23 Workers Describe Their Most Hilarious (And Baffling) Experiences With ‘Stupid’ Customers

Pixabay / ed_davad
Pixabay / ed_davad

Found on r/AskReddit.

1. I work in customer service for a cell phone company so everyday I hear the dumbest customer I’ve ever heard. But a good one was when a customer called complaining about international numbers calling an soliciting her. I asked what the number was and she gave me a standard 10 digit number. I asked why she thought it was international to which she said “because the caller ID says it’s coming from the District of Columbia”.

bwj8891

2. When I was working internet tech support, I had a customer call us up because his net wasn’t working. He said he hooked everything up but “the damn thing just won’t let me email”.

He then said “the cable you sent me was too damn big”. I told him that shouldn’t be the case, and he said he had to re-size it to make it fit into his computer. After a little more questioning, I found out he just took the box that had his network card, his modem and most importantly that cd with a huge red sticker on it that says “RUN THIS FIRST BEFORE SETTING UP EQUIPMENT”, and chucked all that stuff aside. He then took out the ethernet cable, tried to plug it into his 56k modem, when it didn’t fit he took a knife and carved it down to make it fit.

I just kind of sat there as he was furious because his service didn’t work and we sent him useless equipment. When he finally let me get a word in, I told him he was supposed to run the cd and use all of that other equipment. He said he didn’t want the service anymore and told us to cancel it, but I told him he signed a contract and I could setup an appointment for him for a technician to come out. He wasn’t interested.

I hated that job sometimes.

T3rkish

3. I didn’t have to deal with it, but it was amusing listening to a waiter at an IHOP try to explain to a customer why they couldn’t order “Never ending pancakes” to go.

jbomb1080

4. I have been a waiter for years but by far the stupidest thing I’ve ever had happen to me at work happened when I was just starting out. I was waiting on a family of four and they all ordered ice waters.

I brought them their drinks and then a few minutes later the mom waves me over. She says, “The outside of my glass is wet.” I stare at it and see the beads of condensation on the outside of the glass.

“Yeah it’s called condensation, its what happens when you have ice water in a room temperature glass,” I say.

She stares at me like I’m a fucking alien, and then I realize that this was my future as a waiter, dealing with fucking idiots. I took her drink and wiped it off with a towel and handed it back to her.

AcTungs

5. I worked at a helpdesk…one time a lady called in complaining she “charged her internet all night, and now it won’t work once she unplugged it from the modem”…

Thepeoplesman

6. I work in the maintenance department of a large hotel in Ohio. Have had a guest flip out because her room did not have a TV. I told her to turn around, she spun in a circle (NO lie) I then told her to face the exact opposite direction from where she was and look on the the wall above the fireplace. She did and said “Oh, I thought that was one of those fancy digital picture frames.”

Dougdahead

7. “Thank you for calling Starbucks, this is Jeff. How can I help you?”

“Yes, where are you located?”

“We’re at the corner of Main and Magnolia.”

“And where is that.”

“Do you know where Main Street is?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where Magnolia Avenue is?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where we are.”

“Well I’m standing at that intersection and I can’t find your store. Is it underground or something?”

[looks out the window and sees a woman who looks lost]

“Ma’am, turn to your left. Do you see a man in a green apron waving at you?” [begins waving at her]

“Yes.”

“That man is inside a Starbucks. Go there.”

“That’s not Starbucks. That’s Quizno’s.”

“Ma’am, I’m very confident I’m in a Starbucks right now.”

“You’re not very helpful” [click]

– Anonymous

8. I worked at a Stop and Shop in the produce department part time for a few years. There was a kid in there named Bobby who sold drugs but had a really good sense of humor.

One day we get a call from a customer saying she found a spider in her grapes. He handles it properly and explains that sometimes bugs do come in on the fruit and that he was sorry that happened. She however says that she’s bringing it in so we can test whether it’s poisonous or not. Problem is, we don’t do that. It’s a bug. Kill it.

