Are they for real?

[jayhawk]

This isn't at all what I thought this thread was about.

[JoW]

Consider the shear number of customer-staff interactions in the US every day.  There are probably millions.  Not Always Right present 5 or fewer everyday.  I suspect those 5 have at least a glimmer of truth, most likely embellished to make a better story. 

Besides - I have know a lot of morons in my day, some of them dumber than the dumbest customers on that site.

[Redsoil]

*Snerk @ Jayhawk* Didn't think of that!

Bansidhe - sounds like a tough gig.  We're lucky in almost all our patients (private practice), and in many ways it's like family with some of the long term ones.  (In fact, I've just finished doing "thank you" cards for the Chrissie gifts received - it's lovely when work is like that.)

Thinking it through, I imagine some jobs really would attract more difficult types of customers, given variations in location, timeframes, and general acceptance of what's "due the customer"  (an attitude I dislike intensely).  Good service is to be expected, of course, but not servitude or grovelling! 

[Reika]

Thinking it through, I imagine some jobs really would attract more difficult types of customers, given variations in location, timeframes, and general acceptance of what's "due the customer"  (an attitude I dislike intensely).  Good service is to be expected, of course, but not servitude or grovelling!

I had one charming soul tell me that the "customer is always right  and that we'd see the error of our ways" when my company denied her claim based off her insurance policy. I can only imagine her reaction when the Insurance Commissioner supported our denial. I only knew about that because our claims management was keeping my escalation team up to date on her because of the number of times she was calling and harassing us.  Thankfully, I never had to talk to her again after that one call. 

[Ginger G]

I'm sure some of the stories are embellished, but no doubt some are true.  I worked in customer service type jobs for years myself and have been absolutely stunned by some customers' behavior.  One memorable encounter when I was a teenager - I was working at a local BBQ restaurant.  It had a set up similiar to Sonic where people could pull up to individual electronic menus and order a meal to be delivered to their car (no roller skates though!).  One night close to closing time, someone pulled up and ordered a meal and a "large orange drink".  The lady taking the order told them we didn't have orange drink.  "OK, a small orange drink".  Sorry, no orange drink at all.  Then they ordered another odd drink we didn't have and did the same thing...changed the size but not the drink itself.  It was odd, but I thought maybe they were trying to be funny.  We finally got their order after much back and forth.  It was my turn to deliver the meal, turns out it was an older couple.  They insisted I wait while they checked their order (no big deal there), but then when they decided it was wrong.  They insisted they ordered something we didn't even have on our menu, and the man started screaming and cursing me out.  I tried to explain we didn't even serve that item, and the lady starts screaming "Shut up!  Shut up!".  The man says "Are you talking to me or her?"  The lady says "HER!"  It was truly crazy.  They then threw their money at me, followed by a bunch of trash from their car.  I was so mad I was shaking, my manager let me go home immediately.

I also worked in a call center for an insurance company, and got cursed out on a regular basis there.  I could kind of understand people being upset when a claim was denied or something like that, but people would get angry over the craziest things.  For example, we had a deal with a grocery store chain where everybody in the state with one of their loyalty cards got a free $1000 accidental death policy.  They could purchase extra if they wanted, but the $1000 policy was at absolutely no cost and they didn't even have to do anything.  I had more than one person call and yell at me about it.  I couldn't even figure out exactly why they were so mad, maybe they just didn't like getting mail?

[SCAJAfamily]

"A double cheese burger, onion rings, and a large orange drink...."

"Did you get that?"

"WWaaaHHHaaawwaaaa"

comedy ensues....

[Cami]

I believe the stories of poor customer behavior. I have less faith in the witty comeback or karmic justice stories. Especially the karmic justic stories since in my experience, most obnoxious horrible people never pay for their behavior. In the retail and service world, they are generally rewarded by the gutless wonders running most such establishments.

