Sometimes they're not the smartest flower in the bunch. Sometimes they're straight-up rude. But pretty much every time you have a less-than-desirable moment with a customer, there's one thing they have in common: their demands are absolutely ridiculous. These real-life retail employees and servers shared their stories of having to deal with terrible customers asks, and they're utterly jaw-dropping.
1. Environmentally Unfriendly
I used to make coffee for a living. One day, a woman insisted we remake her coffee for a really ridiculous reason. We had to use the pour-over method for that particular drink, and our tools, measuring cups, filters, and other items were plastic.
She watched us start making it, then suddenly freaked out and said we were “tainting” her good. She actually shouted, “What are you doing? You can’t use that plastic stuff. That will hurt me!” Needless to say, we were pretty stunned. We’d never had a customer react like that before.
We asked what the problem was, and she said all our plastic probably contained BPA and other harmful chemicals, and that if she drank the coffee, it would be the end of her. So we ended up improvising some kind of setup with stainless steel tools just to make her drink.
She never even said thank you. She just stared at us and gave us dirty looks the whole time.
2. Going In Circles
I was talking with a customer on the phone. After going back and forth about an issue we couldn’t help with, the customer finally said something like, “Well, that’s not good enough.” By that point, I was completely over it, so I said, “Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t mean it changes.”
She snapped back, “That’s really unprofessional.” And I replied, “You thinking it’s unprofessional doesn’t change the answer either.” Then she said, “Let me speak to your manager.” That’s when I got to drop the line.
I told her, “I am the manager. We’re going in circles. If you want, you can email me, and I’ll review your complaint to see whether it needs to be escalated.” She was definitely not happy when she hung up.
3. The Fountain Runneth Dry
I run a convenience store in a mall. Right outside our store there’s a nice fountain, except it’s been drained. It had already been like that since before we took over the store last year. One day, I was sitting there enjoying the cool air. Our store is set at a slightly odd angle, with one wall shorter than the other, and through the glass windows you can watch people passing by.
I was casually watching the mall traffic while half paying attention to my game, still keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. At one point, my peaceful little view was interrupted by a man marching straight toward me like he was on a mission. I didn’t even get a chance to say my usual cheerful, “How you doing today?” before he hit me with a question that completely caught me off guard: “When are they going to turn on the fountain?”
I apologized and told him I had no idea. There was a pause, and his brow furrowed like he couldn’t process the fact that I didn’t know. Then he said, as if this would somehow explain things, “They drained all the fountains!” Now I was the confused one. Obviously they drained all the fountains. I’d been staring at the empty one all day.
I have no idea why he thought I hadn’t noticed. Did he think it was somehow my fault? Maybe he didn’t realize the mall makes those decisions, not us. So I told him, “You’d have to ask mall management. We’re just a convenience store.” He firmly said, “I will!” Then, with his mission apparently redirected, he stomped right back out of the store with the same determined energy.
4. She Didn’t Know Jack About Cocktails
I used to work as a cocktail bartender. One woman brought back a Jack and Coke because she said she didn’t like it. I asked what she had ordered, and she said, “Jack and Coke.” I politely told her she wouldn’t be getting a replacement or a refund, and that next time she should order something she actually enjoys.
She came back to the bar several times after that, deliberately choosing a different bartender each time to see if someone else would replace the drink. Every single bartender looked at her like she was out of her mind and refused.
5. Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish
I worked at an outdoor gear store for a while. One incident really stands out, involving an ex-Marine who worked with us repairing bikes. He had gone to the back to grab a part, and while he was heading back across the store to the bike shop, a customer who had already been loud and aggressive with everyone decided to grab my co-worker hard by the arm and try to spin him around. It did not go well for him.
My co-worker’s Marine training kicked in, and the next thing I knew, the angry customer was on the floor in the wreckage of a display about eight feet away. Of course, he jumped up yelling that he was going to sue us and get my co-worker fired, and all the usual stuff.
The manager came out, heard what happened, checked the security footage, and told the customer he absolutely could not grab employees like that. She said he was welcome to call the authorities if he wanted, because she was prepared to press charges against him for assault. Then she banned him from the store.
Honestly, no one was sad to lose that customer. He already had a reputation for being rude and for constantly trying to take advantage of our return policy.
6. Dog Days
Several years ago, I worked as a dog trainer at a well-known pet supply store. Even though I was hired to train dogs, it was still retail, so naturally I ended up doing a hundred things that weren’t really part of my job. I worked the register, stocked shelves, and of course helped customers. And yes, the store had more than its fair share of difficult people.
The store was surrounded by big suburban neighborhoods, so they came in nonstop. On this particular day, it was vet clinic day. A local vet partnered with the store to offer quick walk-in services like vaccinations. And whenever you combine “cheap” with demanding customers, you know it’s going to be the longest shift of the week.
That week, the store was packed. The line stretched all the way to the front, and we were the biggest location in the area. Customers were asking questions from every direction, dogs were having accidents all over the floor, and kids were tearing through the toy aisle. It was total chaos. I was already running around like crazy, juggling five different tasks while also trying to get ready for a dog training class. Great.
As I was walking back from the vet station after helping someone, I spotted her, and she immediately looked like trouble. She had a deep tan, straight shoulder-length hair, sunglasses, and was dragging two kids down the aisle toward me. She looked furious, like she was ready to explode. I braced myself and started to say, “How can I help—”
She cut me off with one loud word: “Dogs!” She had this wild look in her eyes. Trying to make sense of what she meant, I asked, “Dog toys? Dog food?” Then she snapped, “Where are your dogs?” It took my brain a moment to catch up and realize she thought we actually sold dogs.
Thankfully, big chain stores like ours usually don’t sell dogs directly, which is a good thing because that often means puppy mills. Still, I had to be the one to tell her we weren’t that kind of store. I got ready for an argument and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t sell dogs he—” She immediately started yelling, turned around, and stormed off, dragging her kids behind her the whole way.
Then she stomped right out the door. It felt like being hit by a truck made of pure attitude. The whole interaction lasted less than 30 seconds, which honestly felt like some kind of record. That was the moment I decided I needed to take my break before teaching my next class.
7. They Were Allergic To Paying
A customer once insisted that half the ingredients in a meal be swapped out because they claimed to be allergic to them. Then, after all those changes, they declared the dish inedible. We were told to give them a completely different meal for free, one that didn’t include any of the ingredients they said they couldn’t have.
They loved the replacement meal right up until they realized their complaint wasn’t going to get the entire table free food. Suddenly, they said it was undercooked, even though they had already eaten about three-quarters of it.
My boss was usually awful, but that night he actually did the right thing. He told them their meal would not be replaced again and that they still owed for the other four meals. The kitchen staff and I ended up standing between their table and the door, looking completely unimpressed.
8. Pool Party
I worked at the public pool in my town, and one of the rules was that no outside food or drinks were allowed inside. That did not sit well with one woman, who was very determined to tell me she had just spent 12 dollars on her Starbucks coffee.
She argued that the public pool in the next town allowed outside drinks. I kept repeating the same practiced response: our policy was that outside food and drinks were not allowed. I still can’t believe what happened next. She dumped the coffee onto our computer, so I called the authorities. She was detained, and the town pressed charges as far as they could.
9. Taking A Bow
Several years ago, I worked at a small beauty supply store in the southern US. Among other things, we sold little clip-in hairpieces. One day, a family of four came in. The parents were looking at products in the first aisle while their two young daughters ran wild through the store, making noise and leaving messes behind.
It was truck day, and I had been stocking shelves from a shopping cart, which a lot of people in that area called a buggy. It was piled full. I stepped into the stock room, and when I came back about 30 seconds later, I saw one of the girls pushing my cart around the corner at the far end of the aisle.
She was standing on tiptoe and still couldn’t see over the handle. I heard her say something to her mother, and her mother called back, “Put that back where you found it.” By then, I had almost reached the girl, who had turned the cart around. She pushed it up to me proudly and said, “Ma’am, are you lookin’ for your buggy?”
I replied, “You don’t need to be messing with that.” That was when the mother’s attitude came out in full force. She stormed around the corner, saying I should not speak directly to her child and that if I had something to say, I should say it to her. Never mind that the girl had already run into a shelf, slipped a little on the tile floor, and nearly tipped the cart over on herself clear across the store from her mother.
I didn’t bother arguing about safety and just went back to stocking shelves. A little later, the mother asked me to help her match her hair color to the hairpieces. I helped her choose one, and I heard her tell her husband it was the one she wanted. Then I went to the register while she gathered her kids.
When she got to checkout, the hairpiece she placed on the counter was not the one I had seen her discussing. I asked about it, and she said the other one cost more than she could afford, but she planned to come back for it. I rang her up, and they left. The next day, when I got to work, the opening clerk said, “One of your customers came in today.”
I said, “Oh yeah?” I didn’t get customer complaints often, although that same week someone else had come in while I was off and claimed I was rude. In reality, they were upset because I had stopped them from shoplifting and just made up another reason to complain. When my coworker confirmed that this was one of those situations, her tone made it clear I was in for another long day.
So I asked, “Have you ever seen me be rude to a customer?” She said, “No. You always seem sweet, but the way they tell it, you’re some kind of villain.” Right about then, the door opened, and in walked the hairpiece woman and her kids. Things were about to get interesting. She immediately started in on me about how she had come to return the hairpiece she bought the day before.
We didn’t accept returns on hairpieces at all. But she said that while trying to return it with my coworker, they found a mismatch between the item she was returning and the one I had actually rung up. So my coworker asked her to come back during my shift so I could help sort it out.
The woman pulled out the item she wanted to return, and sure enough, it wasn’t the one she had purchased from me. In fact, it was the one I had heard her tell her husband she actually wanted, and it was inside a different product’s box. I told her that, and she started yelling, saying I had better not be calling her a liar.
Then she started making vague physical threats. Meanwhile, one of her lovely children had come around behind the sales counter where I was standing and was trying to get my attention so she could join in. I ignored her at first, but she kept tapping me on the hip. I spun around and said sharply, “Don’t touch me.”
Then, remembering the scene from the day before, I turned back to the mother and smiled as politely as I could. Through clenched teeth but in my sweetest voice, I said, “I’m sorry, could you please tell your child not to touch me and move her out from behind the counter? It isn’t safe for her back here.” She snarled, “That’s better.”
She barked at her kid, then made it clear she would be back in an hour to continue causing problems. Shortly after she left, our store manager came in unexpectedly early for the closing shift. We filled her in on everything that had happened. When the woman came back, I happened to be in the stock room.
My manager shut the stock room door and told me in the sternest voice I had ever heard, “Do not come out.” I could only catch bits and pieces through the door, so I never heard the full conversation. My guess is that we gave her some money back as a one-time exception, probably because the alternative was sending her to corporate, who likely would have refunded her anyway.
But then I heard her voice ring across the store: “Go get her and bring her out here. I’m going to grab her and—” My manager cut her off immediately: “You will not lay a hand on my employee.” I didn’t hear much after that because I was honestly stunned by how firm my sweet, proper manager sounded.
My coworker was just as surprised. Afterward, all of us agreed we were proud of how tough our manager could be when it mattered. We also decided that if anyone ever claimed I was rude to a customer, it probably meant I had stopped them from stealing.
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10. He Landed In The Thick Of It
A guy came into Wendy’s and bought a milkshake. Nothing unusual there, except he came back about 10 minutes later with his girlfriend and maybe one-tenth of the shake left in the cup, complaining that it was too “milky.”
He then launched into an explanation that a milkshake is just a flavored cold drink, and that if they wanted something thicker, they should have ordered a “thick shake.” Then the whole thing took a ridiculous turn. The woman turned to her boyfriend, grabbed the cup, and threw it in the employee’s face.
Without even hesitating, the employee picked up a bottle of caramel sauce and squeezed it right into the woman’s face, then added a few sprinkles on top for dramatic effect. He lost his job almost immediately, but I’m sure he felt it was worth it. Honestly, I probably would have thought so too.
11. We Don’t Do That Here, Lady
One of my managers once had to explain to a very demanding customer, right in the middle of a lunch rush, why she couldn’t have the onions taken out of the French onion soup.
12. Greasing The Parts
At the time, I was working as the front desk receptionist at a car dealership with a service and parts department attached. I dealt with all kinds of people, but one customer in particular completely baffled me. It was around 7 p.m., about an hour after the service and parts department had closed. The sales department stayed open until 8, so I was just handling my usual tasks.
A woman walked up to my desk and slammed a 19-liter jug of motor oil onto the counter. It startled me because I had been looking away. She immediately demanded that I sell it to her. I was so confused that I just stared at her for a second. There wasn’t even a checkout counter at my desk since we were in a totally different part of the building.
And honestly, where had she even gotten it? The parts department was closed, and the storeroom window was locked behind a fold-down metal gate. I finally pulled myself together and explained that the parts department was closed, so I couldn’t sell her anything. Her reaction was unbelievable. She instantly got angry, waving toward the nearest window and demanding that I give her the oil.
I suggested she try another shop nearby since they were open until 9 p.m. Surely she could get oil there. She hated that idea and scoffed at me. “I need Kia brand oil for my Kia brand car,” she said completely seriously, staring at me like I was the one being unreasonable. That caught me off guard all over again.
I have pretty bad anxiety, so I was still shaken from her slamming the jug down, and I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. I tried to explain that any suitable brand of oil would work, and that I’d be happy to help her figure out what she needed so she could buy it there, but she just kept shaking her head.
Finally, she shouted that she’d just come back the next day, that I’d been absolutely no help, and stormed out. That’s when I noticed she had a kid with her. Not exactly a great example. I later realized she had pulled the oil jug off a display shelf in the service department, which made the whole thing even more ridiculous. The idea that she grabbed something from a clearly not-for-sale display because she was upset still makes me laugh.
13. Well Done
Where I worked, people would sometimes ask for their “undercooked” burgers to be remade. Most of the time it wasn’t a big deal, but every now and then you got a truly unreasonable customer.
One time, a customer came up to the counter, said their burger was undercooked, and demanded that we cook it more. The problem was that they waited until they had already eaten about three-quarters of it before telling us. Still, my manager agreed and had the burger remade. But he had the perfect response ready.
When it was done, he cut the burger into four pieces and handed the customer one fresh quarter of a burger—fully cooked. The look on their face was incredibly satisfying.
14. I’m Like A Bird
I was the only person working that shift, so I was basically the acting manager. About five minutes before closing, a woman came in absolutely furious that we didn’t have any decaf coffee. She demanded to speak to the manager. I told her that was me, since I was the only one there, and that the coffee pots had already been cleaned for the night because we were closing.
Her response shocked me. She started yelling and said she was going to “find a real manager and get you fired.” Then she threw half a cup of cappuccino machine sludge at me and looked like she was about to come over the counter. I was standing there holding a hammer under the counter thinking, “Please don’t do it.” I picked up the phone like I was about to call the authorities. That made her leave, and I locked the door.
