31 Of The Weirdest Reasons Why Customers Got Mad People At People Working In Customer Service

Anything can trigger people nowadays.

Ayoub

• Published in Funny
• July 5, 2022

Working in customer service is an absolute nightmare; you spend all day dealing with entitled a-holes who always make sure to do and say things to ruin your day and make your job harder. The worst part is that you cannot react to their entitlement as you see fit because you are supposed to treat customers like royalty.

It's some of the most mentally and physically draining jobs you could ever do, and no matter how much you try to avoid negativity while on the job, it will end up finding you one way or another. It's one of the things people should keep in mind before opting for a customer service job.

The worst part of the job is dealing with angry customers, some of them don't even have valid reasons to get angry, but they still let you know that they are regardless. You have to remain calm the whole time a customer is abusing you verbally, but that's just part of the job.

A Redditor, who eventually deleted their account, asked an interesting question on the r/AskReddit subReddit that got a lot of interesting answers from the community. The question goes: "What is the most bizarre reason a customer got angry with you?"

Scroll down and check out the answers from the Reddit community:

1. "I worked at a Burger King in high school."

A guy comes in one day complaining he put in money to get a newspaper in the machine outside, and it wasn't this Sunday's paper. He wanted a refund. I told him we didn't own that machine, and we weren't able to give him his money back. I also mentioned to him it was actually Saturday, not Sunday. He flew into a rage, threw last weeks Sunday edition of the paper all around the restaurant and behind the counter. My manager comes out, and threatens to call the cops.

Dude leaves screaming about how we ripped him off. Sometimes you can't fix stupid.

2. "A woman and her high school daughter walk up to me while I'm working in Bath and Body Works."

Here's how the convo goes:

Mom: We don't know what they are called, but you know those things you can wear around your neck and you clip keys or badges to them? Do you sell those here?

Me: Oh, do you mean lanyards?

Mom: WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?

Me: Nothing, you said you didn't know what those things are called, they are called lanyards. Unfortunately, we do not sell them here. Maybe check Hot Topic?

Mom: Whatever, thanks for wasting my time.

As they turned to leave, the daughter turned behind her moms back and mouthed, "I'm sorry," to me. Poor girl, that mom was nuts.

3. "Apparently when she said she wanted a "hot fudge sundae" she meant strawberry sundae."

4. "Apparently I didn’t greet her at the drive thru with enough enthusiasm.."

But the real gag is it wasn’t even me on the speaker and when I corrected her she got even madder.

5. "I had several people yell at me after I called them out for trying to steal sh*t."

Even after pointing out the cameras in the store, some would guarantee I would be losing my job after they spoke with corporate.

6. "I used to deliver pizza. I had someone get irate and refuse the delivery because they'd ordered it to be delivered at 7pm and I got there at 6:55."

7. "Worked at Walmart and this guy went through my line buying something for his tires. "

He accidentally got two different things. One was a lot more expensive than the other. He got pissed (looking at his receipt) and demanded to know why one cost more money. I looked at the products and noticed one had some gel inserted in the product. I told him this and he demanded to know why this made the product more expensive. I explained to him I knew nothing about cars and was just a cashier but he could go to customer service to exchange the more expensive product for the cheaper one. He then refused to leave my line until I lowered the price of the more expensive product. BTW I was working the express check out line on Friday at 5:30 and a huge line was forming behind this man child. My manger finally got him to leave the line and go to customer service. Though his son was in line behind him and apologized for his father's actions.

8. "They noticed I had an accent (I'm from southern virginia and north carolina area) and pointed it out as 'Russian' "

I don't know how they possibly thought my accent was russian but I corrected them and they got angry that I was being 'condescending' to them.

9. "He got caught having his 4 and 6 year old nephews hide merchandise under his wheelchair for the THIRD TIME."

Mostly video games and controllers. He accused me of hating disabled people as he was being kicked out. I was just the cashier by the front door. Literally wasn’t involved at all.

I’ve noticed some common questions/thoughts and I’d like to clear them up!

Q: How on earth did he steal games? Aren’t they locked up?

