|
I'm sure there a billion hospitality and retail peons amongst us here. What are the absolutely dumbest and most standout complaints you've heard and had to deal with? Working in a small hotel in the middle of rural Australia I got my stupidest one last month: a very serious, unhappy, you-need-to-deal-with-this issue where the poor gentleman was woken up in the morning because "the birds are too loud". Poor bastard had to deal with the local wildlife and was not okay with such an inconvenience. We suggested that perhaps leaving the city was not for him. Second to that, at the same property, was the guy who was gobsmacked that this tiny place in the country didn't have a Tesla charging station. We offered him a long extension lead.
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 11:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:18 |
|
|
ubermarcus posted:Working in a small hotel in the middle of rural Australia I got my stupidest one last month: a very serious, unhappy, you-need-to-deal-with-this issue where the poor gentleman was woken up in the morning because "the birds are too loud". Poor bastard had to deal with the local wildlife and was not okay with such an inconvenience. We suggested that perhaps leaving the city was not for him. Give him a break, he was probably only in town for the most important trial of his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4mogrWHTS4
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 11:28
|
|
|
I worked at a pretty well known BBQ place in Detroit. Sundays were typically full of customer service issues. You'd get large groups that had just come from church. Many of these people had given money at church, were done with their charity for the day, and felt pretty good about themselves. The restaurant I managed allowed waitstaff to implement an automatic 18% gratuity on tables of 6 or more at their discretion. Large groups take up more of the servers time, as well as tables in their section. The policy is a safeguard against people coming in with a group of 12 or so, taking up a servers entire section and then stiffing them. So a group of 8 adults and 2 children sit in Tiffany's section. They run her ragged (drink refills, a million questions, food sent back, confused at menu items, generally whiny). Tiffany is pretty much over it and she decides to hit them with the 18% gratuity because shes fairly sure these folks aren't going to tip above that. Servers tend to know how well a table is going, and Tiffany was a veteran. After the table receives their check, Tiffany informs me that the table has asked to speak with a manager to explain their bill. I greet the table and ask how everyone enjoyed their meal, I'm met with deafening sighs and eye-rolls. I as the man seated at the head of the table why he needed a manager. This is where it gets good. The man points to the bottom of his bill where it reads "18% gratuity: $XX.XX". I think the amount was somewhere in the $60-70 range. He looks me dead in the eye and says: "I'm confused we didn't order no Gratatouille" (pronounced like Ratatouille, the provincial French dish and its eponymous Disney film about a rat named Remy with culinary aspirations). Me: "I'm sorry sir I don't understand" Gentleman: "I said we didn't order no GRAT-TAH-TOO-EY" (forcefully) Me: "Oh I see" Gentleman: "Well OK, then" (crosses arms, stares) Me: "We don't serve ratatouille here, this is the 18% added to your bill for being in a party of 6 or more. It's stated on the front of the menu and has always been our policy. I apologize for the misunderstanding but the total at the bottom of your bill is indeed the correct amount" Gentleman: "$70 ain't an understanding (sic), you charging me for some poo poo we didn't order. Nobody here had no GRATATOUILLE" I mentioned earlier that this was a BBQ place. We sold ribs, brisket, smoked chicken, greens, beans, etc. Nowhere on the menu is there Ratatouille or anything resembling it I had to go and retrieve a copy of the menu, kneel down next to the man, and go line by line explaining that perhaps he's confusing the dish from the Disney movie with the word "gratuity". I then explained that servers can invoke this power of gratuity at their own discretion. I had to do this without belittling the man or being condescending. Knowing full well that this group planned on stiffing their server from the second they walked in. Eventually he begrudgingly paid, but not before he promised that he wouldn't be coming back, called us "thieves" and let his family leave a mess of the table (straws, food, napkins, etc thrown everywhere). While I was explaining, his partner (assuming wife) loudly rolled her eyes, tapped her fingers on the table and muttered "This some bullshit, this some bullshit, this some bullshit" over and over. She averted her gaze anytime I looked up. Tiffany was listening in on the whole interaction and thought it was hilarious. Once they left she just gave me one of those, "better you than me" sort of looks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 11:54
|
|
|
Working at a restaurant, we had an order come back to the kitchen because a customer said she could taste salt and that she was allergic to sodium. The server wisely recommended that next time, she should notify staff about dietary restrictions before ordering. We all had a good laugh when the server told us the situation, and remade her meal with no salt. I truly hope that her aversion to a life-sustaining element hasn't stopped her from spending extravagant amounts of money at restaurants for bland food. The Mighty Moltres has a new favorite as of 12:20 on Jun 5, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 12:09
|
|
|
