20 Customer Service Experiences That Are Just Something Else

“I used to work in concessions at a movie theater. One time, our popcorn kettle caught on fire.”

“Smoke filled the lobby and I was using a fire extinguisher to put out the fire, all while a customer stood at the counter and yelled at me that she still wanted popcorn. I could barely even see her through the smoke.”

“I worked at a gas station. Once, a guy came in, grabbed a foot-long sub from the sandwich case, opened it up, pulled a hair out of his own head, and stuffed it in the sandwich. He came up to the register and demanded a refund.”

“When I was a manager at a health food grocery store, a customer was perplexed that we did not stock ‘goat eggs.’”

“I gently explained to her that goats do not lay eggs, and she went on a rampage saying that our store was supposed to carry EVERYTHING. She demanded to speak with the manager. I was the manager.”

“I work at McDonald’s and this happened just a few days ago. I handed a woman her tray and asked if she needed sugar with her coffee.”

“She turned her nose up and said, ‘I won’t answer. You all are not educated.’”

“A woman came in, grabbed an herb-roasted rotisserie chicken, plopped down in the casual seating area, ate 85% of it with her bare hands, then brought the carcass to customer service and tried to return it.”

“I once had a customer scream obscenities at me because apparently we sold her burnt pizza multiple times. I worked at a take-and-bake pizza place, so she cooked the pizzas herself.”

“But I guess somehow it was our fault she didn’t know how to use an oven.”

“Someone yelled at me because her fries were deep-fried. I had to resist the urge to give her raw fries.”

“I had a woman try to return something without actually bringing the item.”

“I sold a guy a phone years ago when I worked for a wireless carrier. I spent an hour getting all his information transferred and setting up the phone. He came in the next day with a shattered screen.”

“Apparently he didn’t remember that I was the rep who helped him and proceeded to tell me that the phone was like that when he left the store. Needless to say, the phone was not replaced.”

“I was working at a place that had soft-serve ice cream on the menu. One day, a lady came to the counter and said, ‘I’m really sorry, but my daughter dropped her ice cream and she’s really sad about it. Do you think you could give me another?’”

“I was about to, then I realized our ice cream machine was broken that day and we hadn’t sold any. I looked back at her and told her that the ice cream must’ve not been from us because of the machine.”

“She turned bright red and mumbled, ‘Oh, then I guess it must be from Dairy Queen or something,’ and left quickly.”

“I worked at Aldi, which has a return policy where you get your money back plus an item of equal or lesser value. One customer routinely returned a gallon of milk with just a quarter remaining, claiming it was ‘rancid.’”

“He’d then get a new gallon and his money back. This went on almost daily for two weeks until the district manager finally put his foot down.”

“I wouldn’t take a raw rotisserie chicken out of the oven and sell it to a customer, so they threw a gallon of milk at me.”

“I once saw someone trying to return an empty 10-pound bag of ice because it had melted too quickly.”

“I worked at Chick-fil-A in high school and had a woman yell at me because I wouldn’t sell her a cheeseburger.”

“Today, an old woman got mad at one of my coworkers because he didn’t know what school her granddaughter went to.”

“My first job was at a grocery store, and they had just started charging for plastic bags. This one guy didn’t want to pay the five pence, so he threw a block of cheese at my head!”

“I used to bartend. This lady came up to the bar and said she had dropped her phone in the toilet. I was like, ‘Oh wow, that sucks!’”

“She said, ‘Well aren’t you going to go get it out for me?’ She left the phone sitting in the toilet she’d just used. I politely reminded her that I was a bartender not a toilet-phone-recoverer. She called me a choice name and stormed off.”

“Postal office clerk here. One customer screamed at me when I told her we couldn’t send her mail because it had no address on it. Yup, no address — just the person’s name.”

“She then proceeded to yell that she always sends letters like that and that her letters always arrive that way.”

“I’m a server, and one time a customer asked for double the meat on a meat lover’s pizza that already came with four types of meat on it. Well, he got the pizza and yelled at me, refused to tip, and left a bad review about me all because there was too much meat on it.”

“Again, he wanted double meat on a pizza that already came with four types of meat. I even offered to make him a new one with less meat and he declined four times. He sat there the whole time picking off the meat one piece at a time.”