A: It’s simple. My store sucked! The games were kept behind plastic doors that were too small for the shelf they were attached to. People found out pretty quickly that you could bend the plastic back and reach in and grab the items. Someone even stole a PS3 this way. Games and controllers that had the spider alarm were much easier to steal. Cameras are expensive and my store only kept them faced on where the expensive merchandise was displayed. So you could take the items, go to another part of the store, and then damage the crap out of the boxes to get around the spiders. Sometimes people would give up and I’d come across the left behind mangled carcass of an iPod touch.

Coincidentally my store also had the highest theft rates out of all the stores in the country. No idea why. /s

Q: What do you mean, kicked out? Employees can’t really do anything.

A: You’re right. We had security. I don’t know exactly what all they could do because I was just a lowly cashier and I was not paid enough to care about anything. I just saw it was a big commotion with a lot of yelling and somehow I got caught in the crossfire. I found out about the man’s repeat offenses later as I was talking to my manager.

Q: What were you really doing to set him off?

A: I’ve thought about this a lot today and honestly? I lead you guys astray. I wasn’t an innocent party. The fact of the matter is, I made eye contact with the man. It’s my mistake and I own up to it. I’m sorry everyone.

10. "I remember being screamed at every time the cigarette prices went up. "How am I supposed to afford that?" I don't know, sir; I'm a 15 year old girl."

This was 20 years ago, I think the law has changed but at least at the time, yes, minors were allowed to sell tobacco products! And yes, as a then 15-year-old girl sometimes being yelled at did make me cry!

11. "I worked at a gas station in high school and was in charge of changing the prices on the sign outside."

As I was using a 20 ft pole and suction cup and struggling to swap plastic numbers I would get screamed at by people in their cars. Ma'am, I'm a teenager I dont set gas prices for Royal Dutch Shell. And the prices are already set on the pumps, this sign doesnt control the oil market.

12. "Because I didn't open up shop an hour before opening time."

Because "he was here now, so open the store!" He kept banging on the door and then threw a metal bucket at my head. Good times

13. "I applied another discount to the total instead of the promoted discount to save her more money. "

Had to get into an argument with her just to explain I’m trying to save her more money. She wasn’t having it.

Pay more money, I don’t fucking care anymore (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

14. "A woman I had never met or seen in my life, asked me where her kids were."

I was confused and said "I'm sorry, I don't know." And she yelled and asked where they put them. She stormed off angry at me. I never had a clue why she asked me.

15. "I was a department manager in a "health & beauty" section (next to the pharmacy) of a grocery store. "

A guy came in and asked for an antifungal called miconozole that the doctor suggested for an infection on his face.

Now, as some of you may know, miconozole is very commonly used for yeast infections in the vagina, so it is sold by the feminine hygiene products - pads, tampons, etc. I took him over there, pointed out the miconozole and showed him that we carried a generic store brand as a cheaper alternative.

Dude was absolutely pissed off that I suggested he put "pussy cream" on his face and demanded to speak to a manager. I told him that I was the department manager and he argued saying there's no way a chick is in charge of men and left. Or so I thought. Apparently, he had wandered the department and found the nearest male employee, who then brought the customer to his manager (me) when he had no idea where or what miconozole was. The customer refused again to listen to me, so I told the stocker to bring him to the pharmacist (also a woman lmao) to discuss his needs.

Next thing I heard was him screaming at the pharmacist, demanding to talk to someone who knew what they were talking about. He was asked to leave and eventually security was called to escort him out when he continued to rant and rave about women who know nothing about his medical needs.

16. "I used to work deli for a New England grocery chain, working in Vermont."

Working in one of the bigger stores meant that we would often be loaned out during ski season to small stores with "big" holiday booms (it was very busy for them, about normal for my store).

I was slicing cheese for a woman, who got real angry that I hadn't stacked her cheese perfectly straight, which blew my mind. Who expects deli sliced cheese to be stacked perfectly?

The story has a happy ending though. Her exact, indignant words were "where I'm from in New York they stack the cheese perfectly straight." And the guy behind her, a regular the local employees had greeted by name, piped up and said "well then maybe you should go the fuck back to New York." Best moment I've ever had a work.

17. "This lady at Walmart once got really pissed off at me because we didn’t sell pasteurized eggs."

