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Tell me about the worst customer you've ever had.

I'm writing a scene where a character has a horrible day at work, and he works in a convenience store. So I'd like some stories for some inspiration.

Some woman who yelled at me and argued for nearly a half hour because I wouldn't refund her on a 5 dollar bar of soap that she opened and used. It wasn't defective. She just decided she didn't like the scent and actually expected me to mail a used bar of soap back to the manufacturer for her so she could get a rebate from them when I told her our store policy of no returns on personal care items was non-negotiable. The entitlement was strong with that one.

Former department store anon, here!

The worst customer I had was probably the old man who screamed at me for ten minutes straight because he paid the balance on his store charge card (with another associate) and wanted the money we "stole" back. I didn't call a manager because he refused to talk to one, and I was scared that me reaching for the phone would make things worse for me. The other woman working in my department calmly folded clothes across the aisle, doing absofuckinglutely nothing to help my case (she later admitted that it was because she was asspained that she's been yelled at by customers before and no one stepped in to help her. way to pay it forward).

I also had a customer get nasty with me for smiling and greeting him pleasantly ("You're not paid to smile and look pretty."). I've had customers go apeshit because I (a woman) had to clean up the men's fitting rooms. I had to clean semen off a mirror once. One of my coworkers had to deal with someone pissing and shitting in a fitting room.

I know department store =/= convenience store, but hopefully this provides some inspiration!

holy shit that second one, who the fuck
i...

i'm sort of just dumbfounded by that... who says that?!

Fuck if I know. My manager and I laughed about it after he walked away. You can't even be mad at that kind of nonsensical misery.

you're ayrt, not sa

ayrt is like op but not of the original thread - anon you replied to
sa is for when you're adding onto something you literally just said - same anon

Worst customer I ever had also came in on he busiest day of the year.

First she accused me of trying to steal her purse because I accidentally bumped into her (because of another customer bumping into me) despite the fact that I was apologizing the whole time. She loudly bitched about our prices the whole time and shouted across the store at her friends about how she wanted to go somewhere else. She left our cooler door open and put things back in the wrong place. When another customer very politely asked her to stop blocking the aisle she snapped that he didn't own the store and should be less rude.

Then when she went to check out my coworker asked for her ID because she was purchasing alcohol and using a credit card. She flew off the handle and started ranting about how no one asked for ID for credit cards anymore and that we were just asking her because we were racist and hated black people. She finally showed her ID, but it didn't match to the name on the credit card at all. When my coworker said he couldn't run the card like that the woman flew off the handle again and starting bitching that it was her boyfriend's card and we'd run it like that before and that we were just awful racist people trying to ruin her New Years Eve. We told her that she could wait for her boyfriend to show up and pay for it himself, which she finally agreed to.

But, she wouldn't move so we could check out other customers while she waited. When we finally asked her to move she started yelling again. I finally threw her out when she started spewing awful racist slurs at my coworker (all the while accusing us of being racist) and told her to not come back.

She came by the next afternoon and threw another tantrum when the day manager told her she was banned.

And this is why I would never recommend working in a liquor store to anyone.

One woman once screamed at me for half an hour in the middle of the store, calling me a religious zealot and an intolerant bigot among other things.

My crime? I politely told her that she couldn't strip down her 5 years old daughter in the middle of the store and that she needed to use the changing rooms to try on her clothes.

children's retail -

- shit/piss/vomit everywhere unexpected places all of the time
- at our particular mall there were a lot of those scams where people ask you to make change and try to get you to give them extra money back so we were outright banned from making change for anyone which meant that more than a few customers lost their shit at us, with their screaming kids in tow
- we did luxury toys for a lot of business and free giftwrapping, which often meant big boxes, which meant an initial headache and then the customer getting pissed you couldn't leave the store to take it to their car
- parents would just leave their kids there for hours at at time unattended and if we called security would pitch a tantrum to rival their three year old in the middle of the store
- one time i was up on a ladder restocking these little fuzzy animal doll things we carried and a customer literally tried to push my ladder over, like just grab it out from under me, to get my attention. i was standing on the very top rung, over hard concrete floor, and i'm terrified of heights
- people will just smash stuff off shelves and leave it on the floor
- did i mention the shit piss and vomit