A few seconds later, she came back and ran straight into the glass door. Face first. Like a bird. I honestly couldn’t believe it.
15. A Giggling Fit
It was close to closing time, and I was cleaning the self-checkout machines while my manager refilled the coins and receipt paper. A woman, probably just under 50, walked up to the checkout area and simply stood there with her mostly empty cart. I waited to see if she’d come to the actual register for help, but she just stayed there.
Eventually I asked, “Do you need help?” She replied, “No,” and kept standing there. Then she started giggling loudly to herself in a way that made everyone nearby uncomfortable. I kept cleaning, and my manager kept restocking the machines, all of which were completely empty. Finally, the woman said loudly, to nobody in particular, “Do you want to work or not?”
I took a deep breath and put down my cloth and spray bottle. Before I could respond, my manager stepped in and said loudly, “She is working. She’s cleaning right now.” Then she motioned for me to keep going. The woman giggled again, even louder and more smug this time, and said, “I want a checkout.” My manager answered, “You had your chance. She asked if you wanted help, and you said no. Now you’ll need to use self-checkout.”
The woman started complaining and demanded to speak to the manager. My manager shut that down with one line: “You’re looking at her.” The woman quietly checked out her own items while we both watched. Then my manager gave a loud little giggle in the same style the woman had been using. It was perfect.
16. Comparing Pineapples To Oranges
I worked as a waitress at an Italian restaurant. One day, a woman in her 40s ordered a Hawaiian pizza and got upset, saying we had made it wrong. I asked what the problem was, and she said it wasn’t a Hawaiian pizza because the toppings were wrong. I looked at it and could barely keep a straight face.
It had diced tomatoes, pineapple, and ham—exactly what the menu listed. I pointed that out, and she said, “What are you talking about? These are yellow! Pineapples are orange!”
Confused, I got my manager. He tried explaining that pineapples are yellow, not orange, and told her that if she didn’t like it, she could order something else free of charge. She got even more upset and said no, she wanted the Hawaiian pizza, just with the “right” pineapples.
Then she started describing what she thought they looked like, and I finally said, “Wait, do you mean oranges?” because that was exactly what she was describing. She said, “No, pineapples,” and then described oranges all over again. At that point, I pulled out my phone, searched for pictures of oranges and pineapples, and showed her.
She pointed at the oranges and shouted, “Yes, those! I want those!” My manager told her we didn’t have those, and that she could either choose something else or eat what she had. She left.
17. That’s What They Call Owning
This was probably the best customer interaction I ever had. A woman was complaining that she shouldn’t have to pay the full price for the work done on her computer, even though it was exactly the amount she had been quoted when she dropped it off. She demanded to speak to the service manager, so I called him from the back.
The service manager listened while she explained why she thought she deserved a discount for a completely unrelated and not very sensible reason. While she was talking, he looked at me over her shoulder, and I stayed completely neutral. When she finished, he told her no—the quoted price was the price she would be paying.
She said that was unacceptable and announced that she would be complaining to the owner, who she claimed was “a good friend” of hers. But there was one thing she clearly didn’t know. The service manager calmly told her that they must not be very close friends, because the “owner” was me—the same person she had been talking to before asking for the service manager.
The look on her face was priceless. It made the whole moment worth it.
18. A Lucky Gamble
This just happened. A man came in and asked me, “What’s the $8 lottery package my wife always gets?” I looked at him, but I had no idea who he was. He didn’t look at all familiar. He wasn’t wearing a mask, but I’d actually gotten pretty good at recognizing people I had only seen in masks since we bought the store.
Still, I had no clue who he was. So I said, “Sir, are you asking me, a complete stranger, what your wife usually buys?” He repeated, “Well, she always gets an $8 package.” I told him, “There isn’t an $8 lottery package.” Then he asked what the standard games were, so I listed them one by one until we figured out what he wanted.
I handed him his purchase and said, “Here you go, and I really recommend not telling your wife that you asked a complete stranger what her usual pick is.” I thought that would settle it, but he still didn’t see the problem. He said, “Well, she comes in here all the time.” I replied, “But she’s not here now, and I don’t know who she is.”
Then he added, “Well, I come in with her sometimes.” To wrap things up, I said, “Ohhh, well, I have a pretty bad memory, so that must be it.” What I didn’t say was, “It might also be because I see hundreds of people a day, and unless someone comes in constantly and actually talks with me, they’re probably not going to stick in my memory.” Honestly.
19. It Matters How You Slice It
A guy ordered a pizza with fresh jalapeños on it, sliced lengthwise. When I brought it out, he got upset and asked why we had put bell peppers on his pizza. I told him they were jalapeños, but he refused to believe me.
He actually walked straight into the kitchen and told the chef he couldn’t believe he didn’t know the difference between bell peppers and jalapeños. The chef picked up a whole jalapeño and said, “This is a jalapeño, right?” The customer said, “Yeah.” Then the chef sliced it the same way it appeared on the pizza and said, “And that’s what you have, right?”
The customer just stared at it for a second and said, “…Yeah.” Then he left me a terrible tip.
20. Cheesed Off
This happened when I was serving at Steak ’n Shake. A customer had a coupon for a burger, fries, and a shake at a set price. The coupon clearly said that cheese on the burger was an extra 39 cents, even though the picture showed a burger with cheese. I was not ready for the meltdown that followed.
This woman started causing a scene in the dining room, accusing me of being unfair and saying it was false advertising. I told her I actually agreed that the picture was misleading, but the written details clearly listed the extra charge, and unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it. Also, we were talking about less than half a dollar.
A woman at the next table had been listening the whole time. She stood up, put 50 cents on the table, and said something along the lines of, “I’ll pay for your cheese if it means this conversation can end.”
That only made the cheese customer even more upset. My manager must have realized what was happening, because he came out and removed the cheese charge from the bill. I still couldn’t believe all that drama was over 39 cents.
21. Three Strikes
A few years ago, I worked a second job in the evenings at a small U.S. retail chain that sold woodworking tools, supplies, and machinery. Most of our customers were wonderful, but every now and then, we’d get someone difficult. On this particular night, we were about 15 or 20 minutes from closing.
I was at the front counter near the registers, doing little tasks to pass the time before locking up. The sales floor was completely empty except for me. Then I heard the doors open and looked up to see a customer walk in.
“Hi! Welcome to our store!” I said in a genuinely friendly voice.
He gave me a quick, blank stare, made brief eye contact, and then walked right past me without saying a word. Not a great start.
A few minutes later, I saw him coming up to the counter, so I asked, “Hey there! Did you find what you were looking for?”
Without answering, he tossed a few packs of euro hinges onto the counter. Still no words.
Then I asked, “All right! Have you shopped with us before?”
I needed to know because part of my job was entering customer information into our system if they allowed it, and if they were already in there, we could ring them up under their account. Instead of replying, he dropped a postcard-sized piece of paper onto the counter.
That paper turned out to be one of our birthday coupons. If a customer is in our system and gives us their birth month, we send them a coupon every year for 10% off a single purchase. There are a few exclusions and conditions, all clearly printed on it.
I picked up the coupon, used the information to pull up his account, and noticed one important detail. Then I said, as cheerfully as possible, “Okay, sir, I see your birthday isn’t until next month, and unfortunately this coupon is only valid for one purchase during your birth month.”
While I said that, I held up the coupon and pointed to the printed text.
I’m pretty sure I still had my best customer-service smile on my face. He stared at me for a few seconds, let out a sound that seemed like disgust, turned around, and headed for the door.
“Wait!” I called after him. “You forgot your birthday coupon!”
Without stopping or turning around, he waved his hand dismissively, pushed through the door, and disappeared into the night.
Honestly, good riddance. Our manager at that store was a very laid-back guy who encouraged us to do everything we could to help customers, and I was always happy to do that. People came in early with birthday coupons all the time, and it usually wasn’t a problem. We’d gladly honor the discount anyway and just remind them that it was technically meant for their birth month.
But he chose to behave that way. He wouldn’t offer even basic courtesy or say a single word to me. That was entirely his decision.
22. Sizzling Mad
Once, a man ordered a Grade 9 Wagyu scotch fillet cooked medium rare. We sold that steak for $63. When he got it, he cut it into tiny pieces because he said it was slightly under medium rare. It felt incredibly wasteful. Normally, if someone says their steak is a little underdone, you just put it back on the grill for a few moments and bring it up to the right temperature.
So we got this very expensive steak back in pieces and had to cook him another one, which we did. Then he did the exact same thing again. He cut the second steak into tiny pieces and said it was undercooked too. At that point, he had spent over $120 worth of food, and the whole kitchen was furious.
Then he ordered a pasta dish, which I made and sent out. He ate all of it and then said it was terrible.
When it came time to pay, he told the waitress, “Just charge me for a bowl of chips. It’s fine. The boss will understand because we’re friends.”
I don’t know whether the waitress actually did that, and I’m not sure what the boss thought because he was out that night. But even now, just thinking about that guy still annoys me.
23. A Slight Overreaction
At the time, the staff didn’t realize the ketchup dispenser was empty. A boy, maybe around 10 years old, kept pressing the handle trying to get ketchup, but nothing was coming out. One staff member noticed him pounding on it, so I went over to check what was happening.
“Oh, the ketchup is empty. I’ll grab a new bag from the kitchen. Give me two minutes and I’ll be right back,” I told him.
I removed the empty container, took it to the kitchen, cleaned the dispenser, and installed a new bag. But when I brought it back to the condiment station, I was immediately confronted by an angry mother.
“WHY DID YOU TAKE THE KETCHUP AWAY FROM MY SON?!” she shouted.
“The ketchup was empty, so I replaced the bag,” I explained.
“WHY DID YOU TAKE THE KETCHUP AWAY?! GO GET YOUR MANAGER!”
“Okay, one minute,” I said.
I walked about two meters, turned around, and introduced myself as the manager.
“WHY DID YOU TAKE THE KETCHUP AWAY FROM MY SON?!” she yelled again.
“Ma’am, please lower your voice. The ketchup was empty. I explained to your son that I needed to take it to the kitchen to refill it.”
“NO YOU DIDN’T! I WAS STANDING HERE THE WHOLE TIME. YOU TOOK THE KETCHUP AWAY FROM MY SON!”
“Ma’am, please lower your voice. You were not standing here with your son. He was here alone, trying to get ketchup from an empty dispenser.”
“DON’T YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO! DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH?!”
“No, I don’t. Ma’am, please gather your things and leave the restaurant.”
“I WILL NOT LEAVE! I’M GOING TO BURN THIS PLACE DOWN!”
At that point, other customers were clearly disturbed by the scene. I had had enough, so I called the authorities. The woman gave her statement while the officers spoke with me, and I gave mine as well. Then I heard what she had told them: that I had struck her son, shoved him aside, and moved the ketchup somewhere he couldn’t reach it.
I denied all of it and offered to show them the security footage, including audio. They watched the video, thanked me, and then went back out into the dining area.
One officer asked her, “Ma’am, does your son have someone who can look after him?”
“His father is at work right now!” she shouted.
“Okay. You’re being placed under arrest for making threats and filing a false report.”
That led to even more yelling, pleas, and crying. In the end, she was charged with filing the false report, and she received a lifetime ban not only from our restaurant but from the entire mall where it was located.
I felt bad afterward—not for her, but for her son. He’s the one who has to live with all of that.
24. A Watery Chuckle
I work at a small convenience store in a large airport, on one of the busiest concourses. I hear comments all the time, especially about our prices. We try to keep our margins reasonable, but we still have to cover expenses, including rent, which is around $14,000 a month.
One day, an older woman came in and put down a bottle of premium water that came to about $5.15 after tax.
I had a feeling she was going to comment on the price, so I braced myself. She did, but not in the way I expected.
She asked, “Want to know something funny?”
I said, “Sure.”
She replied, “This same water in another airport is $2.50.”
I stared at her for a good ten seconds, then finally said, “I think I missed the joke.”
She looked offended and started insulting me, but she still bought the water before storming off.
Honestly, it was one of the better shifts I’d had in a while.
25. Bare Bones Diet
Three women once ordered a pork sandwich and two cheeseburgers. At first, it sounded completely normal, but it definitely wasn’t.
They were following the Atkins diet, so they wanted no buns, no cheese, and no toppings at all. So I brought out three plates: two with plain burger patties and one with a pile of pork.
Then they looked at the plates and said, “What is this? This is NOT what we ordered!”
I replied, “Well, ma’am, that’s a pork sandwich without the onions, coleslaw, cheese, bun, or fries.”
I honestly have no idea what they were expecting.
26. They All Scream For Ice Cream
I used to work at a zoo snack bar. We had a few wheeled ice cream carts, and we’d roll them out to different parts of the park and stay there for the rest of the day. One day, I was assigned to the playground, which was one of the worst spots to work.
Kids there would run wild all over the park while their parents sat on benches, talking with friends or barely paying attention. Every day, hundreds of kids would come up and beg me for ice cream, but obviously I couldn’t just hand it out for free.
I’d always ask if they had any money, and they never did. So I’d tell them to go ask their parents if they wanted ice cream. On this particular day, it was especially hot. One little boy had a complete meltdown when I told him I couldn’t just give him one.
He dropped to the ground crying and screaming, and I just kept helping other customers while he wailed at my feet. Eventually, he calmed down and went off to find his mom. About 15 minutes later, he came back with her.
He was still sniffling, but clearly thrilled that he’d convinced her to buy him ice cream. They looked over the choices. We had about 15 kinds, all with the prices clearly posted. Of course, he picked the most expensive one, and his mom said, “Whatever you want, sweetie.”
I handed it to her, and she opened it and gave it to him. He immediately started drooling all over it. Since it was such a hot day, it started melting fast. Then she asked how much it cost, and I pointed to the clearly marked sign. She lost it.
She started yelling that she wasn’t paying that much. I just said, “Sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing I can do. He’s already started eating it.” She kept going, but eventually paid me—entirely in coins, mostly pennies and nickels. Then she asked for napkins.
The park wouldn’t let us give out napkins because people littered too much, and apparently cleanup cost too much. I politely explained that and apologized for the inconvenience.
That’s when she completely lost her temper. She snatched the dripping ice cream away from her son—who immediately started another tantrum, and honestly this time I understood why—threw the ice cream at me, reached into my tip jar, grabbed her money back, and stomped off with her crying child.
I had to wipe melted ice cream off my shirt with leaves from a nearby tree and then sit at my cart like that for the rest of the day.
27. Do You Know Who I Am?
I used to work in a call center, and I dealt with plenty of people who always wanted to speak to someone above me because they acted like the world was supposed to revolve around them. I’d always go back into their accounts and read the notes to see what had actually happened.
Nine times out of ten, they got exactly what they wanted, even when it wasn’t deserved. It was so frustrating—giving in to people like that is exactly what makes them feel so entitled in the first place. One time, I told a woman that if she didn’t pay for her services, they’d be shut off after 60 days. Her response honestly stunned me.
