People Being Rude To Customer Service

[crono738]

A little bird told me(that's the captcha), that Not Always Right is a fun place to find those stories.

I was just about to link to it... now you almost robbed me of the fun!
http://notalwaysright.com/

And there goes my productivity for the day. It's remarkable how uppity and bitchy some people can get. I've been teaching tennis for close to 10 years, and I've lost track of the number of people who yell at me because their kid isn't getting better as fast as they want...because they don't practice in between lessons.

Apparently it's my fault that an hour of playing a week isn't enough to actually improve.

 

[PhiMed]

Yes, a lot of people are jerks.

I don't have stories because being rude to customer service is one of the least infuriating things I see all day. I'm a physician who works at a Veteran's Administration Hospital.

If this is the worst example of humanity's unkindness to one another you have, then you live a blissful life.

Enjoy it, and quit obsessing on other people's assholery.

 

[Smolderin]

Yes, a lot of people are jerks.

I don't have stories because being rude to customer service is one of the least infuriating things I see all day. I'm a physician who works at a Veteran's Administration Hospital.

If this is the worst example of humanity's unkindness to one another you have, then you live a blissful life.

Enjoy it, and quit obsessing on other people's assholery.

I think you might be misunderstanding the tone of the thread. I wanted to create a thread where people can share their stories that are quite similar to mine. No one is obsessing over anything. This isn't about my story, it just serves as an example and inspiration to set this entire discussion off.

That all said, even though it's the "least infuriating" thing you deal with, someone in that line of work has definitely seen and experienced a few things. You sure there is not a story that sticks out in your mind?

 

[6_Qubed]

I work as a delivery driver, and I have had people demand I drive back and return with dipping sauces for their wings/breadsticks/pizza crusts. People who live on the other side of town, and didn't tip in the first place.

 

[MrBenSampson]

A lot of people who have worked as cashiers in Canada will have a story about a customer shouting "I DEMAND TO BE SERVED IN FRENCH!" My friends telling me stories about that was why I got a job where I'll never have to deal with people.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

Oh, I have stories. So many stories. I work in a Mobil, so safety is the absolute highest priority next to customer service as it should be. The most common issue I run into is when someone wants to be let into the store (I do graveyard shifts and the doors stay shut between 10pm and 6am for obvious reasons) and they start acting like children when I tell them no. Also, I actually enforce the pre-pay rule on my shifts unlike my co-workers which offends at most just a few people but most don't really seem to care. Still, the few who do will act like little children whose mothers just told them, "no you can't have a lollypop, now behave".

Had a few gang members start having a go at me so I got sick of it and for once followed my manager's advice: I turned the intercom off and walked away from the window. Next thing I hear is them smashing the window with beer bottles. I did not enjoy doing the paper-work for it.

Also had a guy ask for a coffee, and when I charged him for it he immediately yelled, "I'll pay for the coffee when you give it to me!". Apparently him being a regular customer has given him a sense of entitlement.

There was one time when I was in the fridge but I was keeping an eye through the fridge doors for customers. I'd look literally every 30 seconds, and I could see the entire forecourt so I'd notice if someone came to buy something. I saw a customer pull up and I straight away went out there. She then claimed she was waiting out there for ten minutes. Um no, *****. That would not be the first time a customer would lie to my face in order to try and cheat the system.

My experiences with bad customers over the last two years have led me to just stop apologizing for shit unless it's actually kind of a big deal and I was the one who caused it in the first place. Instead, I just prefer to get straight to fixing the problem instead of standing there offering hollow sorries to someone who's literally looking down their nose at me. Any customer who actually stands there waiting for such an apology is, quite frankly, an idiot especially when I'm serving other customers at that time. And I'd really rather not enforce your self-entitlement by grovelling for your forgiveness.

I don't care that I'm the one behind the counter, that does not excuse aggressive behaviour from you just because you're the customer. I don't give a shit who you are. Five nights a week, you're in my house so treat your host with respect because Mobil has no qualms about taping a trespass notice to your ass if you so much as imply that you're going to cause me any amount of physical pain whatsoever.

