16 employees share their best examples of 'the customer is never right.'

Working in customer service can be a true test of your faith in humanity, especially when the most entitled person you've ever encountered on this planet is screaming at you for not smiling enough...

So, when a Reddit user asked, 'The customer is always right? F you' disgruntled employees everywhere were ready to share their stories of when the customer was hilariously wrong.

1.

I work at a cafe in a very rich part of town. One day a man orders a drink, I give it to him and he comes back yelling and screaming; dropping F bombs like nobodies business like the biggest unjustice in the world had just occured to him.

His drink was 3 dollars. Judging from his complaints, he obviously ordered the wrong drink so I ask:

'Excuse me sir, are you sure you ordered a _______?' To which he get EVEN MORE MAD 'Of course I ordered that drink!!' To which I felt like asking him 'Do you feel better about yourself yelling at a teenage girl who is getting paid minimum wage and has to put up with your bullsh$t?'

But of course, I don't. Finally my boss comes by sweet talks the man and gives me shit even though I did nothing wrong. Whoever said the customer is always right should get punched in the face. - g33kk

2.

I work as a butcher and had a customer order a rump steak, so I go into the locker get the meat and cut it, we always show the customer the meat before we sell it to them, so I show her this steak and she totaly freaks out starts screaming 'I ordered fing rib you dumb shi%'

so I politely tell her that she didn't still freaking out she screams that shes 'going to f-ing stab me' at which point my boss looks over waves a steak knife which is more or less a machete and says 'bring it' best day of work ever I have never laughed so hard in my life. - twiggy-ramirez

3.

A guy orders 'Hot and Spicy Onion Rings' with a subheading of 'Onion rings coated in a hot chilli batter.' These were one of the favourites at the restaurant I used to manage, same recipe was used for as long as I remember the place existing.

I notice one of his toddlers gasping for air, so instinctively I run over with a glass of water, hand it to him and check on the kid. I ask him what's up and the boy says 'burns!! hot!!'

The young lad's about 3 or 4...I clear up any debris on the table from the ordeal and walk back to the bar to check on staff, closely followed by his father.

The father claims he's going to seek legal action because I served the onion rings to the table and didn't make him aware that they had chilli in. He stated that every other time he'd been to the restaurant they never served them with chilli and the last time he visited, he said, was 1 month ago. It was my responsibility to make sure he knew they were hot, apparently.

F that -- I pointed out that the item on the menu contained the word hot, spicy and chilli more than once and that it was his responsibility to ensure the food that HE fed to his kids was suitable, not mine.

He blushed after seeing the menu information and blushed even more when I showed him the printed on date on the back of the menu. Nearly a year prior to the incident. Needless to say, I enjoyed every second of knowing I, the manager, was 100% right. - itsbri

4.

I was working at an ice cream shop a few years back. This one ridiculous bitch came in one day and evidently had the intention of sampling EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN FLAVOR IN THE FREEZER.

She literally stood around for like 20 minutes, holding up a line that was forming behind her while she had me systematically serve her up one miniature spoonfull at a time.

Fortunately, before I resorted to smashing her f-ing face through the counter, some handsome, eloquent gent behind her administered a much-needed wake-up call and got her a$s the f out the door.

My whole life I've been told the customer is always right, when in fact, usually, the customer is a moron and an ahole. - PunkRockMakesMeSmile

5.

Web designer here, I get a very special brand of annoying customer: the guy who makes last minute changes to huge projects because he can.

Oh, you don't like the logo I revised 3 times for you? You want to use the one made in 1998, with the gradient-studded golf ball that looks like what someone makes on their first try using Illustrator? Awesome.

Thanks for that. Oh? I'm not allowed to change the colors either? Because beige and off-white are hot right now? Clearly you know better than I do, I've only been doing this for 6 years. Nooo... this logo will look great!

It's not like I based the color palette of your site off of the logo I painstakingly made for you over the last 2 weeks. Oh wait, that's exactly what I did. - [deleted]

6.

When I was 17 I worked at Walgreens and the dress code stated that men had to wear a collared shirt and tie. So me being a smart a$s I used to wear a polka dot shirt with a black bow-tie once a week.

The old ladies loved it and commented on how its a shame nobody wears bow-ties anymore. One day a grumpy middle aged lady came in and was infuriated that her prescription was not ready yet and proceeded to yell at me at tell me how stupid my tie and shirt were and my mother should be beat for letting me leave the house like that. I told her its not nice to bring someone's mom into this.

The store manager heard the lady yelling and came over, this is when the lady started telling the manager its 'unprofessional' for me to wear a polka dot shirt and bow-tie. Sadly I was told not to wear them anymore to appease the customer. - droptune

7.

I spent 11 years at a major Airline:

Guys walks up to ticket counter, yells about how he thinks we screwed him, then throws his frequent flyer card at me 'this thing isn't worth anything anymore, just throw it away, how are you going to make this right?'

So I fix his problem, then I say 'Normally I would give you 5,000 miles, but since I am throwing away your card I know you don't want those'. He looked at me blankly, told me to go ahead and give him the miles and his card back and then crawled away.

Late one night we had a flight arrive really late because of weather and everyone had mised their connecting flights. It was so late we had hotels for everyone food vouchers and already had them booked for in the morning.

