Customer Service Thread

A friend's ex used to work at McDonalds somewhere in like Fontana, CA or thereabouts, and she had someone hand her money DRIPPING IN BLOOD.

She refused to take it and closed the window on them.

 

Jesus CHRIST.

The worst I ever had was just. dollar bills soaked in sweat. or pulled directly from between tiddies. or once right out of someone's sock

 

I've been in retail...over ten years now? god. First CVS, then a grocery store. I work at Michaels now. On my second day on the job, a couple years ago, a lady came in and wanted to buy some iTunes gift cards. Ok. I ring her up. She comes back half an hour later to return them. Not knowing any better, I attempt to process the return. The register rejects it. I examine the cards and hey, they say "non-returnable" in tiny print.

She completely flips her shit. Starts screaming at me, screams at the manager, it's $60, she didn't want to spend that much, she's 60 years old how is she supposed to read tiny font, etc etc. I'm fucking terrified because I have anxiety and still cannot handle people yelling around me, so I'm basically in tears. Eventually she storms out yelling that she's going to call the police.

She...actually does. The officer shows up and talks to her for a while, looking completely like he has way better things to be doing, explains patiently that there's literally nothing he can do, and finally suggests she call the attorney general. She claims she will. I never see her again.

It was awful at the time but looking back on it, it's hilarious.


On another note, this comic is amazing.

 

I live in the deep south and work at a tourist attraction in georgia. One of my favorite comments usually comes from very southern men and is something along the line of "You're not from around here, are you?" because I don't have much of an accent, compared to the local yokels. If you ask my grandma I have a strong southern accent, but she's lived in Michigan her entire life so what does she know?

My favorite part of it is that I've lived here for 22 years. I moved here when I was one and have lived in small-town Tennessee for my entire life until two years ago when I moved to urban Tennessee. But I spent ten months of my life in a different state, so I guess I'm not from 'round these parts.

 

Anybody else have an NDA in effect? I can't tell my best/worst stories without feeling like something's breathing down my neck.

Anyway, one that's legal to tell: My employer has a free entree deal at Thanksgiving and Easter/Passover. Two turkeydays back this eighty-ish granny brings me a qualifying freebie (store branded, frozen whole bird, ~8 lbs) with an unreadable tag. For inventory and account redemption purposes, I have to have a tag to scan. Since the turkey was the last item on the order and everything else is bagged out, I'm stuck with nothing to do but wait with the customer.

Her: Where did my turkey go!?

Me: It needs a price tag, so I sent it back to the department. (Bagger) will be back as soon as she can.

Her: But it's free, why can't I just take it and leave?

Me: Because I have to ring it out properly and not cut corners.

Her: Well whatever; I don't care. I'm just going to take it and leave. You can't stop me from taking my free item!

Me: Ma'am, I know you're frustrated with the wait and just want to be finished, but you haven't paid for these other things, and the turkey's not even in your cart.

Her: What! Why isn't my turkey here? Where did my turkey go!?

Me: It needs a price tag, etc.​

We did this loop for four minutes, which as we all know is a very long time in retail.

(This is the most lucid and complete text I've written in one sitting in the last 12 years. Thank you, Kintsugi.)

 

So, we recently got back a regular... 'customer'. She puts nearly a thousand dollars worth of merchandise on hold for as long as she can and buys, like, maybe thirty bucks worth of stuff.
Now, in the past month, she tried to get one of my younger associates to buy her a bottle of water because she wanted to purchase a dress and had already opened the bottle when she realized she did not have enough cash on hand to accommodate both. I, hearing this story from management, shrugged this off as 'nah, that's too absurd, I must be missing something'.
. . . She spent at least half an hour regarding the hold policy with me (which we've gotten strict on her about), goes to buy a pair of pants for her doctor (who gave her the cash to buy the pants), and--
She's eighty nine cents short.
Okay, charge her debit-- declined.
She asked not only myself, but my cashier, to cover it for her.
I nipped that one in the bud with a 'No, I can give you back the cash you paid, that's that'.
Gets ready to go home-- nope, comes back and spends that money on some different things, and even when I mathed out the tax so she could just focus on price tags, still gave me several items and a 'how much will this be' and a 'but I need this one!'

I have never heard that associate swear before, and all I can do right now is laugh because... I can't even process any other response.

 

I absolutely refuse to work a closing shift ever again on Halloween because of October 31, 2009, 11:48pm

I'm the only one working the registers in the College Town, AZ grocery store. The store has been utterly dead for more than 2 hours, and my boss has actually offered to let me go home early, but I opted to stay because "working" currently amounted to sitting on the counter with a book.

And then he walks in. Rail-thin and clearly over 6ft tall even without the 4in white pleather gogo boots and rainbow clown wig, in a white velour minidress and a pink feather boa.