She said something like, “Excuse me? I’m a valued customer, and that is not how I will be treated.” Completely ridiculous.
28. A Customized Experience
A customer showed me a ring and asked about it. I told her it was a sterling silver lotus ring. Then she showed me that it didn’t fit. As she forced it halfway down her finger, she said, “But it doesn’t fit me, see?” As if I could somehow resize it right there on the spot. I explained that we only had one left in that design.
A little later, the same woman asked whether the artist was local. I told her I wasn’t sure if the artist was from our city, but all the artists in the shop were American. So if she wasn’t from our state, she was from another one. Then the woman said, “Well, obviously. If she’s not from here, then she’s from somewhere else.” Sigh.
I wanted to roll my eyes because that was my usual answer whenever people asked about local artists, and I’d never gotten such a rude response before. Most customers just wanted to know whether it was made in America, if not locally. Then she asked which way her husband had gone, so I pointed to the only exit and said, “That’s the only way out.”
29. She Was Left Crushed
I was working at Dairy Queen, and I made really good Blizzards. One day, a woman came through the drive-thru yelling that she wanted a small Oreo Blizzard. Fine, no problem. When I handed it to her, she poked at it with her spoon and stared at it like something was terribly wrong.
She said, “The Oreos are too crushed up. I want another one.” The Oreos came to us pre-crushed, but whatever. They only cost about 25 cents to make, so I made another one. This time, I mixed it for barely a second, leaving huge chunks of Oreo on top and hardly blending it at all. I handed it to her, and she said it looked perfect.
Her real plan was to get the “mistake” for free. She asked, “So what are you going to do with the other one? Can I have it since you can’t serve it to someone else?”
I just smiled. I was actually looking forward to this. I said, “Sorry, the Oreos are too crushed,” and threw it away right in front of her.
30. She Lost Her Nuggets
Before I became a chef, I spent one year working at a state fair in an “Orient Express” booth. A woman ordered a plate of sweet and sour chicken. About ten minutes later, she came back with every fried piece broken open, all the chicken eaten out, and demanded a refund. She claimed there hadn’t been any chicken inside the breading.
31. It’s Never Enough
Oh, absolutely. Here we go. I used to be a manager at a chain barbecue restaurant I’ll call Popular Charlie’s. We had a customer we nicknamed “Nacho Lady,” and there was definitely a reason for it. She was the crunchy, essential-oils, military-wife type, always acting like she was raising her toddler to become some world-changing genius.
Everyone dreaded seeing her walk in. We called her Nacho Lady because every time she came in, she ordered nachos from the takeout counter. Normally, that would be fine. But she wanted every single topping on the side. Still not a huge issue, because to-go nachos can get soggy fast, and that makes sense.
The problem was that once everything was separated out, she didn’t like seeing the actual portions. Two ounces really doesn’t look like much. That applied to the cheese, chili, beans, nacho sauce, all of it. Even though the portions were correct and evenly measured, she always felt she wasn’t getting enough once she saw it laid out. That’s when the trouble started.
She would demand extra but refuse to pay for it. Our takeout staff were actually pretty good about standing their ground and following policy.
Of course, she never accepted that, so she always wanted to speak to a manager—usually me or one of two others, depending on the shift. She also ordered two kids’ meals with pork sandwiches and fries. Again, nothing unusual on its own, but she had a long list of requirements for that too.
The pork had to be dry, with no barbecue sauce, and packed separately. The kids’ buns had to be toasted, which we normally didn’t do. The fries had to be dropped the moment she walked in so they’d be extra fresh and crispy by the time she got them home.
Her instructions got so specific that eventually only a manager was allowed to take her order, and only a manager could go over it with her. That was always the most stressful part, because she would sit at the waiting table in the takeout area, open every single container, and inspect all of it.
That was when the complaints always started. The fries were never hot, fresh, or crispy enough, so she’d send them back. There wasn’t enough pork for the kids’ sandwiches, so she wanted more. Not enough cheese sauce, not enough shredded cheese, not enough chips—you can guess the rest.
The list just kept growing. On top of that, she somehow ended up with a stack of “free kids’ meal” coupons that were blank—no manager signature, no date, nothing showing they were actually valid. One coupon is one thing, and normally only one could be used per transaction.
But she insisted on using two at once so both kids’ meals would be free. It got to the point where we had to run it by the general manager, even if that meant calling him on his day off. He was not great at putting his foot down, so he usually approved it, but by then she was costing the restaurant money.
It just wasn’t sustainable to keep serving her. Nine times out of ten, food had to go back to the kitchen, which meant product gone, and time gone. One of our other managers, Billy, was tough and never let customers push her around. She was great. Eventually, she decided to ignore the general manager’s usual approach and banned Nacho Lady for good.
When it finally happened, we all gathered in the office and watched the security cameras while Billy told her off. It was unforgettable. I eventually left the restaurant industry and management because that line of work can be brutal, but I still appreciate that I walked away with a true crazy customer story.
32. They Are All This Together
I work at a grocery store that only carries natural foods. That means no artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, and similar ingredients, plus no products containing certain things like high-fructose corn syrup. We have an internal list of ingredients that aren’t allowed, and we’ve even had to stop carrying some best-selling products when reformulations added something on that list.
Because of the kind of store we are, we get customers from all across the political spectrum, including some pretty extreme ones. This story is about one man who came into the store several times. I’ll call him Mr. Q, since I never actually learned his name. He had been a semi-regular customer even before I started working there. My first experience with him was indirect.
I was supervising the front end and placing vendor orders when he went through one of my cashier’s lanes—Melissa’s. Unfortunately for her, nobody else was in line, so he just stood there talking at her. Then I heard a phrase that immediately got my attention. I don’t remember the full sentence, but I definitely heard the word “QAnon.”
That made me listen more closely. He could have been mocking it, or he could have been a believer. Once it became clear he was going on about right-wing conspiracy theories, I told another manager I was going to rescue Melissa, who was doing the usual customer-service smile and nod routine.
My solution was to get to a phone where he couldn’t see me and page Melissa to the loading dock so she could disappear for a few minutes. This happened before the pandemic, so our general manager was still around. When I used the phone outside his office, he gave me a puzzled look until I explained, “There’s a crazy guy at her register.” He just laughed.
That visit ended there. Then, after the pandemic began, our store had a policy that masks were required, but if someone claimed a medical condition, we had to let them in anyway. That was frustrating, because plenty of people clearly used it as an excuse. Naturally, Mr. Q was one of them. He was quiet enough while shopping, but when he got to the exit, he stopped, turned around, and started loudly declaring that the pandemic was fake because otherwise “people would be dropping like flies in the streets.”
We all just rolled our eyes and let him leave. That should have been the end of it, but then came his third and final visit. By that time, the store had switched to a strict mask-required policy with no medical exemption.
By then we were used to people arguing with us, claiming it was against the law, saying he was going to file lawsuits, all of that. When Mr. Q came in, another manager, Aaron, spotted him first. He was busy with another customer, so he warned me and said, “That guy is a mess. Good luck.”
Our usual approach with unmasked customers was simple: take a box of complimentary masks over and politely ask if they needed one. Most of the time, people had just forgotten. That was not the case here. I walked up and said, “Hi, do you need a mask today?” He replied, “I have a medical condition.”
I told him, “I’m sorry, but everyone inside the store still has to wear a mask. We do offer curbside pickup, though. Since you already have a list, we’d be happy to shop for you, take payment, and bring your groceries out to the car.”
That immediately annoyed him. He said, “Do you know the United States Constitution? Do you realize you’re violating my rights?” I stayed calm and answered, “Sir, this is private property, and we do require masks.” By then Aaron had finished with his customer, so he came over and backed me up by saying, “Right. We’re not the government.”
That’s when Mr. Q took things way too far. He dramatically announced that he felt sick, then fake-coughed on both of us. At that point, any remaining customer-service politeness was over. Aaron told him, “You need to leave right now. You are no longer welcome here.” Mr. Q took that as a cue to launch into another rant about his rights.
So Aaron told me to call the authorities. Mr. Q then switched topics and started yelling that we were hurting people with the products we sold. While he was ranting, I went to the phone and started dialing. We had called the authorities often enough during that period that we practically knew half the department.
Once Mr. Q realized what I was doing, he decided to abandon his cart and head for the door. Aaron pulled out his phone, started recording, and followed him outside. Mr. Q spent the next five minutes pacing around the parking lot and shouting at Aaron. It was completely unhinged. One minute he was accusing us of tainting customers' food, the next he was ranting about Michelle Obama.
Aaron kept repeating that he needed to leave and that he was banned from the store. Then, when Mr. Q noticed Aaron was filming him, he started shouting strange things about Aaron being like Michelle Obama too. Thankfully, all he did was pace and yell. After I finished calling the authorities, I joined Aaron outside and had another manager cover the front end.
Unfortunately, Mr. Q left before law authorities arrived. Since he hadn’t bought anything, we didn’t have his full name to give them. After the general manager reviewed the video, he officially banned Mr. Q from the store. The plan after that was simple: if he ever came back, we would call the authorities immediately and inform him of the ban in front of them.
That way, if he returned again after that, they could arrest him for trespassing. Thankfully, he never came back.
33. We Cooked The Cluck Out Of It
We sent out an order of grilled chicken exactly the way the customer requested it—well done. To make sure of that, we left it on a little longer before serving it. The customer sent it back, saying it was undercooked. We were all confused, but we decided to make absolutely certain it was fully cooked the second time.
The chicken went into the microwave for a minute, then back onto the grill for several more minutes before being sent out again. By then, everyone in the kitchen had the feeling this customer was trying to angle for a free meal. Then she sent it back a second time, again saying the chicken was still raw.
At that point the line cooks were furious, because there was no way it could have been more cooked without turning into charcoal. Still, no one was willing to hand over a free meal. So, under the manager’s direction, we cut the chicken into cubes, microwaved it again for several minutes, and grilled it even longer.
The customer still complained, but she ate the chicken anyway. By that stage, it must have had the texture of warm sawdust.
34. Left In A Stew
I used to own a restaurant, and one day a table of three came in and ordered fish stew. It took about 45 minutes to make because everything was prepared fresh to order, and the menu clearly said so. I also always made a point of telling customers, “That will take at least 40 minutes. Are you okay waiting that long?”
They said yes, they definitely wanted the fish stew. So I sent the order to the kitchen, brought them some bread, tuna spread, and a few things to snack on, and got their drinks started. About 15 minutes later, the woman waved me over and asked if the stew would be much longer.
I told her it would still be at least another 25 minutes. She asked if there was any way to make it cook faster. There wasn’t. She then started complaining that other places she knew in Lisbon never took that long to make fish stew and began listing famous restaurants.
I told her I understood, but there wasn’t anything I could do, and I had warned them about the wait before placing the order. She said it was disgraceful and that we should be ashamed of our service, then asked for another glass of red. When the fish stew was finally ready, I brought it to the table and asked whether they needed anything else.
They said no, so I moved on to other tables. Five minutes later, I returned to ask if everything tasted good and whether they needed anything. They said everything was fine. I went off again, and a few minutes after that, they waved me over once more and said there were two flies in the stew.
I looked down, and sure enough, there were two flies in it. It was strange because my mother ran the kitchen, and she was obsessive about cleanliness. I apologized sincerely and asked if she wanted the complaints book or would prefer to order something else.
She said she wanted the complaints book and also wanted to speak to the manager. Since I was the owner, that meant me. I stayed polite, apologized again, and told her there would be no charge. She filled out her complaint and then went to the bathroom.
While clearing the table, I found something infuriating: a Ziploc bag with three flies in it under her chair.
I waited until she came back and said, “I found this near your chair. If you ever come back to this restaurant, we will not serve you. I’m also going to warn the other restaurant owners nearby, so this trick won’t work again. Now please leave.”
She denied it was hers and said she was going to call the health inspectors to shut us down. I pulled an image of her from the security footage and sent it around to other restaurant owners in the area.
35. A Bunch Of Suck Ups
I work at a vacuum repair shop, and people pay far less attention to their vacuums than you’d expect. I can’t count how many times someone has come in to pick up a machine and said, “This isn’t mine,” or “Mine didn’t have scratches down the side.”
I would always tell them, “Yes, it is yours, and it came in with those scratches already on it.” After it happened a couple of times, we started taking photos of every unit, including the serial number and the customer’s information. We also gave customers their serial number and required them to bring it back when picking up the vacuum. We thought that would solve the issue, but it didn’t.
Even with all that documentation, I once had a woman nearly in tears insisting we did not have her vacuum. We showed her the photos from drop-off, her customer information, and the matching serial numbers, and she still refused to believe it. Apparently, in her mind, we were running some elaborate scheme where we swapped people’s vacuums around for fun. People really need to pay more attention to their own stuff.
36. A Red Flag
We have one of those self-serve lottery machines. Do you play numbers, Mega Millions, or Scratch-Offs? You can do all of that at this machine. But one grown woman, I swear, seemed determined not to listen, even though she kept saying she had no idea what she was doing. I still tried my best to walk her through it.
I said, “OK, right in the middle of the screen there are three big blue boxes. Tap the middle one.” She pressed the Powerball button instead, which was on the far left in a row of four boxes. I tried to correct her and said, “No, that’s Powerball. You need to tap the red rectangle at the top right of that window where it says ‘Close’ so this will go away.”
She then pressed the tiny red button by the quantity bar. I repeated that she needed to tap the box with the word “Close” in it, but she still was not listening. Instead, she stared hard at the bottom of the screen, where there was literally nothing red at all. This went back and forth for a solid twenty minutes. Please, someone rescue me.
37. A Tuna Travesty
I was a line cook at a fairly upscale seafood restaurant. In the middle of a busy Saturday dinner rush, we got an order for ahi tuna tartare. Our tartare plating was pretty elaborate and took a good seven minutes to put together. That day, I happened to be the one making it. I sent it out, and it looked beautiful.
There were wasabi and sriracha aioli designs around the cucumber slices, with seaweed salad and ginger arranged around a perfectly stacked tower of raw tuna marinated in ponzu and eel sauce.
I sent it out the window, and it came back almost immediately. The reason completely threw me. The woman who ordered it “doesn’t do raw fish.” She wanted us to sauté the fish and rebuild the plate for her with a sad pile of well-done tuna chunks dropped in the middle.
Freepik, stockking
38. Stuff It Lady
I worked at a restaurant where we served a grilled two-pound lobster for $60. It was already substantial, but you could also get it stuffed with crab meat and bread crumbs for an extra $10. A woman at my table asked about the added cost and said, “Ah, well, I’d love to get the stuffing, but I’m not going to run up the bill that much.”
I told her I understood, smiled, and rang in the basic grilled lobster. As it turned out, the kitchen made a mistake and prepared it with the stuffing anyway. I brought it to her and explained that there would be no extra charge since it was the kitchen’s mistake, and told her to enjoy it. Big mistake.
