Give Me Your Customer Service/Retail/Etc. Stories.

[Sugar and Spite]

We all have one horror story from working in customer service/retail and the like -- Unless you're on of the fortunate people who have never had to work a horrible minimum wage job where the customer is always right and you have to treat them like a God while making them items that are not on the menu.

Anyway. Tell me those stories.

[Spambot]

"Are you bleeding?"

Wut?

"There's blood on that bag!"

There's a mark on one side, doesn't show up on the inside

"That's blood!"

It's on the same spot in the same shape on literally every bag right here

"I work in the health business, I know blood!"

Ok, so I managed to bleed on every bag in this lane- oh, looking at the next one, looks like every bag has it too

Bled on literally every single bag in the same spot in the store

"That's disgusting! I want a refund?"

K mate

This isn't even that bad, it's just the one I best remember. It's that scenario where you wonder if there should be a license to breathe.

And no, those weren't my live reactions, my reaction was pretty much just 'wut' with a cashier pointing out that the same mark is everywhere and a supervisor coming in, nodding along and just doing the refund.

[NuttsnBolts]

Had a customer abuse me because we don't sell dog food...

I work in a hardware store.

[Sugar and Spite]

This was about a month and a half after I started my current job waiting tables at a pizza joint.

There's this one guy who is semi-regular. He doesn't come in that often, but when he does it's either exactly nine o'clock or right after - we close at nine. This is the second time in this week that he's came in after nine and asked if we could make him a burger. Both times we denied him. Our kitchen was closed, register was in the process of being shut down, etc.

He didn't take his frustrations out on us thankfully, but it was a busy Saturday night and we still had a few tables that we were working on busing.

This guy yeets over to one of the tables, snatches a leftover half-eaten piece of pizza, takes a bite and walks out the door like nothing happened.

[Assallya]

I have a hundred of these blasted things.

At one point we had a customer run around our dairy department holding a dozen eggs screaming while a colleague looked on with distress. Being used to dealing with such situations I headed over to help resolve things. I went over and visited him. His issue was that everything in the ENTIRE department was expired, or beyond the "best before" date. Needless to say I was incredulous. One or two items- Sure. A single group of items- Sure. The entire bloody department? No way in Hades.

I venture a look. Sure enough, the best before date is in June. Here in Canada the format is "BB/MA 06-22" or something along those lines. Each company do their codes slightly differently.

"These all expired in May!" the man declared.

This of course confused me. It's not entirely impossible. If the product isn't properly rotated an old piece might stay at the back for a long time and then get moved to the front or maybe it was stuck in the backroom for a month before someone put it out without looking at the dates. It's unfortunate but it happens.

"Sir. I'm afraid this package clearly reads June 22nd."

"No. I know how to read these. This clearly shows MA. That's May. This is five weeks past due."

"Excuse me sir?"

"Right here!" he states, pointing out the "BB/MA".

"Sir. That stands for 'Best Before' and 'Meillieur Avant'. The MA is 'Best Before' in French."

"I know what I'm talking about."

In short order, three staff and two managers later we simply had to ask him to leave. When he did not we reminded him he was on private property, had been asked to leave, and that if he did not we would summon the police.

At long last he departed, screaming about how it wasn't over and that he was calling the local newspapers and that we were going to be very sorry when the store was shutdown for violating health statues.

At that point, there was no point in explaining that Best Before dates are not regulated by the government in any fashion. Some people are just idiots.

(In fact, most eggs are good for WEEKS past their Best Before dates. It turns out that most people don't have a clue and throw out millions of eggs each year and the companies chuckle gleefully and accept your money for replacements.)

[Finris]

I have at least two - but I do not want to get in the mood from the first one.

So back to the time when I was working in a bakery as a seller. Where I come from some pasteries have different names in different regions. As if this was not already irritating enough, sometimes the same name exist in different ragions but mean other pastries.

This was the case for the pastry in point. Let's call it X - a filled pastry. In other regions it's called Y, but in our region Y is a smaller pastry, unfilled and roled in cinnamon and sugar.

A costumer strolls in "I would like to have 5 X."

My colleague is packing up and ringing her up "4 $, please." This is already a good price.

She lost it, saying that they were not 4 $. We checked and it was the correct, reduced price for that amount. She argued that 5 X should cost 2.50 $ and that we needed to sell it for that price. After a little back and forth my colleague asked why she thought it was that amount and she pointed at the little tag in front of an empty display row (left to the row of X) 5x Y for 2.50 $

My colleague apologized profusely that there were no more of Y and she had not yet had the time to take the tag out. But X were in fact 4 $ - pointing to the tag directly IN FRONT of the line of X.
The customer threw another small fit and complained, but in the end I think she took the pastries home (like I said 4 $ was already a good price). I think she said something about talking to our superior, but honestly they were used to irate costumers and as long as we stayed polite would just apologize again.

My colleague was crushed, having been berated in that way and looked at me as if she wanted to apologize again. I calmly pointed out that the woman knew perfectly well that her pastries were called X in this region and could have just ASKED for Y, making things easier for everyone. And that my colleague did nothing wrong as the last few of Y had been sold earlier in the line - and making people wait to remove a tag is really bad service.