Worst/funniest/strangest customer interactions -

[sleazetown]

Rudest, most unreasonable or strange customers, awful attempts at shoplifting, minors trying to buy booze, etc.

I will start:
Used to work at Slaveway/Albertson's as a courtesy clerk (bitchwork). Waiting outside of bathroom for customer to come out to clean/replace paper towels or whatever. Old dude walks out, and the bathroom smells like fuarking Nagasaki. I walk in to see that he had diarrhea'd all over the floor, right in front of the toilet and just left with me to clean it up.

 

[some Sketchy dude]

A guy chambered a round in his handgun and pointed it at my face and told me I was illegally trespassing when I tried to sell him a dry cleaning service. He then called the police, who pulled me over, scolded me, and gave me a ticket for soliciting.

I was given this as a "hot" sales lead, where the person at the address expressed interest in the service prior to solicitation. But it wasn't the guy who lived there, just a troll who knew he was very blunt with unwelcomed guests.

Spoiler: ADDED DETAILS

Hint: I live in Murica

This was a very wealthy neighborhood, where normally soliciting requires a town hall issued license and the property to not have an explicit NO SOLICITING sign.

I did not have a license(thus the police ticket) but in situations where a person expresses interest in the service, it wouldn't be considered soliciting.

The person who falsely expressed interest in the service went all out. They provided all relevant info(name, address, home phone) to verify them, but made the contact info their own. Gave their own cell phone number, from Metro PCS in the homeowners name, and an email that was a major one(homeowner @ yahoo. com) that he had created, when the homeowner uses like Gmail or AOL.

When I showed up to a wealthy neighborhood under the pretence that it was requested, my guard was all the way down.

 

[Dick Pooman]

The store that I worked at in college had at least one attempt a month of someone pretending to slip and fall so they could try to get some money out of us. Most of them were 70+ year-old elderly people, but they don't realize that we have two cameras on every aisle. I never knew what happened to those people but they always told me that our insurance company takes care of it and they go after people committing insurance fraud really hard. The shoplifting/angry customer/psychotic customer interactions are too many to count. That was pretty much a daily occurrence.

 

[Exorbital Columnations]

Worked at 7/11 years ago. A good job all things considered; I was a fresh-faced young guy doing the graveyard shift before the law required two employees be on duty at all times. I could see two bars from my till and I had the weekends so around 2:15 the drunkards would start wandering in; there was the odd fight in the parking lot but I never concerned myself with anything that was happening outside. There was a gay couple who would come in fairly regularly to hit on me, there was an alcoholic lady who would spill hot cappuccino all over my freshly-washed floors until I started getting her to wait at the till while I fetched her coffee and whatever else she needed (I'd put about a small's worth in an extra large cup and charge her for a small so her tremors wouldn't cause a huge mess; partly so I wouldn't have to clean up and partly because I hated watching her burn the shit out of her hands). I learned pretty quickly to tell obvious junkies that the washroom was out of order after one of them sprayed blood all over the fucking place and left me a needle to clean up.

Sometimes people would wander in with lit smokes, open alcohol, open cuts, etc. Still, I could smoke weed outside whenever there was down time, people would buy me lotto tickets and cigarillos, I'd eat all of the taquitos and hot dogs after they'd been on the grills for their maximum time.. it was a good job for a young kid. The worst that ever happened was some dick smashing the front door by flinging it open too hard; he was following his battleaxe former girlfriend in after she'd been poached at the loggers' bar and got a little too excited. I just told him I was calling the cops if he didn't fuck off and that ended it, although I had to wake my manager up to find out what I should do about the door.

I worked at a Tim Hortons' for a while a few years later, graveyards again, and it was a similar kind of vibe. Ramadan was a fucking nightmare, though; 50 muslims would show up at once and they'd all want an Ice Cap; the machines are good for about 10 at a time before you're just getting cold water with no crushed ice. We'd try to explain but people are stupid so they'd get all pissy. Eventually I'd just shrug and tell them to take it or leave it. The only really rude customer I can remember is the fellow who got his order, took it away, then barged up a few minutes later, thrust a cup into my face and said "Here, taste this!"

I took it from him and asked him what the problem was. He just kept telling me to "Go on! Taste it!"very belligerent. I kept asking him what the issue was until I finally snapped and said "Look, buddy, I'm not putting my fucking mouth on this; that's how you get diseases. Tell me what you need me to do and I'll fix the order." Turns out it was supposed to be a black tea and I'd poured a coffee. Gave him his tea, apologised, sent him on his way. After that he was always very polite when he came in. I'm sure there were more but that's all that really comes to mind. Customer service is pretty meh.