Oh, what's that? You want to be let in? I'll get fired if I open the door for any reason. Oh, now you're throwing a tantrum. You're, what, in your 50s? Grow the hell up, the way you're acting right now is only proving my point and the locked-door policy was designed to keep people like you out. Deal with it.

Also, when you purposefully drive off without paying for your fuel, you can no longer claim that as a customer you are making us money. At that point, you are costing us money. And making zero money is better than losing money.

Seriously, every time I hear "the customer pays your wages", I want to throttle the person saying it. It is my least favourite phrase - or at least one of the worst.

As a customer myself, I've had plenty of occasions where I'd be sitting there being held up by assholes who are giving the staff a hard time. And I'd be super nice to the staff because they deserve it, especially after the treatment they'd just gotten.

When it's my term to be a customer, I always treat all customer service people with the respect that I would expect from my customers.

Just the same I have coworkers that will fight with those kind of customers and every time I'm just like... Why do you give a fuck? Okay fine, they're cheating the system of whatever but who gives a crap? It's not your company.

Because some people have morals? I refuse to let the customers I serve cheat the system, I'm not rude and I'll try to find any convenient alternative, but I'm not going to completely break the rules to help someone who just doesn't give a shit about the rules.

Exactly. I'll let a customer off the hook if they're maybe 30 cents short but I make it very clear that I'm doing it because I'm having a good night thus far and they are always grateful for it when I explain that as well as the fact that it's me who's currently on and not one of the other workers. It makes me happy when they leave really happy like that, and they end up turning loyal which is a huge bonus. But if the customer is being a jerk, yeah nah, I'm not even giving them a 10 cent discount. They pay full price or go elsewhere.

 

[theevilgenius60]

Working paint counter at Home Depot, I get hellions and angels coming through. One time I had a guy throw the old "What happened to 'the customer's always right?'" at me. I'd had enough and let him know that was Walmart's phrase and we used "You can do it. We can help ". His head nearly exploded. I didn't get any trouble from it because this guy had been shitting on the whole staff that day trying to scam a few extras using that tired old line. Also, I never smile, but people actually ask for my help by name when other associates can help them quicker(like if I'm with another customer). That being said, it's probably because I'm not pushy. It wouldn't help anyway. People don't come to Home Depot to shop.
Another fairly humorous story: I got a call from a customer berating me about selling him this Valspar paint and how I'd messed up the color and that the paint wasn't as good as I'd told him it would be(too watery was how he put it). Now if you don't know, Valspar is a Lowes exclusive. It would be like complaining to Sony about Halo or Gears. I tried to relay this to the guy, but he wasn't having it. I got to watch one of our managers(not with us anymore) destroy this guys ego over the phone. I never liked that manager( he was like that all the time), but when I had problem customers and I had a choice of which managers they could talk to( and they always do want to talk to a manager), I'd smile and call on him.

 

[Rinshan Kaihou]

I'm an inbound sales rep for time warner cable. So I deal with people like this multiple times a day. People who are rude, nasty, swearing for no reason, and then expect you to have a magic wand to fix whatever problem they are having. "my bills too high whine whine whine whine" as you pay $128 for a triple play. STFU, there are people paying $180 for the same thing, quit bitching. People amaze me. No, I can't issue you a credit, no I can't just waive your installation fee, no, you have a write off from a previous account from a few months ago, I can't just ignore it.

And I could handle that, but it's the fact that people insist on being exceptionally rude when they call in for this stuff. I get yelled and screamed at, and you try to explain to them that you are trying to help, and they still scream at you. WTF is wrong with people? Seriously people are assholes. NOt to mention if you are going to be an irate jaackass, I'm less likely to want to help you at all.

It's a 2 sided coin of course, sometimes you get the awesome person you can just chat with for hours about random stuff and are hilarious. Had one of those tonight. But overall I'd say more people are rude and obnoxious than the nice ones.

 

[WolfThomas]

Was eating Thai food in a restaurant. This old guy kept complaining to the staff. His table was terrible. So they moved him. His drink had too much ice. New drink no ice. The final straw was that he declared (after eating his meal) that he wasn't going to pay for the main because the vegetables were too tough. He kept getting louder and ruder to the wait staff. Eventualy he tried to leave and the manager actually had to stand outside holding the door shut while they called the police. Finally after having a chat with the manager and officer the guy paid the full price and left sheepishly.

