The worst thing about working in customer service is dealing with grown adults having temper tantrums. These employees reveal their stories. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Miley Cyrus’s Music
“Back in my retail sales days, I worked at a Sprint store. There was an infamous woman and her infamous son who were known for coming in and asking for ridiculous things or exhibiting crazy behavior.
Just prior to me starting my job, they had come in and the woman threw a fit about her bill. Her son, who had some developmental disabilities and couldn’t control his emotions, got so upset that he dropped his pants and took a major dump on the floor.
Fast forward to when I was a new employee, they came back again. As I was new, I had no idea who these people were, but everyone else did. So my coworkers handed them over to me to assist as a bit of a hazing or initiation exercise.
The presenting issue that brought them into the store was the fact that the son, who was roughly 25 years old, was absolutely furious that he couldn’t find ‘Party In the USA’ by Miley Cyrus on the Sprint music store.
Infuriated, he berated me for my inability to magically add the song to the list of available downloads. Standing roughly four feet away from him behind the counter, I almost vomited because his breath was so bad. I had to turn my head away when he spoke and back away from the counter to keep from tossing my cookies.
After a good twenty-minute argument where I probably visibly turned green with the struggle I was having to avoid his smell, they left, hysterically yelling about our failures as a company and as humans in general.
Retail life is glorious.”
False Accusation
“It was late afternoon on a weekday in the middle of summer, and the store wasn’t terribly busy. I was assigned to a register that had a clear view down the aisles. Since I wasn’t actively ringing someone up, I was people-watching.
There was a woman in one of the aisles who had her cart turned in such a way that it blocked the aisle and nobody could pass by her. She was standing slightly away from her cart as she looked at jarred cherries, completely oblivious to the small crowd of four or five people awkwardly accumulating near her cart. They clearly wanted to go by, but nobody made a move to actually do it.
I remember thinking if we were in NYC, where I used to live, nobody would have a problem saying ‘Excuse me’ and nudging her cart out of their way, but here in Rhode Island, it’s almost like people are scared to interact. They’d rather stand awkwardly and wait silently for someone to move than speak up.
Anyway, a gentleman apparently decided enough was enough and asked, very politely, if he could go by her. She ignored him, too busy comparing the labels of two jars of cherries.
He spoke up again, a little louder. She glanced up at him but still didn’t move. I decided to head in that direction to move her cart myself under the pretense of needing to go by, do a little crowd breaking.
I hadn’t taken three steps before the gentleman put his hand on her cart to move it aside.
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! DON’T TOUCH MY CART! Mind your own business!’ the woman screamed. He instantly let go and held up his hand.
‘I just want to go by,’ he started to explain, but she kept hollering at him for touching her cart, accusing him of trying to steal from her. I should mention that she didn’t have any personal belongings, like a purse, in the cart.
He was backing away from her as I ran to them, asking what the problem was with a big smile as though I hadn’t been watching this interaction from the start. Everyone in the aisle was staring and others were gathering at the ends of the aisle to see what the yelling was about.
She yelled, ‘He was touching my cart! He was trying to steal from me! Mind your own darn business!’
‘I wasn’t! I was only trying to pass through!’ the gentleman insisted.
I told the woman we could go find a manager and talk about what just happened, hoping to diffuse a fight from happening in the aisle. A couple of other employees had appeared in the aisle. One was leading the gentleman away and the other approached the woman and me.
‘Yes, let’s go talk to a manager and get this sorted out,’ my coworker agreed.
‘MIND YOUR OWN DARN BUSINESS!’ the woman shrieked.
She hurled one of the jars of cherries straight down at the concrete floor and it burst in a deafening splatter of red and glass shards. She reeled back her other arm, holding the second jar, and aimed at the gentleman. I whipped my hand out to grab her arm, but I missed and knocked the jar out of her hand and it also shattered on the floor.
She reached for the shelf for more ammo, but my coworker stepped between her and the shelf. She yelled at him to move and to mind his own darn business. Two managers came running into the aisle and, upon seeing them, the woman launched into a furious tirade about allegedly attempted cart theft and how we all needed to mind our own darn business. Meanwhile, the third coworker got the gentleman out of the aisle and away from her.
The managers took over the situation and ended up walking her out of the store. She was honestly lucky we didn’t call the police, considering she tried to pitch a glass jar at someone.