ice cream sales (truck and stand) -

- most trucks are barely held together with spit and hope and they corner like whales, part of it's open so it's so loud you can't hear and the smog is like swallowing a glass of instant migraine no chaser
- depending what neighbourhoods you work people will come out of their houses armed i had a guy come up to the truck acting pretty erratic once and only realized as i was passing over the popsicles that there was a handgun stuck in his front jacket pocket
- half your customers are drunk or stoned and none of them can make correct change
- i like kids but those little fuckers will swarm you and cry when they don't have money for it. i kept around some of the half-melted/squished bars that i had to write off as a loss anyway for those times when they were sweet about it or when only one kid in the group couldn't get one or stuff like that, but the way my boss worked his inventory all those came out of my own paycheck
- you can either arrange your truck in such a way that you can get at the product, or in such a way that the product won't melt, but there's no in between
- teen and college guys in particular really love to try and intimidate you into giving them free shit
- i wasn't allowed to take tips and you wouldn't believe the number of people who were sweet and tried to give me one -- then utterly flipped their shit when i couldn't take it
- if you ever have to store your inventory anywhere around other people, they will blatantly walk in and take it, because it's just an ice cream
- good luck ever keeping accurate track of your inventory as a result
- my boss liked to call me at like 6 in the morning to scream at me about it, and then again at 12 to apologize. regularly. several times a week
- you aren't going to make any money if the weather's shitty, and you usually work on commission and pay for your own gas. if you hit a bad stretch of rain, good fucking luck
- people will run out in front of your truck to try and stop it and then lol forever like you almost didn't get arrested for manslaughter
- did you think you were getting out of piss/shit/vomit you're not one time at a festival i was walking up to my stand in the morning to set it up and there was a guy peeing on my tarp
- add in blood too because the box knives you use will taste yours a thousand times over like the hungering cursed blade of an ancient tale

restaurant -

- pretty much the worst industry for bosses, no matter what section of it you work in. i don't know why food service managers are so horrible, but everyone i know who's worked it has stories out of the ninth circle. it's a high-stress high-energy job and it will get taken out on underlings pretty much guaranteed
- our dress code varied nightly and would often change between one night's shift and the next morning's. i got written up once for wearing the dress code that had been assigned to us the night before because they changed their minds overnight
- if you're female or faab you will get the most impractical uniforms known to man assigned to you. i regularly hauled sixty pound garbage bags, 5 gallon ice buckets, and full tubs of dishes in high heels and a fancy dress
- at my particular job i got hired on as a host and actually did bussing, serving, cleaning, managing, and just about everything other than actually hosting
- you will regularly go home covered in bruises from tubs and bumping into people and sometimes handsy customers. i used to box and i got more beat up working my most recent restaurant job
- you will be flat out fucking exhausted, you're usually on your feet for shifts of indeterminate length with few to no breaks
- you're guaranteed a break by law, not by your management, good luck getting them to let you take it sometimes
- hours are so not guaranteed, pay is incredibly variable by the day, hope you like uncertainty and disappointment
- group tables are the worst they tip like shit and take forever and there is always that one person in the group who goes ADDED GRATUITY FOR PARTIES OVER XYZ?? WHAT ARE WE COMMUNISTS?? and pitches a fit so that your management ends up waiving it and you get zero tip at all
- piss/shit/vomit now with more kids throwing food and cockroaches that are attracted no matter how spotless you keep the place
- i regularly smiled through a shift, did my job, and then as soon as i got out would go sit and sob in my car for half an hour before going home. several shifts a week, i would go home crying. there's not enough space here to relate every single story and i will just upset myself again when you're looking for convenience store things anyway
- if you injure yourself on shift even badly you are expected to keep going no matter what because you're needed on the floor. one of my coworkers and friends burned his hand so badly that he couldn't use it one morning and still worked a 12 hour. i worked all weekend through severe anti-depressant withdrawal, another coworker once came in later in the day after a concussion that morning and we just took extra care to make sure he didn't topple over. shit's insane
- weekly meetings you are required to attend and will not be paid for, which is illegal. often they'll be on the slow night of the week late at night, or extremely early in the morning -- one boss would use those purposefully to test us, assigning the people he was suspicious of the super late hellish friday night shift, telling them to sleep in, and then seeing who still showed up. one girl posted about it on facebook and a customer she somehow knew leaked it. guess who got scheduled for no shifts that week and fired for totally unrelated reasons the next.
- the meetings all cover shit like if you sell more food you will make more money and smile at customers. you can have worked in the industry for thirty years and you will still be treated like you're four
- there is so much cook drama. a couple months before i started working at one restaurant a guy got stabbed. more of it got threatened while i was there. make friends with the cooks because they're fucking armed