She ate the entire lobster, then waved me over and said, “Yeah, I know this had the stuffing and everything, but that’s not what I ordered, and I’d like them to remake it. I’m still not very full because it was mostly bread crumbs.”
I politely explained that it was the exact same amount of lobster, with bread crumbs and crab added. Then she said it seemed like we had taken out a lot of the lobster to make room for the bread crumbs. At that point, my manager came over and assured her that wasn’t the case. She still demanded another one.
She started making a big scene about how “this wasn’t what she ordered” and how the upgraded version left her hungry. Naturally, the kitchen was furious. We remade it, didn’t charge her for the second one, and even offered to comp her dessert to keep her happy. But that wasn’t even the worst part.
After all of that, she left me no tip on a $140 bill, and made sure to write on the receipt, “the service was HORRIBLE,” probably because she could tell we were all disgusted by how little tact she had.
39. Having Her Cake And Eating It Too
I used to work part-time at a bakery inside a grocery store. I had my fair share of difficult customers. To explain how it worked, we had a binder with laminated pictures of about 100 different cake designs our decorators made regularly.
A customer would flip through the binder, choose a design, and tell me the details: when they needed it, what size, what flavor, whether they wanted color changes, and so on. Our decorators came in at 7 AM and stayed however long it took to finish the orders.
Usually, they were gone by early or mid-afternoon. The bakery closed with the store at 9 PM. One night, around 8:15 or 8:20, a woman came in and said she needed a cake. I assumed she meant one of the cakes in the cooler that we kept ready for anyone who wanted something quick and simple.
So I pointed to the cooler and asked if she saw anything she liked. Then came every retail worker’s nightmare. Apparently I was unintentionally hilarious, because she started laughing and said, “No, sweetie, I need a wedding cake.” Fine, no problem. I grabbed an order form, wrote down her information, and asked what day she needed it.
“Tonight.”
Keep in mind, the store was closing in about 40 minutes, so even if I had known how to decorate a cake, I still wouldn’t have been able to help her. I told her there were no decorators there at the moment, but I could make sure it was ready first thing the next morning. She was clearly unhappy, but said that would be fine.
I kept taking the order and asked what size she wanted. Ours was not an upscale bakery, and the prices reflected that; most of our products came in frozen. Our cakes came in a set range of standard sizes.
She pulled out her phone and shoved it in my face, saying, “Whatever that is.” When I saw the screen, I almost laughed. It showed a gorgeous cake with smooth white frosting, seven or eight tiers, and decorations made from fondant and blown sugar.
Before I went any further and let her get her hopes up, I told her that just wasn’t going to be possible. I wasn’t trying to insult our decorators, but the truth was that most of them were talented home bakers without formal culinary or cake-decorating training.
I politely referred her to a more upscale bakery I knew, one that was much better equipped to help her. Then came the dreaded six words: “Can I speak to your manager?” At that point, I had worked in that bakery for a little over a year, and I was capable of closing the department by myself.
So I told her I was the only one there, but I offered to leave a note with her name and number so my manager could call her the next day. “Fine, then. Let me talk to a store manager.” There were usually one to three store managers on duty at night overseeing the entire grocery store and all of its departments.
So I paged a store manager to the bakery. The whole time we waited, she kept glaring at me. A manager I got along with came over a few minutes later and asked what the problem was.
I explained everything before she went to speak with the customer. The second we walked over, the customer started telling lies about me, saying I had been rude and refused to help her. I tried to defend myself, but the manager told me to keep working on closing tasks in the back.
Ten minutes later, she came back shaking her head and rubbing her temples. “That woman was crazy.” Customer service really is something.
40. A Ban Challenge
Today, a man bought something at my register. After he paid, he said, “Actually, I’m banned here. What do we do now?” I just stared at him for a second, my brain basically shutting down. I was stunned by the audacity of someone coming back after being banned, then casually telling me about it after making a purchase.
I asked my supervisor, who sighed and said he got lucky this time and that I should tell him to take his things and leave. But that wasn’t enough for him. He started trying to provoke me, saying, “And what about next time, huh?” I explained that I wasn’t authorized to decide how long his ban lasted and that if he wasn’t sure, he should probably not come back.
He kept going, now openly harassing me. “Yeah, what do you want to do? Do you want to call the authorities? Huh? Huh?” At that point, I was close to crying, because he would not stop and I didn’t know what else to say. Then a woman in line stood up for me and told him to leave me alone because he was making me nervous.
“Yeah, I can see you’re shaking. I wonder why,” he said. And I was shaking, because it was taking everything I had not to cry in front of everyone. After being rude to the woman too and telling her to mind her business, he finally left. My heart really goes out to that woman, who was third in line, and told me, “Honey, don’t ever let a man talk down to you like that! Just remember: big ego usually means insecurity.” That honestly made me feel a lot better.
41. Mussel Madness
A very rude woman came in and ordered mussels. After my friend brought out her plate, the woman insisted that the kitchen had removed some of the meat from the shells. My friend tried to explain that the mussels are cooked live in the pan, so there’s really no way there could be more empty shells than actual mussels.
The woman then spread the shells and meat all over the tablecloth to prove her point. Instead, she proved herself wrong and stormed out. The awkward part was that she was dining with three friends, who were completely embarrassed and paid for the meal while leaving a HUGE tip.
42. A Few Sandwiches Short Of A Picnic
I used to work at a sandwich shop where customers filled out their order on a paper bag and wrote their name on it. When the order was ready, we’d call out their name and they’d come grab it. Making a sandwich took about five minutes, so most people would get their drink and sit down to wait—but some very entitled customers did not.
They would come in, place their order, walk straight to the end of the prep line, and just grab whatever sandwich was sitting there right as the actual customer was coming to pick it up. Then they’d sit down and start eating it.
Of course, these sandwich thieves would get upset when the sandwich was nothing like what they ordered, then march angrily to the front of the line to complain. At the same time, the people whose sandwiches had been taken would also come up wondering what happened.
We ended up making a ton of replacement sandwiches because a group of clueless people couldn’t grasp one simple idea: if they didn’t fill out the bag, and their name wasn’t on it, then it wasn’t theirs.
43. Thirsting For A Fight
I work part-time as a server. About a month ago, I had a table with a mother, father, and their son, who looked to be around 10. At first they seemed completely normal—but the whole situation went bad very quickly.
After I put in their order and brought their drinks, I had to check on my three other tables that had been seated just before them. I spent about five minutes introducing myself to a party of 10 and taking their orders. Then I went back to the first table because the mother was waving me over.
She told me they needed more water. The cup was still half full, but I said I’d bring it as soon as I could. I went to my other two tables and took their orders...and then everything blew up. Suddenly, I heard her yelling at a teenage carryout worker. I walked over to see what was wrong. She was furious because I hadn’t brought the water immediately, and then she started yelling at me too. I rushed back and brought her a whole pitcher of water because she was clearly determined to make an issue of it.
Then she started yelling because I hadn’t refilled her son’s Sprite, even though they hadn’t asked and his cup was still about three-quarters full. I apologized and went to get the Sprite while also letting my manager know what was happening.
While I was getting the refill, her husband stood up and started shouting in my manager’s face from just a few inches away. And the worst part? They kept yelling and complaining, so another manager ended up giving them the meal for free and even handed them a gift card.
Keep in mind, this entire meltdown was over WATER. It had only been about three minutes since I told them I’d get it for them before they completely lost it. I apologized to my other tables for the disturbance, but they were very kind and even apologized to me for the family’s behavior.
I couldn’t help wondering what life is like for their son when he doesn’t do exactly what they want.
44. Being Extra
I always find it wild when people think extra food should be free. You’re not going to walk into a restaurant and get extra meat, queso, or guacamole at no charge. I had a couple come in and order a salad. They asked for extra meat, then queso, then even more queso.
I explained that they would be charged for each extra scoop. She completely lost it. She started yelling at me about how unfair it was, how she shouldn’t have to pay for more than one, and how the other location never charged her like that. But I had the perfect response.
I smiled and told her I’m actually the general manager of that location too, so I knew for a fact she had never gotten that treatment there. Sorry, but extra food isn’t free. Then she started demanding the corporate number and the store owner’s contact information.
I told her I couldn’t give out anyone’s private number and asked her to leave. She’s now banned from both stores. She did file a complaint...but guess who reads those and makes the follow-up calls? Me. She hung up on me when I called.
45. Like Money In Your Pocket
I used to work at Kohl’s. One day, a customer came to the service desk with her receipt and said the cashier hadn’t applied her 30% off coupon. Normally, that’s an easy fix, but when I checked the receipt, the total was $0.00. She had already used Kohl’s Cash to cover the entire purchase. I explained that the system applies dollar-off coupons first.
Only after that does it apply the percentage discount. That’s just how the system works, no matter what order the coupons are scanned in. Since her Kohl’s Cash brought the total down to zero, I told her the computer couldn’t take 30% off of $0.00. She did not like that at all. She immediately started yelling and accusing me of stealing money from her.
I explained that Kohl’s Cash is basically a store coupon, not actual cash. That only made her more upset. She said she would never shop at Kohl’s again, threw her 30% coupon at me, and walked out.
46. Trim The Fat
I once had a customer eat an entire 14-ounce prime rib, except for the fat. He’d made a little pile of it on his plate and asked me to weigh it so he could get a prorated refund based on the weight of the fatty pieces. Prime rib usually has a strip of fat running through the middle and often comes with some fat on the end.
Most people eat the fat along with the meat. On its own, it probably didn’t weigh much, but after the guy had finished the rest of the meal, the leftover pile looked like a tidy stack of strange food scraps.
47. Burrito Bust
I was the assistant manager at a burrito shop. During our town’s annual festival, the place was always packed. We had 30 chairs, and there were easily twice that many people waiting for food; the line stretched out the door.
One day, it was so busy that we were just calling out names, handing over orders, and politely telling people we were over capacity and needed them to head outside to the festival tables. One guy complained about the wait, and our cashier told him we were doing our best.
When he finally got his food, he immediately asked for it to be remade. He said that after waiting so long, he knew it had to be cold. So we bumped it to the front and got a fresh one out in seconds. Then he stood right by the window and ate it. I didn’t have time to argue, but I started getting irritated when I saw him heading back to the register.
He complained that he wanted another burrito because the one he had was wrong. He wouldn’t explain what was wrong with it, only that it was wrong. The owner came storming out of the kitchen, opened the register, and pulled out a $20 bill.
He walked over, took the half-eaten $7 burrito out of the guy’s hands, gave him the $20, and told him to leave. Honestly, it was pretty satisfying. That day I learned that if you become enough of a problem, my boss would literally pay you to go away.
48. Cold Cash
I’m not a manager, just someone who doesn’t tolerate nonsense. When I worked at a movie theater, a woman came in wanting four tickets, which cost around $26 at the time, and dumped a bag of loose change on the counter that wasn’t rolled or counted.
I asked if she had counted it, and she said no. I told her I wasn’t going to count it and that she could step aside and sort it herself. She got upset and said I had to do it for her. I told her I didn’t. We went back and forth for a minute until she brought out the classic line: “I want to speak to the manager.”
I just said, “No.” She kept demanding, and I kept saying no. My manager eventually came out because she could hear the woman yelling. She asked what was going on, and the woman said I was the rudest employee she’d ever seen. My manager looked at me and simply said, “We are not required to count that much loose change.”
Even after that, the woman kept shouting, and I finally told her to leave or I’d call the authorities. I probably wasn’t actually going to, but it usually got people to back off. She rolled her eyes and said I needed to bag up her money for her. I just told her to have a nice day.
49. A Magical Appearance
Oh wow, this takes me back. When I was younger, I was an assistant manager at Blockbuster Video. For the younger crowd: before Netflix, you had to go to a video rental store and pay to borrow a movie. And yes, they came on chunky things called VHS tapes.
One evening I was working when the phone rang. A woman was on the line. She said she’d gotten a call earlier about some overdue videos, and she was furious. I pulled up her account and, sure enough, three movies were still checked out and had been due back a week earlier.
She completely lost it, yelling over the phone that her daughter had rented the movies for a sleepover and had definitely returned them. I checked the return bin, but nothing. I even went out to the shelves to see if maybe they had already been put back. Still nothing.
Eventually she started accusing me of trying to cheat her. She said she was going to tell her husband, who was an attorney, and that he’d sue us into the ground. I went on with the rest of my shift, not knowing what was coming. Sure enough, about an hour later, she came marching into the store.
She walked straight to the counter and slammed down a stack of three VHS tapes, yelling at the poor clerk. I saw it from the other side of the store while I was checking in returns. I looked at the tapes, and sure enough, they were the same ones her daughter had rented and supposedly returned. But that still wasn’t the end of it.
The next day I was working again when a man in a suit came in. He was very polite and asked to speak to a manager. I went over, and he told me he was the lawyer. He wanted to apologize for his wife’s behavior. I’m not kidding—he actually said, “We’re trying to get her under control. The doctor just prescribed her Xanax.”
50. It’s Never Enough
I was eating at a cheap, old-school diner that had been around since the 1950s. Most of the meat was frozen, and almost nothing was made fresh except the coffee and eggs. You knew exactly what kind of place it was.
A couple came in with their two young boys, maybe six or seven years old. The mom made a small scene about not wanting a booth and insisting on a table. There was a whole wall of booths and several open tables, but she specifically wanted the one in the middle of the room that still needed to be cleaned because the previous customers had just left.
She complained about having to wait for the one busboy covering the section to clear it, even after the manager personally got him to handle it right away. At that point I wasn’t paying too much attention, but they ended up sitting right next to us.
They ordered appetizers, steak, shakes for the kids, and more. Their waitress was handling several other tables too—probably a third of the floor—and at one point she brought coffee and a slice of pie to an elderly couple who had come in after them. Big mistake. She threw an absolute fit because “WE WERE HERE FIRST, WHY ARE THEY GETTING THEIR FOOD FIRST?!”
The manager came back and calmly explained that fried food and steak take time to cook, while hot coffee is ready all day and pie is already sliced and on display, so there’s no prep time. She settled down a little, but was still clearly annoyed.
She wouldn’t let the boys get their food from the buffet until her and her husband’s meals arrived. Once the adults’ food came out, she immediately started eating. The boys were only tall enough to peek over the buffet, not actually reach the serving utensils or serve themselves properly.
A waitress from another section noticed them struggling and came over to help, asking what they wanted on their plates. Another huge mistake. She jumped to her feet and caused another scene, yelling, “How dare you tell my kids what they can and can’t eat! Who do you think you are, handling their food?!”
The manager came out again. The waitress was an older woman with white hair and looked close to tears, thinking she had done something awful. The manager told her to take a break in the back while she tried to calm her down. She then demanded balloons for the kids, since the restaurant gave them out for birthdays.