Now, the outfit wasn't the problem. He had really nice legs, and he actually knew how to work the boots.

The problem came after he laid his handle of Jack Daniels on the counter and gets his total, about $60. He nods, hoists the hem of his dress up, and fishes a handful of sweaty $20s out of his boxers.

I made him put it down on the counter, informed my manager I was leaving for the night, and walked away.

... come to think of it, all my horrible Grocery Store Cashier Stories involve handles of Jack. Hm.

 

Had a super fun face painting a couple weeks ago. A little Indian girl comes up so excited to get her face painted! What does she want? A butterfly! What color butterfly? BLUE! BLUE AND PURPLE! So I paint a pretty standard blue butterfly with purple eye spots and she's so excited and so happy and she loves it so much when I hold up the mirror to show her.

Then her mom walks over. Rich Indian women on vacation are the worst part of my job because nothing is ever good enough for them and they're the least grateful guests I've ever seen, even when everything is perfect. She tells me, "No. Is no good. It should be pink, not blue. Not paying."

I'm like "This is what your kid asked for. If you don't pay for it I have to wipe it off."

Kid starts screaming at mom. Mom starts yelling at kid and me. I ignore them and start putting paint away and getting out the face wipes. Finally, uptight Indian mom hands me three fucking dollars like I'm robbing her for her life savings.

Sometimes painting faces is fun. Sometimes the parents get involved.

 

So this just happened.

A woman came into the fast food place in which I work. She wanted her sandwich plain, with only 3 things added. Now here's the thing: if you say 'plain' but the sandwich comes with cheese, your sandwich will be served with cheese.

Well, stupid me, I didn't ask if she wanted the cheese, so she got it.

She called the store and raised hell at my manager for FIVE MINUTES because she's lactose intolerant and her sandwich is ruined. She somehow remembered my name abd specifically demanded to speak to me, but my manager held her off, explaining that no, we'll talk to her, I know, we'll pass it on, we can gove you a refund, no you really can't talk to her, no for real you can't.

I am so shaken. She might come back in later and I am stressed.

 

@ZeroEsper holy shit im so sorry :(

I frequent a FiveGuys near my work and once time they forgot to put the patty on my burger. So i bite into it and there's...no burger. I went back kinda nervously because I didn't want to bother them during a busy time but when I explained what happened, calmly, they gave me a free one with a lot of apologizing. I told them mistakes happen. It's almost like you don't have to scream at service people when they make a mistake in order for them to fix it for you. x.x

Edit: also on the worker's end, I am WAY more likely to go out of my way for someone who is nice to me about a fuckup.

 

Oh, yeah, a story of my own recently. I currently work in the custom framing dept. Guy comes in with a pretty big framed piece, like at least 30 x 40", says he got it done here 4 years ago or so. (this is definitely a lie because my store has only EXISTED for barely 3 years, and the initials on the back are not from any worker we had past or present.) He wants it wired on the back. My coworker took the order but I overheard him whining at her about getting it done sooner than the usual two weeks it takes for a regular order. She was nice enough to push it up to about a week despite us having a huge workload.

When i go to measure it for her and put it in storage, I look at the back. There are holes where the previous wiring obviously used to be, but someone (PROBABLY HIM) took it out in favor of covering the back in Command strips (aka those sticky things you use for posters or plastic wall hooks) instead. So basically he actively rejected whatever hanging apparatus it came with in favor of sticking it to the wall with glorified velcro. And this thing was heavy!! It was also a very expensive piece of art! And he claimed it had stayed up for a year before falling off the wall. Plus he wanted us to fix the dents in the side of the frame from the fall which...lol.

Of course we have like 5 million orders because of end of summer sales and he calls the MORNING the piece is supposed to be due to bitch at my manager that it isn't finished. She told him he could have a 50% refund. The order for rewiring had cost him $12. I have never rolled my eyes so hard.

 

My favorite stories are always the ones where customers bitch, moan, and scream like toddlers to save miniscule amounts of money, like one demanding that I take her $1 coupon twice. Congratulations ma'am. Because you were more poorly behaved than your five year old you saved less than the cost of a can of coke.

 

Here's one from today.

We have a select brand of vitamins on sale, buy 1 get 1 free. A man comes up to the counter where my co-worker is, with one bottle of vitamins. He asks if someone can check if we have more of it in the stockroom, I go check, and we don't, so I tell him we can get him the one bottle at half price, which is our standard solution for BOGOs when we only have one of the product left. And he tells me that isn't the same thing.

