My first job was working for a luxury toiletries brand. I was only about sixteen at the time, and I was eager to do a good job of representing the company.

I was left in the store on my own while my manager took her lunch break; it was a quiet afternoon and there were a few customers browsing. I hadn’t been working there for long, but I couldn’t foresee that there would be any major issues in the hour or so that I’d be running things on my own.

I was quietly tidying up the till area when a middle-aged, well-to-do-looking woman came striding in with a look of thunder on her face. She proceeded to slam a very expensive room fragrance down on the desk in front of me while exhaling a huge huff.

Me: “Hi there. How can I help?”

She snapped at me, waving her hand toward the bottle of fragrance.

Customer: “It’s this! My son bought it for me as a present. I mean, I don’t know what the h*** he was thinking!”

Me: “I’m sure we’ll be able to give you a hand. Would you have preferred something with a different fragrance? I’m sure your son meant well, but everyone has different tastes. If it’s not to your preference, I’m sure we can find something more suitable.”

Customer: *Fuming* “It’s not the smell I don’t like! He knows I only use the hand wash in that smell! Why would I want a bloody air freshener to smell like lemons?! Get me the hand wash, instead.”

At that point, I was still standing behind the desk; the customer was about two feet away from the hand soap she wanted to exchange the air freshener for. When I pointed out the product, she snapped again.

Customer: “Well, get it for me, then!”

Despite the fact that she was actually closer to it than I was, I try to be a good employee, so I obliged. I could feel that other customers were watching this take place, and I was starting to feel a bit pissed off at this woman’s entitled attitude.

When I returned to the desk, I realised that I was not authorised to process exchanges for products. The customer didn’t have a receipt, and the company did not offer refunds.

Me: “As I’m only part-time, the exchange will need to be processed by a member of the management team. My till credentials won’t even let me attempt to do the exchange; the system is physically blocking it.”

Customer: “Well, go get the manager, then!”

Me: “Apologies, but my manager is on lunch and will be back within half an hour.”

At that, she pretty much exploded.

Customer: “What do you mean, half an hour?! I don’t have half a f****** hour! I live in [Town], and I have to catch a bus in ten minutes! Do you have any idea how far away that is?!”

I actually did know how far away [Town] was, as I lived there. It was about eight miles away, and a twelve-minute train ride or forty-minute bus ride. There were about four trains or buses per hour. I didn’t tell the customer this as I didn’t want to risk incensing her further.

I opted to call my manager on her lunch break and ask for some advice. She was stuck queuing in a department store at the other end of town and, as expected, would not be returning for another half hour.

I explained this all to the customer whilst apologising profusely. At that point, she was starting to turn red and almost began foaming at the mouth.

Customer: “Well, just give me the bloody hand soap, and let’s be done with it! I haven’t got time for these games!”

Me: “I’m sorry, madam, but as the product your son purchased is actually more expensive than the one you’d like to swap it for, I’d need to issue you a gift card for the difference in price.”

This was the bit that really got to me. Up until that point, I’d been quite calm, but she was really starting to test my patience. She then leaned across the counter (which was fairly narrow anyway) and viciously shouted in my face:

Customer: “ARE YOU STUPID? DO. YOU. NOT. UNDERSTAND. WHAT. I’M. SAYING. TO. YOU?”

She enunciated each word as if she really thought I was very stupid.

Me: “Yes, I understand perfectly well. However, I do not have the authority to exchange your products on my till number, as I explained to you earlier. I do apologise, and I have contacted my manager, who will be back shortly. If you’d like to pop back another time since you don’t have time today, I’m sure they’ll be happy to take care of it for you.”

Customer: “Are you some kind of idiot? I told you, I live in [Town]! I’m not going to come back another day! I’m taking what I want and I’m leaving now!“

She snatched up the hand soap, tossed it into her handbag, and went to make a run for the door. I blocked the exit and calmly told her that she would need to return the soap as I had not completed the exchange and it would constitute a theft. (On later reflection, I realised it probably wouldn’t have really mattered, since my manager would have just run an exchange on her return from lunch, but I was so stressed and annoyed that I didn’t really know what to do.)

Customer: “Fine! Your manager will be hearing from me! I’ll be putting in a complaint about you personally!”

And with that, she threw the soap at me and stormed out.

The next day, she did call to put in a complaint. Thankfully, the management team took my side and set her straight. I was so mad immediately afterwards that I was shaking, but some sweet customers who’d heard the whole thing were nice enough to reassure me that I’d handled it well. I mean, really, who screams at a teenager over something as petty as soap?