We'd been served great portion of good food quickly and cheaply during the whole thing. We'd actually had our order wrong (duck instead of chicken) but felt too embarrassed because of that man's outbursts to bring it up. Considering we ordered during his shouting match with the chef over how traditional thai vegetables are cooked I could understand how the waitress was distracted.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Had one ***** at a McD's I work at complain about shipping costs for packets of condiments she could get for $0.20 less online rather than pay for any at the counter, when that wasn't true (Said my 25 in the year business Manager). Eventually when the manager gave up and walked away, the customer said "Hey, get back here! I'm not done with you yet!" In which I reply...

"I wouldn't bother getting her back here. She's been here for 25 years, she probably knows better than you." at which point the customer goes wide eyed, says "How dare you! You should be fired!". I tell her they wouldn't fire me (As I'm incredibly loyal and one of their hardest workers), and she eventually up and left. I felt so damn good!

I went back and told the same manager about the situation, and when she heard about what I said, she started laughing out loud, and was very impressed that I had said that. Made my day to have pulled that on a customer. There are times that yes, you have to be nice to the customer. But, in some cases (like mine), you can manage to sneak away with a comment like that and get away with it (in rare cases. I got lucky, but mostly cause we don't tolerate bullshit as much as other places). Especially if the manager laughs and pats you on the back for destroying the bitchy customer's argument.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I have a problem with the way companies handle customer support. I understand that they want servers and technicians to come off as calm and helpful, but to me it comes off as in-human. I want to talk to a person, not a drone.

This is apparent in Japan, 90% of the places I went to had a service person give me the same dialogue. I could leave come back and buy something else and there would be no recognition of me being there, just the same dialogue.

For reference, I'm American.

 

[Fudj]

Normally calm when dealing with customers, however a few years ago working in a SPAr..(kinda like a franchise 7/11 in the uk) Little old lady taking her time to pay (just old and slow) a guy about half way down the line says something along the lines of "hurry up you old ***** some of us need to get on with our day" I respond with "Sir if you are rude to other customers i will have to ask you to leave" he gets out of line and as he leaves spits in my face...it hits dead centre on my forehead.

RED......I go flying round the tills, football (rugby) tackle him as he is by the door, he goes flying (he wasn't a small guy, but the neither am I) he starts harping on about assault and he is going to get the police, they arrive a little while later and inform me he assaulted me first by spitting so if I wanted to I could press charges, it was agreed that would be the end of it and he would never return to the store again.

Got promoted to supervisor

Still retail sucks sometimes.

 

[joshthor]

I work as one of a few customer service managers at a books/movie store. this kind of thing happens all the time. I dont get why either. it never works! I am far more willing to work to help out and even break policy for someone who comes in pleasant but has a problem then someone who comes in screaming at me.

You catch more flies with honey they say. its very true. if something reasonable comes up i will gladly help a customer so they keep coming back. if some asshole just is yelling that he wants his money back and this place is shit, i wont bother helping him because A. He isnt coming back anyway, and B. I dont WANT him back.

oh. and if you make my associates cry ill simply kick you out of the store. it pisses me off.

 

[BlackStar42]

Normally calm when dealing with customers, however a few years ago working in a SPAr..(kinda like a franchise 7/11 in the uk) Little old lady taking her time to pay (just old and slow) a guy about half way down the line says something along the lines of "hurry up you old ***** some of us need to get on with our day" I respond with "Sir if you are rude to other customers i will have to ask you to leave" he gets out of line and as he leaves spits in my face...it hits dead centre on my forehead.

RED......I go flying round the tills, football (rugby) tackle him as he is by the door, he goes flying (he wasn't a small guy, but the neither am I) he starts harping on about assault and he is going to get the police, they arrive a little while later and inform me he assaulted me first by spitting so if I wanted to I could press charges, it was agreed that would be the end of it and he would never return to the store again.

Got promoted to supervisor

Still retail sucks sometimes.

Oh, how I wish I'd seen that!