The gentleman wasn’t angry or upset about the ordeal. The store manager personally apologized to him and gave him a gift card and a bouquet of flowers, about which the gentleman joked that he’d never gotten flowers before.
We found glass shards spread across three aisles, and the stain from the cherry juice took several months to get up off the floor. Oddly, it wasn’t a red stain; it was pale instead like it had taken the color out of the colored concrete.”
A Nice Gesture Gone Bad
“I asked a woman on my bus route, who was waiting for the bus going the opposite direction if she wanted to ride my bus to stay cool. I was the only bus on that route and she’d be sitting in the hot sun until I reached the end and then returned to pick her up on my way back. She frantically waved me off and so I continued on.
Forty-five minutes later, I picked her up on the way back. Obviously, she had been waiting in the hot Arizona summer sun all that time. She was seriously angry at me, not because she had been waiting so long, but because I had asked her a question.
She started screaming, ‘Drivers can’t ask people questions. We can ask you questions, but you can’t ask us questions.’
She wouldn’t calm down. It got so bad that it became necessary to contact the police. I got them to meet the bus en route when she started banging her head on the window behind her seat.”
Broken Gym Machine
“I used to work at a local gym. When I dropped from full-time to part-time on the weekends, I lost a lot of connection with other employees and, unfortunately, a lot of information. As a result, it was just me running the gym on the weekends and I was the only employee by myself. Everyone else working during the week had at least another employee, manager, or maintenance working with them.
I was working one weekend recently and a member came up to me to tell me how a button was off on one of the machines in the Women’s Center. She had interrupted the conversation I was having with another member.
I acknowledged her, and told her, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry! Thanks for letting me know!’
She didn’t say anything back and continued to the bathroom. So I continued my conversation with the other member, who was a younger guy who would stop by the desk occasionally to tell me about his body-building competitions.
When she walked out again, I was still talking to him. However, I did notice how she eyed us and gave us a disgusted look. I didn’t think anything of it, assuming she was still mad about the button.
After I had finished my conversation, I checked out the machine. It wasn’t a ‘button’, but the whole knob was off. I fiddled with it for a bit, but it looked like something maintenance needed to fix, so I put an ‘Out of Order’ sign on it and returned to work.
During the week, I stopped by the gym to work out. My manager got my attention, telling me how someone had sent in a complaint to the work email while I was on shift. Confused, I thought about all of the interactions I’d had with the members and couldn’t think of any bad interactions. I usually remember the angry ones, just in case.
My manager showed me the email, which read something akin to, ‘I was at the gym this weekend around 3 PM and I told the girl at the front desk that one of the machine’s buttons was off. I couldn’t even lift weights because it was broken. I told her I needed to use that machine, but she didn’t even fix it for me. She seemed more interested in chatting to guys than working. I would think if you want to retain a customer, you would fix your equipment!’
All I could do was laugh at it. It was one of a hundred machines we had in the gym and she could have switched to dumbbells. However, apparently, she had interpreted me as just a dumb girl wanting to talk to boys at the counter. The fact that she went out of her way to email the manager showed how bitter she really was for whatever reason.”
“I Ordered Him To Show His ID”
“A big, beefy guy, rated fireman, came back to the ship after a half a night of liberty in a Caribbean port. He got tired of waiting in line to come aboard and started shoving people out of his way as he came up the ramp. As the Petty Officer of the watch, I disapproved of the principle.
When our young idiot reached the top of the ramp, I stepped out in front of him and ordered him to stop and show his ID.
‘Forget you, man, I don’t gotta show ID! Get out of my way, pipsqueak!’ He exclaimed.
I let him come. But when he tried to shove me out of his way, I took a step forward and to the side, grabbing both of his wrists and giving them a hard pull. He staggered around in a half-circle, and I let go. With a hoot, he tumbled off the ramp and into the water between the ship and the pier, swearing a blue streak.
Well, there was a ladder on the side of one of the pilings, so he could have climbed back out at any time. But he never did figure it out. So I made an entry in the deck log every quarter-hour until I was relieved, noting his status. Didn’t want anyone to think I was ignoring him.”
Color Match
“I worked at Wal-Mart for a time in the hardware and housewares department. As a result, I mixed paint for customers. They would come in with color swatches or, more often than not, paint chips they wanted us to match. That’s usually fairly easy. Just press the paint chip up against the reader, load it into the computer, and let the equipment do the rest.
