People working in customer service have to put up with some terrible behavior—but every once in a while, the universe is on their side and they get to watch rude jerks experience instant karma. And when it happens, it's seriously sayisfying.
1. Feeling Blue
Some blue-haired lady came up to complain about a dessert she ordered at our restaurant, saying that there was a hair in it. She shows me, and what do you know, the hair was blue. I said, “Ma’am, no one who works here has blue hair”.
2. Have A Care
I worked at a telecom in Canada. This lady comes in with a broken iPhone, demanding to get a new one for free. She went to incredible lengths to get her way. She called up our loyalty team in store and spent the next two hours screaming at them. Finally, they agree to a deal, and she is getting it for zero. She looks at me and goes, “I do not want a case, and AppleCare is a scam”.
Now, we work on commission, so this essentially meant I was getting nothing and ruining my numbers. She then keeps telling me to hurry up through the setup, since I was trying to get her out of the store with everything transferred over and set up. She grabs the phone and starts marching off, saying I was a terrible employee.
She gets three steps out of the store and drops the phone. Shattered screen, phone can’t even turn on now. She ran back in asking what I can do. I shrugged and went, “Sorry, but AppleCare sure would have helped, eh"?
3. Coming up Short
This happened to me at work. A lady was trying to pay with like a thousand coins for a $5 scratch off. She tried to say she was only 10 cents short. Ended up being over a dollar short, then complained and said any decent person would have spotted her the money. I pretty much told her she could go down the street and try there if she'd like.
She then suddenly pulled out a twenty and bought two, because of course she did. As she walked out of the store she said, "Karma is a witch". When she gets to her car an officer pulls up behind, blocking her in completely. They proceed to search the car, and then detain her and her boyfriend. I didn't feel bad. Screw that woman.
4. Karma Decked Him Good
My buddy and I were having a drink on a large wooden patio at an ocean-side bar/restaurant. A middle-aged couple was sitting next to us. Our tables were next to each other, and they were relatively close to us. As my buddy and I were just taking in the view, he caught eyes with the dude and said something innocuous like, "Good evening".
The guy retorted, "Mind your own business and keep your eyes to yourself". My buddy and I looked at each other with a "Did that just happen"? expression. My buddy looked back over at him and said something like, "Relax, buddy, sorry to bother you". At that point, we were a little put-off. We got back to our drinks and enjoyed the sunset.
Two minutes later, the guy pulled out a ring for his partner. It was a large diamond. She was excited, and he had a sufficiently smug, self-satisfied look on his face. She went to hand it back to him. Then disaster struck. When he grabbed it, he fumbled. It fell to the deck, rolled an inch or two, and then promptly disappeared, falling between two slats of the deck.
I felt bad for the woman. The guy’s face went white and then immediately red. He was barely able to maintain his composure. It looked like he wanted to strike his lady friend. The dude looked over at us, and now we were looking straight at him. We just smiled casually. He called a waiter over and started discretely explaining what had happened.
He wanted someone to pull up the deck slats. However, that was NOT going to happen. The waiter was cool as ice. Despite the guy raging at this point, the waiter flatly told him something to the effect of, "Look, man, you can come back tomorrow and talk to the manager, or pay your bill and leave now”. The guy sat down. His lady friend was visibly shaken.
While enjoying our drinks and the sunset, my friend and I remarked about how karma, while certainly inspiring, is almost magical when it's instant.
5. This Customer Is Always Wrong
Over the years, I have met plenty of entitled people while working in retail, but there's one individual who stands out in my memory more than any of the others. This particular woman had by far the most entitled attitude of anyone I've ever met. She was also a regular customer, so we had to deal with her terrible behavior at least twice a week on average.
This customer's favorite pastime would be to literally fill a trolley with clearance items. These items were always a nightmare for cashiers, as you would have to reduce the price on the till for each one manually. Our management was worried about scanning fraud, and so they had disabled the multiplication button on the till.
This meant that each item had to be scanned and discounted individually. Once all of her items had been scanned and discounted, this customer would always, without fail, kick up a fuss over the price, accusing us of overcharging her and demanding to see a manager. Some managers would give in to the persistent lady, which meant voiding the transaction and starting all over again from the beginning.
If they told the woman to get lost, she would complain about "never shopping here again" and storm out, leaving a full trolley of goods for us to have to go through and put back. Gee, thanks! How kind of you! Either way, the entire spectacle would usually take up at least an hour of our time when all was said and done. And, I repeat, this happened on a very frequent basis.
There was eventually a nice moment of karma for this person, however. One winter, we had an especially heavy snowstorm in our area. Our policy, in this case, was to clear the car park’s access to the spaces closest to the door. We would always do this as very few people come out when it's snowing, and it lets people park as close as possible if they do decide to make the trek.
Not this customer, though. Oh no. She pulled into the car park, drove directly into the uncleared section, and tried in vain to drive through a snowdrift, hitting a covered bollard in the process. She then clomped on into the store, demanded to see the manager, and proceeded to yell at him point-blank about the excess snow in our parking lot and the damage it did to her car.
Apparently, she was going to sue us and get every employee fired for "not clearing her usual parking space of snow". Our manager responded by permanently banning her from our store for being consistently abusive towards our staff. Good riddance!
6. Babies Know Best
I currently work at a consignment shop. We have two stories of furniture, and it's only things people bring in for us to sell for some of the profit. A lady came in with her young son and looked around. We had two barstools and she came up to the desk and said, "I'd like to order two more of these bar stools".
I smiled and said, "We can't do that, those belong to someone and that's all they had to consign with us". She looks back and says "Well why the heck can't you order ones like this?! I'm sure you can find them online”! I clench my teeth and smile again, saying, "Ma'am we really can't do that. If you'd like to go online you are more than welcome to look for yourself, but I can't help you and I'm sorry”.
She huffed and started walking to the door, talking about getting me fired, making a horrible review of this place, everything in the book. I still laugh when I think of what happened next. She then got a nice big faceful of door. It's a push door and it was locked. She looks at me and screams "WHY IS THIS LOCKED"?! I have no idea. Then her son looks at her and says, "Mommy you were mean to that lady and I don't wanna go till you say sorry". Best kid ever.
7. Clean Up In Aisle Five
I previously worked at a pet store for a few years. One pet peeve (ha) I always had was that customers who brought their dogs in would almost always leave any of their dog's poop and not bother to pick it up.
However, worse than that were the customers who saw their dogs take a dump and then run to get me and ask me to clean it up. Once a customer was walking (dragging) his dog over by our fish wall. The dog at one point starts taking a dump and the customer sees this and continues to drag his dog down the entire side of the fish wall.
I approached him and said "You need to clean that up sir. I have some paper towels and cleanup spray in my podium that you can use". The customer looks at me, then down at his dog, and "My dog didn't do that, I was watching him the whole time".
The guy had the audacity to walk away. So now I am super angry at this point and my co-worker and I clean up the line of poop by the fish wall and then stuff it into a plastic bag. My next move was brilliant. We handed the bag over to our cashier and told him to make sure to put it in the customer’s bag when the time came.
I watched as he did so later, and I'll admit that gave me some sick sense of satisfaction.
8. A Hot Tip
I was delivering pizza in college. Two guys came in for a pizza and were being loud, obnoxious, and general all-around jerks. They were also spitting on the floor that I was going to have to clean at closing time.
When I went out for a delivery, I called the authorities and gave them the description of their car and the license plate number. It turned out so, so sweet. When I came back from the delivery, they were pulled over and being led through the standard sobriety tests on the side of the road. I have no doubt they failed.
9. Slamming the Slow Door
I was kicking a customer out for being insensitive and cursing at one of my employees. He yelled offensive stuff and then he tried to slam the door on his way out, but it had one of those things on it that makes the door close slowly. He pushed it hard, it didn't budge, and he slipped and fell on the floor. We had a good laugh.
10. That’s Nacho Order
I was at Taco Bell and had ordered nachos bell grande—and so did the man immediately behind me in line. We waited together for our food to get done, and when they called my number, he grabbed my food. He looked at me and said, “You ordered the same thing as me, but I'm in a hurry, so you can just take mine when it's ready”.
This guy didn't care two bits what I had going on. He was in a suit and tie, and I was in my construction clothes. He took one step toward the door and slipped, spilling his drink and my nachos all over his shirt and jacket. At that exact moment, they called his number. I picked up his nachos, thanked him, and walked out the door.
11. A Coke And A Smile
I worked at a pizza joint during college. We sold some beverages out of a fountain machine and others in a can. One day, this lady in a business suit came in acting a little frantic. She wanted soda in a can but wasn't happy with our selection. She got pretty nasty when I told her we only sold Coca-Cola out of the fountain.
She left the store mad and went across the street to a little hot dog stand to see about buying her drink there. They had it in a can, but apparently at a price she did not want to pay. So, she came storming back to my pizza joint and snottily said, “The Coke across the street was too expensive, so I have to settle for your fountain soda”. She wanted six of them.
She got even angrier when I offered her a choice of 12 or 32-ounce cups and even more aggravated when I told her we didn’t have carrying trays. However, I offered to get her a box to carry them all. She was just flat-out unhappy that she had to deal with this. To make things worse, we had a faulty batch of soda cups that day. About every tenth cup had a pinhole in it.
I did not know that, as I had just started shift when this woman first came in. Wouldn't you know it, but this woman in her business suit got one of the defective cups and soda sprayed ALL OVER the front of her suit. I was sure she thought we did it on purpose. I apologized offered her a wet rag and a replacement cup. But when she finally walked out the door, my boss and I had the biggest laugh!
12. Told Ya So
I’m a former cell phone industry worker. We HAVE to pitch insurance and a case every time you get a new phone. We have to. You can actually be fired from some carriers for refusing to partake in making these suggestions. During a normal new-line set-up, this insanely rude woman is hostile about every part of the exchange.
Her credit is absolute garbage, so she has to pay a gnarly deposit and more of the phone up front, and that's somehow my fault. As I’m finalizing everything before she’s completely rung up, I casually offer the same thing I do to literally everyone getting a new phone: Which insurance plan were you interested in, and what kinds of cases have you looked at?
Apparently, that was the most offensive thing she'd ever heard in her life. She immediately raises her voice and makes it really uncomfortable for me because apparently I'm accusing her of being clumsy. I kept my composure and tried calmly explaining everything.
I even try to let her know that I HAVE to offer that to everyone, and I couldn’t get anything across. Eventually my co-worker lets me know he's got this. We swap places and finish each other's sales. As she steps out of the store looking down at the Galaxy Note 3 she had just spent a total of 500 something dollars to get, she trips and smashes the screen. She comes back in asking for help after raising heck.
13. A Road To Nowhere
I was working drive-thru at a Tim Hortons and some jerk in a massive black truck parked too far away from the window and expected me to lean super far out to give him his change. He was real impatient and just really rude. I just shook my head and so he gets all angry and finally gets out of the truck…and the door shut behind him.
It was locked and he sat there for like 15 minutes and we had to call a tow truck. Sure, it ticked off everyone behind him, but at least they were mad at him and not us! He acted like it was the biggest embarrassment of his life. Maybe it was. It was pretty embarrassing.
14. When You’re Here, You’re Family
I was a server during college at an upper scale restaurant. I rarely had problems with customers and am overall genuinely friendly. I had a table for 4 with only 3 patrons there, an older couple with their adult daughter. I served them beverages and was told we were to wait for patron number four, the son.