They got the balloons, and she settled down again. The husband and kids stayed quiet through all of this. The boys looked embarrassed, and the husband acted like this happened all the time. The husband’s steak came out last. He didn’t seem thrilled with it, and she called for the manager a fourth time to complain that it was overcooked, dry, and so on.
They sent it back and demanded another. Then a third. And again, this was the kind of place you went to for greasy burgers, fries, and fish and chips. Steak was technically on the menu, but no reasonable person was expecting anything fancy. You got what you paid for.
The manager stayed calm the whole time and kept apologizing for their “less than ideal experience,” but aside from small, inexpensive things like the balloons, she didn’t really give them much. When she finally announced that they would never be coming back, the manager just said, “Sorry to hear that—have a nice night.” A total professional.
51. Listening In
I worked all through COVID at a supermarket. A few months ago, I found out I have permanent hearing damage and hearing loss from an illness I had between January and February. I’m still early in the audiology referral process, and my employer has been very supportive. They’ve been making sure I can keep working the same roles as before and feel just as confident doing them.
One day, a customer came to my till and somehow misunderstood one of our store offers. Basically, she wanted the discount, but she didn’t want one of the items that had to be included for the offer to apply. She didn’t realize that I had to scan everything and charge for the extra item so the discount would go through properly.
I processed the transaction that way, but not before she raised her voice and tried to grab the item she didn’t want out of my hands. At that point, I was pretty confused. I could hear parts of what she was saying, but she was talking so quickly that I couldn’t fully understand why she was getting so upset over a bag of frozen peas. Around then, she also started insulting my coworkers and me, saying we “shouldn’t work here if we don’t know what offers are on in the store.”
She also said the staff “know nothing,” basically implying that I should lose my job because she had misread the offer. At that point, I finally understood why she was so angry, so I asked one of my coworkers to come over and help.
She didn’t want to deal with me anymore, and by then she wasn’t willing to have a calm conversation. My coworker came over, and I started serving the other customers waiting while the woman kept telling my coworker that I was “incompetent” and “useless.” But the worst part was that she kept saying I “wasn’t listening” to her, even though I was giving her my full attention.
That repeated comment about me not “listening” really got to me. After months of dealing with illness, the last thing I wanted was to be reminded that I was losing my hearing. It was permanent, and not something that could be fixed like the other health issues I’d had before.
Working on the tills already takes a lot more effort now because of my hearing loss, and even though I try not to let it get to me, this was just too much in that moment. I ended up crying in the middle of a transaction while this woman kept berating me over something I had absolutely no control over.
Somehow I tried to pass it off as hay fever, which I don’t think anyone believed. Eventually, the customer realized she was wrong, and she hurried off after figuring out she had completely embarrassed herself in a store full of people. She never apologized to me, my coworkers, or the other customers.
I’d been wondering whether I should get a lanyard that clearly says I have hearing loss, but since I’m still early in the process, I didn’t want to buy one before I’d had proper testing done. After this, though, I knew I needed to get one as soon as possible.
Even aside from my hearing loss, that kind of behavior was completely unacceptable and deeply humiliating. It was one of the most insulting reactions I’ve ever experienced, especially over a bag of frozen peas. If she didn’t want them, we even had a perfectly good food bank where they could have been donated.
52. A Short Wick
I work at a candle shop, and this happened yesterday. An older woman came in—probably in her 80s—but she seemed perfectly sharp. She kept talking about needing a small gift for a man who had done some work in the building where she lived. I told her we also sold a line of men’s skincare and bath products.
She immediately scoffed and said that would be strange. So I said, “How about a candle?” Mostly because, well, I work in a candle shop. Her response instantly annoyed me. In a sharp voice, she said, “I can’t give him a candle. He’s not gay!”
I had to work hard not to react and just reminded myself that we have plenty of male customers, and even my straight boyfriend likes our candles.
Then she actually said, “That’s fine for him, but I can’t give this man a candle because he’s not gay!” At that point, I was done and walked away. My manager stepped in, because she has a lot more patience for ignorant comments than I do. After the woman left and we talked about it, my manager told me she ended up buying a notebook that said, “Slay the day.”
53. An Adult Behaving Like A Child
I once had dinner with a family friend who refused to eat anything that was brought to the table. We were at an old-fashioned country restaurant with no menus—you just ate what they served. She insisted they make her special portions of the traditional dishes, prepared exactly the way she wanted.
Then she actually went back into the kitchen to make sure they were following her instructions. She even told us proudly that she had them remake her vegetables three times. I was 12, and it was my birthday dinner. I had never been so embarrassed.
I told my parents that after she went back there, I wanted to see the big kitchen. What I really did was apologize to the cooks and servers for my guest.
54. Get Out Of My Hair!
When I was younger, I worked as a cook at a very popular Denny’s. It was basically the place everyone went. At the time, I had bright pink hair. One day, when things had slowed down a little before the bar crowd came in, the other cook on shift went on break, so I was working alone.
One of the servers came back and said a customer had found a hair in her French toast. I looked at the plate. Almost everything had been eaten except for two small pieces, and between them was a long black hair. I made her a fresh order of French toast, bacon, and hash browns, then brought it out to the table myself.
When I set it down, I got my point across. I said, “Here’s your new order. I’d just like to mention that your server has short blond hair.” Then I took off my hat and said, “I have pink hair, and you have long black hair—the exact same color as the one you found. Next time you want free food, try somewhere else.”
Then I went back to the kitchen line. My night manager and general manager both thought the whole thing was hilarious.
55. Onto Bigger, Better Things
About 15 years ago, I was a manager at Little Caesars. I usually worked three or four closing shifts a week and one opening shift. Back then, they had the $5 pizza deal, but it was normally just on Wednesdays.
Most of the rest of the week, they ran “two pizzas for X dollars” specials. This happened on one of those nights. A man called in an order, then came to pick it up. I think he ordered one of the two-pizza deals, but when he arrived, he also wanted bread and sauce.
The problem was, he hadn’t brought enough money for the bread and sauce—only enough for the pizzas. I apologized and told him there wasn’t anything I could do. He looked at me angrily and said, “My kids want that bread.” I repeated that I was sorry, but I couldn’t just give food away or I’d get in trouble.
There were several other customers in the store at the time. If he had been the only one there, I might have handled it differently. But his reaction was unbelievable. He completely lost his temper, called me names, and then said, “This isn’t over!” before leaving with the pizzas he had paid for.
The next day, I found out he had complained to the store manager and clearly made up a lot of the story. The manager called me at home and yelled at me over the phone. According to him, I had mocked the man for being “too poor” to buy bread for his kids and humiliated him in front of other customers.
In reality, I had apologized three or four times and simply explained that I could get in trouble for giving away food. But that wasn’t the end of it. She wrote me up for poor customer service and gave the man a credit for up to $40 worth of food whenever he wanted to use it.
He came in the very next day while both the store manager and I were working. I was completely polite to him, and I even apologized if there had been some misunderstanding. He still acted rude while I took his order, throwing in comments like “the customer is always right” and “the younger generation doesn’t know how to treat customers.”
Fine. I was glad the store manager was there that day, because I had already made up my mind. I prepared his pizzas properly, put them through the oven, made a slight mess, and then told the store manager I was done working there—especially for someone who treated employees so badly.
I walked out and told the man to enjoy his pizza. I had worked there for two years. A few days later, I got a 9-to-5 manufacturing job at a small family-owned company close to home. Until then, I hadn’t realized some workplaces actually treated their employees like people.
56. Nothing Comes For Free
I’m not in retail anymore, but I used to manage a popular mid-range handbag store—the kind known for “classic mom bags” in the $200–400 range. Most customers were great, but one woman marched in one day and demanded that we repair her 20-year-old bag for free.
And if we couldn’t do that, she wanted us to trade in this worn-out, musty 20-year-old bag for a brand-new one. Our policy had recently changed, so there were updated prices for repairs, and free service only applied within about a year of purchase—not two decades later. I explained that to her.
I was pretty young for the position, so she didn’t like hearing that from me and asked to speak to the manager. I told her I was the manager, and she got visibly furious. She started yelling about how she was going to call corporate and never shop there again.
Honestly, that didn’t feel like much, considering she didn’t want to pay to repair a 20-year-old bag and clearly hadn’t bought anything new from us in ages. I gave her my best customer service smile and said, “I’m sorry, that’s just the policy.” Then she demanded the company’s phone number.
So I gave her the same customer service number anyone could find online. She stormed off, leaving her keys behind on the counter. Halfway out the door, she realized it, turned around bright red, stomped back in, and grabbed them right in front of my smiling face.
It was honestly pretty funny. A few months later she came back, worked with someone else on the team, and didn’t even glance at me.
57. Sole Cost
I don’t work retail anymore, but I used to work at a big discount store—something like Marshalls or TJ Maxx. This happened just a few nights before my last day. We were about to close when a woman came up to my register with a pair of Michael Kors baby shoes and asked how much they were.
I told her the price was $27, and she immediately lost it. She insisted that couldn’t be right. I calmly said, “They’re $27, ma’am. Did you still want them?” She replied, “I want them, but not for that price.”
It was pretty obvious she wanted a discount, so I had to explain: “I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t do discounts. We’re already a discount store.”
She stared at me and said, “$27 for baby shoes? That’s ridiculous.” Since she clearly didn’t want to pay that much, I assumed she had changed her mind and offered to put them back. That made her even more upset. She snapped, “Um, excuse me? I said I want them!”
So I said, “Okay, ma’am, but they’re still going to be $27.”
She still didn’t believe me and told me to check again. So I turned the screen so she could see the price herself. At that point, she didn’t know what to say because she was clearly wrong, so instead she demanded my manager. My manager came over, confirmed the price, and walked away.
I thought that would be the end of it, but then she said, “I just don’t understand why they cost so much.” I tried to explain: “Well, they’re Michael Kors, which is one of the more expensive brands we carry. If you bought them somewhere else, they’d probably be at least $100. This is actually a good deal.”
She still wouldn’t let it go. She said, “I just don’t believe you. That’s not the real price. And you should know, I work for the Attorney General, and it would be a shame if you lost your job because you’re making up prices.”
Still trying to stay calm, I replied, “There’s really no reason for me to lie to you.” After that, she finally went quiet.
What did she think was happening? I was making $9 an hour to scan items. Why would she think I got a commission? If you want Michael Kors, you have to pay Michael Kors prices—even if it’s already marked down.
58. Salad Swindlers
I put together a pretty big takeout order for a family—somewhere around $65 to $75. They didn’t leave a tip, which wasn’t great, but it was takeout, so whatever. Then they came back four days later with the salad—probably the cheapest item in the whole order—and claimed it wasn’t fresh. It looked like it had been sitting in a hot car the whole time.
The bartender came to get me from the kitchen. She was really sweet, but not quite tough enough yet to deal with people trying to scam the restaurant. They asked for a full refund and handed me the receipt, but the date and time had clearly been cut off.
I looked at the receipt and asked where the rest of the food was if they wanted a full refund. Before they could even answer, I told them I had personally made their food four days earlier, and that they’d already tried something like this before. They denied it, but I just told them not to come back if they didn’t like my food.
59. Hiding Out Hooligans
I used to work at Outback. There was one family the wait staff all knew, and their behavior was unbelievably shady. At least twice before, they had ordered food, eaten part of it, and then disappeared into the bathroom until the bussers cleared the table, assuming they had left.
Then they would come back and demand a refund, claiming they hadn’t finished eating because the whole family had gone to the bathroom at the same time.
The first time I saw them, several servers and the manager told me exactly who they were, pointed out their table, and warned me not to clear anything until a manager said it was okay.
So I kept an eye on them. I watched them eat, get up, and disappear. Time passed. I saw the husband come out with the son, then quickly head back and rush him into the bathroom again. They were in there for about 30 minutes.
Of course, we never cleared the table. Later, the server told me the husband looked pretty unhappy when he had to pay the bill that night. We never saw them again the whole time I worked there.
60. Agree To Disagree
A woman was trying to return a board game that had already been opened and clearly played, and she didn’t even have the receipt. I offered her store credit, but she refused and asked for my manager. He came over and talked it through with her.
Eventually it turned into the usual argument: “Back in my day, the customer was always right.”
My manager tilted his head a little and said, “I’ve never really agreed with that idea.”
She got the store credit.
61. Faking It
I’m a former fast food worker, and this is my story about a seriously difficult customer. He came through the drive-thru and handed me a $100 bill that I was pretty sure was fake. Even though I already knew, the process was to run it through the deposit box bill feeder and see if it would accept it. Of course it didn’t, because it was obviously fake. Naturally, he did NOT appreciate what I was implying.
So he drove around, came inside, and started yelling and calling me names because I wouldn’t take the fake bill. He demanded the manager, and I quickly headed to the back because I wanted out of that surreal situation.
62. Limits Are For Other People
This happened around the time Walmart had just announced pickup service. We didn’t have any kind of “shop for customers” or personal shopper roles yet, so I probably should have seen the warning sign right away when my customer service manager (CSM) came up to a coworker and asked if I wanted to be a personal shopper.
I was in the middle of a transaction, and the coworker was quietly chanting, “Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.” But I was 19, inexperienced, and still thought grumpy last-minute Christmas shoppers were the worst thing retail had to offer. I also wanted to help out my coworker, so I said, “Uh, sure.” My CSM gave me a quick rundown about a woman who only had $85 to spend.
I was told to make sure she stayed close to $85, and that was basically the only warning I got before I was sent off with the woman. I never learned her real name, but I’ll call her Audrey, because she was just as dramatically whiny as the girl from the old Little Audrey cartoons. The first warning sign I noticed was that she immediately headed to the garden center to look at Christmas clearance items.
I had just met Audrey, so I assumed she was old enough to know her budget. She was probably around 65, if I had to guess. So I followed her. But wow, was I wrong. We wandered around the garden center, and she stopped to admire the special perfume and cologne gift sets companies put out for Christmas.
She picked one up and said it looked really nice and that she’d love to try it. Then she put it in her cart and kept adding more sets for different family members—some fancy slippers that massage your feet, plus not one, not two, but three light-up Christmas yard decorations.
I politely let her know she already had well over $150 worth of things in her cart, and she asked if I was sure. So I added up everything and included sales tax. She reluctantly put back several perfume sets and two lawn decorations, and then we moved on to the next part of the store.
Since she was old-school, she still used a landline and told me she needed AA batteries for it. She said she wanted rechargeable ones to save money, and I agreed that sounded reasonable...until she picked out a $30 pack. We spent forever in that aisle because she specifically wanted batteries that said on the package they were good for phones.
I got her to put back two more Christmas items, but several expensive things were still in the cart. Then I asked if she was ready to check out, and she told me she still needed groceries. I had already spent about 45 minutes with this woman, and I was way overdue for my break. My stomach just dropped.