clothing retail -
- PISS/SHIT/VOMIT/BLOOD - no matter how vigilant you are about the dressing rooms you will find the clothes and room soiled beyond all reason. my first introduction to this was the fancy prom dress someone wiped their shit with. it was only the beginning.
- stock is never going to come when you're prepared for it or have the manpower to handle it, just give up on that dead dream now.
- people will walk in at two minutes to close and pitch a fit that you're closing.
- people will blatantly lie to your face and your managers for the hell of it.
- people will steal literally anything that is not tied down, one time this girl tried to walk off with our ring hand model thing and i had to ask her to put it down. you can't really accuse them of stealing though so you just have to nod along because yeah sure i know everyone gets confused it's okay.
- if someone's being extra nice to you, they probably stole something. learned this the hard way more than once.
- ripping clothing off racks is everyone's favourite pasttime, no one will put them back.
- remember all the shitty things you and your friends did for laughs as tweens, guess what, it's your turn.
- basically if people can be shitty they will. for example, i got a screaming tirade once about how i was a whore and a bitch because i wouldn't sell a woman a pair of shoes after close. another time someone straight up overarm threw a pair of jeans at my coworker's face after utterly trashing our display because we didn't have her size
- as far as parents are concerned you are the babysitter
- counterfeit money fun. usually it's just kids who don't know how that stuff works
- one time my coworker campaigned to get me fired for like three solid weeks because she wanted her friend to get hired instead of me
- timecards. fucking timecards. the clock on the machine will never match reality, good luck
- your payment systems will all go down at the worst possible moment, embrace it
- we had no heat in the winter and no ac in the summer. well, we had it, but our boss refused to pay for any of it. gloves and hat in the store in the winter, drenched in sweat in the summer
- sometimes weird sections of product will reek for no reason at all (preservatives for shipping). our store had the cat pee corner so named because it was where we hid everything that smelled horrendous
- this was actually my best job out of all of them, i'd take clothing retail in an instant above the others
- but keep in mind that dress codes for it are often stricter than other places and like restaurants they hire heavily on appearance, which often involves racist elements

everywhere -

- sexual harassment, threats of physical harm, the most entitled people that you will ever meet, and sometimes people just having a bad day who have hit their breaking point and dump it all over you as the easiest target
- everyone you meet will treat you like an utter moron, especially older white guys in business suits. people will call you stupid to your face for no reason at all, just for the hell of it, because you are working whatever shit job you are
- you can never trust anyone to cover for you, i don't care how many times you've covered for them before, it's not going to happen when you need it most, pretty much guaranteed
- racist sexist homophobic pick an ist comments of every stripe
- breaks?? you mean time to go help the customer who only needs you for a minute really why are you being so cold they only need your help for a minute they're talking to your manager about this!!
- it's always good to be as polite as you can be but realize that it won't make a lick of difference in how the shittier customers see you, many of them made up their mind to make trouble before they ever walked in the door. that's kind of reassuring though, in its own way
- every place has the one coworker that is unecessarily dramatic about everything for all that they migt be nice otherwise. if you don't have one, it might just be you

teal dear over. godspeed brave soul.