About 40 minutes and two refills go by. I say, "I bet you guys are starving by now, would you like me to bring you our lettuce wraps? They are small enough to not ruin your appetite. Or are we still waiting for my buddy"?
Well, they didn’t like that. The father said "We are going to wait, and he isn't your buddy. Frankly, you don’t know him, he’s a hardworking man and will be respected".
"You're right sir, forgive me”.
"He actually has a real job”.
"I understand sir, it won’t happen again”.
When I come back for refill number three, the son was arriving. But now I knew something they all didn’t. The son happened to be an old high school friend, and before taking a seat he gave me a hug right in front of his dad. I looked at the father and said, "Small world huh? I can't believe you’re his family. I’m surprised we've never met before with him and I spending so much time together in high school”. It's too bad our restaurant didn't serve crow.
15. Should Have Just Been Nice
I used to work in a Safeway Deli. Horrid job. Anyways, one day, a guy that looks like he is trying his best to be a Mexican tough guy, but failing horribly, comes in. I think nothing of it. This is Portland, I see stranger things every day.
A buddy of mine, Dario, is helping this guy. Now, Dario used to be majorly depressed. He is an immigrant from eastern Europe, and has had a hard life. As a result, he used to be in some dark places, so he has scars up and down his arms.
Well, it is hot in the deli, so his sleeves are rolled up and the scars are visible. This wannabe tough guy, completely unprovoked, starts ridiculing Dario about the scars, calling him insane, loco, etc. Now, Dario used to be a Thai boxer, and has a bit of a temper, so I tell him to go into the back, cook some food, and I'll handle this.
The dude is a complete jerk. Like 11/10 on my rage scale. So, he orders 1 1/2 lbs of Mac n' Cheese. I knew just what to do. I "trip" and spill it all over the floor. It was the last of the Mac n’ Cheese, and he was out of luck that day.
So now this guy is screaming at me, looking like he is going to jump over the counter at me. I call my manager. Manager comes over, tells the guy to leave. Guy won't leave. My manager calls the authorities, and the guy gets dragged out of the building. That’s when it got even better. Turns out, he had stuffed a $75 bottle of vino in his jacket.
Busted. Also, he ended up injuring an officer by thrashing around and pretty much head-butting her. It was nice to see him get slammed into the wall. A few weeks later, I got subpoenaed to be a witness against him in court, as my manager filed charges. The guy got put away for a while. True story.
16. From Flipping Out To Tripping out
This woman comes to the counter at a fast food restaurant and berates me for under-cooking her beef patty. The patties are all cooked on a timer, and the meat looked normal. Finally, we remade her entire order and handed her the tray. She whines some more, turns around, and then immediately trips and falls, all of her food and drink spilling everywhere.
17. Your Own Worst Enemy
I was in Wal-Mart one time. There's this girl, skinny as a twig, pushing a cart with her toddler in it. She just had that look, you know? The kid is upset about something as well. She's yelling at him to shut up, and of course, it's not working. I'm further down the aisle doing that "looking but trying not to look like I'm looking" thing.
My brain is ping-ponging between "I should really say something" and "But it's not my business," when she hauls off to smack the kid. I snap my head around, and any pretense of not watching the scene is utterly gone. But of course, I'm much too far away to actually do anything. All I can do is watch as her hand swings way, way back.
Then I watch as she swings so hard that her feet actually slip out from under her on the tile floor. She crashes back into the shelves behind her, totally missing the kid, thankfully. I remember her head bouncing, bam-bam-bam, three times as she thunked down each shelf. The kid just kind of looked down at her, clearly having no idea what the heck was happening.
18. It Was A Sign
I was a cart boy for a grocery store back in high school. One afternoon it was pouring rain out and terribly windy. A new black Escalade pulled up next to me while I pushed about 10 carts. The guy got out and yelled at me, saying I better not scratch his truck because "Heads will roll". I wasn’t in any way endangering his new car, but he proceeded to yell and warn me. And then *it* happened.
Just as he finished yelling at me, the sign from the pizzeria next door crashed into the side of his truck. That made my night a little better, even if I was soaked.
19. Delayed Revenge
This is my father’s story. We owned a restaurant years ago in a mall next to a bar. Parking was assigned by business, but people would constantly park in our spots. One day, a man in a newer Corvette convertible parked right in front of our store and walked toward the bar.
Dad stopped him and asked him to move his car, as there were plenty of other spaces available. He laughed, and said "Try and tow me”. My dad shrugged, waited for about 20 minutes, and then poked his two front tires with sharpened wire, right in the sidewall. The tires didn't deflate right away because the hole was small. I'm sure they did over the next day or two though.
20. Oh, Baby
In 2004, I worked at a Blockbuster for the summer. I was working late one Friday night and the rush had essentially calmed down. A woman in her late 20s entered the store, and she was at least eight months pregnant.
She approached me, wondering if I could suggest a horror movie to her, as she was "in the mood to be scared”. I can’t believe what I did. Rosemary's Baby. God forgive me, I successfully recommended and rented Rosemary's Baby to a pregnant woman.
21. Please, Take A Seat
I took a full flight home from Hawaii. I go to my assigned window seat and notice a grumpy woman sitting in it. I politely tell her she is in my seat. She looks at her boarding pass and sure enough, she is supposed to be sitting in the aisle seat across. She starts arguing that she must sit next to her husband and that she is not going to move.
I decide it's not worth the hassle and take the seat she is supposed to be in. I don't even get a thank you or anything from her. Well, she got what was coming to her in the end. Once we are in the air, the onboard entertainment of free movies and shows becomes available. I look over and see her yelling at a flight attendant that her TV is broken and doesn't work. The flight attendant apologizes and explains that the flight is full and there are no other seats to move her to.
She had the pleasure of enjoying a five-hour flight with zero entertainment.
22. No, Me First!
I was walking up to an ATM and a dude in a Ferrari parked at a red curb and ran past me to use it before I could. I was like, "Really, dude"? and he says, "Blow me". I looked around in kind of dazed disbelief and saw an officer about 50 feet away. I waved to get his attention, and when he saw me, I just sort of held both hands out at the Ferrari and the red curb.
The traffic officer cruises over and starts writing a ticket. I waited for the dude to finish at the ATM and when he saw the officer writing the ticket, I told him that they didn't even notice his parking job until I flagged him down and showed him.
23. Squeaky Clean Revenge
I work at the hotel's front desk. One day we had an Armenian guest who was claiming his room was not up to his standards. He decided to make a big deal about it the next morning. He was so rude to the point of almost making a co-worker cry out of desperation because she refused to compensate the night as his arguments seemed really fake and invalid.
Once he saw he was not going to get anything back, he threw his receipt on the floor and powered walked his way out…right into a very clean glass door that was recently cleaned. His sunglasses broke, causing him to get a small cut on the upper part of his nose. My co-worker and I couldn't stop laughing the second he walked out, even more mad.
24. Bad Timing
I was a cashier at a grocery store. This guy with a full cart whined and bullied employees until he was allowed to use my express checkout because he didn't want to wait in the regular lines, and my line only had two people in it. As soon as my floor manager allowed him and he had his cart unloaded, a tiny old lady with a walker who could barely stand got in line behind him.
Everyone gave him dirty looks. He realized he messed up and tried to make a joke about it. Complete silence. I hope his saved time was worth being a total jerk.
25. Be Careful What You Wish For
This lady at a client company laid into me for the amount of the bill we sent her. She called me every bad word in the English language. Says we overbilled her, and she requested I go through her order. Here’s where it got so good. We come to find out that we underbilled her by $1000 dollars due to a misplaced zero. The silence on the other line was so beautiful.
26. How The Wind Blows
It was a particularly windy day. I was in the parking lot at a grocery store with my dad. As we exited the building, we saw a shopping cart being pushed along by the wind at walking speed. The cart passed right in front of this woman who just watched it go by, despite it going slow enough that she could have easily caught it.
My dad turned to me and said, "Why didn't she just grab it"? We continued to watch this cart gain speed. After a few seconds, a burst of wind came through, and the cart rocketed across the parking lot directly towards this one van. We could hear it smash into this van over the howling wind and saw the huge dent in the driver's side door from over 75 feet away.
We then noticed that the woman from earlier who watched the cart go by her was walking in the same direction as the van. With each step, my dad and I could barely contain our excitement. When she got to about 15 feet away from the car, we saw her hands rise into the air. At that point, we just lost our composure and laughed until we got home.
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27. Managing At Its Best
My very kindly-seeming fast-food boss was a really nice man who did charity work with immigrant children on the side, was endlessly cheerful, and so on. I'm working drive-thru one day. A customer orders his food in heavily accented English, and gets irate when I ask him (politely) to repeat his order.
I'm trying to stay calm and not respond in kind, and mostly succeeding. The manager can hear both sides of the conversation over the headset, so when the guy reaches the window and continues being a raging jerk, he comes over to do the usual manager thing.
That is, apologize, make sure the customer got what he ordered, and so forth. He even goes so far as to pre-place a straw in the man's drink. This isn't enough to placate the customer, who yells us both out in two languages as he peels out of the drive-thru.
I turn to start to complain to the boss. But I don’t know the best part. Before I can speak, he's patting me on the back saying, "Don't worry about it. I poked a hole in the bottom of his drink with the straw".
He then left it there, so that the drink wouldn't start flowing out until the straw gets pulled up to a normal height to drink from...
28. The Writing’s On The Wall
Back in the old-old days, I worked tech support for a company. Among many things, customers could dial into our computers and download activity reports for their account. This particular customer weekly would have a 100-page report when printed.
She had phone line problems frequently, and more so, just didn't want to bother dealing with pulling the reports, so she'd call and complain she couldn't get the report and expect us to fax it to her.
Once, we pulled the report for her, but came up with the perfect twist. We didn't separate the sheets when we sent it through the fax. These were the old faxes that printed off rolls of paper. It would cut the paper when it sensed a page break from the other end. Since we fed her a 100-page report with no page breaks, it just sent her one giant page.
When that didn't teach her a lesson about pulling her own reports, we faxed her the first few pages of a report, and then fed a loop of black paper into the fax machine. It faxed her about 50 pages of complete black.
After that, she never called us again to have us pull her reports for her.
29. Zero Offers
I worked selling shoes for two years on a weekend-only basis during school at a national chain. During that whole time, I was never offered a raise, never offered to open the store, and never given any recognition. When I asked for some more responsibilities, I was told I was unimportant, as two new outside managers were coming in.
One managed a section of PetSmart, and the other had no prior experience. I put in my two weeks’ notice. I could never have predicted just how much it would backfire in their faces. Both people came in on my last day, so I showed them everything I learned and all the small quirks of the inventory that we had. Both quit within a week, and the store closed within four months.
30. Do You Prefer Fashion Victim Or Ensembly Challenged?
I worked in this fancy clothing store in this posh town at the seaside. It was a busy Saturday when suddenly a very pretentious girl walked in with her boyfriend. She ignored us as we greeted her and even gave my colleague a demeaning look. She went on to browse around in the store and eventually took some clothes with her in the changing booth.
After a while, I notice a heated conversation arising from the booth between her and her boyfriend. I see the boyfriend running back and forth between the booth and some clothing racks. Meanwhile, me and my colleague were being chased away by her constantly. She refused any help and didn't leave the booth.