I tell him that actually yeah, it is. He says no, the value of the second bottle is $14, so he isn't getting the same deal if he gets one at half price. I try to break it down for him. If it's normally $14 a bottle, and it's buy 1 get 1 free, that makes it $14 for two bottles on sale. Then one bottle on sale would be $7, right? And he keeps arguing about it. I tell him that this is our standard for this sort of situation, and we can either do that or get him a rain check for two. But he wants to buy the 1 bottle and get a rain check for the "free" one. I explain to him that no, it doesn't work that way. We can't do rain checks for a price of $0. After a few more minutes he finally gets the rain check.

I feel like this shouldn't be hard for people. It's very simple math.

 

I dont technically work in customer service but we had someone call our office basically to tell us something that was mostly irrelevant. he just kept calling with more details which was the weird part

reception transferred his calls to us like three times but there were more that she just sent directly to voicemail because Wow stop calling?? as receptionist is in the room telling us this, the phone rings. It's duder with that irrelevant info, he sort of warbles "[name of coworker whod been taking his calls to our dept]?"

I tell him no, coworker is out of the room, can i take a message? Even tho coworker is standing 2 feet away from me.

later that day, dude gets another person with more information to call us about the irrelevant thing. thankfully showing sufficient politeness satisfies this new person and we havent heard more from that guy

 

So, little outdated, but, I used to work in the on-campus bookstore at school, as a cashier. At the beginning over every quarter for classes, we were packed, everyone wanted to get textbooks as soon as possible(a week later, the line wasn't nearly as bad, and most teachers didn't use the actual book until a few weeks in, to give everyone a chance to get it).
So, every time, because all of the registers were going at once, which only happened at then, the network they were on would slow to a crawl.
The only spring semester I was there, the entire network crashed. Nothing would go through for 45 minutes or so, it was the longest 45 minutes of my life. Now, I'm stressing out, because the customer who I was helping when this happened, I had helped her find books(we didn't have enough people in the back to help find textbooks, so cashiers often got pulled to go help look for books), and I felt bad because now she has to wait longer, and I hadn't eaten anything that day(woke up late). So, I'm starting to have a panic attack and feeling lightheaded from lack of food, and, she actually helps me calm down and offers to buy me a snack so that I could have something in my stomach. Once the network the registers were all on is up and running again, we get through the transaction and things all get worked out. Other customers were awful over having to wait, but, I felt alright because of her. Turns out we had a break at the same time so we saw each other pretty often while we were getting food between classes.

 

With the winding down of junk faxes, I no longer participate in adventures such as Seebs and the Tale of the Three Cokeheads Who Sent Illegal Faxes and Seebs and the Tale of the Joke Resume At the Deposition or even Seebs and the Tale of Fiddlefucking Around.

But I still get stuff.

I had an older lady walk in a few years ago who couldn't understand what was going on with her checking account and suspected bank shenanigans. I basically balanced her checkbook and determined she had mixed up the dates of a few auto debits and auto deposits and was ending up in overdraft every month. She was awfully nice, but clearly losing a little bit mentally. Not a lot, just a little. I worked with her and her bank to set up a couple of accounts and get overdraft protection going. I charged her only a little, because I had seen all her finances and knew she couldn't pay much.

Anyway, a couple weeks later I got a call from her asking about potential check fraud. I thought maybe she had just gotten her dates mixed up, but that wasn't it. She had a more serious problem.

You see, Bill Clinton came to her in The Light and told her he was going to send her a check. The check had not arrived and she would like to get to the bottom of it. I told her that given the power of the Democratic party in our city, Bill was likely to prevail in any action and I could not in good conscience take her money to fight such a doomed battle. She thanked me for my advice.

 

Y'ALL YESTERDAY OKAY YESTERDAY I HAD THE WORST CUSTOMER like, seriously. this dude comes in and i can tell he's mad and he throws his credit card statement down on my counter like "Can You Tell Me Why This Is Late?" (this is the closest approximation i can make of his tone- he was very sarcastic and definitely trying to intimidate me, but he didn't raise his voice about it which was so much worse) and i was like... umm, no?? and he was talking kind of fast and not making much sense but eventually i figure out that he would like to make a payment on his credit card and he is Incredibly Upset that we have charged him a late fee, and he wants me to tell him Why.

so i kinda stumble awkwardly and go... okay, well, let me pull up his account on the computer system and see what it tells me?? the answer: it tells me to tell him to call the credit line. so i tell him that.

He Is Not Happy, Like At All. and at this point openly mocking me?? and i'm shaking w/ anxiety and trying to keep calm. "uhh? it's saying you have to call the credit line?? i can give you their number?"

"But Can You Tell Me Why You Charged Me A Late Fee? 60% is Ridiculous!!"

"Uhh, sorry I don't know why they did that? i would call the credit line??"

"Well can you get someone who knows what they're doing?"