oh right tidbits -

- people who buy drinks with redbull in them do not tip well
- strawberry shortcake ice cream was our most popular item, i imagine it's not much different at a c. store
- there's this mexican food preservative with a very distinct almost sort of salty flavour that there's popsicles of, i can't remember its name. it's very good but you'll sell none of it for weeks at a time, then sell out of your entire stock when the right family happens along
- biggest usual sellers - ice cream bars (plain or neapolitan, neapolitan usually sells a little better), face popsicles (it doesn't matter what face, i usually sold spongebob because his eyes didn't break off so easily as some of the others), snow cones
- snow cones melt crazy quick, so you really have to bury them in a freezer, no matter where you're selling them. they also pop right out of their cup the second a kid grabs it wrong
- i sold snacks too for a while -- biggest sellers: snickers, bbq chips, pepsi, and oddly diet dr pepper
- people who carry guns (concealed or otherwise) will generally take every opportunity to talk at you about them and show off
- speaking from experience it is hella awkward to meet the girl you blew off on a date when she shows up unknowingly at your workplace ah haa ha that was a shitty day

grips your shoulder reassuringly

thank you friend

in a few more years i can get a degree and graduate to starbucks and its marginally better rep

wow

"that fucking sucks" is just not enough

i'm speechless, brosis

yeaaaah i've had some bad luck on the job front

don't get me wrong! there were great things about all of them. children's retail was my very first job, the owners hired me with no experience and were really kind about training. restaurant coworkers were almost all very lovely people, and i ended up making decent money. ice cream sales were really interesting, if not super profitable, and it got me a lot of time out in the sun. clothing retail i had a total sweetheart boss.

there's always good stuff along with the bad. i like to think it balances out.

op

ho-lee shit. i skimmed this and i'm already hurting but when i re-read it later in more detail would you mind if i asked for some specifics about some bullet points? if not it's fine you've already offered a lot and i'm sure this was painful for you to relive anyway

i really do appreciate the length of this list though you are brave for dealing with all of this shit, i'd never be able to

sure, i'll try to answer them as best i'm able!

tbh it was kind of cathartic. a few of the more horrible bullet points of that stuff (mostly the gun and things) i don't tell people like parents or friends because i know how they'd react. so thank you for letting me vent tl;dr all over your post.

the thing about it is that while you're in the middle of all that crazy, it's hard to see just how crazy it really is. then you get out of it and look back it's like what the shit, how did i even do that for so long. but you'd be amazed how quickly it just turns into routine.

one time i was up on a ladder restocking these little fuzzy animal doll things we carried and a customer literally tried to push my ladder over, like just grab it out from under me, to get my attention. i was standing on the very top rung, over hard concrete floor, and i'm terrified of heights

would i be able to ask for more details on how this went over?

people will walk in at two minutes to close and pitch a fit that you're closing.

i know this happens to people in EVERY job, as it happened to me a lot too, but if you have any particularly interesting stories regarding this i'd like to hear.

if someone's being extra nice to you, they probably stole something. learned this the hard way more than once.

if you'd like to pick a "favourite" time this happened and describe it to me, i'd love that.

again, thanks for this long, detailed post. i'm glad you found it more cathartic than anything else and that it was a good source of venting!

many of them made up their mind to make trouble before they ever walked in the door.

As someone whose Dad is one of these people...It's the worst. If they're anything like him they go in thinking that if they throw a fit and cause a fuss, everyone will get so fed up with them they'll just be given whatever it is they want.

Once a woman yelled at my coworker for not ringing up gas purchases on two different pumps in one transaction even though we explained that our registers literally wouldn't let us do that. The manager made him apologize to her later, knowing full well he was in the right.

The highschool down the street had the power go out during a football game while it was raining so like, 30 people crammed into the store an hour before we closed and we got yelled at for not having everything done by closing.