So me and my colleague continue working and helping other costumers. I was working the register when suddenly the girl turns up next to me, completely teed off, and she starts ranting about "How our store really should work on the fitting of our clothes” and how we were complete screw-ups.
I was completely caught off guard, but I soon figured out what was wrong. Right when I wanted to ask her what the exact problem was, I see my colleague looking at the girl while bursting out this horribly loud laugh, tears and all. What had happened was that the girl had taken a piece of clothing that she thought was a strapless dress. Well, it wasn't a dress. It was a skirt.
The girl had tried on all sizes in this “dress” and got completely fed up, and now she was yelling at us and her boyfriend because the FREAKIN DRESS WON'T FIT. Yep, she walked out in a crowded store, making a scene, with a skirt pulled up to her chest. I have to admit, after she left I laughed until I cried.
31. Not A Clean Getaway
I was working at a restaurant, and there was this family who were extremely trashy. Honestly, they didn’t look like they had a lot of money, despite ordering a bunch of expensive steaks and drinking a bunch of drinks. They were rude the whole time, treating me like I was their butler.
They then asked for a manager and said that their steaks tasted “rotten” (after they finished) and their drinks didn’t taste like they had any hard stuff in them (again, they finished them).
In short, they were obviously just trying to get free food. My manager noticed the way they were treating me and knew they were full of it and refused to comp their meal like they were demanding. They began yelling and cussing and ended up trying to leave without paying. But it wasn’t over.
When they got to the parking lot, their car wouldn’t start. My manager called the authorities, and one of them got detained for disorderly conduct. The rest ended up walking after having their car towed.
32. An Extra Large Mistake
I used to be a nighttime manager at a pizza place downtown. We were literally around the corner from a direct competitor. They had a carry-out window and offered that service all night. We did not and closed our doors at 10:00. We only offered delivery service after that. It's worth mentioning that we were quite friendly with the local authorities and officers frequently sat in our parking lot at night to catch up on paperwork, etc.
One night at about 11:30, I had a woman and a man start banging on our door. I politely (but loudly) told them through the door we close carry-out at 10. The woman goes ballistic. She starts screaming and hitting the door, while the man just stands there watching and trying to look hard.
I ask another employee to keep an eye on me in case the situation escalates. I then step out another side door in order to be able to actually converse with them. This woman is absolutely nuclear at this point, screaming and cussing. I let her finish and I inform her that if she called and ordered, it was probably our friendly neighbors with the carry-out window.
I get accused of calling her stupid. I ask her to check her phone and tell me which number she called. She says, "I don't have to, I know I call y'all and YOU took my order"! At this point, I informed her that there is absolutely no way I took a carry-out order after we closed carry-out. It got worse. Now the man joins in and starts taking a very aggressive posture and tone with me. He informs me I "better let them in and get their food". I flat out said no. The man then shoves me and I stumble back about three feet. He goes to swing at me, misses, and I kindly repay the favor and connect, knocking him on the ground.
At about the same time, the woman attempts to rush me. The next part happened fast: There is a sound of "WOOOP WOOOP"! and flashing blue lights behind them. This doesn't stop them from continuing to try to assault me, however, the two uniformed officers that happened to have just pulled in take care of that very quickly.
Another squad car shows up. The two are cuffed and placed in the cars, the officers have been given a copy of the security footage, and I ask the officer I'm talking to if, for the sake of curiosity, he could possibly try to convince her to tell him the phone number she called. He walks me back out to the car she's in and somehow convinces her to do this.
She recites the number while glaring at me, with so much vitriol and hatred in her voice. "XXX-XXX-7272 you stupid jerk”. I smile at her and inform her, "Our number is XXX-XXX-3030. We are Domino's. That's the number for Papa John's. That's why 7272 spells out Papa".
33. Going Out Hot
I worked at a gas station some odd years ago. The week before this story takes place, it had been snowing a lot, so the gas tankers got delayed for safety reasons. A customer came in a pretty new Mercedes-Benz, something like SLS 400 or something, and wanted the premium gas.
I explained to him that the takers are delayed and we currently don't have any premium gasoline. I said that he could try the next station down the block. He started swearing at me on quite a personal level, like I had control over the gas delivery. He sped off, tires screeching, only to have his rear tire hit the curb. His rim got messed up really bad and he couldn't drive it. I laughed at him.
34. Be Careful What You Wish For
I managed a computer repair shop. It was sort of like the Geek Squad, but cheaper and with some excellent techs. We had off-site laptop repair, so when a customer brought in a laptop that needed major internal hardware work, we'd pack it off to be fixed.
One day, a gentleman rolled in with his family and a broken laptop. He said it was just over a year old (out of our warranty) and that it was no longer working properly. He further claimed that it had not worked properly since we last worked on it (over a year ago...?) and that he was just now bringing it in.
Right. Well, to avoid conflict, I offered to waive the diagnostic fee and just ship it off so the laptop guys could have a look. The customer was happy enough with this, so we shipped. Fast forward a week, and the laptop returns. The motherboard is fried according to our repair center.
They had called the client, and per his instructions, put his Hard Drive in an external enclosure. The enclosure itself was the only charge: $0 for labor, $0 for diagnostics, $25 for the enclosure plus tax. They explained the pricing to him. Pretty darn cheap, considering that he's outside the warranty, right?
I call the customer to let him know it's ready. He hears the price tag (again). Then he flips the heck out. I was a bit stunned. I reminded him that although he was not in the warranty, we weren't charging him for the diagnostic OR the labor, such as it was, only for the enclosure.
This was an outrage, to hear him tell it.
We were obviously trying to take all he holds dear, and he would come to our store and take his machine. Uhh, ok guy. "After all, it hadn't worked since the last time you worked on it"!
I didn't ask why he then brought it back to us, but I decided to check that a bit. I told him I'd ask my boss, and instead, we hooked his HDD to the data transfer kit and had a look. Sure enough, there were some timestamped cookies right up until two days before he brought it to us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Without getting too detailed, let’s just say these were NOT kids’ sites he was visiting. A lot. I called the customer back. This time, both he and his wife were on the line. Both didn't let me get five words out before starting in with the screaming.
They threatened to sue me, have me fired, find out where I lived, and burn down the store. Comprehensive! I let them get it out, then interjected something along the lines of the following: "I'm really sorry that you're so upset! I have good news for you, though. The computer worked better than you think for that year”.
"What do you mean"?
"Well, someone was using it. For example, on [date,] the computer went to the following sites “…”. And I named a few.
Stunned silence.
"Don't worry, I have literally hundreds more entries to read to you. On [date] someone was apparently interested in”... and then the screaming started. Not them at me....them at each other. Oh, glorious. It was a symphony of hate. Eventually, the wife hung up.
The husband, who sounded like a broken man, mumbled something like "Now my wife is going to leave me”. I told him that wasn't my business, but if he'd like the hard drive enclosure, it would be $25 plus tax. He never showed up to buy it. Imagine that!
35. At The Last Second
My fiancée and I were employees at Pizza Hut. She was a waitress, and I was a cook. I had worked for them for five years and she had worked for them for two. Anyway, we were probably the best employees they had and knew what we were doing. Nevertheless, in the food business, managers come and go, some better than others.
So, we were both scheduled for a ridiculous shift of about ten and a half hours in that place, from open to eight that night, we would have been the only two employees there in our respected positions until five. Keep in mind this was a Sunday morning in the bible belt and a buffet day. Both she and I had a whole ton of work to do.
On top of that, they had steamed the carpets the night before and never set the tables and chairs back up in the lobby. We both only had a couple of hours to do our opening stuff which every minute counts. It wouldn’t have been that horrible—until our manager came in. So, what happens is that our manager gets breakfast, sits in a booth, and watches my fiancée and me put the lobby together, even though we were running so short on time.
My fiancée comes to me in tears saying she just wants to leave cause this day was completely messed up. We wait, the buffet is coming out of the oven, and at least a dozen people are walking in. We both just say screw it and leave, leaving him by himself to manage that stuff like he should. Do I feel bad? No, that was swift justice.
36. The Llama Keeper
I used to be a zookeeper. This lady who was visiting was making fun of our llama for looking ugly. The llama was a rescue who had corrective jaw surgery. The woman pointed and laughed at our llama. Right as that happened, the llama spat in her mouth. The whole scene was absolutely hilarious. After she left, I gave the llama a treat and told her that she was a good girl.
37. A Surprise Ending
I was waiting at a hotel reception while a young staff member checked me in. A really obnoxious woman flounced over, interrupted what the girl was doing, and proceeded to whine about the standard of the kettle in her room. She ranted on and on about only having a "normal kettle" until I told her to wise up and get in bloody line behind me.
She shouted that she had been traveling all day and that the room was not a suitable standard. There was just one thing. I pointed out this was a freaking airport hotel, so we'd all been traveling all day and that she should just get lost. By now the girl at the desk was blood-red and tearful.
The woman banged her fist on the desk, demanded to see a manager, and then had a fit of coughing. I still can’t believe what happened next. She promptly pooped herself all through her beige trousers. She didn't hang around after that.
38. God Has A Plan, And It’s To Embarrass You
I worked at a Pier 1 Imports as a teenager, outside Birmingham, Alabama. This was about 20 years ago, and transgender folks weren't on my radar at all. Anyway, it's near Christmas, and I'm at the register with a line of customers waiting. There's a woman huffing about something near the end of the line.
By the time she gets up to pay, she's being very loud about the customer behind her. "It's a man! It's a pervert in a dress"! The person behind her was very obviously assigned a different gender at birth, but was in fact wearing a dress. It didn't really phase me as much as this woman who was doing her best to shame this person, who looked very hurt and embarrassed.
And this lady was doing it while buying Christmas decorations, no less. Anyway, she's trying to convince me how wrong and gross it is, how this person shouldn't be in the store, etc. As she's ranting, I run her credit card. Declined. I try again. Declined.
I have rarely in my life experienced the satisfaction as I did at that moment, looking up at her, smiling, and saying that her card had been declined. Her face got red and she really just went off. "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! TRY IT AGAIN! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG"! At this point, she has the whole store looking at her. I try again, and very loudly say it is, in fact, declined.
She stormed out of there, knocking over a poor Santa statue by the door. I shared a smug grin with the customer behind her.
39. A Dangerous Occupation
Back when I worked at a Blockbuster, we'd occasionally deal with thieves. The standard was just to let them go, so as not to endanger employees or customers. One time this guy grabs some stuff and bolts. My manager runs after him and points him out to two officers who had parked in our parking lot.
They give chase. This guy dodges and weaves through people and traffic. He successfully crosses the street with the officer on foot. Desperate to lose them, he jumps down some stairs to gain a lead—but breaks both legs.
40. Watching, Waiting
This didn't happen with a rude customer, but with a rude co-worker. I work in a store with 10 different check-out lines, but only one of them has all the tobacco products in lockable glass cases behind it. So if you want to buy that stuff, you either go through that line or, if you go through another line, you have to ask the cashier to go get your products. At which point, they have to go to that specific line and ask the cashier working there to get them.
I have more than a few co-workers who smoke and they have to buy their cigs the same way as customers do. Employees are not allowed to get out their own products and check them out themselves. They have to have another cashier ring them up for them.
So one day, early morning, I'm working the check-out with the cigs behind it and I notice this woman who works as a janitor hovering around behind me. I know she isn't supposed to be near there so I ask her, "Can I help you with something"? She tells me that she just wants to get some smokes. I'm like okay, no, if you want them, have to get in line and buy some that way like everyone does.
