Crazy Customers

[Koing]

Share your experiences with crazy customers in whatever job you do or had:

Girlfriend had a customer ask for a discount on a pair of creme trousers because they blood on them from the manager. A woman had tried on the creme trousers at this up market department store in England and must have been on her period and stained the trousers with blood. Don't know if she did it intentionally or not but they were stained. The customer who *knowingly* spotted the blood stain asked the manager if she could do a good deal she would buy them!

WTF?!?!

Crazy customers in this world.........

 

[Maetryx]

I am the assistant manager of the county landfill. The city had a ladies house demolitioned and delivered to the landfill as garbage. The lady contacted the manager and talked him into letting her dig through the rubble to find some paperwork and other "valuables". She was basically mentally deranged. She was living in a burnt out (literally) house storing all of her "valuables" in garbage bags. The place was an absolute health hazard, and didn't look much different after it was laying in piles at the landfill than it had before.

Anyway, she spent a couple days collecting about 6 garbage bags worth of stuff from the debris.

 

[Koing]

^

 

[Rallispec]

i dont work with people. thank god.

 

[MrBond]

Maybe she was going to try and get the blood out? Blood comes out pretty well with a little work and some shampoo

Back when I worked at an ISP/Computer shop, we had a pretty interesting customer. She was autistic, which accounted for most of her strangeness. The thing is, she could be downright mean sometimes. So as a result, not too many of the techs wanted to take her calls. She'd only talk to a few of us, I unfortunatly wasn't on her sh|t list, so she had no problem talking to me.

This one day, she called up, and proceeded to go on and on about something. I don't even remember now. It became apparent that she didn't have a computer/internet problem, but I couldn't get off the phone with her. She started to talk about some website she had been on and how it looked VASTLY superior to ours (I believe she said something like "your website looks like complete dirt compared to this one"). Meanwhile, the phone is ringing nonstop and the only other tech can't answer all the incoming calls himself. Finally, during a break in the calls, I net send over to his computer that I need help, so he runs to the front of the store and yells for me to "come help him unload a printer". I tell this woman I have to go and basicly hang up on her.

I kind of felt bad, she just wanted someone to talk to. But nonetheless, there were other customers (with real problems) who were being ignored and I had to do it.

 

[amnesiac]

I just got my old job back at a restaurant so I'll share some stories.

Guest: "So...that Chicken Piccata....is that a chicken dish?"
Me:

This guest walks in and asks us if we can just whip up a vegetable soup type thing for his pregnant wife. The soup of the day is some cream chowder, so I say no. He comes back with "I came by the other day and you guys did it for me then..you just had the cooks make some vegetable broth.." I got the manager who told him flat out the he was full of BS because it would take them hours to make a vegetable broth like he was asking.
Seriously, we get people coming in ALL the time with fabricated menu items saying "oh, you made it for me last time." when they KNOW it's crap, and when we call them on it ("No, ma'am, we have never even stocked the ingredients for what you're asking") they get pissed off. It's not their fricking kitchen goddamnit.

 

[bmacd]

when i worked at the bagel shop, there was a customer with turrettes that we didn't know of. When we were talking casually to him over the counter, he'd randomly twist his neck sideways and start twitching his eye like crazy. He was a very well educated man who had a high paying job, but he'd randomly spazz out like that.

Right now at kmart, since we're having a little *trouble* with the whole bankruptcy issue, whenever we don't give a customer WHATEVER they want, they use the "no wonder you're going out of business" excuse. They'll want to "price bargain" on items like we're some kind of pawn shop/flea market. Geesh!

-=bmacd=-

 

[michaelh20]

I've had my share of loonies working as a Customer Service rep for Ameritech.net (not actually from Chicago, etc. but pretending to be an employee of Ameritech). As a CSR you get to decide whether you should hold the line with people or *attempt* to get a manager and see if the manager will help them. Some people give up and others start fuming and yelling obscenities etc.. I remember telling one old lady she would have to actually pay something and she started in about how she was on a fixed income but oh well I guess I'll eat catfood this month. Another fun call was where someone who apparently made dual channel ISDN connections (at something ridiculous per/hour charge) and who proceded to yell at me to take the charges off and said repeatedly "Ameritech Sucks! Ameritech Sucks!" over and over again, and could not say anything else until he hung up the phone. Usually the ones who are really poed hang up in the end anyway, so you don't really have to deal with anything

Then of course there was the usual freakazoid who thought we actually had the power to give them DSL and who had measured the distances to the offices, etc.. Little did they know we were a Call center in Minneapolis who had to in turn call Ameritech who in turn called the 3rd party people who called Ameritech who called us. People like this would call over and over again trying to speak to managers.

This was decisionone, which no longer has the Ameritech.net account which no longer exists either

 

[MrBond]

Ohhh...I almost forgot a couple more good ISP stories.

Back when Windows 95 was only a couple months old, I had a customer call me up once wanting an account. I set them up with a free trial and proceeded to try and walk them through the internet setup. They were new to computers, but windows 95 was usually easy enough to get working that I didn't worry. After a few minutes of trying to get them to open up "My Computer", I discovered they were clicking on the icon once, then hitting the "start" button. I got directions to their house, drove out there, and set it up myself.