Related:
A Different Kind Of Soap Opera Drama

I was consulting, and I was working at a customer site helping them install a new system. The customer’s engineer and I hit a point where we were waiting for updates to install on the computers, so we went for coffee. We bumped into the IT manager, who asked for a quick statement as to where we’d got to.

As we were talking, we heard one of the helpdesk operators answer her phone. She did the welcome script and then paused to listen. After a short pause, she said:

Helpdesk Operator: “Do some work, then.”

[IT Manager] just stopped, mouth open, and stared at her.

Helpdesk Operator: *Slightly nervously* “The user called and said that they didn’t like the new screensaver we rolled out, so I suggested a workaround.”

IT Manager: “I have no problem with that. If you get a complaint, send it to me.”

Our discussion continued after a short laughter break.

I am a lead flight attendant for a UK airline. Today’s destination: Ibiza. A popular TikTok recently did the rounds in the base where a group of influencers basically showed no respect for the entire cabin — vaping, playing music loudly on a portable speaker, and just generally being a massive pain.

It’s not relevant to this story, but the idea of this happening again has us all on our feet.

We are just about to conduct the safety demonstration when a group of lads at the rear makes enough noise that I can hear them at the front. The first time I stop the safety demo, they quiet down, but after a few seconds, they pipe up again. The third time around:

Me: “Okay, gentlemen in the rear, since you have no concept of acceptable behaviour on a plane, then this is your very own personal briefing. You can consider this your last and final warning regarding the disturbance you are causing me and my colleague’s work at this time. If you interrupt one more time, I will guarantee that each and every one of you will be off the plane, and you will not be going to Ibiza. Am I making myself absolutely clear on that?”

Not a word.

Me: “Good.”

I allow my crew to finish the demo, and then I perform my final checks. I approach the problem rows and one of the lads — clearly the ringleader — jerks my hand into his and shakes it.

Lad: “That was the best demo I’ve ever seen, pal! Great job!”

The rest of his friends, each with the same s***ty haircut, all mockingly agree, giggling like f****** kids all the way through. I smile forcibly and then go to speak with the crew member who is responsible for this section of the plane.

Me: “Come with me a moment, please. Which rows were making all that ruckus earlier?”

My coworker points out three rows; unsurprisingly, this includes the earlier lad.

Me: “Great! So, this row, this row, and this row—” *points to those three rows* “—get absolutely no alcohol for the duration of today’s flight.”

The group suddenly stops laughing. Shocking how that works, isn’t it? I look each one dead in the eyes.

Me: “Yeah, ain’t so funny now, is it?”

Throughout the entire flight, I made sure that not one member of their group would get further encouragement. Of course, that didn’t stop them from asking repeatedly for the entire flight, even though it was only two hours tops. Of course, they could and should have been offloaded anyway, but watching them plead for the whole flight was so much more satisfying. 

Airline rules are there for a reason. Don’t be a p***k.

I used to work in a consumer electronics pop-up store. We had rather valuable products on display, and being in quite a visible spot in a busy shopping centre, we were quite an enticing site for shoplifters.

We normally only had two staff members on the floor, so when one of us was out to lunch, the other would be alone at the store, so we would constantly have to be on the lookout for shady customers.

During one particular shift, I was by myself on the floor and was serving a family of five, so my visibility of the other side of the store was obscured.

Whilst I was serving this family, I noticed a rather scruffy-looking man on crutches looking at one of our products on the other side of the store. He was intently looking around every few seconds and looked very nervous so, naturally, he immediately raised a red flag with me, but I couldn’t just leave my customers before completing their transaction.

I kept a keen eye on this shady man throughout the transaction, and just as I was about to complete it, I noticed him starting to leave. I couldn’t see anything missing from where I was, so I breathed a sigh of relief and finished the transaction. Then, I made my way over to the products the man had been standing near.

Much to my shock and horror, not only was one of the products missing, but the security cable attached to it was flaming!! This man had clearly used a lighter to sever the cable and then just walked off with the product. I was able to put out the flames but not before it damaged the products around it

I called security afterward, but I didn’t have any real hope of them finding the shoplifter as, more often than not, they would get away. Much to my surprise, though, within twenty minutes, they had located him. It turned out that he didn’t get far because he was missing a leg!

Related:
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 17
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 16
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 15
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 14
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 13

I was a software developer at a financial institution in London in 1999. There were about eight members of the development team, split equally between permanent employees and contract staff.

Permanent employees had job security and a career at the bank, and they got paid vacations and a relatively low annual salary. Contract staff were hired (in theory) to work on specific projects for short periods and then let go again, were not employees of the bank, and therefore got none of the associated benefits (vacation time, sick leave, etc.) and were paid extremely well, by the hour worked.