Oh yeah, when I was working at the 7/11 I'd often be asked if I was worried about being robbed. Mind you, it would be 3 in the morning or so and it would be me and the customer. I'd usually laugh and ask them if they had something on their mind and they'd get embarassed and apologise.

 

[The Shadow]

I worked at a gun store for a few months in college. Had a customer ask, completely without irony, if we sold beer.

Yeah, sure, right next to the PMAGs.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

A guy chambered a round in his handgun and pointed it at my face and told me I was illegally trespassing when I tried to sell him a dry cleaning service. He then called the police, who pulled me over, scolded me, and gave me a ticket for soliciting.

I was given this as a "hot" sales lead, where the person at the address expressed interest in the service prior to solicitation. But it wasn't the guy who lived there, just a troll who knew he was very blunt with unwelcomed guests.

Not gonna lie bro, that's pretty funny.
Also nobody likes door-to-door salesmen.

Once when I was working at Radio Shack I was trying to sell this dude a cell phone, but he was being really rude and impatient. He looked really uncomfortable and kept shifting his weight from one leg to the other. I was halfway through the process when suddenly the guy freaks out and yells "JUST FORGET IT" at the top of his lungs and then shambles out the door like a fucking zombie.

I was totally confused until I started to smell it. This dude had shit himself and it was dripping down his pant leg, hence the shambling out of the store. We didn't even bother cleaning the carpet tiles he ruined, we just threw those fuckers out and replace them.

The funny thing is all this dude had to say was "I'll be right back, I REALLY have to go to the bathroom".

The store that I worked at in college had at least one attempt a month of someone pretending to slip and fall so they could try to get some money out of us. Most of them were 70+ year-old elderly people, but they don't realize that we have two cameras on every aisle. I never knew what happened to those people but they always told me that our insurance company takes care of it and they go after people committing insurance fraud really hard. The shoplifting/angry customer/psychotic customer interactions are too many to count. That was pretty much a daily occurrence.

Apparently we had a distant family member who liked to "reconnect" with her long lost relatives and do the exact same thing. Thankfully we were warned well before she tried to contact us.

 

[some Sketchy dude]

Not gonna lie bro, that's pretty funny.
Also nobody likes door-to-door salesmen.

Once when I was working at Radio Shack I was trying to sell this dude a cell phone, but he was being really rude and impatient. He looked really uncomfortable and kept shifting his weight from one leg to the other. I was halfway through the process when suddenly the guy freaks out and yells "JUST FORGET IT" at the top of his lungs and then shambles out the door like a fucking zombie.

I was totally confused until I started to smell it. This dude had shit himself and it was dripping down his pant leg, hence the shambling out of the store. We didn't even bother cleaning the carpet tiles he ruined, we just threw those fuckers out and replace them.

The funny thing is all this dude had to say was "I'll be right back, I REALLY have to go to the bathroom".


Apparently we had a distant family member who liked to "reconnect" with her long lost relatives and do the exact same thing. Thankfully we were warned well before she tried to contact us.

I agree, because I'm not dead, it was a hysterical prank. Whoever it was knew the homeowner well and was very dedicated to their craft.

If I ever met them, I would punch them in the face for risking my life and shake their hand for creating an Op so gay it went full circle and became straight.

 

[Ilackcreativity]

last year I worked at my colleges store. There was a professor that walked in and she decided to buy a candy it as a single laughy taffy. She comes up and I ring her up the candy came out to 15 cents she thought that they were 10 cents, and instead of telling this to me she stared to shout at me. And in a case like this I would have just waved the extra 5 cents, its just a nickel who cares, and fix it afterwards. She is shouting at me for a full 30 seconds before I interrupted her to say that its just 5 cents it not that big of a deal. In hindsight this was probably not the best idea as it just made her even more angry. She responds to my remark with do I have to pay rent and demands to speak with my manager because of coarse she has to. I ring the bell and my manager walks out and the first thing that she does is shout at him, and my manager was not some one who took shit so he told her the same thing that I had said which was that it was only 5 cents. After that realizing that she wasn't going to get what she wanted she stormed out of the store.

 

[SSF2T Old User]

In my late teens-early 20's, I worked in the Deli department in multiple supermarkets, and I would not recommend it. It felt more like a prison sentence. You would not believe how anal people get about cold cuts. Boomers that don't understand that slicing cheese too thin will crumble it up and look like a mushed up ball of mess. People that will force themselves to bend over the counter and eyeball you cutting the stuff. People that will force you to open up a new package of meat/cheese even though the one already open is still usable because something about the stuff being "near the end" makes them have an aneurysm. Heaven forbid you make one tiny mistake they will run to the store manager, even if the deli manager has your back.