One time, there was a woman who came in with a paint chip. It was nearly 10 PM, so almost time for me to get off. I took the paint chip from her, said I was able to match it, and mixed her paint for her. After I mixed it, I put some of the paint chip, dried it, and showed her how it was the same color.
‘That’s NOT the same color. That’s NOT what I asked for,’ she stated.
I looked at the paint chip, then at her. I said, ‘I dried it on there, you can see it’s the same bit. See?’ Then I touched it to smear it a little.
She exclaimed, ‘Look! It’s lighter.’
I said, ‘Because this part is wet underneath it.’
She said, ‘Remake it. Add more brown to it.’
I said, ‘Okay.’
I did as she asked. Now the color was definitely off.
She said, ‘That looks NOTHING like the paint chip. It looks way too dark!’
‘It does,’ I agreed.
She said, ‘You need to make it match.’
I apologized but explained how adding colors wasn’t going to help. I suggested she bring in a larger paint chip tomorrow. I didn’t want to deal with her anymore today.
She immediately became incensed, stared at me, and then said, ‘Whatever, I’ll just take that.’
‘Okay,’ I replied.
So as I closed the paint can up, she snatched it from me and stormed off. I shrugged it off and went back to where the sheets were. As I was cleaning things up, I saw her coming down the aisle. I moved out of the way, but she rammed her cart into me. I got knocked into the shelves.
She didn’t even say a word; just looked at me and stormed off.
The woman assaulted someone because of paint.”
Serious Threat
“One day as I was working on the register, I was chatting with two employees who were off the clock. It was a rather glorious moment of camaraderie after not seeing either of them for some time.
A lady with a young child came up to my register so I could ring her up.
I immediately turned my attention to her, smiled, and said, ‘Just the two cups for you today?’
She didn’t say a word, just handed me a coupon for a free cup, from a different location. It said specifically on the card it could only be used at that location.
I apologized and said I couldn’t accept her coupon because it was for a free cup for the location in the mall (from their grand opening). I was about to say, ‘I’ll be happy to give you a discount thou-‘
But then she started talking over me, saying, ‘Maybe if you were paying attention so I could ask you a freaking question! I wouldn’t have even gotten yogurt here if I knew I couldn’t use this.’
I apologized and told her I could still give her a discount.
She said, ‘I’ll go where they know how to do their job.’
And she walked out with her six-year-old in tow. As soon as she left, my employees and I were joking about what a lunatic she was.
A few minutes later, the lady called my store and asked for the name of the manager and contact information. So, I gave her my name and email.
When she asked who was working, I replied, ‘My name is Amber, I am the manager.’
She flipped out and started screaming. She called me a shady hag and a whole plethora of invective things. Then she told me to watch my freaking back because she was going to murder me.
I tried calling the non-emergency number but there was a hold ‘For the next available operator.’ It all seemed so crazy. The girls I was with said they’d be the witnesses if I needed anything, but both left eventually.
I was by myself in the store at that point. I knew the lady was probably just saying stuff to scare me, but I wasn’t going to take a threat on my life lightly so I called 911 and an officer responded. I gave them all the information I had on this crazy woman. They had a unit stay in the parking lot the rest of the day. Never heard anything from the officer or the lady again after that day though.”
Shoe Prices
“I had a customer destroy the shoe department because she didn’t get the prices on dresses she wanted. She said they came off a rack with a 25 percent advertisement on it. We told her how someone probably put the dresses there instead of putting them back where they belonged. She didn’t care. She wanted the discount. I was then called over because she threatened the manager.
She tried to plead her case and I wasn’t having it. I offered her a 10 percent discount on the shoes she wanted. She seemed to calm down and made the purchase. I walked away. I began surveillance on her once I got back to my office.
The customer seemed to be exiting the store but then suddenly turned and began walking back towards the shoe department. She then began arguing with the store associate and manager once again. When the manager picked up the phone, the lady went berzerk. The manager was calling me.
The customer began throwing display shoes and knocking down shoe boxes. I apprehended her as she tried to leave. I gave her two choices: Be arrested or she could clean up the mess she made. She chose the latter. She thanked me for not calling the police when she left.