My coworker called in sick (The manager said she was probably just hungover) and left me to run the store alone...the day that a bus carrying an college volleyball team stopped in.

Also. All the millions of times parents have let their kids run around and spill slushies and sodas all over the floor.

generally i have really nice customers who are very understanding and polite but there are a couple bad ones:

"I want a pound of [our cheapest deli meat]."

"Okay!"

"I'm not going to buy more expensive deli meat until we have a legitimate American citizen in office!"

"........................."

why
why did you think this was an appropriate opinion to share with the deli clerk

whyyyy

Also a lady that demands that the meat and/or cheese we're giving her be exactly the amount she asked for. not 1/100th of a pound off. do you know how little 1/100th of a pound is? about a sixth of an ounce. 1.01 pounds is still unacceptable though even if it means we have to break off a corner of the top slice of cheese or rip a third off a slice of meat and oh my GOD it's like one sixth of an ounce of difference just take the goddamn meat.

I take supervisor calls for a cell phone company's support line. Not quite the same as retail, but we do sell phones and service. And since I get the ones asking for a manager I definitely get the cream of the crop as far as crazy people go.

Let's just say my day isn't complete until I get someone threatening to sue over something completely stupid (and usually their fault).

I'd be hard pressed to say which one is the worst, the most memorable though are the following customers:

-The guy threatening to sue us because we discriminate against white males.
-The transgender person threatening to sue because one of our stores refused to accept their ID that listed the opposite gender. That and they added a bunch of made up things that the store supposedly did.
-The woman who worked with terminally ill patients demanding a free device that boosts cell signal (which is one of two things that I absolutely cannot adjust pricing on, and I don't have the ability to give out free devices anyhow), said woman threatened to route her calls to me.
-The creepy guy who said he could see me and then proceeded to cuss me out. And all because I couldn't make the system magically not require a data plan for a smartphone just for him.
-The guy who threatened to hunt me down and kill me. Let's just say that one got forwarded to the authorities.

i work customer service at a large store.

- entitlement. people expect you to know and understand exactly what they want without a word. they'll come up and put down and item and you're supposed to know what it's for and why they brought it here and they get really annoyed when you ask them because you should just know.
- line cutting, interrupting, i'm clearly on the computer helping a customer and someone else will just march on up "i'm in a hurry/quick question/i just need" etc. people don't know how to stand in line either, they all just bunch up/claim open spots along the desk.
- scammers. my store offers a "if we make a mistake, we'll give you a coupon." we have people in every day just searching for mistakes for those coupons. we have people trying to rip us off for coupons, saying "oh the sign said blah blah" and counting on us not to care/be too busy to have a look. or they'll just get really angry if we do look or hesitate. i had a woman tell me she didn't have time for me to look up something... so how do you expect me to give you the money we owe you?
- "i'd like to talk to a manager." i can get the store manager for you no problem, but he doesn't know the policies like i do (in this situation). so first thing i'm going to do is call him and tell him the issue and the policy. half the time he'll support what i already said. but people think it's a magic "get what you want" code.
- general rudeness. not saying a word in reply, talking on the phone the entire time, wandering away while i'm processing their order, slamming things down, etc.
- SHOPLIFTERS. a lot of people will steal things and try to "return" them for money. "i bought these batteries and they're the wrong size, can i get a refund?" because of the way our store policy works, even without a receipt we can do returns sometimes. we get a lot of people blatantly trying to scam us.
- stupidity. some people are just dumb. not understanding basic things, needing to be walked through everything; i once had to spent literally 15 minutes trying to explain why i wasn't refunding a woman the price of two items when she bought them buy one get one free.
- creeps. a lot of regular customers try to schmooze. one guy always hits on all the girls, a couple regulars clearly try to flirt with me, etc. i've been pretty lucky that it hasn't gotten any sketchier than that, but there's some sketch things.
- angry/rude. if a customer feels like they're getting denied/rejected anything, they will argue. i've had people tell me the store is ripping people off intentionally, that i was breaking the law for refusing service, try to complain about me to management in order to get their way ("i've gotten bad service! give me stuff!"); recently a customer outright lied and filed an official complaint, saying i'd said things to him i never had; although both my bosses believed that i hadn't, the big boss decided to believe the customer and it's now in my file.
- LOTTERY TICKETS. depending on where your character's convenience store is, he probably has to sell those bitches. they are the worst. people stand in front of your counter forever, scratching one, buying one, never leaving (while you have tons of other stuff to do, and you can't leave with a customer there). or they'll give you a wad to check instead of using the machine themselves. or they won't scratch the barcode on the scratch tickets, leaving you to go through them all yourself. i hate lotto.
- outside of customers, there are other little things that can be pretty "bad day of work!" we sell propane tanks; they're in rusted cages outside. it is january. anytime i have to go outside for that is pretty uncool. we get all sorts of gross returns, smelly/nasty people, etc. cash registers come up short or over money for mysterious reasons (that you get held accountable for). messes that need cleaning. people leaving products in weird places. people sticking ice cream on shelves where it melts instead of putting it back. having a lot to do and not enough time to do it. crappy coworkers. broken anything. inventory not adding up correctly. the heater not heating the store enough, or heating it too much. cleaning bathrooms. busy points where there are 80 people and only you to help them all.
- it's a fun life!

