmaster apologized again, and afterward, they held my packages down at the post office and left official pickup notices in my mailbox.

Related:
You Passed The Smell Test

I work in a fairly nice restaurant with occasionally long wait times on weekend nights.

I am hosting one Friday night. We are pretty busy with maybe a thirty-minute wait for parties of four or less, but larger parties depend on the size as we only have two different spots that will fit anything over about eight. 

A customer comes in with her several children and approaches the other host who is manning the desk.

Customer: “I have twelve people.”

Host: “All right, just so you know, for a party of that size, it is going to be about a forty-five-minute wait.”

Customer: “Why? There’s a table right there.”

She points to one of the six-person raised booths in the restaurant that is covered in dirty dishes.

All of the hosts are thinking three things: one, twelve people won’t fit into a six-person booth. Two, we can’t put high chairs at the end of raised booths due to it being neither the right height nor safe. And three, there are two other large parties ahead of this group on the waitlist, so even if they could fit there safely, they’d still have to wait on the other parties first.

The host explains these to the customer in a polite customer service manner.

Customer: “Geez! I don’t see why we can’t just go sit there! I don’t want to leave. Just put us on the list anyway.”

She stomps off with her kids. The host proceeds with normal work and I don’t think much of that encounter until I am walking past the aforementioned booth and notice that that lady from before has crammed all nine of her kids into the booth along with — somehow — herself and two other adults.

I walk over to start to explain that they can’t do that when she stops me mid-sentence to say:

Customer: “Can we please get a high chair over here?! My baby has nowhere to sit!”

I definitely don’t want to get into that with her so I just walk away and tell the main host, who is very sassy and good at telling people off.

The main host goes over to the table and tells the family that they have to leave because they cut the line and put too many people into the booth, and the lady starts yelling:

Customer: “I was seated here! You can’t make me leave! I demand to see your manager!” 

The main host went and got the manager who told them they had to leave. The lady was steadily yelling about awful service all the way out the door.

I’m in the shoe department of a department store. It’s an unusually busy day for a weekday and the two girls working are doing their best running registers and working with customers needing sizes. They are doing pretty well keeping up but I can tell they are getting tired from running back and forth.

A certain customer starts causing major slowdowns. She continuously walks up to the workers asking questions while they are helping other customers, which is rude to start off with. She then starts grabbing shoes and bringing them to the workers asking what they’re made of.

Worker: “Ma’am, I’m helping another customer at the moment, but if you look in the tongue of the shoe it will tell you if it is man-made materials or leather.”

The customer just stares at her. I can tell that other customers are getting annoyed, as well.

Worker: “Do… Do you need me to look for you?”

Customer: “Yes, that’s why I asked!”

Worker: “It’s man-made materials.”

The customer snatches the shoe back. This happens about two more times, both while the workers are checking someone out or answering questions for other customers who have patiently waited their turn.

The third time this happens, the lady shoves a shoe in the worker’s face while she’s talking to another customer at the register. The worker finally snaps.

Worker: “Is this some kind of weird power trip for you or something?!”

Customer: “No! Just when I ask you to do something you should do it!”

Their customer left shortly after the worker confronted her. I am unsure if she even purchased anything. She needed to be put in her place at some point!