I've never worked retail, so I don't have any tales to share. I'm always polite to the person on the other side of the till- and I never seem to run into any problems with customer service. Funny how that works, isn't it?

 

[Blow_Pop]

People are entitled asses when dealing with anyone in a "customer service" position.

I'll tell a Disneyland story that actually happened TO me when I worked there.
We were really short staffed and had me and one other person at my location. Our lead was watching not only our location but the other 4 locations in our area. My lead knew that I could run the location by myself if needed to so I got the lead keys since we had just gotten new registers and they had a bad habit of breaking down at the worst possible times. This particular day we had a girl who was fresh off of training like the day before. She had the longer shift and I had the shorter. Being that I was in charge, the lead informed me of the break schedule (in that I would take my 1 break for my shift and then send her on her lunch immediately upon returning from break). I left for my break and we had 2 people in line. It should be mentioned that this girl didn't know the cash register system well yet and that she didn't know the location well like most of us who worked there regularly. I came back 15 minutes later and the line wrapped around our location and started wrapping around itself so it was halfway around itself at this point. I log into my cash register and as I log in I notice a lady who was like 2nd or 3rd in line get out of line. Not unusual. People get out of line frequently to go get something else or put something back. I thought nothing of it. I tell her to go on her lunch when she's finished with the transaction she has started. I take the next 3 people and tell them what their totals will be(because at that point everything was either .25, .50, or .75 and I could do it all in my head). Transactions go well I just make change from what others are giving me unless someone needs their receipt or has a credit card. Cashier locks her register and goes on her lunch. At this point I've gotten 10 people done with transactions. I go to do a credit card transaction and the lady who had gotten out of line starts harassing me because I'm serving everyone else but her. She's being very loud and obnoxious. I had temporarily stopped the transaction I had started to listen to her. Long story short, she saw me opening my register and assumed that I was just going to start a new line or to start at the end of the line instead of y'know using logic like I did and start helping people from where the other cashier left off. I apologise to her and the guy whose transaction I started told me to go ahead and ring hers up instead and to do his after. She bitches and moans about how terrible the service is and how we're terrible employees and how she wants to complain. I finish her transaction, look at her straight in the eyes with a huge smile on my face and say "Once again ma'am, I apologise for your inconvenience my name is April Marie, this is Tropical Imports, and city hall is open for complaints. Exit Adventureland here make a right and before you hit the train station it will be on your right hand side. Have a wonderfully magical evening." (Which that last for Disney speak is basically fuck you) and finished the guys transaction thanking him numerous times for his patience and then our registers broke down causing me to get up onto an overturned barrel and using my big girl voice to tell everyone that we were unable to do credit card transactions and that I apologise and then giving the nearest locations of the other fruit carts in the park. Then re-started the registers and whilst they were down and re-starting I wiped out the entire line 5 or 10 minutes later. Needless to say, she didn't report me or if she did no one took her seriously and I got an extra 2 hours onto my shift cause we got really busy and I had to wait til one of our other closers came on duty(which was fine because I didn't mind extending my shift). Also, people pulling shit like that at Disney are very common.

 

[Bertylicious]

If you're loud, obnoxious and abusive all the time then you will get more concessions. You'll be an arsehole, of course, and live a shitty angry life but nobody ever gets materially rewarded for being nice.

Personally I'm always nice to C/S but then I'm a mug.

 

[Screamarie]

I used to work at a movie rental store. It's a pretty nice place to work if you've got a good manager and the company itself doesn't treat you like shit (I had neither, but I got free movie rentals). Anyways the customers are generally good people because they're getting movies without any of the theater bullshit (super long lines, crowds, getting concessions) so they're pretty relaxed...but your also the person standing in the way of their entertainment...so when you don't give them what they want they can treat a person quite badly.

So here's a little story from when I worked there, taken from customerssuck.com forums (which you should visit, it's a fun timewaster).

Me: The beautiful, the fabulous, the delusional
Sucky Customer: Little Miss *****
Friend: Little Miss *****'s Friend
MOM: Little Miss *****'s Mother

If anyone has ever worked at a rental store, you probably know that there are accounts made by a specific person, and then on those accounts are extra names (kids, spouse, girl/boyfriend). The rule is if your name isn't on the account, you can't rent on it.