Two weeks later, the women did the same thing at another anchor store. She was arrested.”
A Cooked Meal
“I had a couple come into our restaurant. The guy seemed very friendly, if a little quiet, whilst the lady seemed fussy and obnoxious. Before she even sat down, she had commented how she didn’t like the salt and pepper pots as they looked cheap. They are basic white ceramic ones.
I told her in a jovial way, we preferred to spend money on good quality ingredients instead of fancy S and P pots, and that they did the job they were supposed to do. She also didn’t like the decor. I told her, still in a jovial manner, it was a very old building, and legally we couldn’t change the structure or do much with it but it had a lovely atmosphere and a lot of people enjoyed the ‘cozy’ rustic charm.
Fast forward to when the food arrived. She ordered chicken.
I went to do my follow-up, ‘Is everything okay with your meals?’
She said, ‘This is too hot! I can’t eat this.’
I was confused as it was not a spicy dish.
I told her, ‘I’m sorry. There isn’t supposed to be any spice in there, just some herbs and a cream sauce. Would you prefer something else?’
Lady: ‘NO YOU IDIOT! IT’S TOO HOT AS IN I NEARLY BURNT MY MOUTH!’
Me: ‘I’m very sorry but this is a freshly cooked meal straight from the oven. It’s supposed to come out hot. Legally, we also have to cook food to a certain temperature to ensure you don’t get food poisoning. Did you burn your mouth?’
Lady: ‘No, luckily, I felt the heat before it reached my lips. I used my finger to check and it’s VERY hot. This is unacceptable. I could have been hurt.’
At this point, I thought I was being punked.
Me (absolutely incredulous): ‘If you’re okay to wait 30 minutes, I would be happy to bring you some room-temperature food? There is a homeless man who comes round this way, I’m sure he would like this hot meal.’
Lady: ‘Your attitude is awful and I would like to speak to your manager. If this is the way you treat valuable customers, your manager ought to know that you just cost him two as we are leaving and won’t be coming back.’
Me: ‘You’re actually talking to the manager. And I’m sad that you want to leave without eating but I can’t help you if your biggest problem is your meal is too hot. Have a lovely evening.’
I felt a bit bad that I came across as rude but seriously? What kind of first-world problem is this? I (personally) assume that when I’m at a restaurant or anywhere someone is making me food that when it is delivered, there is a very high probability that it will be hot?!
Anyway, the homeless guy enjoyed the chicken so it didn’t go to waste.”
Receipt
“A nice man ordered two dinners and asked for his receipt. So I printed it out for him. He looked at it and told me I needed to replace the ink in the printer.
I said, ‘I know.’
Which I did since I had seen the ink turning red. It does that when the ink is on its last stretch in the receipt printer. It’s still readable, and the red ink is just a notification that the ink will be out soon. But the customer transformed from nice to extremely angry, stating he wanted a new receipt.
He said, ‘If you worked for me, I would fire you!’
I was kind of shook since I had thought he had just been telling me to replace the cartridge for the next person. That was why I responded with ‘I know.’ But since he now insulted me, I was a little irritated.
‘Good thing I don’t work for you,’ I said.
He got even more ticked off and demanded a new receipt. I didn’t know where the cartridges were yet, so I asked someone else to grab one for me. She went to the back to do that and I was left avoiding eye contact with this man. Since I felt that I wasn’t needed anymore, I went to the drive-thru station and got a drink. The man raised his arms in the air like he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
A manager noticed and asked him, ‘What is wrong?’
He blew up, yelling how I had left him when he needed help.
I, not realizing yet that he wouldn’t take no for answer, said, ‘No, I left after she went to get the ink.’
He started saying I was a liar and kept repeating himself until the head manager of my store came up to pacify him. The man proceeded to say not only I but also my head manager deserved to be fired. He called him dope and continued to scream. My manager told him he could call the store owner if he wanted to tell him to fire the head manager. Eventually, my manager kept repeating, ‘Have a good day, sir,’ until the customer left.
The people who had been in line behind him said they would’ve jumped over the counter if they had been in my manager’s place. The man’s food he had ordered was thrown away since he had left by the time it was ready. Looking back, I know I should have kept my mouth shut when he insulted me and stayed at the register, but his temper tantrum was still ridiculous over a receipt that didn’t have enough ink for his liking.”