I was a “permie”. I was working with people who were probably making twice what I was making for the exact same job, but at least I had the knowledge that the bank cared about developing my skills and knowledge as a long-term employee and that, therefore, I’d have interesting projects to work on.

This was particularly important in 1999, because as some among you will remember, in 1999, the world’s computers were all about to be killed by the Y2K problem. As a result, all the bank’s code needed to be examined and tested to make sure it wasn’t going to get confused and fall over on January 1.

I was quietly working away on whatever the h*** I was working on when two senior managers were fired. This was the beginning of much unpleasantness. The new guys came in, decided that it was bonkers to be paying the contract developers all this money, and immediately fired them all. Not employees, so no redundancy and a significant reduction in payroll. However, it was something of a shock to the contractors, at least one of whom had been working there “temporarily on three-month contracts” for at least six years.

The next thing they did was ask what was going on with Y2K testing. This was a slightly unfortunate order to do these things because it was the contractors who were just about to start on the Y2K testing. After all, they were the ones who were supposed to be doing the crappy boring projects.

Side note: If you’ve never done Y2K testing, thank your lucky stars. It’s as crappy and boring a project as they come. The developer literally had to go line by line through god knows how many thousands (millions?) of lines of code looking for date fields. Even if he knew there were no date fields, he still had to go through them for “compliance reasons”. It was like looking for an elephant in a haystack, but having to individually mark down each strand of hay as being “not an elephant”. Then, he’d have to try to run a test to prove that the system wouldn’t collapse when the date was set to after January 1, 2000. The problem with this was that the bank’s systems, as you might imagine, were extremely complex. When the developer set up a test environment with the date 1/1/2000, the programs would fall over EVERY SINGLE TIME. Not because of any date issues, but because some file would be missing, or missing data, or data didn’t reconcile, or for a million and three reasons that had nothing at all to do with the date. Just an incredibly tedious, frustrating, mind-numbing, skill-sapping, Sisyphusian task. I was so grateful that I didn’t have to do it; it was worth the lower pay to avoid that.

With the contractors gone, I had to do it.

All four of the permanent staff were moved onto the Y2K testing project. It was grim.

It got grimmer.

Suddenly, the business found they had no developers working on any other projects. They were, understandably, a bit miffed that the new software they’d been promised was no longer on the cards. They complained bitterly to the new management. The new management agreed that something must be done.

They hired new contractors at higher hourly rates. It was hard to find people in 1999 because everyone needed Y2K testers who didn’t know anything about our systems because they hadn’t been there for the past six years learning everything. They put those guys on the interesting business projects, while we permies got to keep the Y2K testing because we were the only ones who “knew where to look”.

I have little recollection of the next few months because my brain shut down fairly quickly after that. But a couple of things stood out, one of which was the pettiest decision I’ve ever seen. One of the perks of the job was that we were given company mobile phones — hey, it was 1999, so that was still a (small) perk then — so we could be on call twenty-four-seven in case anything went wrong overnight. Sometimes it did, and those times were frenetic and stressful because the bank’s overnight processing simply had to complete running before the bank could open for business the following day. In return for being on call (with no extra pay if we spent the night debugging some disaster), we were allowed to use the phones for (moderate) personal use and the company picked up the tab. Woo-whee.

New management decided that this was an unnecessary extravagance. “Return the phones,” we were told, and then, once we’d bought our own replacements, “Please give the number to overnight support so they can call you if they need you.”

This was the point at which we told them to f*** off. It was also around this time that I was called in to ask my views on how things were going and how morale was in the group.

I told them that we felt we’d been treated like s***, and if it carried on like this, the whole team would quit. If we wanted to work on terrible projects, we could all get new jobs in a week or two, for more money, and probably with free mobile phones thrown in.

It carried on like that, and we all quit. Three successive Fridays were someone’s leaving party. Another guy and I finished on the same day, the last Friday.

To cap the incompetence, the bank elected not to have any of our replacements start until the Monday after the last of us had finished. They didn’t have us interview any of the candidates, so they were hiring programmers without any idea whether those people could actually, you know, program. They really didn’t want to let us meet and talk to our potential replacements!

They then asked me to spend my last week documenting all of the systems so the new programmers would have some idea of how everything worked. If there is anything in the world more boring than Y2K testing, it’s documenting systems, and if they thought I was going to work my socks off for them… Well, let’s just say I did a basic professional job and included a note for the new guys wishing them all the very best of luck (they were really going to need it) and suggesting they didn’t throw away the number of the headhunter who’d placed them there.