O.O okay fine that's it i am not making enough to be dealin' w/ this guy's bullshit... now you get to yell at the manager

so my fav manager, Rick comes over. rick is... well... kinda blunt? definitely a bit curmudgeonly, but he's actually a really nice guy, just very deadpan. so rick listens to him for approximately five seconds and then immediately shuts this guy's bullshit down- "Sir they don't give us that information, it's a violation of privacy laws, you can call the credit line" just over and over, no variation in tone. it was glorious. and this asshole's getting all flustered now- rick won't be intimidated. he starts like literally shouting about how it's no wonder that our company is going downhill and everybody knows it and we're a sinking ship and it's so pathetic that we Are Refusing To Help Him and rick doesn't change at all- "i can do the payment for you, if you would like, but i can't give you any of that information."

so he pays his bill and leaves, finally. "Can we help you with anything else sir?" rick asks him, with his Perfectly Pleasant Customer Service Tone. "God no." the dude replies, and his entire body might as well formed one giant walking middle finger w/ how fucking pissed he was.

and then he comes back!!! maybe ten-ish minutes later, he comes up back to my counter and wants to cancel his payment, and is visibly Gleeful about how uncomfortable he's making me? so i have no idea how to actually cancel a credit card payment, i call another manager because i rlly don't want to subject rick to this bullshit again, she tells me she has no idea, so i call the credit line, they tell me they can't do anything but that a supervisor should be able to do it at the store and at this point i'm like legit scared this guy is going to start screaming at me, but i think he just thought i was laughably pathetic? i'm not sure what's worse, tbh. so rick comes over and just voids the transaction and then leaves to make sure it actually went through.

and the guy, he looks at me and just goes... "I suggest finding somewhere else to work. Not because you're good at your job or anything, but because this company is going downhill."

and i just kinda stared open-mouthed at him and like literally squeaked "oh" because how the fuck do you even respond to that?

but god, what i wanted to ask him, was, "who hurt you?"

 

All I can say is, holy shit, what a colossal douchebag. (your manager sounds rly cool tho.)

 

You can't just say something like this and then not tell the stories attached to the names.

 

I haven't worked retail for a long, long time, but the experiences just kind of stick with a person. The last purely retail job I had was at a Big Office Supply Store with a print shop. Since it was located in the downtown of a big city we got some real characters (like the grifters who were there so often the spineless head manager treated them like regulars, or the supposed hairstylist who was very interested in getting me to shave my head, ostensibly so he could have color treated hair to use to test different dyes, or the guy who was so pleased with the help I'd given him with a printer he came back absolutely shitfaced drunk to ask me out on a date, or... well, you get the idea), but one really sticks out on my mind for his pure obstinate ridiculousness.

He wanted to buy a piece of software - some cheapo $10 productivity thing - that came in a box. You know how boxed software has that sticker seal on either flap? That was NOT GOOD ENOUGH for him. The sticker seal was not secure! ANYONE could have bought it and used it and resealed it! It could be a fake pirated copy now!!! He wanted a box that was shrink wrapped.

The cashier was a friendly, happy dude who was awesome at customer service and genuinely liked his job, but this guy had taken him to his wit's end. The cashier looked like he was going to have a fit by the time he called me over (I was the tech salesperson on the floor that day) to try. No luck there either, though - this guy just would not accept any explanation. According to him, the sticker seal was totally easy to bypass or fake and legit software always came shrink wrapped. Nevermind that this was a cheap piece of shitty software no one would bother to pirate, or that no other software in the store came shrink wrapped, and even the software that cost hundreds of dollars that we kept in lockup only had sticker seals - we had to have actually shrink wrapped copies of this shitty software that we were just hiding in the back for sooooooome reason, and he wanted one of those.

I was at the razor edge of losing my fucking patience when I remembered that the store's print shop had a shrink wrap machine.

I smiled real big at the stubborn jerk and said I just remembered that maybe we DO have a shrink wrapped version, let me get a manager to check the software lockup :) :) :) The guy was mollified that I'd finally listened to reason and the cashier was completely baffled as I sailed away in search of a manager. I snagged one and announced that I needed something out of lockup - and once we were there, I told him I needed him to take this box of software upstairs to the print shop and shrink wrap it for a customer who refused to have it any other way.

The manager was so accustomed to weird customer bullshit that he didn't even blink before going to do it. I chilled by the lockup until he returned, neatly shrink wrapped box in hand, which I then delivered to the customer. His face lit up - he was just so pleased he was getting an Extra Legit Shrink Wrapped box of shitty cheap software! Big Office Supply Store had come through! He paid and left looking like this was the best thing to happen to him all week.

The cashier, utterly confused, asked me if we really did have shrink wrapped copies in the back. Nah, I told him, I had [Manager] take it upstairs to shrink wrap it so I could pretend I'd gotten it out of lockup. He had a well-deserved laugh.