At the time this rule had gone somewhat unnoticed, but because the manager was finally getting annoyed with the complaints she decided to start getting upset with us about it. So I was trying to keep up with the rules and, of course, this just draws out the sucky customers.

A young woman (probably 18 to 22) walks up, trailed by her friend.

I take the movies and unlock them (we keep all dvd cases locked up with special tools, hard to explain here) and then get into their account by asking for a phone number. I asked for the girl's name. The exchange went something like this:

SC: Little Miss *****
Me: Your name isn't on this account. I can't rent to you.
SC: What?! But I've rented on this account before!!!!11!!2!
Me: Well I'm sorry ma'am, but that's the rules.
F: *turning to her friend* Well I'll just call the manager in the other town, you know the one I used to work at, and get her to over ride this.

I did not tell the young lady (as I knew it would be pointless) that it didn't matter what the manager in another town says, she's not MY manager. If it were MY manager, I would have to, but since this other manager doesn't work here, she has no authority.
Well the friend, luckily, couldn't find the number for this woman so I didn't have to try and jump through that hoop.

SC: WELL I'll just call my mom and get her to say its okay!
Me: You can do that.
SC: *gets out her phone and dials her mother* MOM! I'm at Movie Gallery and I'm trying to rent some movies and the woman here says I'm not on the account when I've had no trouble ever before! You need to say it's okay! *she then puts her mother on speakerphone.*
MOM: Uh, well Little Miss ***** and my son's names are both supposed to be on the account.
Me: Well I'm sorry ma'am, I don't know what happened, but the account says...
SC: *pulling phone away.* So can we rent these movies or not?!
Me: Yes, just as long as you're mother says it's okay.
MOM: Well ye-
SC: You know what?!! Just FORGET it! We'll just go somewhere else! *she says, stomping towards the door.*
Me: That's fine by me. Bye. *takes the movies, locks them, and puts them back onto the shelf.*

I'm a friendly person, rather laid back, if she hadn't copped an attitude with me, I might have asked for her ID to prove who she was and gone ahead and let her rent, but my thought is, be a *****, get a *****. Besides someone needed to tell her no at some point in her life.

EDIT: OH! And I just remembered, sometime last year, can't remember exactly when I was in a stripes gas station store, buying some sodas. I'm standing there with one person in front 3 men behind and one of the men, the man right behind me, keeps snarking about how slow the service is.

Now I go to this stripes store ALOT, I know many of the workers there by name, they great me, treat me well, and never piss me off. Hell the man who used to be the manager there would give me a hug every time he saw me. So it is with confidence I say that, these people do their jobs,and at this particular time, there were two people there, hardly anyone in the store, and both of them were busy. It was slow at the register, but neither of them were just being lazy shits and the line was not very long.

So when this man behind me keeps saying rude things about how slow the service is, and just generally ragging on these people because their service workers and not CEOS, I got pissed. Espeically since the two men behind him were laughing too. It was totally inappropriate. So after I had paid for my sodas, I turned around and I looked the man right in the eye and I said, "Sir, next time you want to complain about the service being slow, get behind the counter and do the job yourself." and I walked out of the store.

 

[Doclector]

I don't like most employee's. They walk up to you in retail stores all smiles and "How can I help you sir or madame?" But I know they are paid to smile, so I always get very cold towards people "just doing their job".

I assume half the people that are being nice towards me in retail are the same kind of people that were bullies towards me in school. If I want help I'll fucking seek you out!

*cough*

I'm not quite so hostile, no offence, but I'll admit, it bothers me a little when people do that. It usually makes me literally jump. Probably more to do with me being awkward about being approached by random people, but still.

I hope I'm not the sort of person to be a problem, but I know on a bad day, I could be. That's the thing, we can all, in our completely calm rational state, say that being an arsehole to customer services is definately a bad thing, but let's face it, we could all be prone to do that on an incredibly bad day.

 

[Angie7F]

I try to be nice to people as much as I can.
I actually find men who are assholes to waiters etc a total turn off.
It just shows their class...