I posted this story in the call center thread, but here it goes. I worked at a call center for a mid-sized internet hosting company as a 2nd level employee (supervisory duties, 1st level pay) on it's website design team. Thanks to a boatload of mismanagement, at this point, we had former copywriters for our defunct copywriting service doing design work, while actual, trained, went-to-school-for-this designers were relegated to taking customer phone calls. There was one copywriter in particular who was staggeringly incompetent. He looked like a tall heron trying to be part of the indie scene, and sounded like the world's saddest trombone seeing the girl of his dreams dancing with the head jock at the prom after she told him she wasn't going. Let's call him B. We had a few interesting customers. One was a voodoo priestess trying to be a reality TV star. One had a doctorate in cybernetics from Moscow University from the Soviet Union and believed he should be voted to be the head of the UN so he could welcome aliens to our planet. This story, though, involves a Prophet of the Lord. She was a kind, if clearly deranged, woman from Texas who we will call Lamb. Lamb used our service to copy/paste images and long, ranting, all caps messages from God onto her website. She did so at such a high frequency that we had to limit her to one day a week in which we would handle all of the changes to her website. The ticket Lamb sent to us should have been simple. Take an image in the Image with Text Box element our crappy CMS used and replace it with the one in the email. B got this ticket. Somehow, he deleted everything in that text box. Instead of hitting the convenient undo button at the top of the CMS window, which would have fixed everything, B looked through every email she sent to us for the content he deleted and added it back to the page, an effort which took him most of the day. The problem was that Lamb had changed the content in that element. It was no longer what she had sent to us before. No. You see, God had given her a reprieve from her stigmata long enough for her to write an end times prophecy while He dictated it. The call came fast and immediately went to me as the "supervisor" on duty. She explained that this prophecy could not be re-written, as God had inspired her to write it. That President Obama was meant to read it, as he played a big, and positive, part of welcoming the new age. That, as a result, she was protected by both angels and the secret service. She said that only an agent of Satan could have been so vile and careless as to delete her prophecy, with which, knowing B, I was inclined to agree. That call was two hours of Lamb cycling between screaming, wailing, and gnashing of teeth and calm acceptance. There wasn't anything I could do on my end; once content is gone, it's gone, and the undo button only worked if you were still on that page. Eventually, I gave her six months of free service, which was payment enough for taking knowledge of the end times away from the world, and promised her that, from then on, I would personally handle all of her website changes. And B? Well, he still had his job, and was still considered a designer while our trained designers scoured Indeed between phone calls.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 14:43
|
|
|
I worked in a big box store with a copy and print department. We had self serve and full service. One time a lady came in with 3 single sided 8.5 X 11 sheets of paper. She asked me to make it double sided. Me: So are you wanting 2 sheets stapled with one sheet being double sided? Her: No. I want one sheet. Me: Ok do you want me to shrink two sheets to fit on the back? Her: No. Me: I can do it on 11 X 17, is that what you're looking for? Her: NO! I want it on one normal sheet of paper! Me: Ma'am I'm sorry but I don't understand. I can do any of these options but I can't fit 3 sheets of paper on one without altering it somehow. Her: KINKOS DID IT BEFORE! WHY CAN'T YOU! Me: Ma'am I'll be happy to just please explain how you would like me to do it. Her: JUST PUT IT ON ONE SHEET! I then did all three ways of doing it and offered her all three options. She then got super mad and then yelled at my manager that I was a "loving dumbass" as she left. I don't miss retail.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 14:53
|
|
|
Croatoan posted:I worked in a big box store with a copy and print department. We had self serve and full service. One time a lady came in with 3 single sided 8.5 X 11 sheets of paper. She asked me to make it double sided. Pfft, your fault for perceiving the universe as only three dimensional.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 15:32
|
|
|
i was in a starbucks and witnessed a women yelling at the barista that her green drink thing wasent green enough and he had to make it again so it was more green. he did but i couldnt figure out why anyone would care. it wasent even in a see-thru cup.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2019 16:02
|
|
|
A woman at my table sent her salad back because “the blue cheese has mold on it”
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2019 07:37
|
|
|
I banned an angry drunk from a pub because he threw a pint glass at the bartender (without laying a hand on him on the way out the door), and after a months- long series of boring events during which he realised that yeah, he was really actually for-real banned, "his lawyer" sent a 15 page letter to the pub, the police, and the local council, about his constitutional UN human rights being violated right now by me, personally.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2019 10:48
|
|
|
Crackwhore Barrel posted:A woman at my table sent her salad back because “the blue cheese has mold on it” Oh man, that's right up there with sending gazpacho soup back because it had "gone cold".