I never got to hide in the back with the elderly workers and manager who made salads and pre-packaged food and stocked all the shelves and rarely had to deal with the customers themselves. Most I ever did was start the rotisserie chicken on the big-ass skewers and stick them in the oven... and then clean the oven before closing.

 

[Crankenstein]

As cringey as it is, I was in a metal band when I was younger. After finishing a show I was approached by two young men claiming they were just robbed by "two fucking bitches" who had lured them to the parking lot with promises of lewd acts but hit them with the ol' shanghai surprise and took their wallets, cigarettes, and weed while the boys were mostly naked. I unfortunately had to explain that; despite the fact my shirt said "security" on the front and back I did not work there, but offered to help. After quite some time, we found an actual security guard who had already caught the women which were bragging about it to some other folks at the show. He had them sitting in the security office awaiting the arrival of the police.

 

[K. V. Bones]

I'm not gonna get doxxed that easy, no brand names but i did have one customer when i used to work in hardware call the manager on me when i wasnt even the one serving them after the manager came, my manager asks me to assist said customer, i was glad to help, he proceeded to get the manager again when he didnt explain what he wanted, i expected some write up or something and was prepared for the worst, but my manager took my side and called the customer a douche, packed his truck and told him to stop harassing their employees.

 

[Melktert]

I currently work at a Walmart. the worst customer that i've ever had (and still have) had to be this extraordinarily fat man named Luke. he is about 50 and has 3 kids, all girls, and each is 3 times my weight and 5 inches shorter than me (i'm 5'11). the youngest one he lets ride on our poor mobility scooter. so this 700 lb man than literally drips out of his seat will constantly ask when we are getting new movies in, when we are getting new soda shipments, etc. even if i'm in a completely different department, this lardass seeks me (and 3 others, depending on shifts) out and asks me these dumbass questions... then proceeds to force me to scan products to see when the next shipment is. half the time i lie and say a week or 2 weeks so he'll shut the fuck up about it. the story has a happy ending though cause apparently he liked me so much he asked a manager to give me a "promotion" (which makes no sense and will never happen), so they gave me a "happy to help" award.

But the absolute fucking worst customer i've ever had was when i was covering the lawn and garden register since the tranny that usually mans it (kek) was on lunch. this skinny queer old guy comes to my register, buying charcoal, then proceeds to ask me, a straight man, when i get off work. naively i say 10 pm, thinking the fag is just making conversation. he then proceeds to hit on me and ask for my number. i tell him i'm not interested and he leaves. when i go outside to walk to my girlfriend's car (mine was in a shop), who do i see but mr faggot sitting on the curb by the cart corral. i ignore him and walk at a quick pace. my girlfriend sees that my face is visibly contorted and asks me what's wrong, i say nothing and tell her to drive. being stubborn, she keeps asking what's wrong and by now the faggot is at my passenger window. he taps and i roll it down, he asks if we want to go to a party so i say no and we drive off. he showed up a few times later but my manager called the cops.

for my last bad customer, there was this old lady smelled like shit and bought a laptop and cell phone from our wireless department (i work electronics). i set up her phone and shit, and ask if she needs anything else, she says no so i walk away thinking she'll pack her shit up. she leaves, but only with her fucking laptop. so here i am, with a set up phone, and no way of contacting her. by now she's rushed out the door so i figure she'll come back for it. she came back the next day and shat me out for not telling her to take her phone (like it's my responsibility?)

yeah retail's a bitch but at least i get to tell my kids alllll about it.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

Can I do one I witnessed?

I was driving long distance and was hungry. I saw a highway sign for some fast food places and thought: Gas station parasites or Burger King?

I chose Burger King.

So I am at the drive-thru and all is well. It was a warm night so my windows were down. The car in front of me pulls up to the window and they hand the food to the car. One of the items was a soft serve ice cream cone.

From the car I heard, "I asked for chocolate!"

The passenger threw the cone into the drive-thru. The car started pulling away and the window person yelled at the car. Brake lights.

I had prudently waited to pull forward because I thought some shit was going to go down.

A fat black lady gets out of the driver side and walks the couple of feet to the window, "Gimme some napkins."

She gets back in the car and I can see her slap the back of the passengers head and shove the napkins in his face. The entire time I can hear things like: I didn't raise you like that. Now you ain't gettin' no fucking ice cream. Get out there and clean that up.

A massive fat guy gets out of the passenger door and starts wiping up the pavement with shitty Burger King napkins.

It was...awesome.

 

[Melktert]

Can I do one I witnessed?

I was driving long distance and was hungry. I saw a highway sign for some fast food places and thought: Gas station parasites or Burger King?

