Customer Service Horror Stories

I got a few more. Not so much horror stories, though.

A young kid calls for a delivery. He places his order & I ask for his address. He says, "P.O. Box 229." I ask, "Do you want me to mail it to you?" There was a few seconds of silence and he goes "Wait. What? Why would you mail it..Oh! I'm sorry!" and then gave me his street address.

Every once in a while, I'll deliver to a house that is having a kid's birthday party. Usually some kids will see me & yell, "PIZZA!" I'll give them a stunned look & say, "Pizza? You wanted pizza? I thought you guys ordered pancakes." Then they look at me & either stay confused or get the joke right away.

One guy came in & asked to use the bathroom. I said, "Sure. Down the hall on the right." He comes out about 20 minutes later & his clothes are soaking wet. I have no idea what went on in the bathroom & I didn't want to ask. The floor was one huge puddle, the faucets were left running & there was nearly half a roll of paper towels in the toilet.

And how could I forget Suzanne?
There were 2 sisters living in the trailer park. Jean & Suzanne. I never saw Jean. I think she was bedridden. They were in their 50s & weren't "all there". They always gave me a $2 tip, but the money had the strongest odor of cat urine. I would keep it separate from the rest of my money & had to wash it when I got home. The greatest thing about delivering there was the painting. It was of Suzanne dressed in a white sailor suit. I think eventually Jean passed away & Suzanne was put in some sort of a home. If they ever had a garage sale, that painting would be mine!

I lost track of how many times people threatened to kill me or kick my ass over not giving refunds for returns in retail, or for not removing their late fees when working at video stores.

Had an African man with a heavy accent yell obscenities at me and my employees at inside a Blockbuster for an hour because we "dared" call his house two days before Christmas to remind him of his week overdue movie. He threw the movie across the store, and yelled at us, said I would be fired and he was going to "own Blockbster" because of it. Meanwhile I had 4 lines 20 people deep of people laughing at this lunatic while I ignored his tantrum.

Had someone scream at me for 30 minutes because they said I was lying when I told them that the Sega Genesis they were trying to return certainly did not come with an NES controller and that we wouldn't take it back for a refund.

Another kid threatened to shoot me for not letting him use his mother's credit card to purchase a video game. I called security and while he was shouting at me they tackled him and arrested him.

Had a guy jump the counter and try to steal a few Playstation games right in front of me. I tackled him and he started crying and sobbing and begged us not to press charges. I did.

Had someone at Blockbuster flip over our giant gum ball machine and break it over a $5 late fee. He was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and destruction of property.

Had a woman spit in my face because we couldn't take food stamps for fresh prepared shrimp from the seafood department.

Had some weird guy who kept trying to give me and my friend back massages at a video game store, and wouldn't leave until we called security. Was very bizarre.

One guy called the police saying that we were robbing him by charging illegal late fees. He was charged with improper use of emergency services.

I was screamed at for 20 minutes for being racist because we didn't have any copies of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" in for rental all day.

One guy was trying to sell a Super Nintendo, and I refused to take it because it had roach eggs inside the cartridge slot. He said I put them there and demanded I take it for quite a while. Before leaving and coming back and trying again acting like we hadn't just done this an hour ago.


I could do this all day...

I work at a movie theatre. I've seen some sh*t.

We aren't suppose to hold tickets for anyone. It was super busy, lines out of the door, I was ripping tickets. Some lady insisted I hold a ticket for her friend, I said sorry, we can't do that. I suggested she text her friend to text her when she got there. "But I need to shut my phone off in the theatre!". I told her to put it on vibrate and she could exit the theatre and give her friend the ticket upon her arrival. We went back in forth, I was as kind to her as I could be...until she threw her ticket at me and told me to go myself. First instinct was tell her to get the herself right back, but instead I told her she was embarrassing herself and that she could leave the theatre for bring rude to me. She actually did, which was the most surprising aspect of this story.

We once ran out of small and medium popcorn bags because of the Christmas holiday and a really big snow storm. We would only sell larges; we couldn't ring them in as smalls or mediums and fill them accordingly because it would cause invalid inventory. It was a crapty situation, but it wasn't something I could control. I had a grown man insist I give him a large bag and charge him for a small, and I tried my very best to explain the situation to him and apologize, but he insisted I was a liar and didn't know what I was doing. He asked to speak to the manager, who told him the same thing I had already said. He said we were doing this on purpose, we were scam artists, blah blah blah...but eventually bought the large popcorn. His wife patted him on the back after the transaction like a 5 year old child, and said,"There there, hunny, we'll write all about this on Yelp when we get home." *gag*...they never wrote a review, by the way.