Still, I followed her while she picked out groceries, reminding her the whole time that she had a strict budget. At that point, I completely understood why my CSM had passed this off on someone else. Once again, I told her she had over $150 in her cart, so she put a few things back, but she still didn’t believe me when I said she was over budget.
Instead, she insisted we go to checkout to confirm it. Maybe she was one of those people who had to see the total for herself, or maybe she just wasn’t thinking clearly, but I was too mentally drained to argue. So I followed her to a lane and helped unload her cart. When the cashier recognized her, he looked at me and nodded.
Then he asked, “How long did it take?” I told him it had been over an hour, and he rolled his eyes and said that sounded about right. But it still wasn’t over. The cashier rang up everything while I stood there watching, and this time he didn’t know her budget limit.
So he just kept scanning. The total got to around $193, and Audrey looked at it and said, “Oh.” She took off a few packs of meat, which brought it down by about $20, then handed the cashier a flavored drink enhancer and waited. The total was still $172, and she handed him another drink enhancer.
I told her we might need to remove one of the more expensive items, like the perfume set or the slippers. She was determined to keep the slippers but agreed the perfume could go. Great. That brought it down to $161, which was progress, at least. Then she slowly lowered the total a few items at a time, all while insisting that certain things were absolutely untouchable.
I thought she had put back the rechargeable batteries and swapped them for regular ones, since those were much cheaper. By then, the cashier had turned off his light, but he still had a line. His replacement had shown up, and with the lane closed, all of us were trying to talk this woman into giving up more items she insisted she needed.
When we got her down to $120, she started asking if she could just have some of the remaining items. The cashier clearly knew where this was going and told her she could have them if she paid for them. We tried again and again to get her to remove more things, but she insisted everything left was necessary. It was exhausting.
Then she started asking the replacement cashier if she could help pay for the items, and the cashier told her no—she could literally lose her job for doing that. Then Audrey turned to the man behind her and asked him for money, and he was actually about to offer until the cashier gave him a look and asked him not to. Clearly, this was not her first time doing this.
The cashier then told her she wasn’t allowed to ask other customers for money in the store and that she needed to put more things back. Ignoring that warning, the nice customer behind us handed her $10 anyway. She put back another frozen item and got down to $115. All she really had to do was return the cheap plastic lawn decoration...but she kept complaining about how badly she needed it and how much better it would make her yard look.
At that point, I sighed and decided I was done. I was going to remove the item from her order, pay for it myself, and hand it to her just so this whole ordeal would end. But the cashier warned me I couldn’t do that and could get in trouble for it. I took the item with me when I clocked out for break, grabbed my wallet from the back, bought it, and gave it to her.
I told her I didn’t even have a yard—I just wanted the whole thing to be over. Later, the CSM decided to ban her from the store. I was also allowed to take it easy for the rest of the day. It was an incredibly stressful experience, but about as close to a happy ending as I was going to get. And no, I didn’t get in trouble, which was a huge relief.
63. A Warm Send-Off
A group of four was seated in our dining room, proudly announcing that they were hard to please. One of these very particular diners ordered a room-temperature salad made of only mixed greens, avocado, salt and pepper, and a mix of Tabasco and olive oil.
I thought it was a little unusual, but I went ahead and had the pantry guy pull the greens from the cooler so they could warm up a bit. I made the Tabasco dressing, sliced our best avocado, and put the salad together.
The food runner took it from the cold pass, placed it on a tray, and brought it out. Then I heard a very clear complaint from the dining room. The server came back with the barely touched salad.
Apparently, the salad was still too cold, and the customer wanted us to “put it in the microwave for a minute or so, so it softens up.” I asked the server to confirm that this was exactly what the customer had said. She looked me straight in the eye and solemnly nodded.
So I tossed the plate into the industrial microwave, gave it about 10 seconds, and pulled it back out. It was practically melting in front of me. I put it back on the tray, and the server rushed it out.
Two minutes later, the server came back and told me, “She said it was the best salad she ever had and hopes we add it to the menu.” I finished my shift, went home, and needed a very long evening.
64. A Journey For Some General Tso’s
I used to deliver Chinese food. One night, I delivered to a couple of guys who were very obviously not in a normal state of mind. The guy who answered the door had huge pupils, and his friend had built a fort out of what looked like pillows and garbage bags. The delivery itself went fine.
I stayed calm enough not to make them nervous, but later we got a callback. My boss didn’t speak great English, and what turned into a shouting match on the phone somehow turned into a second trip for me. The guy wanted a refund because he said the food was bad, and my boss was fine with that under one condition—we had to get the food back.
So I headed back to their place, wishing I had some kind of self-defense item since I was delivering in a rough neighborhood. I got to the door, and Mr. Huge Pupils was much less friendly this time. He asked, “What is this, man, some kind of sick joke?”
I laughed and said, “No, man, they really want the food back.” But that wasn’t even what he was upset about. He said, “No, the fortune cookie, man.” Then he handed me the slip of paper, which had something so harmless on it that I don’t even remember what it said.
I told him, “That’s just one of those little sayings. It’s about looking at things from a different perspective, you know?” Apparently, that was the wrong answer. He informed me it was a Chinese saying and that they had poisoned his food. There I was, stuck with this guy refusing to hand over his half-eaten General Tso’s because he was saving it “for the FDA.”
I didn’t want the food back anyway, but my boss paid me well and was always flexible with my college schedule. So I told him he had every right to do that, and I just wanted to call my boss and let him know I couldn’t get the food back. I stepped outside, and he slammed the door.
My boss told me, “Don’t worry about it,” and honestly I should have just left. But I wanted to let the guy know it was fine, since he was clearly not thinking clearly. I knocked again, and when he opened the door, he threw the General Tso’s all over me. I just stood there, looking right at him. Then he said, “Be sick, you traitor,” and shut the door.
65. Aw, Muffin
I used to love letting angry customers yell themselves out for a few minutes, and then, with a completely straight face, asking, “Do you want a cookie?” Right before their heads practically exploded, I’d point to the bakery case and say, “It’s free. You can have a free cookie while we try to sort this out.”
Most of them were so caught off guard by the sudden change in tone—and a little embarrassed by how strongly they’d reacted—that they couldn’t stay angry, even if they turned down the cookie. And for the people who accepted, it’s pretty hard to keep fuming while eating a free cookie. Nine times out of 10, I could solve whatever issue they had pretty quickly by offering something small, like a gift card or a coupon.
66. It’s Never Enough
One story that really stands out to me happened a few years ago when I worked for a cell phone company. We gave everyone unlimited data for about three months at no extra charge. It was basically a stress test for the network, but since everyone was getting free data, I figured nobody would have much to complain about. I was wrong.
I spoke with one woman who demanded a manager because unlimited phone data apparently wasn’t enough—she wanted unlimited hotspot data too. She even said she was going to “get us all fired” because we wouldn’t give her unlimited hotspot data, which wasn’t even a feature we offered to paying customers at the time.
She went on and on for quite a while, and in the end she got passed through about five different levels of supervisors before finally giving up.
67. On The Edge
A woman demanded that I get her a manager today. She wanted to complain that some items had prices on them while others didn’t. She started questioning me about pricing procedures, but I was assigned to self-checkout duty, and since I’d never seen her in the store before, I just said I had nothing to do with stocking.
When the manager came over, this lady launched into a full rant. While she was standing at the counter complaining, she also started waving her hands around and saying the edges of the counter were too rough and sharp. She even claimed she was lucky she hadn’t hurt herself, or she would have called the health board. I wipe that counter down probably 200 times a day.
I can confidently say there is nothing sharp about it, because I’d be one of the first people to report it if there were. The employees where I work are very aware that even something small, like a sharp edge on a cart, could lead to a lawsuit in the kind of economic and opportunistic climate we live in now.
My manager handled it well, but the other associates and I spent the rest of the shift laughing about it. Her dramatic claims about how random things—like the store’s color scheme and other nonsense—could have been dangerous were just ridiculous.
68. His Theory Went Up In Flames
At our restaurant, the only pizza on the menu was a basic Margherita. One customer asked me to make him a meat lovers-style combo pizza with white sauce, which we didn’t even have. I had to reduce some Alfredo sauce to make it work. It took about 15 to 20 minutes, and then he sent it back because the bottom of the pizza was too dark for him.
He insisted I had cooked it too close to the flames, and that was why it tasted too burnt. The funny part was that we used a standard three-deck conventional oven, so there weren’t any flames anywhere near it.
69. What A Piece Of Trash
When I worked at a restaurant in Cincinnati during high school, I saw some pretty memorable things. It was a family-owned Tex-Mex place with good food at cheap prices.
One day, a guy ordered a taco salad to go. It had a lettuce base with meat, onions, beans, tomatoes, dressing, and cheese, and customers could add whatever extras they wanted. It was a very hot summer day, and his order was completely normal at the start of my shift.
Near the end of my shift, I got a complaint, which surprised me because I didn’t think I had made any mistakes. The manager told the guy to come back in so we could figure out what had gone wrong, and if it was our fault, we would refund him.
He came back with the taco salad after it had been sitting in his car for hours. The receipt showed it was almost four hours old. The lettuce was soggy, the cheese had melted, and the container was full of watery liquid. It had obviously been left in a hot car for a long time.
He still expected us to refund his money and give him a fresh salad for free. We refused, because it was clearly his own fault. If he had taken it somewhere and eaten it within an hour or so, it would have been perfectly fine. Instead, he threw a full tantrum.
Eventually, he accepted that we weren’t going to give him free food. Then he walked toward the door holding his gross salad and loudly announced to the whole dining room, “Trash can’s full.” He opened the container, dumped the salad on the floor, and walked out like he had somehow proved a point.
Freepik, jcomp
70. Would You Like Fries With That?
I used to manage a sandwich shop. Our policy for pickup orders was that we didn’t cook the fries until the customer arrived, so they’d be fresh. We always explained that on the phone. One woman called in an order and asked if I could cook the fries right away so she wouldn’t have to wait.
I told her I couldn’t do that, because if she didn’t arrive within about five minutes, the fries would be cold and soggy. She seemed to understand.
Then, of course, she showed up about 45 minutes after placing the order and started yelling at me because the fries weren’t ready.
I explained that if I had cooked them when she called, they would have been cold and soggy by the time she arrived. She didn’t care. She kept going on about how she was a nurse and didn’t have time to wait for fries.
I told her she could either wait for them to cook—which literally takes two minutes—or leave. She waited.
71. Something’s Fishy
I worked at a grocery store in high school, and I came back the following summer for a seasonal job. We ran this ten-for-$10 promotion where a bunch of items were on sale for $1 each, and the 11th one was free.
The store was open 24 hours, but all sale prices started at 6 a.m., and we weren’t allowed to activate them early in the register. It was clearly listed on the front page of the flyer and in the app, which matters here. Sometimes I worked the overnight shift when they needed coverage.
One night, around 4 a.m., a woman came in with an entire cart full of tuna—easily 300 to 400 cans. She had basically cleared the shelf displays into her cart. Naturally, none of it rang up at the sale price, and she immediately started yelling at the cashier. The cashier calmly explained that the sale didn’t begin until 6 a.m., but the woman kept shouting about false advertising and insisted she should get the discount anyway.
I stepped in and tried to calm her down, but that only made her angrier. I showed her the part of the ad that clearly said the prices were valid starting at 6 a.m., and she absolutely lost it. “Are you seriously arguing with a customer right now?!” she shouted. I told her I wasn’t arguing, just pointing out what the ad said, and she demanded to see the manager.
He told her exactly what we had already explained, and she yelled about not understanding “why she even bothered shopping here.” I didn’t go back to that job the next summer.
72. Make Way
I work for a grocery store chain, and Tuesdays are what we call “Specials Day.” My job is to replace last week’s sale items with the new week’s sale items. It’s a long, exhausting project, but I volunteered for it after getting promoted because I actually like doing the jobs other people avoid.
That day, I was working in the specials aisle. I was getting more irritated as time went on because the whole job would have taken a third of the time if they had just let me do it while the store was closed. But for some reason, they wanted customers shopping around me while I was surrounded by 10 pallets of random merchandise.
By the time I got to the end of my ninth pallet, I had basically boxed myself into a corner of the aisle. It felt like pretty clear nonverbal communication: “Maybe don’t come down this way. If you do, I’ll have to move everything and start over.” But of course, a woman came walking right toward me from the end of the aisle.
I’m generally a laid-back person, but I don’t say much to customers. My store is in a wealthy area, and a lot of those shoppers do not want conversation from a sweaty guy in a store uniform. So when she kept coming closer, I realized she was probably going to try to squeeze around my pallet—or worse, step on it.
I quickly moved the pallet jack and shifted the pallet out of her way, then looked up at the ceiling for a second, silently wondering why some customers are so oblivious. Apparently, that glance at the ceiling really offended her. As she walked through the path I had cleared, she gave me a half-hearted apology in that very specific customer way.
It was the kind of apology that sounded more like, “Sorry, worker. Hope I didn’t trouble you by existing.” I nodded and turned back to move everything into place again. Apparently, she not only expected me to move, but also expected me to warmly reassure her that it was totally fine to interrupt my whole setup so she could save 15 steps.
Because I didn’t fully accept her apology and because I had looked at the ceiling for maybe three seconds, she decided I needed to be corrected. She started criticizing me for not smiling like some cheerful retail mascot all day. Then she used the classic line that always gets under my skin: “I don’t think you should be working here if that’s going to be your attitude.”
She said it while staring at me like I was part of a zoo exhibit. I didn’t respond and just kept working. I figured I couldn’t please everyone. Then she got in line at the checkout, which was only about 10 feet from where I was working. In her mind, I had now become the villain who had blocked her path.
She went out of her way to loudly complain to other customers about me and say I shouldn’t be allowed to work there. Honestly, I probably should have just ignored it. If I had let her vent, it might have ended with nothing more than a phone call or a strongly worded email to corporate. I should have just kept working.
But part of me wanted her to know that loudly criticizing employees to other customers was not acceptable in our store. So I calmly told her she needed to stop making a scene. The moment I said that, everything escalated instantly. She pulled out her phone and started recording me, and the situation got much worse.
She began asking loaded questions like, “Did you just tell me I can’t talk to other customers?” and “Do you think you have the right to trample on my First Amendment?” and “Who’s the manager here?” When someone starts recording you, there are two choices: walk away and risk being followed, or make the mistake I made and ask them to stop recording right away.
Naturally, asking her to stop only made her louder. She started accusing me of being a terrible person and saying she could get me fired whenever she wanted. At that point, I was just trying to get her to leave.
She had already made the whole thing worse by filming, clearly hoping to create some “look how badly I was treated” moment for the internet. I’m glad I didn’t lose my temper. I never raised my voice. I just stood there while she yelled. When she finally paid for her groceries, I asked her again to please leave if she was going to keep causing a scene.