She gets angry and asks me why I won't just let her get her own. I tell her again that I can sell her whatever she wants if she'll just get in line and pay for them. She huffs, rolls her eyes at me, and storms off. I had no idea what I’d set off.
For the rest of the day, she totally has it out for me. Throughout the day, I have other cashiers telling me that she's talking trash about me in the break room left and right. My manager comes up to me and says that the woman made a complaint that I refused to sell stuff to her because of prejudice. I explain what actually happened and go on with my job.
Then at one point, there's a big lull in business and I take a quick break, putting on my “away” light at the register and making sure to lock up the cases when I go, as is policy. I then go toward the bathroom. This woman comes out of nowhere and blocks the door, refuses to let me in, shoves the handle end of her mop into my chest, and tells me I'm not allowed to use the bathroom.
She’s saying stuff about how I think I'm "so much better than her" because I'm a cashier and she's a janitor. I'm like, "You realize there are security cameras right in this hallway, right"? and she jumps and takes off again and I got to the bathroom. And this stuff just carries on ALL DAY. She gives me these nasty looks every time she comes by.
But the day ends and I give my register to someone else and go home. It wasn’t the end of it though. The next day, first thing in the morning, as soon as I get into work another cashier informs me that the woman was fired late last night because apparently, she'd been caught on camera stealing a few packs of smokes out of the case when the cashier who relieved me at the register eventually took a break herself but didn't lock the cases up.
The cashier who didn't lock up got a warning but didn't lose her job.
41. Karma Comes Back Around
When I was a cashier at Borders, I had this one customer who had either put something on reserve or had it special ordered. I remember them getting really rude because I couldn't find it and I asked them multiple times what name it was under. It eventually turned out that it was placed under her husband's name, so it wasn't my fault I couldn't find it at all.
She didn't apologize or anything, so it felt really nice when I swiped her card and it was declined. She felt so embarrassed and just stormed off.
42. Taking A Stand
Used to work at Target. We were always told if a parent has their kid standing in the cart, we should ask the parent to have their kid sit down. Most of the time, the parents are fine with it. This one lady was not having it. She was outside and had just put her kid in the cart. At the entrance, the ground had shifted a bit and there was a small lip to get into the store.
Of course, the kid is standing at the very front of the cart. I politely warned the customer of the lip and told her the kid should sit down because there's a very high chance he'll fall out. Her reply made my jaw drop. She tells me “Go screw yourself. You can give me advice about my kid when you become a parent yourself," all while pointing her finger at me.
Well, okay then. So she walks towards the door, kid still standing, and hits the lip. The kid flips out of the cart and bashes his face on the floor. If anyone knows about the “carpeting” in the entrance vestibules, it's basically like having a piece of paper draped over a slab of concrete. There's no padding whatsoever.
The kid had GIANT lump on his forehead and must have hit his nose too, since he was bleeding everywhere. I told my managers, and the lady got the help she needed for her kid, but she was still being extremely rude the entire time. Told you so, witch.
43. Waterpark Scares
I was a lifeguard at a well-known chain of indoor waterpark hotels in the US and a woman was letting her less than two-year-old daughter play in the shallow end all by herself while she sat in a chair and read a magazine. I walked up to her to let her know that it was not safe for a child that young to be by herself, and the mom start yelling at me, telling me that it was not my business how she parented and to leave her alone.
At this point, everyone around her is staring. As soon as she finishes her rant, her daughter loses her balance and falls face-first into the water and is too young to know how to stand back up to get her face out of the water and breathe. I run in, grab her daughter, and bring it back to her. Everyone around who was staring began to clap.
44. You Get What You Pay For
I used to work at a bank branch. A client was being very disrespectful to a female staff member. You can’t make up the plot twist that came next. Literally two minutes later, our bank was robbed—at the teller he was using. His $5K was taken right off the counter before it could be negotiated. Eventually it was covered by the bank, but at the time I can imagine him being worried.
45. Seeing Double
I’m in Hawaii one day at the resort bar. This kid comes in one day. He looks about 18 and orders a drink. The barman asks for ID and when he hands it over, the tender says, “Sorry, this is expired”. The kid loses his mind, insults the bartender, threatens his livelihood, all that jazz. Fast forward two days, I’m sat in the bar at the airport. The same jerk comes in and orders a drink.
The lady behind the bar asks for ID, and he hands over the ID. She looks at it and goes to hand it back, which is when I pipe up: “Check the expiration date”. Jerk move, I know but Karma, is, as they say, a witch.
46. This Comes Right From The Top
I worked for a sushi bar for a few years. They do a half-price sushi hour most weekdays for dine-in customers. It's a good deal, especially for how high quality the food is. It was an especially busy day. People waiting, etc. This woman and her daughter come in and stress that they are in a hurry—"My daughter has cheerleading”—but want the half-price deal.
Uh, good luck? Full house...but whatever. So, the lady gets angry when her food takes longer than 15 minutes. She asks if she can get her food to go, and I then explained that the food would then be full priced. We get into an “argument” in the sense that she's getting angry and beginning to yell at me in front of her embarrassed daughter while I'm meekly standing there, unsure of what to do.
“WELL I ORDERED DINE-IN”....you are asking for it to go, IT DOESNT MATTER IF YOU WERE SITTING AT A TABLE WHILE ASKING. She's getting louder and more annoying and I'm starting to panic as my anxiety was really bad at the time. Then the situation flipped completely around. Suddenly, my boss chimes in. And by chimes in, I mean she started ripping this woman a new one.
You see, my old boss just happened to be working behind the sushi bar that summer. She told the woman to stop yelling at me and that if she wanted her darn half-price sushi, she would have to sit and wait like everyone else. My boss apologized to the other customers and made sure I was okay.
The lady was shocked and now super embarrassed, since the entire restaurant was now judging her. She quietly sat and waited for her sushi. The daughter apologized to me and that table ended up leaving a good tip. My old boss is the nicest woman in the world. She still gives me free food whenever I go up for some sushi.
She also has a bunch of regulars who she always makes time for. But don't make her angry, because she will become a scary, scary person in mere seconds.
47. Just Smashing, Darling
I worked at a liquor store. A customer came in, already in his cups. He couldn't really speak and was stumbling everywhere. We refused to sell to him, and he flipped out. We ended up booting him out with the threat of calling the authorities. He went down the street to another store, and as he walked back past our store, he yelled some very mean things at us—and immediately tripped, shattering the bottle he bought on the sidewalk. It was a glorious sight.
48. Not So Fast
In the auto repair business, we have to deal with a lot of passive-aggressiveness from people displeased with having to shell out money for their cars. Once, a couple arrived to pick up a car that was parked in the first spot nearest the street. The husband was great and had approved the needed repairs in stride; the wife was a raging witch debating every line item of the estimate, asking pointless questions, demanding a cheaper price, threatening to take the car elsewhere or "just get a NEW one"!
Anyway, the man made his way toward the office, but the woman made a beeline for the car, found the keys stashed inside, threw the plastic seat cover to the wind, then started it up and drove off before the bill had been paid. The karma was instant. She ended up cutting the turn too sharp and scraping the ENTIRE passenger side of the car badly on the low concrete planter. I saw this happen; the husband didn't. I never saw them again.
49. Forgetting Something?
I used to return customer credit cards by setting them on the Square podium our restaurant used to swipe them. That way, they ended up right by them when I swung the screen around from them to sign and such. One lunch rush (we were a take-out restaurant) one lady decided this was an offense of the highest order and yelled at me for not placing it directly in her hand.
I stupidly engaged her and tried to explain that I did that for everybody. This got me a continued lecture about how she is the customer and good service is doing what she wants and so on. There were about of dozen people eating at our tables and five people in the line behind her, so she was straight hamming it up, making sure everyone saw her putting me in my place.
Unfortunately for her, the dramatic performance proved to be a bit too distracting and she stormed out without her infant. This was of course noticed by pretty much everyone in the building since she had just made herself the center of attention. One of the customers even had to run after her and stop her from driving away. For the record, there is no real subtle or dignified way to pick up a full-size child carrier.
50. Slipping On Ice
I worked at this Thai food place. Our back door led to the driveway of a house with gross redneck owners, whose four dogs pooped everywhere. We entered through the back door of the restaurant at the opening, and it sucked in the winter because you'd have to make your way down this sheet of ice. Anyway, my boss was an awful and mean jerk.
One evening, we arrived at the same time. He went down the ice hill before me and slipped, whacked his head hard, and came to a stop in a fresh pile of dog droppings. I did not even try to hide my laughter. Then I made my way down the ice hill. I also fell, pretty hard in fact, but didn’t land in anything gross like he did. But it was totally worth it.
51. Too Hot To Handle
I work in food service. At a college football game, my co-worker was chewed out by an alumnus because the hot chocolate wasn't "chocolaty" enough. All she and I could really do was sit there and apologize. There was nothing we could really do, until the bartender chimed in. This bartender is a former high school teacher and currently a substitute schoolteacher for all grades K-12.
The look she shot this man could have immediately shut up the snottiest of teenagers. Anyway, she put on her scolding face, and warned him, "If you continue yelling at these girls over something they can't control, I'm going to have to ask you and all your friends to leave. I will not tolerate anyone mistreating my co-workers".
The guy immediately clammed up and hurriedly walked away with his tail tucked between his legs.
52. Want To Revise Your Story?
I’m a bank worker. I had a customer throwing a fit once. He said he sees a charge for $50 on his account and blames us for not keeping his account secure. He throws a fit that rages on for a half hour. Turns out, he forgot he used $50 for a cam service. This was discovered when my customer service rep looked at his account and googled who the charge was from.
53. His Luck Ran Out
I used to work at a check cashing/credit card cash withdrawal booth at a Native casino. One guy was really in his cups and, being a real jerk about how long it took me to get his cash, told me I needed to “hurry it up” or he would make sure I lost my job. I did hurry, and I hurried through the balance on five credit cards as he kept coming back because he was getting his butt handed to him at the tables.
I guess at some point during the night, Visa realized this person had blown through about 10k at a casino in a matter of hours, so they put holds on every one of his cards. This meant one thing only: The merchant must take the card from the customer. I ran and kept every single last card he had on him. He was not happy at all.
54. Checking Out
I sold computers and such for Circuit City back in the day. I was fairly new and the only one on shift at the time as someone called in sick. This is around the time the iPod nano came out, so everyone wanted to see them. I had been working with a group of people selling to each of them for over an hour. Then some guy comes up to me and asks why I have been ignoring his wife.
Apparently, these two had gone into the back corner of the store and stood there, not talking to anyone. They now wanted a high-end laptop but didn’t want me to get the commission because I “ignored” them. We didn’t make commission at the time, so I didn’t care in the slightest. I got the laptop out for a manager to ring up…and their check got declined. I did a happy dance.
55. He Made His Bed
I used to sell mattresses, which no one really wants to buy. No one’s jacked about buying them; they do it because they have to. I get it. Everyone that works there gets it. One Saturday, this cranky old dude comes in, and before anyone can greet him, he's complaining about literally everything.
We're trying to help him, but he shoos anyone who approaches him away. Of course, then he turns around to complain about no one helping him. Dude is old, like I said, and he can't get around well. We recommend he not lay down on an all-foam mattress if he won't let anyone help him up.