And this wasn’t the loud, screaming kind of pissed off. She just looked at me very intensely and spoke at low volume, over-enunciating every syllable, and said “Tell. Your. Managers. To order. Pasteurized. Eggs.”

This other lady grabbed my arm and started pulling on me telling me that the fact that we shut down our sewing department felt like we had killed her child, and that less and less people were going to come to Walmart because of stuff like that and that we would have to close down.

18. "All of this was at a regular Borders, by the way, not a Bible store."

We didn't have any bibles that were

large print,

pocket sized,

and contained the full text of the Bible.

Now, we had large-print bibles and we had pocket-sized bibles, all containing the full text you'd expect. We even had a large-print, pocket-sized "words of Jesus" compendium. But this customer wanted a bible that was all three. All the words, printed larger, yet somehow smaller when it was all put together. I tried to tell her that this was impossible, but she wasn't having it.

I also had a customer that wanted a Bible that was in English ... but somehow not a translation? He kept saying "the original," he wanted the original Bible. But he didn't want the New Testament Greek one we had. He wanted the original, but in English. Well, every translation in English thinks they're capturing something of the original, I said, they do all this scholarship— I don't care about scholarship, he interrupted me. I just want the original. I ended up leaving him in the King James Version section and said, "Let me know if there's anything else I can do!" while walking away quickly enough to not hear anything back.

19. "A customer came in to buy hand sanitizer, she brought her bottle to the register to purchase it, saw there was some at the register, then proceeded to share her vast knowledge of swear words with great vigor with me, swearing she would never shop with us again. What."

20. "Lady walked into my office, asking for one of my colleagues."

I explained to her that he actually works out of a different office, which is listed in his e-mail signature and our website. She was upset, as she had documents to drop off to him. I explained to her that his office is only 3 minutes down the street if she wanted to make the drive, or I could scan her documents and e-mail them to him. She refused. So I said, well, you can leave them here with me and I can ask the guy to come pick them up tomorrow. She again said no, because she didn't trust me. I explained that I am the director of operations for the company, basically my colleague's boss. She then yells that she doesn't know me and this is extremely sensitive information and storms out. 1 minute later, she comes in and asks for my business card to prove I am who I say I am, lol. I give her one, and she leaves her stuff with me and storms off again.

21. "I was working at a coffee and wine bar when I had a man scream at me because he ordered "the Regular" and I didn't know what he wanted."

It was my first time meeting him which, catastrophically, aligned with the first time I was left to take care of the register alone. I couldn't get away from the yelling ("Where the hell do you think you're going?!") in order to ask the people in the back what he wanted.

His "Regular" got written out, laminated, and pinned to the cash register after that.

He kept screaming, "Do you know who I am" over and over, which - no sir, I do not know who you are. This is the first time we met. Also it turns out he was no one but a dick.

Don't remember all the particulars of his "Regular" but I do remember it was an espresso drink where he wanted you to put brown sugar in the milk before you steamed it, then add some boiling water to the top after it was all put together. There was probably another incantation involved but it's been a while.

Also, I don't really blame the owner. It was a new family owned business (not a Starbucks) that she really wanted to have as a hangout for locals. She was worried about rocking the boat banning people. We only banned two people in my two years of working there and that was fun.

23. "I was a cashier, it was an old woman. Whole Foods, back when they had the app to scan for little to no savings."

She couldn’t get her app to work, I spent 5-10 minutes trying to help, looking at her phone, etc. She gave up and her transaction goes through, as she shouts, “I got it open!” I looked at her and said, “I’m sorry, the transaction went through, I can’t scan the app at this point.” She gave me a dirty look, went to the front desk, told my manager I was a bitch and walked away. It’s people like her who I just think are gonna die so sad and angry.

24. "Got yelled at for saying "no problem" instead of "you're welcome.""

25. "My first real job was at a Culver's, and one of the regulars would always order a "mushroom and Swiss, hold the mushroom, hold the Swiss.""

When I finally had a chance to take the guy's order, I straight told him that we make the burger exactly the same as the standard hamburger (butterburger, if you're familiar with the chain).