She comes in 45 minutes later with this spider in a tupperware container and starts asking me what we’re going to do with it. As I’m backpedaling my way through the conversation Bobby walks up saying “OH YOU’RE THE SPIDER LADY!” He grabs the container and notes how big the spider is which freaks her out a little bit. She asks him what we are going to do with it and with the most serious tone on he just says “Probably going to shake him up and see if he’ll fight the other ones we have out back.” Then he just walks away. Lady went apeshit on me. I lol’d.

That’s it.

ytomk

9. I work for a bank, and customers will sometimes call to ask how they can access their account online and do online banking.

I told this older woman to go to bankname.com. She started yelling and cursing at me that I made her go into her e-mail and that she can’t believe I’m reading her e-mails.

I tried explaining to her that I can’t see her computer as we’re talking over the phone…and she probably just got into her e-mail because it was her homepage or the last page she viewed.

She wanted nothing of it. No matter how many times I kept asking her to find the address bar and type bankname.com…she said that it kept bringing her back to her e-mail.

The conversation lasted 45 minutes. She was yelling the entire time. I pretty much wanted to shoot myself in the head.

– Anonymous

10. Back in college, I worked over the summer for a tour bus company in Washington, DC. While driving past the Washington Monument, a woman asked me “How do they get all the flags to fly in the same direction?”

habragg

11. Working in Hotels I have meet quite a few dim bulbs.

One night a woman stormed into the lobby screaming about how our parking garage did not have enough clearance for her jacked up hummer. I explained that there is uncovered parking across the street, and if her Hummer did not fit in the garage, she could park there. She got irate about how it was unsafe and demanded I (this is a direct quote) “Go outside and raise the parking structure with a stick or something”. I politely explained that was physically impossible for me to do, and she said “Well, then you shouldn’t be working with people!”

– Anonymous

12. I worked geek squad once and a customer told me his ipod gave his jeep a virus and that’s why he was having engine trouble now.

halfprice06

13. In high school I worked at a local hardware store.

We also refilled propane tanks for gas grills. After a summer or two of doing ten or more tanks a day you get good at guestimating how full a tank is just by picking it up. one particularly hot day a customer comes in and sets his tank down next to me and asks for a fill up. I pick up the tank and inform him that the tank is full and does not need a fill up.

He looks pretty agitated already with this short exchange and says that he checked that it was empty and would I just fill it up. To this, I inquired how he checked. There are several ways to check, one being by the weight of the tank, another is the thermal strip on the side (which his tank did not have) the other is to pour hot water down the side and feel where it gets cold. His reply assured me that this was one blithering idiot lucky to be alive. He said he checked it by holding his cigarette lighter in front of the valve and opening it.

To this I replied: “You ought to write to your congressman and representative because they saved your life today. This tank has an OPD safety valve on it that prevents the gas from coming out without anything attached.”

He walked out without another word and with a very red face.

Kahanamoku

14. I once had a customer bring back a laptop she bought the day before claiming it was broken. She said it wouldn’t open, I asked her if it was windows not loading up or a program not opening, she said the laptop itself wouldn’t physically open. I took it out of the box, opened it up and just looked at her. Her mouth fell open, she looked at me and said “Oh, it opens that side! Me and my sister tried for an hour to open it up last night and couldn’t” She had been trying to open it from the hinge side…

MunkeyMann

15. I once had a customer service rep call me to the front of the store because a couple were screaming at her, saying that I sold them the wrong game for their console.

I went up to the front, and they shifted their screaming back and forth between the two of us, but it was mainly directed at me, because I was apparently a greedy salesperson who purposely sold them a game that was incompatible with the Nintendo DS (that I had also sold them) just so I could roll around in my filthy lucre while cackling away at their misfortune.

Anyway, in between the yelling, I managed to glean from them that their issue was that the game cartridge wouldn’t actually fit into the console. So I picked up the game cartridge and slid it into the machine with no problems. They both shut up and stared at it for a second. The wife began to yell at me again (something about tricking them and making them look bad) while the husband shushed her and apologized. He explained that they had gone home and handed the whole lot to their 4-year-old to figure out, but their 4-year-old kept trying to put the cartridge in backwards.