He says something rude and blows us off. He hobbles over to a foam mattress, one that is right next to a wall. This wall also has a TV display sticking about 8 inches out from the wall, and it constantly plays ads. The old man lays down on the bed and immediately hates it. He sits up, and he realizes it will be difficult for a man in his condition to get off the bed, but he won't ask for help.
Dude launches himself off the mattress and straight into the TV display. My manager loses it. The guy tries to bark at us, but everyone else is too busy trying not to laugh, so he gives up and cranky-walks out of the store.
56. Pitching A Fit
I used to work at a RadioShack in my area during college. It was never really busy on Sundays, so I was generally the only worker there. On this particular Sunday morning, I was incredibly tired from the night before, so I was kind of annoyed about having to come in on a day when no one was going to show up.
I got even more annoyed when I pulled into the parking lot and was instantly greeted by a man who proceeded to start yelling at me. I put on my sales associate smile and kindly asked what the problem was. "I've been waiting here for 30 minutes and you are late"! I wasn't late, I was actually 15 minutes early.
He then followed closely behind me to the door and was screaming at me the whole way. "I'm never coming back to this store" and stuff like that. When I finally got the door open, I let him know that I had to turn the alarm off and count the register before I could help him. This also made him angry...but at this point I didn't care.
I was nice enough to try and help him 15 minutes before we opened...least he could do was not be a jerk. Anyway, I finally get to help the guy out and he wants to know about batteries. Cool, easy. I proceed to show him our batteries and their prices. He goes off. He starts screaming and yelling about how everything was outrageous and the prices were terrible and apparently I had treated him like trash.
He started to pound his fist on the counter and started yelling again about how we didn't have any name-brand batteries (we did) and how RadioShack was communist by trying to push their batteries on their customers. I calmly told him that there was nothing I could do and asked if I could help him with anything else.
He stormed off, punched a battery display, and then came the karma. He proceeded to slam face-first into our door. Turns out that since he was yelling and screaming at me while I was unlocking the doors, I forgot to unlock the other one. He quickly looked around to see if I had seen him. I just waved and told him to have a great day. He spun out of the parking lot and I never saw him again.
57. Don’t Mess With Traffic
I was working in a pub in Liverpool and had just arrived, about 10:00 am, to start my shift. I knocked on the door and waited for someone to let me in. I became aware of some voices shouting and turned around to see two guys, shirts off, swaggering toward me speaking a language I didn't understand, but they were calling me names.
After insulting me and laughing they walked off toward a busy road. I watched them as they walked out into the traffic, waving their arms at the cars to stop for them, then giving the drivers the finger. Suddenly, one of the cars stopped and four big guys got out. One of the car guys made out like he was going to punch one, drawing his fist far back.
The little dink just covered his face and screamed. They didn't get hit but the car guys and a lot of passersby burst out laughing. They let him go and he ran away. That felt good.
58. Drive On By
I work at Starbucks. One day as I was working the drive-thru, we were having longer than normal wait times as we were short-staffed. This one guy gets up to the window in a huff and starts yelling at me and complaining about his wait. I apologize and tell him his total.
He literally throws his credit card at me, and it bounces off the bottom of the window directly underneath his truck. We look at each other for a second, and then he sends his daughter out of his truck to look for it. I inform them it's right under their truck, so he moves his truck up a bit, gets out, picks it up, and hands it to me softly without making eye contact as he is squeezing himself between the tail end of his truck and the wall of the building.
He's pretty embarrassed as everyone behind him is watching. It was pretty satisfying.
59. Read The Room
I was in line in the hardware store and the lady serving had a sign on the till that said that she was deaf. The beefcake behind me in the queue is trying to get the cashier’s attention, huffing and puffing and talking trash at her for being slow. The person she was serving had a cart full of items, by the way.
All of a sudden, he really loses his temper and screams at the cashier. His words sealed his fate. “What the heck’s wrong with you? Are you deaf"? I have never, ever seen so many people turn round in unison and give one person the stank eye. My mother, who I was with at the time, pipes up, pointing to the sign on the till.
She says: “What the heck’s wrong with you, can you not read"? The guy goes redder than I have ever seen anyone go and skulks out, avoiding eye contact with everyone. After that, he received a generous round of applause from everyone at the tills, including the other cashiers.
60. You Won’t Get Away With This
Way back when I used to be in retail, I worked at an electronics retailer. We had some guys going around trying to lift DVDs. They were cutting the barcodes off to remove the sensors so they wouldn't go off on their way out. My manager notices and starts sending over floor reps to see how they are doing, if they need help, etc.
Finally, my manager goes over and just hands them a basket because they had nothing in their hands, so it was showing them we knew. Now they start wandering around, ditching the DVDs as they go. As soon as they drop one, an employee comes up and grabs it. Now they start freaking out. They dump the rest and just book it towards the door at full speed.
No one chased them because they ditched all the merchandise. As they exit, one of the dudes turns around and starts flipping everyone off. As he's doing this, he steps off the curb into the front driveway in the parking lot and promptly gets hit by a car. It was in the lot so it was only hard enough to knock him over, but he had to scramble to his feet and keep running.
61. The Time Is Right
I was selling a woman a Nintendo 3DS for her son. I had given the son the box while I was ringing everything up because he was so happy to get his new toy. When it came time to talk about the accidental damage protection plan, she gave me an unreasonably hard time, making it sound like I accused her child of not being able to take care of his toys. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
The second she said that, the kid threw the box across the store into some shelves and knocked down a bunch of games. She bought the four-year plan.
62. Sad Violin Sound
I was working at a music store. We do a lot of business in high-end band instruments (tubas, clarinets, etc). We only put them on sale for a couple weeks every year, and we're nearing the end of the sale when this story takes place. An older guy comes in to look at trumpets, and he's ogling the most expensive one we had on display, really standing there for a good few minutes.
My co-worker asks him if he wants any help, or if he's interested in trying it out, and the customer just starts talking trash about the expensive trumpet. "It's nice, but I'm really not that impressed. $3400? That's too much for that thing, yeah right”.
Right at that moment, we get a phone call asking us for that same model trumpet, and the customer is willing to pay for it in full over the phone to reserve it. Normally we would have three or four of these horns around but the sale was good and the very last one was getting trash-talked by this old guy.
So my other co-worker just strolls up behind the dude and plucks it off the wall. The old dude just goes ballistic, yelling, calling us all incompetent, etc. Turns out he really wanted it, but was pretending not to in order to try to get us to lower the price. There was nothing we could do for him, as the sale was only on stuff we had in stock. He eventually ordered one, costing him an extra few hundred bucks. We laughed about that one for a long time.
63. Boy’s Night Out
A group of guys came into my restaurant. They were "celebrating" this rather rotund man's divorce. Needless to say, any pretty server in the building was about to have an uncomfortable visit. I kept an eye on their table, but I can't stand a stare too long before it becomes obvious I'm supervising them and not my staff.
I ran to the kitchen to check up on the cooks. I was gone maybe 15 seconds when a server comes to get me to cut the recent divorcé off because he just grabbed one of the girl's butts. Not cool, dude. I go out to the table to take them their checks and ask them to leave. I tell the table I had a complaint from one of the staff and said there would be no more drinks served to them, and that they needed to pay their tabs and leave.
Now, I'm not a small guy, but the six of them could easily cause more than a ruckus. Once their glazed eyes realize what's happening, the divorcé shouts, "Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do if we don't"? I couldn’t have planned the next moment better. He starts to stand up, but is a bit too husky for his gut to clear the lip of the table, and he spills two full pitchers and six almost empty glasses all over himself and his friends, as he then slips back into his chair with a thud.
I didn't have to say another word. His one friend threw down $100, apologized, and dragged his sticky, wet friend shamefully out the side door.
64. The Biggest Loser
I was working at a coffee shop within the skyway downtown. It was two minutes after closing everything down. So the register drawers are all pulled, and there is physically no way that I could help a customer. Even if I wanted to work something out, it is still against the store's policy.
I'm cleaning up, getting everything else shut down, and some guy in a suit from the Marriott next over comes up, accosts me for being closed, and says that he NEEDS something to eat and coffee. Blah blah blah, you're just a loser working at a coffee shop, I work for a hedge fund, blah blah blah. you have to give me something because I want it and you're still in the store.
DIRECT QUOTE: "That's how customer service works, you idiot". I explain to him that it's not possible and that I would be penalized or could lose my job. He huffs and puffs and walks away a bit, shouting about how he deserves respect and this city sucks.
I turn my back to continue dumping the coffee and get the keys to pack up the bakery. I’m still reeling over what happened next. My back is turned for probably 30 seconds, and when I return, the guy has his hand down into the bakery case and has grabbed a bunch of muffins, biscotti, and even managed to pilfer a bottle of Coke.
He leaves no money, he just leaves the case open as I yell at him and gives me the middle finger as he strides off, going on about how I need to change my attitude. Initially, I'm really angry. I call security to get on the guy, tell them what happened.
While I'm on the walkie with the security desk, I notice something crucial. I see the guy left his set of room keys for the Marriott and a set of car keys with the rental tag/company fob attached as well. The guy's from out of town with a rental car.
So while I'm talking to security, I palm his things in a towel as I "wipe down the counter" for anyone that might have seen me. As I leave, I see some security guards and the jerk yelling and arguing about things. The man is unable to get back into the Marriott from the skyway.
I punch out and start walking home. As I round the corner and begin walking over the nearby bridge, I throw his rental keys and hotel cards into the water below. Screw that guy.
65. From Sob Story To Most Wanted
I work in a cell phone/computer repair retail chain. We had this lady come in the other day, we'll call her Wanda. Now, we do buy phones and other small electronics, but ONLY if we're going to be able to sell them. We aren't going to buy your old iPhone 4, and we sure as heck aren’t giving you 600 bucks no matter how new your device is.
Wanda calls first, asking for quotes on three phones and a laptop. Two of the phones are older and kind of bad, after a quick Google. The laptop is an old Compaq, which should tell you why I refused it. Wanda came into the store an hour later. Apparently, our other location in the next town had quoted her 50 bucks for all three phones and 150 for the laptop. I knew this was a lie because the managers in that store are competent.
I tell her I can give her 30 for the nicest phone (her personal phone, which will become relevant soon), I can't take the two other ones, and I absolutely will not be taking the old Compaq that runs slow with a chunk broken out of the side. She starts whining about how I quoted her X amount of money and how she can't believe we can't give her more and we HAVE to take these items and blah blah blah.
Guys, it was 80 degrees in that store. Our AC had broken and we were hot, sweaty, and annoyed. And Wanda just would not shut up. I ended up giving her 50 for the darn phone, just to end the conversation. Seemingly satisfied, she left, saying she'd be going to the other store to sell her other two phones and the laptop.
About 30 minutes later, she was back AGAIN, this time hocking a sob story to my co-worker. He dealt with her the second time because I was close to screaming at her. She’s talking about needing money for her sick daughter. She whined at him too, until he finally bought the laptop for 10 bucks. Then, FINALLY, she was gone…but the story doesn’t end there.
Long story short, we checked the phone and laptop for resale quality. We find a text on the phone that said, "Give me back my laptop and all the things you took from me, or the authorities will be called”. We also looked up her name and found that she'd been wanted for theft back in 2010 in our district.
Officers were called, owner was called, and the laptop was given safely back to the original owner. Now this woman has a warrant out once more—all thanks to two grouchy, hot twenty-somethings who paid her $60 to get the heck out and never come back.