+1 on the lottery tickets. That shit is the worst. When I worked at a gas station, we had two or three customers would would spend more than an hour scratching/buying/trading winning tickets for more tickets. Once the owner's brother (who would help us close up sometimes) had to outright tell these two people "You need to leave NOW." because they wouldn't stop scratching tickets and trying to buy more almost 10 minutes after we were supposed to be closing up.

Oh wow, I didn't even THINK about lottery tickets because I'm from Las Vegas, which doesn't have a lottery. I know zero about how those work but they might be interesting to implement into my character's work day.

Rule of thumb: anyone who goes out of their way to look at your namebadge (obvious neck craning and carefully affirming how it's said) and refer to you by name is usually a condescending jerk, or someone looking to remember who to blame for an issue. On that note, I've had customers laugh at my name (it's an unusual name).

I have plenty bad experiences but this is the worst, and not because it's the most terrible, but because it's the most baffling to me.

I'm at the register, which is by the entrance, and I have a line and people who I am currently ringing out. A lady steps in and asks if she can get some help. I say I'll get someone, since I'm with customers, and I call for a coworker to assist.

This lady can't be waiting more than three minutes when my assistant manager comes by on an unrelated task of adding money to another till. I ask him to take care of her. Of course, he has to put the money away first, but agrees. In this time, the lady comes up to him, and asks: "can YOU help me?" very pointedly. He says yes, of course, and she notes that his namebadge says 'assistant manager' and demands to see the store manager.

Red flags.

I have a line-up but I see her ranting at the manager, then they go across the store. She gets one item: those reinforcements for holes punched into lined paper. That's it. She passes me, while I have customers, and she waves it in my direction, declaring:

"Your manager says I could have this for free since I got such rotten service!"

Immediately, since I'm pretty easily hurt and cared a lot about this job, I became apologetic, but I explained myself. I said I was sorry, but I had a line, and she insisted that was not the case. No, she insisted, I just stood there and took other people while she waited. Which is true because those people were there first, but she insisted I had no line, and was ignoring her, when she was waiting there for three minutes tops. She made this huge scene, degrading me in front of customers, over nothing. Over a two dollar box of stickers.

Mind you, if she had just asked "where is this" which I assume was all her question was, then it would have been okay.

Then, on her way out, she became mock understanding and reassuring. This somehow bothers me more than when people are just rude because it's condescending and fake. If you really meant it when you said "you're fine; really it's okay" then you wouldn't be acting like a child in the first place. It's embarrassing.

I can understand people being rude if something is too expensive or out of stock, as much as it is infuriating, but when people make up situations like this it blows my mind. This one bad customer that lingers on me most, since she went out of her way to humiliate me in front of other people.

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