We validate parking, but do not own the garage. Some guy put his ticket in the validation machine the wrong way (keep in mind we have 7, literally 7 display examples taped onto the machine to show how to put it in correctly), and was charged some ridiculous amount of money. He came back in insisting I was going to pay him out out my own pocket for it. It didn't happen.

An old man began stalking me and tried to be my sugar daddy. Its a long story, but all you need to know is I turned down a LOT of money and subsequently saved my dignity.

A lady pulled down her pants and literally sh*t in the lobby. She wasn't embarrassed in the least bit.

People fight with me on a daily basis about bringing in full pizzas, bags of Chipotle, etc. It doesn't sound that horrific, but believe me, these people turn into animals when I tell them they need to eat their 12' subs in the lobby.

An older woman got about an inch from my face because I wouldn't let her into the movie without a ticket, and told me I was the one responsible for her slipping on our driveway outside a year earlier, and I was the reason she had back pain, and she was going to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted in the theatre. We ultimately found her and made her leave, but not before she cried buckets and said we were awful people and she was never coming back. See ya.

Was working as a cashier a few years ago and we had a sale on 24 pack Pepsi products.

The deal was they were $4.99 if you had an additional $10 worth of items.

It was towards the end of my shift and I see 2 ladies coming to my line, each had 1 24 pack.

They throw them up on the register and I scan their shopper card just because we are suppose to on each transaction.

It rang up at the regular price, which I believe was $6.99 and that is when all hell broke loose.

The first lady says, in a not so nice tone, "I thought those damn things were supposed to be 4.99"

I told her as nicely as I could that they were 4.99 if you had an additional $10 worth of items.

So she tells me to "scan the damn thing again" so I do and the same thing happens.

By this point she has lost total control and screams "There was no damn sign back there that said any ing thing about having to have more stuff." She also accuses me of lying to her, calling me names and saying "I can go to so and so store and get it for 4.99 without buying anything else."

So I tell her, still being nice that if you can go to that store and get it, by all means go there but I cannot give it to you for 4.99 without additional purchase.

Before she left, she called me a mouthy little bastard and asked for a complaint card (this was before we had an online comment system) to send into the store. I gave her what I thought was a complaint card, turned out it was a application for a store credit card. She was halfway to the exit when she saw this, turned around, screamed some more and walked out.

I could read these all day.

With Subway you can always tell them to put more on a Sub.


I had an experience at a Subway once. I ordered a Sandwich, I just got Meat, Cheese, Pickles, and Salt/Pepper and Oregano on it. I told the guy making my Sub right from the beginning, only lots of pickles. So the guy proceeds to put only 4 slices of pickles on my Sub. So I asked him put to put a lot more on there. This employee told me the Sub already had Pickles on it. Then he shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and put another 4 pickle slices on a foot long sub. Again I told him I wanted more pickles on there. Then he told me, "sir I can't put the entire container on your sandwhich and too many pickles is no good." I got pretty ticked off at this. First off I thought, im only getting pickles on this sub out of all the veggie choices you have. Then I thought, I told you I wanted lots of pickles on there, how is 8 slices on a foot long a lot? Then I thought, who the heck are you to tell me what I should think is good to eat?


I didn't say anything to the guy. Instead I asked for everything on the sub, Lettuce, tomato, spinach, onions, mustard, mayo, peppers.... everything. Then when he wrapped up the Sandwich I just walked out. He started crying about how he made the sub and I had to pay for it and take it, I just walked out. If you work at Subway make the Sub the way the customer tells you to. If things cost extra, tell the customer there is an additional charge if you must, but don't stand there and argue with someone over how they should eat there meal.

As a preface to probably the least rational story I've managed to not flush out of my mind yet, it helps to know that in the northeast a few years back, we had a storm which became somewhat known as "Snowtober", on account of it coming out of nowhere like a day before Halloween and ruining everybody's lives.

So, my last job before leaving the world of customer service far, far behind was in the automotive division of a major retailer than can often be found anchoring malls. I was the lucky sort, in that on the eve of Snowtober, I was one of two service advisers closing. The snow started early, and picked up in intensity pretty quickly, but as is with life, people kept coming in for those sort of things that just couldn't wait like tire rotations and oil changes. In the midst of it all, the bay door at the exit of our garage somehow became jammed in the open position, and so I left Barry, the most pathetic old man I've ever worked with to man the front line while I worked with a couple of techs on closing the door, as we were about 30 minutes out from closing.