66. No Backup Plan
After purchasing a phone from me and being extremely rude and awful the whole time, this customer walked out of my store and instantly dropped their phone. It shattered and they were devastated. They then had the nerve to ask me to do them a favor and add the warranty they earlier said no to because it was a "waste of money". I had the pleasure of telling them it wasn't possible.
I got yelled and screamed at, they threw their phone at me, and security was called. Never saw them again after that, thank God.
67. Holding All The Strings
I work as a service advisor for a major car company. I had an extremely rude customer on the phone who needed her car in for service. I told her the only available appointment was a Monday morning at 7:30 am for a job I knew would only take 10 minutes. Justice served.
68. A Helping Hand
We weren't allowed to follow thieves once they were out of the store. So one day, the hot barista from the Starbucks next door was in chatting with me when I watched some jerk grab a coat off a rack. I motioned for her to follow me and we went to stand at the exit. The jerk catches on and high-tails it to the other exit.
I say to the barista, “Darn, we're not allowed to chase anyone outside the store”. She had the perfect response. Her eyes light up and she says, “But I can"! She proceeds to run down and tackle the guy. Oh, but there’s more. When he fell, his fingers twisted in the hanger and between that and the fall from being tackled, somehow four fingers on that hand got broken.
Only the middle finger was fine. So his sticky fingers got his hand messed up. Glorious.
69. No Such Thing As A Free Drink
This customer was demanding his birthday drink. It wasn’t something we normally did, especially not to jerks. So I told him we couldn’t do that unfortunately in the nicest way possible. His girlfriend understood and offered to pay. This guy pushes his girlfriend and says no, I’m gonna get my free drink.
Me being me, I said nope, we can’t do that. He then storms out while calling his girlfriend stupid. He pushed her a bit while walking out the door. Only, it had just finished raining, and after he pushed her, the momentum made him slip and fall. Karma. I then gave her a free drink while her boyfriend stalked off.
70. A Screw Loose
About a year or so ago, a guy came in very angry that we didn't put all the screws back in his laptop after we worked on it. He also had other problems with this unit. I tried to look him and his laptop up in our customer database and couldn't find him.
I didn't remember him either, so I think either he was pulling some kind of scam or just didn't remember who worked on his laptop last. I didn't tell anyone about the missing screws because it's really not an important detail. I have a bucket of laptop screws and added the three missing screws in just a couple of minutes.
He comes back to pick up the unit. After approving a price to have the other problem repaired, he throws a tantrum and demands a discount because of the missing screws. My boss turns the laptop over and asks him to show him the missing screws.
Unable to point out the missing screws, he blames me and says I replaced them. My boss doesn't understand what problem is. The guy is getting more and more upset. I just keep saying I can't remember if there were any missing or not.
The guy gets so upset he pays and slams the screen of the laptop down before he walks out. Two days later, a woman brings in the same laptop with a broken screen and asks us to repair it.
71. What’s Mine Is Yours
My family used to own a couple of rental properties before we developed the land. It wasn't the greatest part of town at the time and some of our tenants were less than stellar members of society.
As such, there were several occasions where they simply weren’t paying rent. Now, the way that rental agreements work in Canada, all you can really do is serve an eviction notice and if they choose not to leave, there isn't much you can do immediately.
It can be a very long and drawn-out process, and the landlord has no real authority to physically remove them from the property. Well, our loophole was to start dismantling the home. In a bad part of town, we'd make sure the tenants were out and remove all the doors, which is technically still above-board since we never actually entered the home.
They usually leave pretty quick after that happens.
72. An Extra Special Order
I worked at Roy Roger's. It was a summer job and I hated being a cashier, but since I spoke English (at least better than the rest of the staff) they put me up front. So one day two girls I knew came in trying to buy some fried chicken meals.
However, together they only had enough for one meal. I knew one of them well and her parents have always managed to fall on hard times, even both working two jobs each. I knew she did not have money and was probably hungry.
So, I charged them for one meal, but gave them two and threw in some fries. Before they could correct me, I signaled that they should just move along and they did. All was well…except the old lady behind them (who was a known troublemaker) now tells me that unless I give her something extra she will tell the manager.
I really don't think she had a case but didn't want trouble, so I took a small bucket, went in the back, took the chicken out of the garbage can that fell on the floor that day, and gave it to her as an extra she demanded.
73. The Magic Olive And Friends
I worked at the Olive Garden, and other servers would give jerks the "Magic Olive". The put it bluntly, it was an olive that was placed in someone's butt and walked around for a few minutes in that sweaty dank dungeon of disgust. But that was just the beginning.
It was then placed on top of Olive Garden's famous large bowl'o'salad and taken to the table. Once there, the staff would personally serve the offending patron a portion of the salad with the Magic Olive. I witnessed this several times, and it never failed that the person would end up getting physically sick.
It happened to a regular once, and he was back in the restaurant a week later talking about how he had gotten sick, but that the food here was too good to pass up. But inspired by this, I also got my own kind of special revenge. This customer pulled all the normal stuff, saying one thing and then getting mad when I brought what he asked and claiming he asked for something different.
He dumped out a drink on to the ground claiming that there was too much ice and threw some bread sticks at me claiming they were cold. I went back, made him a new drink, got a new basket of bread, and brought out the salad.
I placed everything on the table and told him that I was sorry for messing up, but that I had taken extra time to make these especially for him to make it up to him. I then personally plated up some salad for him and told him that I put some extra toppings on it while no one was looking and that I hope he enjoyed it.
I then asked him to go ahead and taste everything while I was here to make sure that it was as he liked. He hadn't caught the tone or inflection in my voice by this time, so when he took a bite of salad, I let a big grin slowly spread out over my face, and asked if it tasted as good as it looked.
He just stopped chewing. He didn’t say anything. He just stood up and walked out of the restaurant and spit out the salad on the sidewalk never to be seen again.
This once again proves the old adage, "Never mess with the people who handle your food”.
74. Dine And Dash
My buddy would spend $40-$60 at restaurants and never tip. Ever. I'm not a waiter but I'm a dishwasher at a locally popular restaurant, and all the servers there are the nicest people you'll ever meet, so I understand why someone would be upset for no tip.
So I'm at Ruby Tuesday's with my buddy, let's call him Bart, and some girls. Bart spent about $35 and I spent $12 (I'm pretty broke). We decide to take one check.
The whole time we were there, he was criticizing the waitress for being too ugly for her job, he made more money than her, etc. Bart puts down exactly $35 and tells me to cover the tip. I ask him why we don't just split the tip. He informs me that I "don't understand how things work”.
To this day I don't understand that comment. He also knows I'm a generous tipper, I'll tip at least 30%. Anyway, I decide just how to screw him over. I tell him that I'll cover the whole bill. The girls had left earlier and they already paid so the bill was only like $48 or something.
He's surprised but says, "I'm shocked. You're only a dishwasher and you make way less than me but whatever, I was going to ask you to pay for me anyway. I don't want to spend any money tonight”.
So he goes to the bathroom. I call the waitress over and tell her that Bart was paying for the both of us. She decides to wait for him to come back. I then left the restaurant and drove home, as I drove both of us there. I found out later that he came back, discovered I was gone, tried to leave, and almost got the authorities called on him until he paid up.
He ended up having not enough money and tried to explain that this was my fault. He walked 17 miles to his car because he didn't have money for a taxi. He doesn't talk to me anymore. Also, I saw that waitress at a gas station a week later. We both had a nice laugh.
75. Moving On Up
I was in line behind a “Karen”. The cashier was ringing up her stuff and then Karen was like “No, that’s not right. That’s wrong. That isn’t X, it’s Y”. So the cashier corrects it…and it ended up costing more than was originally rung up. “Oh, I should’ve kept my mouth shut, huh"? Best instant karma I’ve seen in real-time.
76. Too Hot To Handle
Until last month, I worked at a small pizza shop in Houston. I was a cook, but there was no wall separating the kitchen from the front of the restaurant, so I was able to see and hear all of the customers. We had overpriced food that catered to yuppies, and most of our customers were jerk.
One guy, however, was right off the jerk scale. Like, he wanted to use his Discover card to pay for his order, and when the extremely polite and shy 17-year-old cashier girl informed him we don't take Discover, he started yelling, saying things like she was stupid and incompetent, she was lying, etc.
He started yelling about how he owned a restaurant and it was an outrage we didn't take Discover, like that would somehow change the situation. The cashier was almost in tears by the time the guy cooled down. I knew I had to do something.
One of the items on his order was our "hot wings," which we used Frank's hot sauce on. On his, I decided to substitute it with a quarter bottle of 1.5 million Scoville "Ground Zero" hot sauce we had for our own use. Fifteen dollars a bottle and three drops will make a large bowl of chili almost inedible.
The spiciness filled the air and burned our sinuses as the wings slowly worked their way through the conveyor oven. He sat down at a table in the front and took a huge bite of a wing, got a blank expression on his face for a couple seconds, then heaved it out and let out a loud "Aaagh"! as he shook his hands back and forth blowing air into his mouth.
In doing so, he managed to splatter some of the sauce in his eye, and within 10 seconds, he was on his knees on the floor yelling for tissues and crying. After that, the guy was almost polite, and my manager found the whole thing hilarious.
77. Probably Still Sleeping…
I work at a coffee shop. We offer a blanket discount on refills, slightly less expensive than the small if the container meets certain size requirements. I once had a guy come in with a very large thermos, probably about a half-gallon and insist on the refill price. After arguing for several minutes about the size limit I get him to agree on a price and ring him through . He then insists that not only does his thermos need the typical hot water rinse before we fill it, but it should be rinsed with coffee so that the water wouldn't dilute the coffee. The thermos takes more than one urn of coffee to fill up and the guy is very rude about the wait, and seems not to care about the long line of people forming behind him. The next day he got an urn of old decaf. Haven't seen him since.
78. You Don’t Get To Choose Your Nickname
I was bartending. We had a semi-regular who was always obnoxious, insulting to staff and other customers, and all that jazz. However, she was also a relative of an executive at the resort I was at, so we couldn't do much except cut her off and then worry about our job.
Finally, one Saturday night, we had enough. She ordered a California cooler about the same time that we just used the last olive out of a jar. I told her, "I'll bring it to your table”—but I had a far more sinister plan. She went to the table, and out went 4/5 of the cooler into the sink.
Into the cooler bottle went all the olive juice from the empty olive jar. I served it to her. The best part? She drank the whole thing and never noticed. We gave her the nickname “Olive” and when she would come back into the bar, we would greet her, "What's up, Olive"?
She liked the nickname, but never knew how she got it.
79. Overreaction Much?
I worked at a small movie theater a few years ago. A man came in with four kids and his wife. They were coming to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I sold him his ticket and said, as I do to everyone, “Here's your ticket. This also considered your receipt”.
The tickets we had were the ones you get at carnivals. It pops out of the machine, I rip it in half, so I have half and the customer has half. To issue a refund, I need both halves. Well, Captain Redneck threw all the tickets away.
He went into the movie and he came out about five minutes later with everyone and said, "the theater is old. I want my money back”. After talking with my manager, we agreed that in this case we would refund him.
So I ask for the tickets, which is policy. I knew the guy bought a ticket, but I still asked for the stub. He FLIPPED out. Started slamming his fists on the counter. Then he goes to the garbage can where he threw the tickets away, and kicked it, so the garbage went all over the floor.