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2019 12:50
|
|
|
Snowglobe of Doom posted:Oh man, that's right up there with sending gazpacho soup back because it had "gone cold". To be entirely fair, it is actually possible for blue cheese to grow mold that it isn't supposed to have. Though I imagine that's not what happened here.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2019 13:42
|
|
|
I like customers who are angry about us not having available for pick-up stuff that they haven't ordered from us, and more angry when they're told they haven't ordered the stuff from us, because now they have to drive all the way to the other place (where they did order stuff from), and we wasted their time by spending ages on the computer trying to find their order. Mostly I like them because they're not my customers, I'm just standing around in sales or the warehouse, drinking rooibos.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2019 23:23
|
|
|
Jerry Cotton posted:I like customers who are angry about us not having available for pick-up stuff that they haven't ordered from us, and more angry when they're told they haven't ordered the stuff from us, because now they have to drive all the way to the other place (where they did order stuff from), and we wasted their time by spending ages on the computer trying to find their order. One place I used to work at we constantly had people looking for a place with a vaguely similar name on the same street but like 5km apart. Think like "Johnson's paper shufflers" vs "Johnstone's elite sporting goods". "You're looking for the sport shop. It's that way. You can't miss it. I promise that I'm not loving with you. See? We have a small room full of people working at desks instead of a big room full of soccer boots and croquet mallets". "Well... if you're sure..." And yeah, they're great because they're not your customers.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 00:29
|
|
|
I ID'd a customer once in a bar, he totally flipped out, telling me it was 'an insult' that I, an 18 year old would ID him, an (alleged) 25 year old and thinking he might look underage. I just shrugged and said I was sorry I felt that way but still needed to see some ID if he wanted some beer. He left, complaining and insulting me all the way out. Never showed me his ID. Never got his beer.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 00:34
|
|
|
A gay couple tried to get me to make a cake for them (I am not gay and do not support that lifestyle). They took me to the loving Supreme Court.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 01:02
|
|
|
Grem posted:A gay couple tried to get me to make a cake for them (I am not gay and do not support that lifestyle). They took me to the loving Supreme Court. Oh, was it nice? What exactly does one do at Supreme Court, anyway?
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 01:21
|
|
|
Jerry Cotton posted:Oh, was it nice? What exactly does one do at Supreme Court, anyway? Despite the gay sounding name and men in dresses I actually won!
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 01:23
|
|
|
Bored boomer at gas pump called me over as while he could easily read the sign recommending discharging static electricity before using the pumps, what if his daughter (who wasn’t there) wasn’t able to see it?
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 01:24
|
|
|
Hyrax Attack! posted:Bored boomer at gas pump called me over as while he could easily read the sign recommending discharging static electricity before using the pumps, what if his daughter (who wasn’t there) wasn’t able to see it? What even was his issue here? Did the sign need to be more obvious or something for the hypothetical case of his stupid daughter pumping gas there?