Dude flipped his lid. Started raving about how he used to own his own Culver's in another city and that if they were just using regular burgers for the mushroom and Swiss, that he'd take it right up the chain and get us all fired.

EDIT: Lot of replies here, and I feel like I need to add that this was over 20 years ago. Maybe they did things differently then than they do now. But there was no difference in how the M&S was made compared to a regular Butterburger back then.

26. "I used to work for Best Buy in Geek Squad but would cover PC occasionally."

I had someone get mad at me because the quality of Intel chips has been steadily going down and they wanted me to give them a discount to buy an Intel laptop. They obviously knew it was a manufacturer's thing as they even talked to me about how Intel is pushing their resources into quantum computing and not advancing current hardware the same way.

Like...I can't just call someone at Intel and tell them to change their focus. I can't give you 20% off a new laptop because you dislike AMD and the price for performance doesn't really match anymore.

27. "I had a customer storm upstairs to customer services to make a complaint..."

...because we'd moved menswear upstairs, and he couldn't get upstairs because of his knees. So he went upstairs.

About all I could do was call the support desk and apologize for what they were about to receive.

We had an elevator, but he was also claustrophobic, apparently.

28. "Guy was irate because I didn't get his pizza delivered in time."

He yelled at me and said he didn't want it and would never order again. I got back in my car and as he stared me down from the porch I started eating his pizza. I took a couple of bites then drove off with both hands on the wheel and a piece of pie hanging out of my mouth. He was very polite when he ordered again a few days later.

29. "I Used to work at gamestop."

One time this guy came in, I asked him if I could help him with anything and he assured me he needed some time to look before I helped him. Then the phone rang with a customer who had like 10 minutes worth of questions. The other guy waited for me to get off the phone just so he could bitch that I took too long to help him so he was taking his business elsewhere. I absolutely told him that I could not care less if he left and didn't buy anything.

30. "I was working at a bank that no longer exists back in ~2005 as a operations supervisor of the teller line."

I was working as a teller and it was a pretty busy day, maybe the 1st or 3rd of the month so the line was out the door with people. There was a customer who was coming up to my window and he was very irate and frustrated with the line. Makes sense - we had all the tellers on the line and it was still a monster. He'd probably waited like 40 minutes? I don't know it's a blur for me feels like 8 hours passes in a blip on those days. Anyway he gets up to the window and he throws his checkbook at me through the little slot in a huff and tells me he wants to withdrawal some money.

It's at this point I should tell you that he gives me his Wells Fargo account, but we are - unfortunately - a Washington Mutual.

I tell him as such and he starts raising all hell calling me a bitch and catty and that I "have an attitude." Now, people get seriously mad over money so I've experienced a lot of hostility. I felt objectively bad for the guy but also shocked that he'd get so mad.

He eventually called my manager over to complain about me. We apologized for my behavior and he eventually left.

Some people seriously lash out when they fuck up.

31. "After I handed him his coffee, instead of saying “thank you” to him, l told him to “have a nice day”."

He sent an email to corporate and my manager telling them I was “rude” to him because I didn’t follow a “company standard”.

31. "Customer ordered a dish that always comes with french fries. Got mad when he got his french fries, because he wanted bread."

Nbd - I apologized (although I did nothing wrong) and brought him some bread immediately. Problem solved you'd think, but he then started yelling at me because apparently the restaurant "always serves this with bread". I should've just agreed with him, but I foolishly didn't. He told me I was wrong. I told him I had worked there for 5 years already, that I knew I wasn't wrong, and I advised him to tell staff that he wanted bread when ordering next time. At this point he got red in the face and screamed that he knew better because he'd been a customer for 10 years already, which is rich, since the restaurant hadn't even been open that long.

Long story short, the owner came over to his table, she supported me, the guy ate his food that must've been cold by then and never came back.

I'll never forget his poor wife, quietly trying to calm him down and to get him to let it go. She was incredibly embarrased but I doubt he even noticed.

People will always find a reason to get angry, especially those who work in the customer service industry. They allow themselves to treat workers this way because they know they don't have the freedom to react however they see fit during working hours.

In any other scenario, they would end up getting their a$$ beaten by someone.

Ayoub