I chose Burger King.

So I am at the drive-thru and all is well. It was a warm night so my windows were down. The car in front of me pulls up to the window and they hand the food to the car. One of the items was a soft serve ice cream cone.

From the car I heard, "I asked for chocolate!"

The passenger threw the cone into the drive-thru. The car started pulling away and the window person yelled at the car. Brake lights.

I had prudently waited to pull forward because I thought some shit was going to go down.

A fat black lady gets out of the driver side and walks the couple of feet to the window, "Gimme some napkins."

She gets back in the car and I can see her slap the back of the passengers head and shove the napkins in his face. The entire time I can hear things like: I didn't raise you like that. Now you ain't gettin' no fucking ice cream. Get out there and clean that up.

A massive fat guy gets out of the passenger door and starts wiping up the pavement with shitty Burger King napkins.

It was...awesome.

are fat people even human at this point? jesus fucking christ they're entitled

In my late teens-early 20's, I worked in the Deli department in multiple supermarkets, and I would not recommend it. It felt more like a prison sentence. You would not believe how anal people get about cold cuts. Boomers that don't understand that slicing cheese too thin will crumble it up and look like a mushed up ball of mess. People that will force themselves to bend over the counter and eyeball you cutting the stuff. People that will force you to open up a new package of meat/cheese even though the one already open is still usable because something about the stuff being "near the end" makes them have an aneurysm. Heaven forbid you make one tiny mistake they will run to the store manager, even if the deli manager has your back.

I never got to hide in the back with the elderly workers and manager who made salads and pre-packaged food and stocked all the shelves and rarely had to deal with the customers themselves. Most I ever did was start the rotisserie chicken on the big-ass skewers and stick them in the oven... and then clean the oven before closing.

Yeah the meat-slingers at my walmart get shat on daily for the whole sliced cheese thing.... why don't people just buy the fucking Sarengeto prepacked cheese or whatever the fuck?

last year I worked at my colleges store. There was a professor that walked in and she decided to buy a candy it as a single laughy taffy. She comes up and I ring her up the candy came out to 15 cents she thought that they were 10 cents, and instead of telling this to me she stared to shout at me. And in a case like this I would have just waved the extra 5 cents, its just a nickel who cares, and fix it afterwards. She is shouting at me for a full 30 seconds before I interrupted her to say that its just 5 cents it not that big of a deal. In hindsight this was probably not the best idea as it just made her even more angry. She responds to my remark with do I have to pay rent and demands to speak with my manager because of coarse she has to. I ring the bell and my manager walks out and the first thing that she does is shout at him, and my manager was not some one who took shit so he told her the same thing that I had said which was that it was only 5 cents. After that realizing that she wasn't going to get what she wanted she stormed out of the store.

who the fuck buys literally one laffy taffy? i mean i get they're professors but seriously that's extremely autistic

The store that I worked at in college had at least one attempt a month of someone pretending to slip and fall so they could try to get some money out of us. Most of them were 70+ year-old elderly people, but they don't realize that we have two cameras on every aisle. I never knew what happened to those people but they always told me that our insurance company takes care of it and they go after people committing insurance fraud really hard. The shoplifting/angry customer/psychotic customer interactions are too many to count. That was pretty much a daily occurrence.

i've stumbled (pun intended) upon boomer retards doing this in walmart... some are pros, too. water bottle in the jacket, they tip it out and onto the floor, pace around for a minute, then try to fall. i watched this retarded old faggot do the water routine and start laying down and then i did the classic "can i help you find anything sir?"... pretty sure he pissed himself

 

[RapeMan]

A guy chambered a round in his handgun and pointed it at my face and told me I was illegally trespassing when I tried to sell him a dry cleaning service. He then called the police, who pulled me over, scolded me, and gave me a ticket for soliciting.

Ahh sales, I was pushing electricity when I came across a house that smelled of cat piss. We called it the smell of success. So I knock and someone answers through the screen door which they can see out of but I can't see in. I do my spiel and show the price list (my only copy) when they quickly reach out and snatch it then run off to show to rest of the clan deeper inside the hovel. I wait for over 10 minutes before i start calling out that I have to get going and need my sheet back but they ignore me, so foolishly i open the screen door to look inside. They we're just waiting for this and immediately start screaming trespass and bloody murder. They storm out the front door and I retreat off the property still asking for my sheet, they say the only thing i'm getting is arrested. Sure enough a cop shows up instantly and takes statements, he calms the ferals down and admonishes me for opening their door. As he escorted me down the street he said
"You have unfortunately stumbled upon the most retarded family in town, we get at least one call a week from or about them, they're not allowed to contact either neighbour."
I was rattled and never got my sheet back so I went to pub, but at least I didn't get a gun in my face.

