Bad Customer

[Chester41585]

Swing by Not Always Right (dot com). It's a whole webpage dedicated to, well, situations like yours.
The funnier articles are usually from food service and hospitality. I've wasted entire days reading through them all.
good times.

 

[ucciolord1]

You did well, she is a *****. I admire your self-control.

 

[zehydra]

Her threat would've been slander, which is sueable. Actually, I think her threatening you was illegal.

 

[Guestowel]

Give them their money back. Sounds to me like you were the one being unreasonable. Never let a customer leave unsatisfied, even if they were being rude. Each unsatisfied customer will tell their friends, and that will be an average of ten customers that will never step foot into your store again. On the other hand if you manage to impress your disgruntled customer, and they tell their friends that you provided excellent customer service there is a chance to gain more customers. If you were in my store and treated my customers that way I would have at the very least suspended you. Your "too big to fail" attitude is another matter all together.

Pffffft. There's no good reason why a shopkeeper should have to deal with rudeness. If you suspend a member of staff for showing self-respect I hope that you pay them enough to hire a good lawyer and sue you. Probably not though since you can't afford to pay them a decent wage and take returns from any old crotchety twat who wanted free money.

Sue for what?

Improper suspension. Possibly even a class action along the lines of creating a dehumanising working environment. Employers have a responsibility to prevent their employees from being in situations where they are verbally or physically assaulted.

If you work in the food industry, no matter how good your customer service is, there will always be a customer that is going to yell at you. If you can't handle the stress of food service, go work in a factory. Failing to provide great customer service is failing at your job. Granted, I may have been a bit hard on x0ny, but pissing off customers is not a good way to generate buisness.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I would've replied with either:

A: Do you have the reciept and the food?
B: I was, until you made that comment.
C: Ooh, Facebook, I'm so scared.
D: What you said.
E: Fuck off.

 

[TyphoidMary]

Have to agree with most of the previous posters. If you go and buy food anywhere and it isn't what you ordered or isn't up to the standards you expect, you can bring it back. However, if you wait an entire day and eat most of the food, there probably was nothing wrong with it and you're a stupid prick looking for a freebie at the expense of the owners and employees.

Unless you find a body part or a bug or something like that, there is no reason to be rude. Especially to people who handle your food. I know people at fast food restaurants and other eateries (and have worked in a few myself) and you never want to piss off the people feeding you. Trust me on that.

 

[King of the N00bs]

I thinks u shuld just not listen to her. maybe something was off that one time whatever she can go whine to the computer all she wants but any customer that has enjoy your food will automatically disregard the *****

 

[Hazy]

I'd like to ask, what would you guys have done?

I would have asked her if she thought I was an idiot who wasn't wise to her intentions of, essentially, dining for free.

Let's face it: If it takes you the entire meal to realize that you dislike the said meal, something is definitely up.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

there's something wrong with people ... I say you did the right thing.

 

[Lysserd]

I would have told her "I will give you back your money if you are willing to do something for me."
When she asks what then proceed, "If you will go home, throw up all the food of mine you ate right now, then find someone to test and confirm that my food is indeed in there then I will refund you."
If she is insane and goes to all the trouble she spent more to get her money back, that and the embarassment of trying to find someone to test vomit. (Do they exist?)
If she reacted as she did, as would be expected at that point, then you can feel satisfied in letting her know how dumb she was for eating half the food and saying it was bad.

 

[Brad Shepard]

I would have said "If you hated it so much, then why dident you come back last night? and for that matter, why did you eat most of it? im not being scamed, get the hell out." but i still laughed at this, sorry you got somthing thrown at you.

 

[Rooster893]

I would have said:

Then just don't come here anymore *****! If you don't like the food, don't eat it!

Simple as that.

 

[TailsRodrigez]

I work at my Chinese Take Away and tonight, one of my staff informed me that a customer had come in to complain about the food she bought the previous night was terrible and demanded her money back, after having eaten most of the food of course.

So I went out, gave a cheery "Hello =)" and before any discussion could take place I was threatened with:
"Do you want to lose all your customers and go out of business? I will write on my facebook how bad your take away is and then all your customers will leave for other take aways." Words to that effect.

Now... this take away has been in operation since 1972, back when my grandfather ran in, who passed it down to my mum, and then down to me. 30 years of being in business, didn't really see the threat.

Normally I'd just give them the money back and that would be the end of that, it's only £10 ($18) after all, but having been attacked with such a joke of a threat, decided against it. The customer asked, "So are you going to give me my money back or not?". To which I replied with a simple "No" and got the food thrown at me.

I'd like to ask, what would you guys have done?
Thanks.

you did the right thing, that person has just grown up with a false sense of authority, basically, their ego makes them think they are better than you, and if you had given them the money they wouldn't have learned anything, keep up the good work.

 

[crypt-creature]

If you work in the food industry, no matter how good your customer service is, there will always be a customer that is going to yell at you. If you can't handle the stress of food service, go work in a factory. Failing to provide great customer service is failing at your job. Granted, I may have been a bit hard on x0ny, but pissing off customers is not a good way to generate buisness.

Yes, there will always be customers that yell at you. But that doesn't mean you have to kiss their butts in order to stand up for yourself and your business, great customer service does not mean that the customer is always right.
You can do everything under your power and still leave with a pissed off customer, and customers that threaten you first instead of acting in a civilized manner certainly do not deserve instant ass-kissing. Especially not when they eat or consume most of the product when it could have been returned after the first bite. If it were a case of food poisoning, that's a little different.

 

[War Penguin]

"Sure, I'll give you your money back only if you give me YOUR FOOD."

 

[Once a Human]

I would have done what you did. What's a Facebook anyway? People like that are just looking for handouts and aren't good people. They deserve your ire and they're most commonly hated by everyone they meet so you're not in danger of losing any business.

OT: I had a similar experience today. One came in while I was facing my store and first thing out of their mouth was "can I get some fucking service over here?!". My first choice of response was, "No, get the fuck out." But I kept my cool, I smiled, greeted him, started my way, ignoring his next taunt as I made my way to behind the counter. The next thing out of his pie hole was a claim that we'd violated him anally in every encounter he's ever had with our store, hated us to the core, and deserved massive discounts for everything he chose to buy. Again I ignored him, offering him no special benefits except for the advertised ones.

I kept wondering, "if he's never been satisfied with the service, why does he keep coming here?" then it hit me. He treats our employees like shit so they'll be extra polite to him and cut him deals where he especially doesn't deserve them. I then proceeded to hit on his girlfriend while he was off to the ATM machine and continued to flirt with her when he came back. He was either too thick to notice, or too engaged with his own ego to care.

After several more verbal abuses he spent well over $100 on gifts for himself, left his g/f with me who gave me a "gift" in the back room. She gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek when he came back with a large meal from the food court for himself and a half empty bottle of water for her and I swear a strand stuck to the side of his mouth.

That kept me chuckling the rest of my 9 hr shift and will definitely keep me happy on the job for a good while longer.

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, provided I could stop myself from making a sarcastic quip and just saying "No" as you did, I would then remember to duck. Then, in my best china-man impersonation, "A'would you like police and...disturbing the peace with your order?".