I called the authorities, and they came and detained him in front of his family. The best part is he kept resisting, so the authorities had to kneel on him...and it wasn’t a very civil arrest.
The family didn’t get their money back. What's funny is if he would have just been reasonable about it, I would have just written the numbers from the stubs on a scrap piece of paper, and everything would have gone fine.
80. Getting Sassed Back
I work near Baltimore, and I manage a plus-size women’s clothing store. We actually get a surprising amount of “non-traditional” customers. Guys who need a dress for a charity show, cross-dressers, genderfluid people, transgender women, and drag queens aren't unheard of. So a drag queen comes into the store to pick up some shoes they ordered online.
They must have been either coming from or going to a show because they were still in full makeup. I get their name, and during our conversation another customer walks in. I call out a greeting and say something like, "I'll be right with you”. I go to the back room, and it takes a minute to go through all the web orders.
I find the one I need and am on my way back to the counter when the new customer throws her arm out to stop me from passing. She then says, "I am a new customer and I've been here for 20 minutes and no one has spoken to me”. First of all, I greeted her when she came in, and second, she had only been in the store for five minutes at that point.
I resigned myself to groveling, but before I could say anything the drag queen stomps over, glares at the customer, and says, “Honey, she said hello to you". Complete with sassy finger snaps. The Queen then made a big show of thanking me for getting her package and gave me a big sparkly kiss on the cheek before she left. The other customer sheepishly paid for her Spanx and didn't make eye contact when I told her to have a good day.
81. A Lesson They Won’t Forget
I was working in a convenience store as a clerk and I see two 13-year-olds entering the store. They look around, and finally leave while I'm serving a customer. My co-worker came to me just a bit after and said that those two just pocketed a watch on the counter while I wasn't looking.
I ask her to take the cash, and I go out and see them both going in a side alley. I follow them and catch them before they leave. I ask them to go back inside of the store and they follow me, somewhat intimidated.
So we're inside the store and I try to make them admit they took the watch. “There are cameras you know, I saw you after you left”. The usual bluff—we didn’t have cameras. After maybe give minutes of “I swear we didn't do it”! and “Why would we do that"? they admit they took the watch.
At this point, I'm telling them I won't give them trouble if they just hand the watch over to me. They tell me that they threw the watch away on the roof of the movie rental place next to the convenience store before I caught them. This is when I decided to teach them a lesson.
I go on and say that since they couldn't give me the watch, they would have to pay for it (mind you, it was a $10 watch). As they are beginning to leave to get the money, I ask one of them to stay with me to make sure the other one will come back.
After 5-10 minutes, the kid comes back with $4, clearly not enough for the watch. After a lot more back and forth, they get so desperate they actually (without my knowledge) go back to the roof of the movie rental place.
They had to climb up a shaky pipe, on a A/C unit, and go back down after that. They were literally shaking from the experience when they came back to me. I then asked them: “Will you shoplift again"? “'N-n-n-o-o-o sir"!
A few weeks later, I decided to go see some friends in high school. I was heading toward the 11th grade when I passed by the two kids. I saw their surprise as they saw me and their hands twitching at the memory of that time they shoplifted something...
82. Your Daily Bread
When I was a teenager, I worked at a local grocery store. There was this one woman that always came through my line (I was "promoted" from bag boy to cashier). She was always a witch, always negative, and always mean to me.
It seemed like she purposefully chose my line each time to be mean to me. One day, I was having a very bad day. I have chronic migraines and my morning had started with a horrible migraine headache that had luckily cleared up before I came to work.
However, I still had some of the symptoms and warned my boss that I might not be myself much that day and did he still want me to work; he did. This happened to be the day that she came through my line again. She was complaining, as per usual, and I was trying to ignore her.
When I scanned her bread, I must have grabbed it wrong in her eyes because she screamed, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP CRUSHING MY BREAD”! I’d had it and didn't care if I lost this customer; I was tired of her. I don’t regret what I did at all. I held the bag up by the opening (where the twisty tie is) and said, "This bread is crushed"? before repeatedly bashing the bread all over the conveyor belt the storage area behind me, tearing the bag open and sending bread all over the place.
"Now your bread is crushed" and then I walked away. I was written up and suspended for a few days, but it was worth it because I never saw that woman ever again.
83. How Do You Say “ You’re Screwed” In French?
I used to work for HP, setting up chargeable repairs for business printers. For whatever reason, our office serviced the UK market, but was actually in Paris. We'd constantly get people who couldn't be bothered actually listening to the options and choosing the right department, and sometimes they would start screaming at us for not randomly happening to be the right person to deal with their issue.
Make us angry enough, and we'd transfer the call to a randomly chosen business in Paris. We'd conference the call, and listen to them get bizarrely confused, unable to vent their anger since their victim usually didn't even speak English.
84. An Ear For An Ear
I worked at a night club as a bartender. It had only been open about two weeks and we had those solid glass ash trays on the bar for some reason. This guy got really in his cups one night and I cut him off.
He picks up one of those ash trays and throws it at me. I dodge it, but the bartender working behind me was not so lucky. The ashtray hit him in the ear, nearly cutting off half of it. When I turned back around to the dude, I instantly hit him with the two bottles I had in my hands.
One was a Jack bottle and it busted over his head. By the time his head hit the floor, the bouncers were already dragging him out the door. This was probably the meanest thing I have ever done, but he really deserved it.
85. Playing The Short Game
I'm not sure if being a public defender counts as a retail or service worker, but considering that I provide defense to indigent clients facing deprivation of their rights and freedom, I'll consider it service nonetheless. I was representing a client who was a massive addict and had done some pretty bad things to her daughter.
She was charged with child endangerment and possession, and was facing three years behind bars—and that was on a plea deal. My client wasn’t happy with this deal and started freaking out at me when I told her that's the best offer I was going to get from the DA, and it was either accept that offer or go to trial.
I further pointed out the mountain of evidence against her, primarily the fact that her daughter was going to testify against her at trial. After she was done cursing me out, calling me a "public pretender" and every other derogatory name she could think of, she fired me and somehow managed to hire a private attorney for the low price of $8,000.
I still don't know how she managed to come up with that, but I have plenty of reliable guesses. The private attorney "guaranteed" her that he could win her case at trial, and that's exactly what she chose to do. Long story short, the private attorney clearly never even read this woman's file before trial. The trial lasted roughly three hours, the jury was literally out for only five minutes, and the judge sentenced her to 10 years. It was a good day.
86. A McSlam Dunk
I worked at the Comcast retail center. One guy in particular came in hot and was adamant that we doubled his bill. I look into his billing history and lo-and-behold, he hasn't paid in two months.
I point this out to him and say, "Let’s be real, you haven't paid in two months". We're both white, and I guess my use of the phrase "be real" triggered something in him because now he's complaining that I have bad customer service and I should go work for McDonald's instead. Without even thinking, I had the most perfect comeback.
I immediately respond, "But then where would you work"? I know Comcast is evil and all, but taking money from that jerk made my entire week.
87. He Knows When He’s Been Beat
I once saw an extremely rude guy picking on waitresses and just being a total jerk. There was, however, one male waiter, whom he promptly summoned.
Guy: Another drink.
Waiter: Sorry, no more left...
Guy: Excuse me? Bring me the drink!
Waiter: No more left for YOU.
He then walked off, leaving the guy to himself. The rude dude then left the place quietly, to my great surprise.
88. A Family Affair
I’m a server. A host set me up with a table with a couple and their toddler. The two sat on the same side of the booth, kissed, etc, so I knew they were a couple, but the woman looked much older. Like, she looked terrible.
She's super rude to me the entire time. She asked for her eggs over easy hard. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Ma'am, your eggs can be over easy, which is kind of runny, or over hard, where they're fully cooked.
Her: Oh, bless your heart, you have no idea do you?
Me: Ma'am?
Her: Why don't you get me a real server, and he can make my eggs the way I like them.
Me: Uhh, ma'am I know how eggs are cooked. Over easy hard doesn't tell me anything. Do you want them over medium?
Her: How hard is your job? Honestly, how hard is it to just serve people eggs?
I'd had it. I gave her order to the cook, and of course he asked me what she meant. I told him to just make them over medium, as I felt like that was what she meant. I gave her the eggs and she sighed real heavy.
Her: I'm sorry, was my order too hard? Did ya not understand me? What the heck kind of place is this that nobody can make me eggs?
Oh boy, did I get her. I took a deep breath, and said this:
"Ma'am...I apologize to you, your son, and your grandson. Let me go ahead and comp your meal”.
Her face twisted up and got so red I thought it was going to pop off of her face.
"THIS IS MY HUSBAND AND THAT'S MY SON"!
Ohh boy, it was so worth it.
"WHERE IS YOUR MANAGER!! I NEED YOUR MANAGER RIGHT NOW"!
I got my manager. He yelled at me in the office, but couldn't prove that I was purposefully disingenuous. So I didn't even get written up. It was awesome.
89. The Most Satisfying Monkey’s Paw
I was working as a waiter in a resort. The guest is a Type A Jerk. You know the type. Obviously has to be the "group leader" of a table full of 4-5 other dudes. During my spiel, I tell the table we are out of a certain thing. I start taking the table's order and get to him...
Jerk: "I'll have the THING”.
Me: " As I said, sir, we're out of THING”.
Jerk: "Maybe I'll just call my GOOD FRIEND the GENERAL MANAGER and they'll find some for me”.
Me: "You're more than welcome to do so but the number on the business card you picked up at the front is an office number, not their personal phone. Also, they're the one who just told me we're out of THING. Maybe if you called them in advance to let your GOOD FRIEND know you were coming, we could have held some back especially for you”.
Now, this may not seem all that destructive, but to this guy, at this table full of his colleagues, it was BRUTAL. He TRIED to save face but it failed so hard.
Jerk: "Well if you can't keep your food in stock then we probably should have gone somewhere else to eat”.
The gauntlet has been thrown down.
Me: "That's an excellent idea, sir. Would you like me to check if there is a table free at our steakhouse"?
Jerk: "Yes, maybe then I can get some food”.
He starts talking to the other guys in the group like somehow we're in the wrong here. They're ALL just looking at him like he's a total idiot, because he is. But I was just warming up. I go to the phone, call the steakhouse, and ask if they have space for ONE. They do. Good. Back to the table.
Me: "You'll be happy to know, sir, that our steakhouse is able to accommodate you and will have a table waiting when you arrive”.
Jerk: (in the jerkiest voice he can muster, which is nowhere NEAR as jerky as I could be) "THANK YOU for SOME KIND of service”. He turns to the rest of the table. "Let's go, guys”.
Me: "I'm sorry, sir, I was under the impression you would be dining alone and didn't ask if they could take a party this size. I assumed they'd be dining with us, seeing as they all ordered items we have available”.
The guy just looks dumbfounded, and while he's standing there trying to process this, one of the Dudes at the Table chimes in...
DT: "Don't worry about it, head on down there. We'll meet up at the bar for drinks later”.
The jerk grabs his drink, says nothing, and walks out. He hits the door and the rest of the table goes into that quiet "What an idiot” laugh that only men of a certain age and income bracket are able to do properly.
The kind that lets you know this is funny now, but come Monday that guy’s world is going to be slightly different in many, many small ways. The evening continues. Sometime after I take that table their dessert my general manager pulls me aside.
