A woman is receiving her order at my drive-thru window. She has two teenage daughters in the back.

Customer: “Hey! My chicken nugget box only has six nuggets!”

Me: “You ordered the six-piece chicken nugget box, ma’am?”

Customer: “Yeah, and I always get seven or eight when I order that!”

Me: “Sometimes we will throw in a couple extra nuggets if some are smaller or we’re at the end of an old frying batch. Usually, though, the six-piece comes with six.”

Also, sometimes we do it just because we feel nice.

Customer: “Well, you’re ripping me off because the six-piece is actually supposed to come with seven or eight! The six-piece is just what you call it.”

Me: “If you like, I can add a couple more nuggets—”

Customer: “—well now you’re making me sound like a demanding b****!”

I didn’t know how to respond to that honestly and keep my job. Luckily, my manager noticed that my car hadn’t moved and asked what was up. The customer made the same complaint.

Manager: “Ma’am, I understand your frustration completely.”

Customer: *Smug look.* “Good, I—”

Manager: “—I can imagine it’s very frustrating to order a six-piece nugget box and not get six. I will instruct all staff to ensure that in the future, every six-piece nugget box contains no more than six, no exceptions.”

The customer has a dead expression on her face. She knows what’s happening.

Manager: “We’ll make sure this never happens again, ma’am, you have my word on that.”

The manager walks away, and I hand over the rest of the food. I turn to get them their drinks. The customer is sitting there, still sporting a blank look, when her daughters say:

Teenage Daughter #1: “Nice one, Mom.”

Teenage Daughter #2: “You always ruin a good thing, don’t you, Mom?”

I hand the customer their drinks, and I overhear as they slowly pull away:

Teenage Daughter #1: “You realize you became that customer, for these people, right, Mom? They’re going to spend weeks talking about you and why they can’t give extra nuggets to people.”

Teenage Daughter #2: “Oh my god, and we’re with you! They know we’re yours! We can’t come back here either!”

Teenage Daughter #1: “Moooooom!”

Related:
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 6
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 5
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 4
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 3
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 2

I live in an impoverished area, and so to try to help out a little, I run a service on Saturday afternoons at the local library that does basic fixes for computers for free. 

I had an old lady come in with a Toshiba laptop.

Lady: “It’s really slow. Can you make it faster?”

I run a hard drive cleaner software, a malware scanner and remover, and a few other programs to check for viruses, manage files, and clear caches. We got the computer’s boot time from ten minutes down to two.

Lady: “That’s still really slow.”

Me: “How old is this laptop?”

Lady: “Ten years.”

Me: “Based on the age, and that it only has 2GB of RAM, this is as fast as I can get it without reinstalling the operating system.”

Lady: “Then, just, I don’t know, do something.”

Me: “Ma’am, your computer is old. It cannot support newer material.”

Lady: “Well, then. Just do something.”

Me: “Your computer cannot be fixed for free. I recommend buying a new laptop.”

Lady: “Okay. How much will this cost?”

Me: “Nothing, ma’am. This is a free service.”

Lady: “Okay. Do you have a website?”

Me: “No, ma’am, I just advertise my services through the library.”

Lady: “Okay, so the library is where I leave the one-star review about how useless you’ve been?”

The one-star review was up on Google and other sites by the next day, likely written on her freshly cleaned-up laptop.

Like many fast food and to-go places these days, we have a mobile order pick-up shelf. We’re such a busy store and get so many online orders (actually, about half our orders are through third-party food delivery apps these days) that we just put the orders on the shelf and let the delivery guys pick them up from the shelf themselves, freeing us up to cook the food and serve the customers in the store.

Delivery Driver: “Hey! Your system said [order number] was ready, but I can’t find it!”

Me: “That’s odd, I definitely remember putting it there.”

I scan the shelf and discover that the food is indeed gone.

Me: “Sorry about that, another delivery guy must have taken it. I’ll get that remade ASAP.”

Annoying, but I can understand it happening once in a while. 

But then it happens again, and again, and again.

Manager: “Some piece of s*** is stealing a meal from the mobile pick up shelf, and they’re doing it every day.”

Me: “I don’t think it’s one of the delivery drivers, as they don’t want to jeopardize their job getting caught doing something like that.”

Manager: “I agree, so I think it’s someone who looks like a regular customer. I’m gonna try something.”

The next day, as time-consuming as it was, my manager spent the whole shift standing by the mobile pick-up shelf and checking every person with every order to see if they matched. Our manager sees a regular-looking dude just walk up to the shelf and start browsing the orders. He doesn’t look like a delivery driver (no bike helmet for one), and he doesn’t seem to be in a rush. Eventually, he sees an order that looks big and expensive enough, and picks it up off the shelf.

Manager: *Rushing in.* “Excuse me, can I see your [delivery app] order on your phone?”

Customer: “My… uh… I ordered this food myself.”

Manager: “Not possible. This is an online order. It’s awaiting a driver from [delivery app] to pick it up.”

Customer: “Oh, I… uh… I ordered this same food at the counter.”

Manager: “If you’re a regular table-service customer, then you wait for your order number to be called at the counter.”

Customer: “Oh, gee, huh, thanks.” *Tries to back off.*

Manager: “Let me see your order number. I can check how much longer your order is going to be. It’s for the exact same fourteen items listed on the receipt of this online order, right?”

Customer: “Uh… hmm, I think I lost my order number. Let me… let me go outside and look for it.”

The customer door dashes out (pun intended), and my manager is happy that the culprit seems to have been caught and identified.

We saw him come in again a week later, and we instantly called out to him to order with us up front the moment we saw him eyeing up the mobile order pick up shelf. 

Sadly, due to this happening a few more times, we had to keep the pick-up order shelf behind the counter and have a dedicated member of staff available to hand them out to the delivery drivers, but at least the thefts stopped.

Our pizza delivery spot uses pre-made dough sizes, and we’re not in a position to make them ourselves (long story).

Coworker: “Hey, [Manager], I just put in an order for a large pizza, but we’re out of the large-size dough.”

Manager: “Call them back and ask if they want two mediums for the same price?”

Coworker: “Okay.”

He tries calling them, but they’re not picking up.

Manager: *To me.* “Bring them out these two mediums instead and explain that they’re getting considerably more pizza for the same price.”

Me: “Sure thing.”

I get to this one guy’s house, and after explaining it to him:

Customer: “So… where’s my discount?”

Me: “What discount?”

Customer: “A discount for the inconvenience? Like… what am I supposed to do with all this extra pizza?”

You just can’t win.

Our flower place used to send coupons and other stuff with the gift boxes and bouquets.

Caller: “I just got this floral set delivered from you for my wife.”

Me: “I’m happy to hear that they arrived on time, sir, would you—”

Caller: “—This is terrible service! There were all these coupons inside!”

Me: “We include some partner deals with our gift sets, but they’re kept outside the main gift so that they don’t get in the way of the presentation.”

Caller: “I don’t care about that! One of the coupons is for a box of wine!”

Me: “Yes, sir.”

Caller: “My wife is an alcoholic! She’s going to think I’m trying to tempt her!”

Me: “Sir, you can throw the coupons away. You don’t have to give them to her as part of the gift.”

Caller: “That’s not the point! Don’t send them out ever!”

The caller hangs up, and I bring the point up with my boss. She concedes and removes the wine coupon from our rotation. A week later:

New Caller: “I just got a floral set from you.”

Me: “Yes, sir.”

New Caller: “I’m very upset that you stopped doing the wine coupons! I only ordered your crappy flowers to get the cheap wine!”

Me: *Sigh…*