Apparently it never occurred to them to look into the matter themselves, as their toddler had things well in hand, and the obvious conclusion was that I had sold them the wrong thing. On purpose.

ArianaIncomplete

16. I work at the Philadelphia Zoo. One day I was carrying a chicken to the exercise yard. A man was eagerly following me waiting to see what animal I had inside the carrier.

The chicken was reluctant to leave her carrier at first, and when she finally exited the carrier I said, “Good bird”. Then the man asked me, “Why are you calling it a bird if it’s a chicken?” I didn’t know how to respond without making him sound like a moron.

ChaalzDahmus

17. I saw an outraged piece of white trash storm into my local AT&T store as I was shopping. She ran up to the counter and screamed at the salesman for selling he a defective Iphone. She said that she had only used it for two days without charging when it suddenly shut off. She plugged it up, even hit it against her table, but nothing would make it turn back on. the salesman smiled, took the phone, held down the lock button, and the iphone turned on. The lady flipped him off and ran out

JustaMoron

18. Once, while working in the travel section of a bookstore, a customer asked for a globe of Britain.

I got a lot of daft requests but that floored me.

Camberwell_Carrot

19. I worked as a lifeguard at a public pool last summer.

We had a strict ‘No water-wings” policy. Those little fuckers are death traps. So this woman is putting water wings on her kid next to the pool, and I politely inform her that we do not allow water wings, and have life vests available for free literally 5 feet from where she’s standing. She becomes so infuriated that I would “dare to dictate how she treats her child” and tons of other shit. So I call my supervisor over, and as he arrives and is speaking to her, the kid jumps in the pool.

Water wings slip up his arms, and he’s suspended underwater. Jump in and pull him out. Woman is furious that I would “have the nerve to touch her child. How dare I?!”.

– Anonymous

20. I worked fast food and a customer wanted a cheeseburger, medium fry, and medium drink. I said ok I will ring you up a #1 combo meal. This angered the lady who told me that she didn’t want the combo meal just a medium drink, a medium fry, and a cheeseburger. I told her that it would be the same order but this would save her money, but she got even more furious so I politely punched them in separately.

– Anonymous

21. Customer: My computer doesn’t work.

Me: Is the monitor on?

Customer: Of course.

Me: What color is the power button on the monitor.

Customer: Black.

Me: Can you press the power button on the monitor?

Customer hangs up.

– Anonymous

22. I can think of one from my time at working at Petco. A lady called saying that her labrador was throwing up blood, and “do you guys sell a pill that stops this?” I gave in to the undisciplined side of my head and irritatedly responded that if her child was throwing up blood she probably wouldn’t be going to Walgreens to find a drug for it, she’d be going to the doctor’s and she should probably do the same for her dog. That job scared me with the amount of people that were totally clueless on how to raise animals and yet had small children.

– Anonymous

23. Worked at EB Games when I was 18, in a city in Canada known for its red necks.

A man in his 40s came in and spent at least 3 hours browsing every single title on the wall. He refused my help several times and eventually came up to the counter with 5 brand new games on almost every system we carried. After ringing in his selection of Cabela’s hunting, Nascar racing and UFC fighting he paid and left.

Several hours later the man returns! He throws open the front door (it was a stand alone store) and yells “What kind of shit show are you running here?!” He is red in the face and stomps towards me and throws his bag of games onto the counter.

“NONE OF THESE WORK. THIS IS A SHIT STORE. WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS… (man rants and yells at me for a minute or so before he decides to take a breath).”

I asked him, “you tried the games in your Xbox, PC and Playstation and NONE of them worked?”
His reply “I just got that new player from Wal-Mart THIS AFTERNOON and NONE OF THESE GAMES WORK!!” Of course, he doesn’t know the name of ‘the disc player’ that he bought was. After several painful minutes and him showing me the Wal-Mart receipt out of his pocket…

…he bought a DVD player. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Ahnita

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