Instead, she sat down near the cashiers and the exit and waited for me to go away before leaving. I told her I needed to see her leave. She said she wasn’t going anywhere until I was out of her sight. I stood my ground and said she needed to leave or I would have to call the authorities.
That was absolutely the wrong thing to say. Most people hear that and decide it’s time to back off. For reasons I still do not understand, her reaction was, “Good. Call them. I want them here.”
The problem was, I had no intention of actually doing that. It was empty. What was I supposed to say? “There’s a woman yelling at me and recording me”? In the worst-case scenario, she would twist the situation into something bigger and I’d end up at the center of some public mess. So after my bluff got called, I went into the office and called my direct manager.
I explained what had happened, and she basically told me to go back out there and de-escalate things. So I did, and I decided the best option was just to apologize. I told her, “I’m really sorry you had a bad experience today. I hope you come back and shop here. I understand what went wrong, and I can give you corporate’s contact information.” Then I told her to have a good day and gestured toward the door.
She sort of accepted the apology. She still kept talking about how awful I was and how I shouldn’t work there, but at least she calmed down a little—until she mentioned that she was an “investigator.” Since she had no badge or uniform, I asked what seemed like a reasonable question:
“An investigator for who?”
Her exact answer was, “Don’t play stupid. You know what kind of investigator.” Then she said she was going to call corporate and report that I was harassing her because she was an immigrant—which was especially ironic, since I’m an immigrant too. She told me I should expect to lose my job within 24 hours.
At that point, I just sat there and took it. There wasn’t much else I could do. Sometimes the only option is to let someone vent until they finally leave. As she was walking out, she noticed I was still watching to make sure she actually left. So she came back and accused me of watching her because I was “going to attack” her outside.
After that, I shut down even more. As one final point, she said she had “the means to retaliate” in her car and would “gladly use it” if I came outside. She finally left, and I called my boss and broke down crying out of pure frustration. My boss told me she was just a deeply unreasonable person and promised she would back me up if it turned into something bigger.
73. Time To Make The Pizzas
My older brother worked at Domino’s when he was in high school. I was about 12 or 13 at the time, waiting for him to take me home. While I was sitting there, a woman came in saying she had called in a big pizza order half an hour earlier—except it had only actually been about 20 minutes.
When she arrived, she was furious that the pizzas weren’t ready yet, even though they already had almost half of them finished. She started yelling, “Where are my pizzas? I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes!”
The manager came over, apologized, and asked her to be patient. He also pointed out that it doesn’t take only 20 minutes to make 20 pizzas. She got even more upset, so he distracted her and gave her a couple of medium pizzas that had been set aside for walk-in customers.
He gave them to her at a discount just to get her out the door. Later, when the customer who had actually been waiting for those pizzas came in, the manager apologized and explained that a really large order had delayed things. The guy just said, “Oh, no problem, man. Take your time.” The contrast between those two customers was wild.
74. Too Hot To Handle
I used to work at a pizza place that also sold slices during lunch, and we were usually pretty busy. One day, I took a fresh pizza that I had personally cut to the hot display in front. About a minute later, a man walked in, ordered a slice, and asked me to reheat it. I explained that I had just put the pizza out and it was still extremely hot.
He replied, “That’s what they always say.” He clearly thought I was lying or just being lazy, so he asked again for it to be reheated. So I reheated the slice, even though it was already hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth. After the usual minute in the oven, I handed it back to him.
Five minutes later, the service bell started going nonstop.
The guy said, “I’ve been sitting here for five minutes, and this pizza is still too hot to eat. I want a refund!”
75. What A Dough Head
I’m a chef at a pizzeria, and every so often we get a woman who orders a pizza and then tries to complain her way into getting it for free. We always refuse, and she always says she's going to leave a bad Yelp review or complains to whoever has the bad luck to answer the phone.
I still remember the most ridiculous complaint she made. One time, she ordered a pizza with gluten-free crust and said the crust was “too doughy,” so she demanded the pizza for free. The thing is, gluten-free crust comes out of the oven crisp as a cracker and feels almost the same even before it’s baked.
Even if someone somehow forgot to bake it properly, it would still be nearly impossible for it to turn out doughy. For about a week afterward, every time we made a gluten-free pizza, we’d joke with each other, “Make sure it’s not too doughy.”
76. A Little Bit Of Heat Went A Long Way
I was cooking brunch at a tennis club because I needed the extra money, and I ended up dealing with the same customer in two different situations.
The first time, a woman sent back her bacon because it was “too salty.” I just heated up the exact same strips and sent them back out. Suddenly, it was “much better.”
Then she came in again the next weekend and sent back her fresh fruit crepes because they were “too sweet.” I warmed the plate up and sent it back, and this time she said it was “great.”
77. She Fried My Nerves
A woman ordered fries for herself and her friend after church. I brought them out, and she said, “Oh, these are too cold. We want new fries.” So I went back and made the fries myself, cooked them a little longer than usual, and served them right after taking them out of the fryer. They were still steaming.
She looked at them, touched them, and said, “Oh, these are ICE COLD.” At that point, I had to get the manager involved.
Flickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer
78. Showering The Troubles Away
I work two days a week as a shift manager and three days as a cashier at a truck stop and rest area. We’ve got fast food, showers, parking for big rigs, and spaces for regular cars. Today’s problems, like most of the problems I deal with, were all about the showers.
A driver came downstairs, dropped his wet towels on the counter—even after my cashier pointed him to the towel bin—and then tossed his key on top of them.
My cashier asked him again to put the towels in the bin. He finally picked them up and said, “Oh, so you guys don’t have to touch them.” I said, “Yeah, some policies changed because of the pandemic.” Honestly, that had been the rule for at least the three years I’d worked there, but it seemed like the fastest way to end the discussion.
My cashier asked which shower he had used, and instead of answering, the guy just held up the numbered key. The problem was that his finger was covering the number, so we couldn’t read it. When my cashier reached for it, the guy lifted it higher so he had to stretch for it. At that point, I was getting seriously irritated. It was just so unnecessarily difficult.
I told him, “Way to make it complicated.” That set him off. He got right in my face and said he’d hit me hard. I told him to leave, and he started puffing himself up like he was about to swing, but instead said, “I’m not going to come after you. But you know what I will do? I’ll find your family and mess them up.”
I pulled out my phone and started recording. Right then, the store manager got there and heard the end of our shouting. He stepped between us when the driver got too close. Then the driver started yelling at him too: “Don’t get involved, bro. You don’t want this.” My boss just said, “This is my property.”
The driver calmed down pretty quickly after that, and they went outside. My boss told him the same thing I had: he wasn’t allowed back. End of story.
Then, by the end of my shift, we had another shower problem.
Our shower policy is simple: we hold onto something as collateral until we get the shower key and towels back. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s no big deal. The other one percent turns into a mess.
This time, a driver came down while my cashier had a line, so I asked whether he had brought his towels. He said no, because nobody told him to. The cashier told him they absolutely had. He just shrugged and said, “I don’t care, man. I’ve got a Lyft outside waiting. Give me my keys.”
He had left his personal keys with us, but since we hadn’t gotten the towels back, I told him he needed to go get them. He got belligerent with both me and my cashier. By then the overnight manager had come in, so he got pulled into it too.
After a few minutes of arguing, the driver said he was calling the authorities. I figured it was a bluff.
It wasn’t.
Like with the first guy, I started recording. This guy also threatened me. About seven minutes later, a couple of officers showed up. He was rude to them too, and he crowded the cashier enough that they had to tell him to step back and calm down.
One of the troopers came to the shower desk and asked about our policy, so we explained it. The driver repeated what he’d been saying all along: “I’m here for a shower. In and out. I don’t have time for this. I’ve got a Lyft outside. I just want my keys.”
Then came the best part of my day: the trooper escorted him upstairs and made him get the towels. Once he brought them back, we returned his keys and gave him his shower receipt. But I also told him that after today, he was no longer welcome on the property.
As they walked away, the trooper made sure the guy understood. He said, “Did you hear what the manager said? You’re not welcome here anymore. If you come back, you’ll be charged with trespassing.”
I left a note for my boss explaining everything and went home. If the driver had just said, “Sorry, guys, I forgot,” or even just acted respectfully, we probably would have handed his stuff back without much trouble. But he wanted to make it difficult.
I can be difficult too.
My main takeaway from the day is that my boss is great. He backed me up and literally stepped between me and a guy who openly threatened me and my family. He probably won’t love that I let the second incident drag on as long as it did, but sometimes in retail, you have to stand your ground.
79. The Best Offense Is A Good Defense
I had an extremely angry woman in the first lane of the drive-thru yelling at me. I just stood there and listened until she finished, then let the silence hang for a second. After that, I calmly said, “Ma’am, I think this conversation is over.” She seemed so caught off guard by the response that she just drove away in shock. It could have gone very differently, but I’m glad it didn’t.
80. Picture-Perfect Pizza
I once had a guy send back his pizza because it didn’t look like a picture of pizza he had on his phone. The photo wasn’t even from our restaurant, and it didn’t match anything we offered.
He carried the pizza back to the kitchen himself, said it was overdone—honestly, I thought it was closer to underdone—and shoved the picture in our faces. We still tried to make something similar to what he wanted, but if he hadn’t been so annoying about it, we would’ve been a lot more willing to help.
81. Meet Dave
What’s the male version of a Karen? Maybe Dave? I’m going with Dave. I was helping open an offshore call center, and this customer, Dave, refused to speak with anyone who wasn’t American. I am American, but during that phase of the project I was working at that location overseas. So when the call got escalated to me, his first question was, “Are you in the US?” At the time, the answer was no, and apparently that was completely unacceptable to Dave.
He hung up. Then he spent the next three hours calling back and hanging up. Every time, he’d ask for an American, they’d transfer him to me, and then he’d ask if I was in the US. For three straight hours, it was the exact same routine.
82. Three Strikes And She Was Out
I used to be a regular at a local Mexican restaurant. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of taking a girl there on a first date. I asked her ahead of time, and she said she loved Mexican food, so I thought, “Perfect. I know the staff, they’ll take good care of us, I’ll come off looking great, what could go wrong?” Famous last words.
We went through two rounds of drinks while she studied the menu, asking the waitress and me what different things were. She finally decided on enchiladas. The food came out, she took a few bites, and said, “Gross, this isn’t what I wanted.”
She sent it back and ordered a chicken burrito, and had pretty much the same reaction. She asked for the menu again, and at that point I had gone from, “Oh, this is kind of funny, she just doesn’t know what she wants,” to, “Wait, are you seriously ordering a third meal right now?”
Eventually she ordered tacos, ate them, said Taco Bell was better, and started criticizing the restaurant and staff, which was a dealbreaker for me. They worked incredibly hard to put up with all of that. Dinner ended with her complaining that they charged me for two of her meals instead of only one.
Then she took the check out of my hands, pulled out a coupon, and insisted that I use it. That was the moment I decided to make my feelings clear, and I said no to the coupon. I left a $20 tip on a $60 bill. It was a solid tip, but after everything they had dealt with, I wanted our server to know I appreciated how hard she worked for us.
My date saw the tip and called me passive-aggressive. She said I was taking the restaurant’s side and making her look bad. I didn’t argue. The drive back to her place was the quietest car ride ever.
83. Burger Beast
I once had a woman order a quarter-pound burger, but she was accidentally given a half-pound burger instead. She only had to wait about two minutes. She immediately brought it back and complained that she had been waiting more than five minutes for a burger that was “completely wrong.”
I asked her what she ordered and what she received, and she explained that she got a half-pound burger and couldn’t afford the extra calories. She kept going on and on without giving me a chance to respond. So I finally just walked away while she was still complaining and got my manager.
He managed to calm her down enough to take the burger back and hand it to the cook, who simply removed the extra patty and sent it back out to her. She angrily ate it, left all her trash on the table, and stormed out.
As she left, she was yelling that she was never coming back and would tell everyone she knew about our “terrible service.” Then she came back the very next day with family and friends, and while she waited in line she was praising our food and service the whole time.
84. Smoke Signals
We had a new employee start yesterday. She seemed like a really sweet girl, probably in her late teens, and she had a great sense of humor. I liked her right away. She had never worked a register before, so I was assigned to train her. I walked her through everything and then let her take over while I stayed nearby in case she needed help.
When things slowed down, I explained the procedure for selling cigarettes. She asked if she had to check everyone’s ID, and I told her to use her judgment. If someone looked younger than 21, she should ask. If they clearly looked older, it usually wasn’t necessary. She seemed to get it, and she was picking up the register pretty quickly.
I figured I could stop hovering and let her work on her own. I told her I was going to stock shelves, but I’d be close if she needed me, no farther than the next aisle. She smiled and said okay. About ten minutes later, I heard someone yelling. All I could hear her saying was, “I am sorry, sir,” in the most frightened voice.
I came over and found an older man yelling at her. She was hunched over and looked like she was about to cry. Apparently, he had asked for a certain brand of smokes, she gave him the wrong pack twice, was slow finding the right one, and then asked for his date of birth when she rang him up.
He was shouting about how he was in a hurry and needed to leave. When he saw me, he said, “Hey, can you ring me up? This woman doesn’t know anything.” I looked at her and saw tears running down her face. That was not okay. I told him not to speak to my coworker like that and explained that it was her first day. He said, “I can tell that, but I have to go.”
I told him that clearly he didn’t, because if he really had somewhere urgent to be, he wouldn’t be standing there yelling at her. He fired back that if I said one more thing, he would never come back to support our store. That was fine with me. I didn’t want customers in the store who treated employees like that. In the happiest voice I could manage, I told him to have a wonderful day.
He stormed out muttering to himself, and I stayed with the new girl. By then she was fully sobbing. What an awful first day. All because one rude person couldn’t show even a little kindness.
85. On The Edge
When I was a kid, my family owned several pizza places. I didn’t spend much time around them because I was pretty young, but my older sisters worked at the main one as waitresses and cashiers.
One of my sisters told me that one night, a well-dressed father from a large family—who had ordered several large pizzas—tried to avoid paying because the pizzas didn’t have sauce, cheese, or toppings all the way to the edge.
The family had eaten every slice except the crusts. My sister refused to give him a refund, and he threw a huge tantrum that left her in tears. He kept shouting and demanded to see the owner—my dad. Dad came out, saw my sister crying, and heard what happened from one of the cooks. He didn’t say a word.
He simply shoved the man so hard that his head went through the wall and into the store next door. The man had to be carried out on a stretcher. The staff and a couple of customers told the authorities that the customer had tried to hit my sister, so my dad wasn’t taken into custody. Dad wasn’t physical very often, but when he was, he didn’t hold back.
86. Know Your Onions
I once had a customer send back a sandwich because she said it had green onion on it. The problem was, we didn’t even have green onions in the kitchen. We never did, so I had no idea what she meant. Then I checked the sandwich and just stared.
What she thought was green onion turned out to be a tiny, barely noticeable piece of stem from the spinach she had specially asked us to chop instead of just putting on the sandwich normally. I might not have been so annoyed if she hadn’t already eaten three-quarters of it.