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 02:50
|
|
|
Double posting for content: As a teenager I spent a summer working at one of the local university's dining halls. Sometimes I'd serve food, sometimes I'd run the giant industrial dishwasher, other times I'd sit at the entrance and make sure students ran their meal cards. One day a student walks in without shoes. In her bare feet on the cold tile of the floor. I vaguely remembered all the signs I'd seen at fast food places up until now (no shoes no shirt no service) and while not being trained on this specific issue I told her I don't think she could come in. She asked to see the manager. So I go and get the manager and he reiterates more formally what I had thought: he's not allowed to let her in for sanitation reasons. She gets more and more upset at this but to my manager's credit he stayed calm but firm, saying she could not go in. We asked if she had any flip flops or sandals or similar in her back pack, maybe? "I have flip flops but they're all the way across campus!" She did eventually give up and leave in a huff but this woman had walked across town (and my town was not that clean or safe) in her bare stocking feet then expected to get lunch before getting her shoes.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 02:56
|
|
|
Nothing concrete besides some old lady smashing and scraping into the ladder I was on because she was an impatient rear end in a top hat with no sense of courtesy. The ladder wobbled to and fro and my heart started going apeshit from adrenaline so I yelled out "What the gently caress man!" out of anger since someone almost just loving killed me as I just barely steady the ladder and she looks at me like I'm some uncouth hooligan then complains to my manager hours later on the phone who then proceeds to not give a poo poo after I tell him what happened. This really is just my experience with old people in retail in general, they are without fail the rudest, most entitled customers, there are obviously tons of sweet old ladies and kind rear end dudes with good manners but it's either one or the other, pure rear end in a top hat or saint. Young people just tend to be the most courteous and normal. I wish this was just something I noticed in retail rather than the truth of it being reinforced by the fact that every car accident I've had in my life bar one was from some old person loving up, running a light or stop sign, side swiping me, just plain not looking when making a turn, or the one that's the most alike to my ladder experience, scraping their car into mine along the side while coming out of a Taco Bell drive thru. And then every time they proceeded to lie and claim it was my fault just like ladder lady. Either that or they're so loving senile that they didn't know they were loving up which is far more terrifying. Thank God cops are used to the treachery of old folks and are inured to their ways so I was never held at fault. Maybe the only thing I like about cops is their disdain for the living calamity known as the elderly. Anyways, working at a liquor store and driving on the road have both instilled a great mistrust and bitterness towards old people.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 03:05
|
|
|
An older guy yelled at me because he walked into the wrong restaurant and I didn't tell him he was in the wrong place, even though I had no way of knowing.  The two venues didn't even look anything alike or have remotely similar names.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 03:56
|
|
|
"How are you out of stock?!" Christmas eve the women's shoe department at a Macys about an hour and half before closing.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 05:05
|
|
|
sudonim posted:What even was his issue here? Did the sign need to be more obvious or something for the hypothetical case of his stupid daughter pumping gas there? Prior to complaining he carefully surveyed the gas pumps for something to find fault with. I think his point was that a very short person may not be able to see something above the pump? Static electricity at gas stations is an unenforceable issue, technically we were supposed to tell people to not get back in their cars while fueling but that would get just them mad. Worst incident we had was a dog in a car biting an attendant, none of our training mentioned that. Oh man entitled elderly customers. Worst one had a meltdown as the food sample attendant saying “I’d be happy to give you a sample, this batch will finish cooking in two minutes” was considered an unforgivable offense.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 19:38
|
|
|
A guy bought 2lbs of steamed shrimp (raw weight), went home and weighed the cooked shrimp, and immediately left us a nasty Yelp review for shorting him
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 19:43
|
|
|
poverty goat posted:A guy bought 2lbs of steamed shrimp (raw weight), went home and weighed the cooked shrimp, and immediately left us a nasty Yelp review for shorting him What? Who the heck sells product based on what it USED to weigh  (A swindler, that's who!)