Manager: "What the heck happened? I spent the last half hour getting yelled at by some guy that says you were super rude to him”.
I give him a quick rundown. We did not have what the gentleman wanted so I made him a reservation at the steakhouse. End of story. I have NO IDEA why he would possibly be upset. His co-workers over at the table are having a great time.
The manager goes over to their table and starts talking to them, presumably starting with how their meal was and ending with "What happened with the other guy that I saw with you"? It got even better. It was beautiful; they had my back the whole way. They threw him so far under the bus for acting like a jerk that he rolled out the other side and got hit by a semi in the next lane over.
They were nothing but complimentary to me, which was a nice bonus. The manager came back over and told me everything seemed fine with them, shrugged it off, and went back to doing whatever he does.
In closing, just take this bit of information and carry it with you always: NOTHING infuriates awful humans more than someone doing EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT DONE...monkey paw style.
90. Freedom Fries
I was working the counter at a ski resort's cafe. This teenage jerk came up with French fries and said that he didn't bring any money, so could he just have them for free? I said nope, he said: "But I'm a good customer”.
I said okay but fries are for paying customers, and proceeded to take them away from him and pop one in my mouth right in front of him. He had nothing to say to that, but his friend cracked up and apologized for him.
When I turned around, all of my co-workers were in awe of how perfect the moment was.
Flickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer
91. The Puppet Master
We had a realtor that came into our local computer store a lot that we had dubbed “’Roid rage”. He is all cool one minute and the next minute he is screaming and throwing around insults, using his size to intimidate people.
On more than one occasion he had made our female sales staff cry. My boss had finally told him not to come back, but I was not there for it and missed out on his final rant. About two years later, I was buying groceries in a Safeway and I hear some guy yelling at the checker over an expired coupon for Muscle Milk.
I walk up to see what’s going on, and lo and behold, it’s ‘roid rage guy. No longer in danger of getting fired, I tell him he doesn't have the right to yell at her and he can stuff the coupon where the sun don't shine.
He asks me if I want to take it outside and get my butt kicked and I calmly tell him, "How about I call your wife and share all those emails you sent to casual encounters on craigslist"? He freezes in his tracks and suddenly realizes who I am.
He just walks off without saying anything and pushes over a stand of chips on his way out. The cute checker thanks me and we ended up dating for three months.
92. Double Whammy
A guy comes into our store and is being a complete jerk. He’s not wanting to show ID to buy drinks even though he looked 20 at the oldest, and is constantly yelling and swearing. He also had parked in the handicap spot despite not having handicap tags or plates on his car. But he got what was coming to him.
One of my regular customers, who is a sheriff's deputy, was also in the store. He saw how the guy was acting. He saw where he was parked. He went out, got his ticket book, and wrote the guy a ticket. The guy realized he wasn't getting his drinks and went outside...to find he was getting ticketed. I could not stop laughing.
93. Show Me The Money
I work at a bar/restaurant and have pretty strict morals against doing anything bad, even towards the worst customers. However, last night I got pushed way too far. Someone left their debit card in the check presenter after leaving me $4 on $103. So today, when she returned to pick up her card, I made sure she had to ask me personally for it.
I also had her duplicate receipt wrapped around it with the tip and total facing out. I thanked her with a big smile, and could tell she was uncomfortable...Still, I don't think there is anything wrong with what I did, really.
If you have the audacity to tip so poorly for adequate service, and the stupidity to leave your card, you definitely deserve to feel uncomfortable.
94. Switching Sides
I work at a family law office, and we had a potential client call to inquire about our services. She wouldn't speak to my enrollment specialist because "he sounded like a gay" and asked to speak with his supervisor, me.
He told me what she said to him, so I got on the phone and started asking her questions regarding her case. She described herself as a "good Christian" who wanted to take away her ex-husband’s paternal rights because he is moving in with his "god-hating sinner of a boyfriend”.
She would not allow her child to be subjected to such "blasphemy”. I told her that I'd need his information for the documentation, politely finished the conversation, threw away her information, and called the ex-husband and offered free representation.
95. Doggone It
Warehouse worker here. Customers have to show a card to shop, and even though we're not technically a grocery store, we don't allow pets. One dude tried to power walk past the employee at the entrance door holding a big pit bull puppy on a leash. We stopped him and told him he couldn’t bring his dog inside and he LOST IT.
He's saying how he’s our best customer and he's here five times a week and he owns stock. Whatever. He demanded to know why we don't allow dogs. We explained how it's a food safety issue, especially with an untrained puppy. At this point, our manager came over and just waved him through because he has no backbone. The results were hilarious. Not even five minutes later, this dog squats in the middle of the main aisle and pees, followed by a poop.
The man turned so red and dragged the dog towards the exit, abandoning his groceries. We stopped him and asked him nicely to please clean up after his pup. “That's the reason we don't allow them, sir".
96. An Act Of God Indeed
This wasn't the customer, it was the manager. She was AWFUL. She was rude, intentionally picked out favorites and gave them presents in front of everyone (even when they didn't like her and tried to avoid it), messed up schedules on purpose for people she didn't like, the list goes on. She was the worst manager ever.
So there was a huge storm coming in, and people were really worried about it. Like the news telling people to stay home, other businesses closing, etc. It was up to her to either keep our store open or close it. Of course, she kept it open. Because schools closed, only half our scheduled employees showed up, and the rest called in—oh, plus she called her favorites and told them they didn't have to come in. But she got taught a cruel lesson that day.
As the five of us who showed up were standing there, watching out the front windows (there were ZERO customers) she starts yelling at us, threatening to write us all up. We are like, no one is here, all the work is done, we are watching the wind BEND TREES OVER and worried about if we are safe and will be able to get home.
Right about this time, we hear a SUPER LOUD crashing noise. CAHCHUNK - CAHCHUNK - CAHCHUNK - CAHCHUNK - WHAM! As the industrial air conditioner on top of the building got BLOWN OFF. Like it rolled along the roof, then went flying into the parking lot…Right onto her car. It was so perfect it was surreal.
Right in the center, it smashed her car flat. If she had been in it, she would have been a goner. It also only happened because she parked right up by the building, where we had SPECIFICALLY been told not to park. All our cars were out in the farthest corner of the lot. We later found out her car wasn't paid off, it was some stupidly expensive BMW or something, and her insurance didn't cover the damage because it was an "act of god".
97. Pre-Teen Power Trip
I worked as an usher at a movie theater. It was common for a person to buy a ticket and let their friends in an out-of-the-way exit door for free. This was back in 1977, before cameras and alarms.
So I would note where the group was sitting. Being an usher, you would see the same movie over and over, so right when the good part was coming up I would bust the whole group and kick them out.
I was young and had an incredible sense of power shining my flashlight in their eyes and escorting them out. Over time, the same group of guys got the idea of giving me a drink before the movie to look the other way.
98. Typical Karen
When I was a server I would always record my tables' orders. Even though my memory is good, my handwriting is bad so I didn’t want to take the risk of getting something wrong. My manager said it was ok and he even put a sign up stating that some of the staff may record your order for accuracy purposes. Seems normal, right?
At the beginning, I ask each person for their name before I take any drinks or food orders. One of the people at the table orders a steak well done, which is gross but whatever. Food comes and she said her steak was not medium rare like she wanted and I apologized and told her that she did order it well done. Here we go...
This sparked a big rant, lots of cussing, a call for the manager, etc. Again, I apologize and say let’s go to the tape. The look on her face when I played back the recording of “And Karen how would you like your steak"? was priceless. She tried to play off that it wasn’t her but nobody else ordered a steak at her table. Her friends just laughed at her.
99. She Got A Doggone Sweet Surprise
I used to clean a local gymnastics facility on the weekends. The owner would rent out the place for birthday parties, and one of the coaches was always present for them. One weekend, I saw a car pull up about an hour before the party was to start. I was finishing cleaning the lobby, and we had no power as our lights were being replaced.
This woman came in and headed upstairs. About ten seconds later, she came STORMING down the stairs, got in my face, and started yelling, "WHY is there no power?! I'm supposed to set up for this party. HOW am I supposed to do that WHEN I CAN'T SEE WHAT I'M DOING"?! I was a little stunned and told her that, per the owner's policy, she couldn’t be in the building until the coach arrived.
Her face went purple. She yelled, "HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CAN NOT DO! THE OWNER SAID I COULD BE HERE WHENEVER I WANTED. I WON'T TAKE THIS GARBAGE FROM SOME STUPID KID"! I said, "Fine, but your power won't be on for another 45 minutes. You might as well go wait in your car until the coach gets here".
She stomped off, tried to slam the door, and proceeded to try and call the owner. When the coach finally arrived, I told her what had happened and how she acted towards me. I also left a note for the owner and called her to inform her. I left the gym and went home for the night. The following day, I went in to get paid. The owner pulled me aside and told me I did everything right in that situation. Then I found out the whole story.
I found out that not only was that lady completely nasty to the coach as well, but that she didn't pay for the party, and she stayed a full hour longer than what was rented. Then, I got the best news possible. When the parents were all inside, her dog had gotten into the cake that was in her car and ate about half of it. Her reaction was deranged.
She then said, "Oh, we can still use it. We'll just cut around the parts the dog ate". 40 minutes later, she came running back into the gym, grabbed a bunch of paper towels, and returned to her car. Within the time that she brought the cake inside to the time she went back out, her dog had pooped and puked EVERYWHERE in her car—on the seats, floors, armrests, even the dashboard. This car was COVERED in poo and vomit.
100. You Got Told
I worked at a restaurant that was very popular for brunch, and Mother's Day was probably our busiest day of the year. I had a customer call the evening before and ask for a table for six. He was incredibly rude when I informed him that this would simply be impossible. He kept getting more and more worked up, asking to speak to my manager.
At first, I didn't want to pass the phone over. My manager, Mac, wasn't the nicest guy and we were in the middle of a busy dinner shift. But Mac came up behind me and demanded to know why I had been on the phone for so long. I was like “Screw it, this customer isn't going to listen to me anyways" and gave the phone to Mac.
Mac asked how he could help, and listened for about 15 seconds before telling this dude something like, "So you're tying up my hostess in the middle of dinner even though she's already told you nicely that we can't fit you and your goddarn family in the night before our busiest day of the year? Screw you buddy"! And he hung up the phone.
101. What He Does In The Shadows
I worked for an online banking help desk and this 18-year-old boy phoned up, saying he had seen a transaction for $7 to “allpay” and because he didn't recognize it, he decided the bank was robbing him of $7 and that I was in on it and I was a "thieving little jerk”. Then he gets his dad on the phone who stuck up for his idiot of a son, saying I was a pathetic idiot stealing off an 18-year-old boy, even though it was a debit card transaction and I simply worked in the department that helped people use online banking.
But anyway, I phoned our debit card services to see if they could give any more information, and boy could they. I then had the pleasure of relaying back to this little brat’s equally bratty father the following.
"Hi sir, thanks for holding. I've checked with our debit card services team and I now understand why your son would not have recognized the payee “allpay”. That's a deliberately vague term used for discretion when the customer has subscribed to online adult images. That's what it was for. Your son has been paying for online videos of that nature. Would you like to pop him back on the phone so I can tell him it's a payment for this, or will you pass on the information"?
The father just muttered that the issue did not require any further investigation, thanked me for looking into it, and hung up.
Sources: Reddit, , , , , , , , , , 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31