As we're working on the door and remarking on the storm, we see the next town over across the river light up like the Griswold's house on Christmas, an then EVERYTHING goes black - streetlights, mall signs, and, sure enough, the entire mall. It's here we come to set the scene - a bay door jammed open. The worst storm we've seen in two some odd years. A cool foot of snow on the ground. No power of any kind because this particular retailer is already running on fumes, and 6, count 'em SIX cars in for oil changes up in the air.

Barry, being useless, is panicking. I took the automotive gig to back out of retail management, but sometimes the instincts kick in, and I start laying some communication groundwork to figure out avenues to get our customers somewhere safe for the night. Six cars stuck until power comes back, and five agree to call friends or relatives to get a ride home, because in spite of my overall awesomeness, I still haven't mastered to whole control of the elements thing yet. What can you do, right?

Ask Mr. Jandrahar. I don't even give a rat's about dragging a guy's name out in public. When the power in the mall went south, he and his family (wife, young child, maybe three years old) made a bee line back to the shop, saw his car flying sky high through the darkness of the shop, and lost his ever loving mind.

It's worth noting that Mr. J was the last customer in the shop, behind five other customers, and that his car sat for no unreasonable time before a tech was able to get his hands on it (not to mention an open lift) and get it started. That's very important to our story.

First thing's first - is my car coming down? Not as such, no. Why not? New England, sir. God's country, but a bit of a b*tch if she gets cold. How could you let this happen?

Let that one sink in.

"How could you let this happen?"

I've seen it all in this thread - finding yourself on the receiving end of threats to your life, your family, and your prospective children is just kind of par for the retail course - hell, if you've managed to get a service gig and not face the unholy wrath, it kinda doesn't count and you should have to pay extra taxes or something, in my book, at least. I've been ridiculed for my lack of control over store hours, wait times, prices, manager availability, the availability of help, the irrationality of return policies, and a dozen other things that someone could probably trick themselves into thinking a front line schlub could somehow control...

...but the weather?

"Where do you live, Mr. Jandrahar? I'm sure we can get you home, somehow."

Burlington. Burlington, Massachusetts. Nevermind the irrationality of my lack of control over the weather, but this guy, in the midst of a storm that had already started, drove 35 minutes out of his way to a different STATE to get an oil change. I know New England gets a rep as kinda being boonish, but here's the kicker...

OUR DISTRICT HAS A STORE WITH AN AUTOMOTIVE CENTER IN BURLINGTON.

So while my level headed coworker is lamenting how awful it is that I've asked him to go into the break room to get our guests with kids some popsicles and sodas our boss bought for the shop, I've got Mr. J, who's miles out of his way, his car stuck in the air, his wife and small kid tired and cold, and he's riveting my ear off over how I could let this happen.

Never one to spend money that isn't mine without the go ahead, I call up my shop's manager, who gives me a threshold of pricing I can use to "take care of it". We settle on a hotel that is without full power, but is running on a generator enough to book rooms comfortably. It's agreed that Barry will drive him there, even though it's around the corner from my house, because my car is a sty, and I hate this guy already.

So with Mr. J sated enough to get in Barry's car for an all expenses paid night in scening southern NH, I finally get to head home to my wife, who was gracious enough to buy snacks and beer before the storm hit. Priorities.

Remember that thing about the hotel neighboring my home? Well, sure enough, as I'm passing by, there's Barry's Ford Exploder, buried nose deep in a snowbank, and the four of them having a mess of getting out of the car into the lobby, which requires a sizeable dodge around a fallen wire. Customer service never sleeps, so I stop and hop out, taking the kid so the oldens can get their balance enough to get to the shop. As I'm handing over little J, making sure the room I booked over the phone for them is all set, you know what Mr. Perceptive says to his wife as I bid my farewell?

"This never happens in Burlington."

The story isn't violent, or confrontational, or really exciting, but in all my years, for all the screaming and kicking and yelling and throwing and threatening, I've never had anybody make a remark to me as irrational, ill conceived, or stupid as Mr. J's two big catch phrases that night. Maybe it's something that you age into, when come to a point where you just want people to behave like functioning humanoids, but man, that took the cake.