Back when I worked in bridal, I threw one customer out of the store. No one had ever done that before, but I was willing to be fired over it. The bride was cursing and calling me vile names at the front desk. All over purple gloves.  Even after everything we'd seen in bridal, this bride took the cake. She was having a full-blown temper tantrum. After she left, my staff did applaud. I was not fired. (I did quit about a year later.) About 10 years later,  I happened to meet two of my former staff at a bridal show and they immediately introduced me to the other two "new" staff people like this: "Oh, this is Cami. She's the manager who threw the purple glove girl out of the salon." Apparently that story has now become a store legend.

[hobish]

"A double cheese burger, onion rings, and a large orange drink...."

"Did you get that?"

"WWaaaHHHaaawwaaaa"

comedy ensues....

  That is exactly where my head went, too.

DRINK! SAY DRINK **** YOU! ! !

[snowflake]

I take them with a grain of salt for the most part. Having worked in customer service for seven years - five of those in a grocery store, two in a bank - I have to agree with the above posters who said they think a lot of them are wishful thinking "what should have happened" stories rather than reality.

But I can relate, because I've absolutely had my fair share of nasty customers to whom I wish I'd had just the perfect comeback.

And every once in awhile you do have the perfect comeback, but that doesn't mean you can actually say it to the customer. Like when a guy yelled at me for our delivery time being over an hour in a heavy snowstorm with at least two inches of ice on the ground (note that I live in Virginia, where we get this kind of weather only every few years, and are really not used to dealing with it). The employees who had 4-wheel drive and had braved the storm to work were amused by my comment that Dominos was the only local pizza place with a dogsled team, but I highly doubt the customer would have been amused.

So true.

Although it does help when the customer finally walks off, and all the surrounding employees are looking at each other with raised eyebrows, and someone says something just AWESOME, and the tension breaks suddenly into a flood of laughter.
Good co-workers are the best.

It is pretty upsetting to be threatened with bodily harm because you don't make the same types of Pizza as the chain store down the street.  So what can you do but laugh? 

As much as I wanted to say rude things to the customer's face, I wanted to pay rent more.  Yes, it's easy to get another grunt job.  But being out of work for a week on low wages?  I'd much rather kiss up to the customer and laugh in private.

There was one time when a co-worker (without thinking) said, "Oh you must be in such excruciating pain!"  (Over a washing machine that was breaking again.)  We all laughed our heads off over that one, but she quaked in fear that the customer was going to report her for being rude. 

Everyone I worked with during those years was on the same page.  That is why I sort of shrug at the "neat endings." 

[parrot_girl]

I'd say some are real, some are exaggerated and some are complete fiction.

However, I can vouch for this one, because I am the submitter and it happened exactly as it's written here.
http://notalwaysright.com/an-offering-to-the-literary-gods/2093

[jedikaiti]

I'd say some are real, some are exaggerated and some are complete fiction.

However, I can vouch for this one, because I am the submitter and it happened exactly as it's written here.
http://notalwaysright.com/an-offering-to-the-literary-gods/2093

I'd wondered if that one came from an e-Hellion.

[iridaceae]

I will say that sometimes people do - just as in the stories - come back and apologize.

About five years ago I came in for my shift and found an envelope with $10 in it addressed to me. Turns out a guest checking out had decided he'd been rude to me (while drunk) the previous night over the phone do this was his way of saying sorry.

Kicker is he hadn't been rude or obnoxious,  just too drunk to figure out how to use a strange TV remote.

[Lady Stein]

I think the we're now dating/married and karma stories tend to be exaggerated or made up.  Sadly, I believe a good portion of the horrible customer stories are true because of my experience with bad customers.  When I worked at a grocery store in high school, a woman was so mad that frozen burritos were out of stock she rammed her cart repeatedly into the freezer door.  Left quite a nice scratch on it.

[Barney girl]

It's surprising how many stories on the sister site, Not Always Working, have shop assistants arguing with women buying computer games that girls don't play them. I can't believe those stories are real.

[Firecat]

It's surprising how many stories on the sister site, Not Always Working, have shop assistants arguing with women buying computer games that girls don't play them. I can't believe those stories are real.

I can. I'm female, geeky, and a gamer (although I'm more into tabletop gaming than video games). And I've met too many women gamers who've experienced this kind of thing and worse to disbelieve it.