 

[Melktert]

Ahh sales, I was pushing electricity when I came across a house that smelled of cat piss. We called it the smell of success. So I knock and someone answers through the screen door which they can see out of but I can't see in. I do my spiel and show the price list (my only copy) when they quickly reach out and snatch it then run off to show to rest of the clan deeper inside the hovel. I wait for over 10 minutes before i start calling out that I have to get going and need my sheet back but they ignore me, so foolishly i open the screen door to look inside. They we're just waiting for this and immediately start screaming trespass and bloody murder. They storm out the front door and I retreat off the property still asking for my sheet, they say the only thing i'm getting is arrested. Sure enough a cop shows up instantly and takes statements, he calms the ferals down and admonishes me for opening their door. As he escorted me down the street he said
"You have unfortunately stumbled upon the most retarded family in town, we get at least one call a week from or about them, they're not allowed to contact either neighbour."
I was rattled and never got my sheet back so I went to pub, but at least I didn't get a gun in my face.

holy fuck i had neighbors similar to this 2 years ago... the dad was an autistic meth dealer (not joking) and his poor wife would get beaten every couple days. neighbors called the cops often. also their dog shit in the house and they didn't clean it, i tried telling them that they should but they just ree'd at me.

 

[Titos]

When I worked at a pet store there was this guy who would come in every week or so to buy feeder fish by the dozens and he would ask for specific feeder fish out of the tank which was a pain in the dick.

At a previous job we had an insane old jewish lady who would call in and complain about how she got a call from us regarding her dead mother. She would then go on to scream about how our CEO personally called her on some Jew holiday and how that somehow violated her religious rights. She would go into "muh antisemitism" any time someone dared cut her off and start threatening to sue. We eventually just decided that if she called you could just hang up immediately. I had a call with her that lasted 3 fucking hours once and I got to speak for maybe 2 minutes during the whole thing.

 

[OvercookedBacon]

Used to be a casino bartender. Policy was one complimentary drink per actively playing customer. This one Karen comes up to the bar window, more than a little tipsy already, and asks why she can't have two drinks. Claiming "her friend is in the bathroom" or something. I politely tell her I can't, company policy. She's persistent. I remain firm. After a minute or two of this she huffs and storms off, not before sneering "What, can't you smile?". And I'm thinking, "bitch, with people like you here, how can I?"
Oddly enough that was the only negative experience I had with a customer, all the others were friendly.

 

[Autumnal Equinox]

I used to work at a retail chain where our customer base was primarily seniors. Made me fucking hate old people for the longest time.

Had one regular old fart come in all the time wearing what I can only describe as a Confederate daddy outfit. He looked like a reject from The Village People. He'd buy a ton of those 5 gallon jugs of water (like 12-16 at a time) and then bitch as loud as he could if the checker didn't bag them. Made one girl cry because she said she thought they'd be too heavy for the bags, so every time this asshole came in, whoever had to deal with him ended up having their line slow yo a crawl because they'd have to triple bag each individual jug of water 16 times.

Had one asshole come through my line buying about $300 worth of shit. Never acknowledged me, never said a word (I fucking hated people like that) I rang him up, told him his total, he waits a moment and suddenly bolts out the exit door without a word, leaving all his shit on the line, and a line of customers waiting while I would have to void it all out and clean it up. I was frustrated and said "really?" as he was running out. NOW the fucker can talk, he comes storming back to my line, yelling "really! really! really! really!" Like an autist, has no idea why anyone would be irritated and demands to speak to my manager. Manager does the standard manager-customer dick sucking they're so good at and personally checks him out while sending me on an early break.

 

[Catnip Smokes]

I worked at a bargain grocery store as a cashier for a little over a year and during that time I dealt with one customer that I will never forget.

This man who's in his 60's, beard, long grey hair with a hairline that is almost none existent, and one bloodshot eye. In his basket was a few produce products and like 5 jars of coconut butter. I go through the routine cashier dialog. "How are you doing" or "Did you find everything today." We engage in pretty normal dialog, until I started scanning his coconut butter. He then starts to talk to me about coconut butter, which isn't that out of the ordinary. But then he starts telling me what he uses it for. He lists off pretty standard stuff like cooking but then he leans in close to me and whispers, "It makes pretty great lube too." Me not even sort of expecting that replies with "oh, okay."

That was pretty much it, he left, I told him to have a good day. But a week later he shows up again in one of my coworkers lines with a giant jar of coconut butter that we started stocking. Must have been a good week for him.