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 22:05
|
|
|
ASenileAnimal posted:i was in a starbucks and witnessed a women yelling at the barista that her green drink thing wasent green enough and he had to make it again so it was more green. he did but i couldnt figure out why anyone would care. it wasent even in a see-thru cup. The green is the flavor. Like getting 2 full pumps of syrup or a pathetic Half dribble cum shot at the end that leaves you feeling vaguely unsatisfied and sad
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 22:18
|
|
|
I used to rent cars and a trashy looking guy came in and his card declined for like 50 bucks but he said he just went and checked his balance and had like 8000 bucks. As proof he pulled out a napkin with 8000 scrawled on it in pen.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2019 22:19
|
|
|
ive probably told this story in one of these threads before. i used to work at a bookstore, and we offered teachers a 20% discount on stuff for the classroom. so no, they couldn't use it on their cafe purchases or fifty shades of grey. it also wasn't allowed on cd/dvd purchases. teacher comes in, tries to use her discount on some CDs, the register wont even let the transaction go through. she demands to see a manager. he comes in, explains the policy, apologizes, but she's not having it and absolutely loses her poo poo, drops a few f-bombs, and the manager tells her he's going to escort her out of the store. halfway through the building, she shouts at the top of her lungs: "I hope you and your gay lover are happy!" his response: "we are, thank you." (he actually is gay) "AIDS is a great disease. you die from it!" This was maybe the saturday before christmas, so the store was busy as gently caress. we HATED teachers. I also got called a oval office one christmas because we didn't have a particular item a customer was looking for. i now work in medical billing. a patient called recently pissed off at me because when she typed in her doctor's name into google, it didn't immediately forward her to our website.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 00:08
|
|
|
sudonim posted:One day a student walks in without shoes. In her bare feet on the cold tile of the floor. [...] I've always wondered about that policy. I mean, if someone's walked across town barefoot to get to your restaurant, are their feet somehow going to be more dirty than the shoes of someone who made the same walk? If anything you'd expect them to be cleaner, since it's much harder to tread in dog poo poo without noticing if you're barefoot.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 14:53
|
|
|
The_White_Crane posted:I've always wondered about that policy. I've always assumed it was more of an safety issue if there's a possibility that someone might drop a knife on their foot or get stepped on or something. 'Cause yeah, your feet are likely cleaner than your shoes since you tend to wash your feet pretty regularly and your shoes never.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 15:02
|
|
|
Sometimes in restaurants people drop plates and glasses. It can be difficult to clean that all up, and your shoe likely won't care if it has a tiny sliver of glass in it. Your foot will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 16:20
|
|
|
A few years ago I worked for a tea shop across the street from Harvard and man, the students and faculty made for awful customers. Something about the combination of smug superiority and daddy's money just makes them devoid of empathy. The worst were the students who wanted to strike up a conversation while waiting for their drink. I'm a pretty personable guy so when I started working there I liked chatting with customers and informing them about different kinds of tea, but that impulse got stamped out real fast. Conversations would start innocently enough, but if they gleaned that you went to a school that wasn't an ivy or got a degree in something like illustration the fangs would come out. Comments like "Oh, you got a degree in art? How's that working out for you?" or "Are you happy working here? It's not like you'll find anything better." were commonplace and, of course, we just had to smile and take it. One time, a student asked how we prepared our chai lattes and had an absolute meltdown over the fact that we didn't prepare chai like they did when she went to India. She started shouting about how we'll never amount to anything because we are parasites on people like her and can't afford to travel. When I told her to leave she upended the cup behind the counter and told us to clean it up like her "loving maid". I am so glad I don't work retail anymore. Chip McFuck has a new favorite as of 17:50 on Jun 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 17:46
|
|
|
my wife is a slut
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 18:33
|
|
|
Demon Of The Fall posted:my wife is a slut Sir, this is a McDonalds drive-thru.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 19:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:18 |
|
|
I had a customer complain that his bernaise sauce didn’t have enough blue cheese in it (yeah that’s because it doesn’t contain that you loving idiot), and he got so mad when the price of his entire steak wasn’t taken off his bill he threatened to smash the restaurant windows. Catering sucks.
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2019 20:53
|
|