One time, I had a customer call me up wondering about "that there internet I heard about on TV." (I am not joking, those were her exact words). I told her about it, then asked what kind of operating system she had so I could guage if I could set her up over the phone or if I had to go out to her house to set it up. Her reply? "Oh, you need a computer for that? You can't get it on your TV?" (This was pre web-tv days). "No ma'am, a computer is required..."

I would have probably gone into EE/CS If I hadn't been so tramatized by my tech support days.

 

[michaelh20]

This will get you guys, when I was a lab attendant at the local college, there was a guy who said that his website was broken. Turns out he had a mailto: tag in his website and the machine he was working on didn't have the right settings for the SMTP server, so clicking on the mailto: tag and sending an email back to himself didn't work (because the server was setup wrong and I couldn't change it). He got all mad about it and claimed something was wrong with his website, and nothing I could say would change his reaction ...

 

[michaelh20]

That reminds me of the many heated arguments I also had (ISP) about the fact that dialing into the internet is actually making a phone call. Had one guy who was fuming because they had the "Internet" line hooked up (Telephone line) and why did he have to get an ISP and all that? Lots of POed people who got billed long distance too...

 

[Jhill]

I know a girl that does room service for a hotel. They serve pints of hagen das ice cream. Once a man got all pissed and told her to put it in a glass bowl because eating ice cream out of the pint container is too "barbaric".

 

[Koing]

some crazy ass customers!!!!

 

[HydroStream6]

I work at an auto parts place and we get this crazy lady who comes in once in a while. She always tries to return something that she doesn't have a receipt for (stolen) and when I tell her I can't take it back, she always gives me this huge long sob story. Well the last time she came in was trying to return some oil and air freshners and crap, and since she didn't have a receipt I wouldn't return it. She then goes off about how she ran out of gas and needs money, etc, so I said well let me see your driver's license and I'll use that to return the items (we use the ID# on it like a log). She then says she lost her license at Walmart yesturday (if you know where you lost it wouldn't you go get it?). Anyways, then she wanted me to call another one of our local stores where she claimed to have purchased these items so we could look at the store receipt. They of course didn't have it. All this time this lady is arguing and making a big fuss. I can't beleive how stupid some people are. I mean, she knew and we knew that she stole it, but she wouldn't give up. She then went out to her car saying "I think I have the receipt in my car, I'll be right back.".. and she was gone.. lol... she does this about once a month or so.

And also, I've had people come up to me while I'm at work and ask "Do you work here?". Keep in mind I wear a bright red "Advance Auto Parts" shirt, black pants, belt, etc.

 

[Frosty3799]

Sometimes at the grocery store I work at as a cashier, I get this one layd who always comes through my checkout line with ~$50-$75 worth of grocieries, but every week has the same $35 limit for grocery buying. Well, I sacn everything up, and then tell her her total, and she always has the same reaction... she looks at it like its too much, and then says that I am going to have to take a few things off of her order. Well, by this time the customer behind her is already pised off... but she makes it even worse by take around 1-2 minutes to decide what not to buy. I mean its understandable to do this once on accident, but come on.. every week? find a new place to shop.

Also, I get other customers who come through and buy a bunch of groceries, and then hand me a huge stack of coupons. I dont mind coupons, but they usually will have only bought 1-2 items that they gave me coupons for, out of like 20 or so coupons. I know who a few of these customers are, so I just give them a hard time, by going back through their order one item at a time looking for the item on the coupon. They always insist, "oh yea I bought that..." but going back through, they didnt buy anything remotely close to that, not even of the same brand. This usually totally blows them away and pisses them off, as if I am wasting their time by not letting them rip off my company...

Oh, I have plenty more specific stories too, I my come back and type them up if I am bored later.

 

[Frosty3799]

wow no one else??

 

[ElFenix]

"i need an ide cable with 4 connectors on it so i can attach 3 drives"

 

[Maverick]

I did some independent tech support for family friends when I was in high school. Best one I ever got was one of my mom's friends who called me up saying "I can't see any of my programs! I think my computer has a virus! Can you come over and take a look at it?" I drove the 30 miles out to her house to see what was wrong since she said she was expecting a very important e-mail from her mother. I get over there and I see this:

She had resized her start menu so it wasn't visible anymore.

 

[ErmanC]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
"i need an ide cable with 4 connectors on it so i can attach 3 drives"

What's wrong with that? One for the mobo and 3 for the drives? Made sense to me... UNTIL I realized that you can't daisy chain 3 drives together. Almost had me there. Still, that's not that far fetched.

 

[Ime]

I used to be on Tech Support for a company that made Parts Catalogs on CD. This was way back in '96 before large hard drives were common, and so we kept all the information on the CD so as not to fill up their drive.

I had one customer calling me all upset because he couldn't look up the parts for his tractor. After nearly 10 minutes of troubleshooting I realized I had forgotten to ask him the easy question first. "Um, sir. Is the CD in the drive?"

His reaction: "Huh? You mean that round thing? I thought I didn't need it, so I threw it away!"