87. Off The Deep End
One time, a woman tried to return an expensive handbag that had very obviously been used. She accused me of calling her a liar, and her anger ramped up fast as she paced back and forth at the register. It all escalated incredibly quickly.
Then she said she was going to have some guys “come after me” when I got off work. The whole time, I kept politely asking her to leave, though looking back, I imagine that only made her more upset. Then she grabbed the bag and actually tried to climb over the counter to hit me with it.
Luckily, a coworker who hadn’t started their shift yet and looked like just another customer was out on the sales floor and saw the whole thing. They slammed her into the wall, knocking over the glass shelves that were displaying around 30 bags. She ended up in a heap on the floor, looked stunned, got back up, and ran out.
88. Behind The Doors
I just finished working the weekend, and wow, reopening after lockdown has really brought out some interesting people. Sure, go ahead and ignore the store hours like they are only a suggestion. It’s not as if we have lives or want to get home before the rain starts. Keeping that trend going, some guy wandered in 10 minutes before closing on Friday.
I greeted him and asked if I could help him find anything since we were about to close. He barely responded. About nine and a half minutes later, I noticed he had spent most of his time chatting with my coworker, and I could tell right away he was going to be one of those customers. He mostly talked about random things, and it was obvious she wasn’t interested, but she was too polite to cut him off and say she had work to do.
So I started the usual closing routine: turning off the open sign, flipping the sign on the door, locking up, and so on. I even made more noise than usual, hoping he’d notice. Of course, he didn’t, because he was too caught up in telling some story about wanting to become a hairdresser or something.
After about 30 seconds, I finally stepped in and asked my coworker if she was ready to close her register. That finally got the message across, and the guy left...without buying a single thing. We’ve had plenty more like that, people who seem determined to stay until the store closes. Then there are the opposite types. We once had a woman stand outside waiting for us to open, only to get back in her car and drive away just as I walked up to unlock the doors. That has happened several times, and I still can’t make sense of it.
89. She Tried To Out Pizza The Hut
A long time ago, I worked at Pizza Hut. One customer came in and said, “I want a Meat Lover’s pizza with no meat.” At the time, that basically meant she was ordering sauce and cheese, except it would cost more. So we made it and said, “Here’s your cheese pizza, ma’am.”
She answered, “I didn’t want a cheese pizza. I wanted a Meat Lover’s pizza!” And this was not a one-time thing. She did it more than once.
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90. Say Cheese, Please!
I used to work at a pretty upscale restaurant. One evening, a young girl asked what came on the cheese plate, so I brought over the cheese cart with its beautiful glass-covered cheese board. I showed her each cheese and explained the flavors.
She ordered the sampler, and I sliced a selection of cheeses right there and served them to her before moving on. About 10 minutes later, another server told me the plate had been sent back. Apparently, the girl said she had “gotten bored of just cheese.”
This “young lady” was an adorable 11-year-old who had more grace and manners than most adults I’d met. She was doing her best to copy her parents and their friends and had even asked me to pour her grape juice into a stemmed glass.
So I went back to the kitchen, because no one was about to throw away a cheese plate, and sure enough, it was sitting off to the side waiting for the kitchen staff to snack on later. I rushed around collecting fruit, berries, jam, chocolate, crackers, and anything else a kid might enjoy, then rebuilt the plate into something more fun. She was thrilled.
She had thought she might get in trouble for ordering it and not eating it. When I cleared the table later, there wasn’t a crumb left.
91. Doing What’s Right
In a very condescending tone, she said she wanted an iced mocha. So I made the drink, handed it to her, told her to have a nice night, and turned back to talk with the two other people at the counter. While we were talking, she suddenly shouted that the drink was wrong and demanded that we make another one.
Her complaint was that it was cold and she wanted it hot. Fine. I apologized and started over, even though I had asked her clearly the first time, held up the clear cup, and wrote everything down right in front of her so she could confirm it. Still, I grabbed a paper cup and began making a new one.
The entire time, she kept going on about how young people don’t respect anyone. She criticized us for talking while working, mocked the movie we were discussing, made comments about how we were dressed, and even made fun of our accents. This was in Alabama, and she definitely wasn’t from the South.
After about two minutes of that, I’d had enough. I finished the drink and went to hand it to her. But just as she reached for it, she said something that pushed me over the edge: “I bet you disrespectful kids don’t even know how to spell mocha, especially him.” Then she pointed at the one Black barista. That was it for me. I pulled the drink back out of her hand and tossed it straight into the trash.
Then I took off my apron, walked out from behind the counter, got right in front of her, and told her exactly what I thought. I said her behavior was completely unacceptable, that there was a camera above us recording everything, and that just because she bought a five-dollar drink didn’t give her the right to talk to anyone—especially us—that way. I asked her who she thought she was.
Then I stepped even closer and told her that maybe the store wanted her business, but I certainly didn’t, and that she could take a refund and leave. I didn’t even go to the register. I pulled five dollars out of my wallet, added the change from my pocket, stepped back, and dropped it at her feet. Then I pointed at the door and told her to get out of my café.
I wasn’t even a manager, but in that moment it felt completely justified. The whole time, her eyes were huge with shock. She quietly bent down, picked up every cent, then finally found her voice and started screaming that we weren’t going to get away with this. She said she was going to call corporate and get us fired, and then started making claims about finding out where we lived and hurting our families and pets.
And that still wasn’t the end of it—when she got to the doorway, she threw her shoes at us and hit a display of chips.
She stormed out and sped away, almost hitting two people in the parking lot. I picked up her shoes, tossed them into the nearest trash can, straightened the chip display, calmly put my apron back on, went behind the counter, and finished what I had been saying about the movie.
The other two baristas were stunned and kept warning me that I was definitely going to get fired. But nothing ever happened. No manager ever really spoke to me about it, and I never heard from her again. I did feel bad afterward because I had never been that angry before, and I’ve never gotten that angry since.
It wasn’t even what she said to me that set me off. It was the way she talked to the two coworkers who had done absolutely nothing wrong. Looking back, I’m not sorry she was made to leave. Most of the time, reacting like that isn’t worth it, but sometimes you really do have to stand up to people like that.
92. She Got A Raw Deal
I worked in the seafood department at Central Market, in a very upscale suburban area. It was basically HEB’s version of Whole Foods. The customers there had been completely spoiled by the company’s “the customer always gets what they want” attitude.
One day, this middle-aged woman—the very polished, luxury SUV-driving, country club type—bought two pounds of wild-caught Florida Key West pink shrimp. They were $17.99 a pound. These shrimp are a bright pink-orange color.
They look cooked, and a lot of customers assume they are at first, but they aren’t. They still have the shells on, so you have to peel and devein them. They were also displayed next to the other raw shrimp, while all the cooked shrimp were on the opposite end of the case. Still, I couldn’t believe what happened.
Four hours later, they were brought back—just the tails—because apparently they “didn’t taste good.” Then they called and said the whole family had gotten sick, complaining that the texture was awful and that they tasted raw. Somehow, their entire family had eaten all two pounds of raw shrimp. I’m pretty sure they could hear me laughing on the phone.
93. Regular Pain In The Necks
My mom owned a restaurant. A family of four adults and three kids came in for dinner about twice a week. Every single time, something was supposedly wrong with the food.
They would complain, and my mom would usually give them a discount. The last time they tried it, though, she wasn’t there and I was in charge. They ordered three whole lemons cut into wedges for their soup.
Normally, we didn’t charge for extra lemon, but these people were already driving me crazy because they had been complaining about cold food and everything else. So I charged them 75 cents for the lemons; we bought them three for a dollar. They immediately started complaining that I was overcharging them and said they wanted the whole meal for free.
I told them, “You come here every week, order the same things, complain about everything, and let your kids run around like this is a playground. I am not in the mood for this. If you try to leave without paying, the authorities will be called.”
They started saying they knew the owner and that I was going to get fired. I said, “Okay, we can call her right now. She’s my mom.” That ended the conversation. They paid and left. The next week they came back, acted polite, and didn’t complain once. I did get in trouble with my mom, but honestly, it was worth it.
94. With A Smile
One day, I had an older man come through my register with lumber. I greeted him, and instead of saying hello back, he immediately told me he had eight boards on the left side of the cart. I started counting them, and he snapped, “I said eight!” I told him we were required to count them anyway. I finished counting and rang up the eight boards.
Then he told me there were ten boards on the right side of the cart. Once again, I counted them. He looked at me and said, “What school did you go to?” I was so confused by the question that I didn’t even know how to respond. What made it even stranger was that, despite how rude he was, he kept smiling at me like nothing he was saying was out of line.
He was also wearing his mask with his nose hanging out the whole time. After he paid and I handed him the receipt, he walked out without a thank you or anything. He’s definitely one of the worst customers I’ve ever dealt with. No manners at all, and I still think about how disrespectful he was.
95. Kosher Crackpot
When I worked in a diner, a customer ordered a cheeseburger with no special instructions other than that she wanted it medium-rare. The burger came out, and she immediately started complaining that it had cheese on it and that mixing meat and dairy wasn’t kosher.
I explained that a cheeseburger comes with cheese, and if she didn’t want cheese, she should have ordered a hamburger instead. I even offered to bring her a hamburger. Then I asked, “But you did order the cheeseburger, not the hamburger, right?”
She replied, “Yes! How hard is it to find a kosher cheeseburger? This is discrimination! I’m calling the Anti-Defamation League and reporting you! I want to speak to the manager!”
I was about to go get the manager to deal with this nonsense when an older man from the booth next to her stood up.
He came over and said, “Ma’am, I have seen real anti-Semitism in my life. I grew up Jewish in Poland, survived Auschwitz, and watched many people pass on. It is you, not him, who are giving Jewish people a bad name.”
The woman turned bright red, put a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and left before the manager even made it over.
96. Hotel Havoc
I used to work as a front desk agent at a boutique hotel. One day, a man who was clearly very full of himself checked in with an online reservation he’d booked at an unbelievably low nightly rate. From the start, he gave me a hard time about everything—from insisting he shouldn’t have to provide a credit card because he had prepaid, to snapping, “Um, yeah, I’m pretty sure I can find the elevators. I’m not stupid.”
He was rude the entire time. About 10 minutes after I checked him in, he came back down and demanded a larger room with a king bed and a view, even though he had booked a standard queen online. Since we had extra king rooms available, I switched him. Then, 10 minutes later, he came down again to complain about the size of that room too.
He told me, “I’m only going to give you one more chance to make me happy,” and asked for the general manager. After a lot of back-and-forth between him and my manager, we ended up giving him our nicest suite and free parking because we had supposedly “caused him trouble.” And he got all of that for an incredibly cheap rate, around $40 a night. But somehow, that still wasn’t the end of it.
A little later, while heading out to dinner, he told us that he wasn’t even going to be using the room for most of his stay because he was visiting friends and would actually be staying at their house. Seriously? After all that, I decided to make things a little less convenient for him.
Every time I saw him leave the hotel—which was often, about three or four times a day—I reset his room keys. It was especially satisfying when he came back exhausted late at night and had to come all the way down to the desk to have them fixed. By the end of his stay, he was clearly frustrated. I doubt he’ll be coming back.
97. Fusion Food
I worked at an Italian restaurant, and one day a guy ordered a salad. It sounded simple enough, but I was very, very wrong. When I asked what kind of dressing he wanted, he kept pointing to the pasta sauces and saying, “Sugo, that would be good on it, wouldn’t it? I’ll take that.” I tried to explain, “Sir, those are for pasta. You ordered the Mediterranean salad.” He replied, “You’re right—maybe carbonara,” which was, again, a pasta sauce.
I honestly couldn’t figure out what he wasn’t understanding. He seemed like a perfectly normal, intelligent guy, but for some reason he just could not grasp the difference between salad dressing and pasta sauce.
98. No Connection
A very grumpy, upper-class woman came into the store saying the brand-new $3,000 Microsoft Surface her husband bought her was defective because she couldn’t get internet while she was out and about. I quickly realized she was talking about Wi-Fi, so I tried to explain how Wi-Fi actually works. That turned out to be a big mistake.
I told her that she couldn’t use her home Wi-Fi connection once she left the house, but that she could use her smartphone as a hotspot instead. She absolutely refused to believe me. She accused me of lying to her and making fun of her. Then she asked to speak to my manager, who told her exactly the same thing, almost word for word. She left the store yelling.
99. You Got Told
I worked at a restaurant that was especially busy during brunch, and Mother’s Day was probably the busiest day of the entire year. The evening before, a customer called asking for a table for six. He was extremely rude when I told him that unfortunately, it just wasn’t possible. He kept getting more irritated and eventually demanded to speak to my manager.
At first, I didn’t want to hand over the phone. My manager, Mac, wasn’t exactly warm and friendly, and we were in the middle of a busy dinner shift. But then Mac walked up behind me and wanted to know why I’d been on the phone so long. At that point, I thought, “Fine, this customer clearly isn’t going to listen to me anyway,” and passed him the phone.
Mac asked how he could help, listened for maybe 15 seconds, and then said something along the lines of, “So you’re taking up my hostess’s time during dinner after she already told you politely that we can’t seat you and your family the night before our busiest day of the year? That’s enough. Goodbye.” And then he hung up.
100. Sundae Funday
When I was younger, I worked as the shift manager at a Häagen-Dazs shop. It was on one of the busiest streets in town, and in the summer we’d have lines out the door all day. Most of our customers were tourists, so we didn’t worry much about repeat business.
One man ordered a huge quadruple-scoop banana split loaded with toppings. I made him an absolute monster of a sundae, complete with towering whipped cream, hot fudge, caramel, and sprinkles.
It had Oreo pieces, brownie crumbles, Heath bar chunks—everything. But once I finished it, the total came out to almost $15, and he was not okay with that.
I pointed to the big menu board behind me showing the prices for everything he had chosen and told him I could maybe give him a ten percent discount, but any more than that would get me in trouble. He still refused to pay.
So, in the middle of a sweltering summer afternoon, in a crowded ice cream shop full of tourists and kids, I got my revenge. I held up that beautiful sundae—enough ice cream for three people—and offered it to the room for three dollars.
Unsurprisingly, a guy standing there with his kids immediately bought it and shared it with them. The original customer was furious. I explained that he had ordered a custom sundae made exactly the way he wanted it, and I had sold it at a discount as a second-hand sundae that might not have been exactly what the new customer wanted.
In the end, it cost the company almost nothing, and the look on that guy’s face was worth it.
101. The Color Of Meat
I was working customer service at a Food Lion when a woman came in with some 80/20 ground beef her husband had bought two days earlier. I asked what the issue was, and she told me her husband had bought “bad” meat. So I asked if it was spoiled or if there was something wrong with it, and she said the beef was pink.
That was one of the days I got written up for laughing at a customer right to her face.