So... 2 guys walk up and one guy is screaming about travelling all day wants to be in city X there has to be another flight. Once I tell him there isn't or he would be on it, he is still screaming and says 'You have to give me options!'

I said okay you have 2 options - Option 1 is go to the hotel, take a hot shower, eat dinner on us and arrive home tomorrow morning.

Option 2 is you can just stand here and yell at me all night and I'm on overtime so I really don't mind. His buddy died laughing and told him to leave me alone. - h2omojo

8.

I work at Brookstone, and the vast majority of our customers are actually pretty nice. Sometimes, though, we get somebody with an axe to grind. The day before, the customer had bought an InStyler..

.basically a rotating curling iron (an item we're desperately trying to get rid of, because it's not very good). It's heavily discounted, but it's still considered a personal care item, so it can't be returned.

We tell people this at the counter. It says it on their receipt. There's a sign at the counter detailing our return policy in excruciating detail. Apparently that's not good enough.

The next day, the lady and her boyfriend waltz in demanding their money back because the curling iron is apparently very loud. Our assistant manager explains why we can't oblige. The boyfriend erupts. For the next 45 minutes I listen to them argue, with the argument on our side going something like:

'I'm sorry sir, this is company policy backed up by elements of state law. Would you want somebody else's toiletries?' And the argument on their side going like so:

'Brookstone sucks! Your products suck! You suck!'

This continued for some time, with the customer demanding to know where exactly it said he couldn't do the thing we told him he couldn't do, us pointing to it in in bold letters in three different places around the store, and him claiming that it needed to be more visible.

Eventually the douchenozzle got his money back because he pulled the corporate number card, which always results in the customer getting their money back, and it wasn't worth wasting their time when we can do the same thing by breaking every single rule in the book.

He kept insulting us on the way out, I gave him a big smile and a 'Come see us again soon!', and then committed his face to memory so I could make a point of giving that sale to somebody else. - Axewerfer

9.

Waiting tables in the South, working the Sunday lunch rush, had a table of fundies ask me 'don't you know it's a sin to work on Sundays?' - Capitalist_Piglet

10.

I used to work at a Home Depot. One time this dude just completely lost his sh*t at one of the other cashiers because she wouldn't let him keep something he 'found' on the floor (ie. something he probably just peeled the SKU off of).

So this abusive sh*t has her in tears, when one of my older, fatherly coworkers comes over from appliances, calmly takes the man aside and politely asks 'sir, do you have any children who work or have worked in retail?' 'Yes.'

'How would you feel if a customer spoke to one of your children the way you just spoke to that cashier?' The customer quite quickly changed his tune, went back over to her and apologized. - eightofswords

11.

The one that comes to mind is this woman who made me photograph her baby for two hours. The baby was not smiling. I am GREAT at making kids smile, but it just wasn't going to happen.

The average sitting at the portrait studio is 30-45 minutes. But no joke, I looked at the clock, and this woman made me take pictures of her baby for two hours. She kept insisting that she was going to buy a lot of pictures.

At one point she turned to me and said, 'It's ok though, you're paid by the hour, right?' (YES BUT I ALSO GET PAID COMMISSION). After the two hours, she used a coupon for a free photo, I tried to push her - she ended up buying $20. Meanwhile, my coworkers had done several $100+ sales in that time. Gah.

We also sold pre-paid packages, which were really cheap, but had limitations. SO MANY DEBATES over the rules of the packages. I quit retail/customer service in May and could not be happier. - taylortsides

12.

I was working in the produce section of a supermarket. An older man comes up to me and asks where the mini watermelons are. I show him.

He looks at them for a few seconds and says 'A few days ago you had some that are bigger. Do you have any bigger ones?' I said, stunned 'The watermelons are over there.' - PShap

13.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away I worked in a department store. One day this lady comes in and while she is buying something, is just being A HUGE B. I forget what her beef was specifically, but it was nothing relevant to the products or services we were providing, she was trying to pick a fight with me specifically.

I'm having a good day and am completely unfazed by this. So while I'm ringing her up, I proceed to very politely inform her that my function at the store is not to absorb the anger from her bad day, and she might want to go have a chamomile or something.

This just freakin sets her off to the point of yelling. As my co-worker who was bagging her stuff is now hiding behind the counter, I re-iterate my opinion that its wrong to take things out on random people.

Then she yells at me for smiling, as I was smiling the whole time, and storms off to customer service, threatening to get me fired.

So, they told me that when she shows up at the service desk, she says she wants to make a complaint about someone, and they ask the name... and as soon as she says my name all three girls at the counter start laughing at her, cause they know I'm the nicest guy in the whole damn store. She walks out of the store crying. I was a hero in the break room for weeks. - cursoryusername

14.

I worked at Bath and Body Works for many many years. Fragrances tend to come and go, some stick around forever like cucumber meleon and sweet pea but most eventually go so new ones can come in.

This upsets a lot of customers because they get used to a certain scent they enjoy, most people when told their fragrance has been discontinued are like oh wow that sucks, I suggest one that may be similiar and they move on.

One time this lady came in looking for a scent we no longer carried. I told her this, and she just looked at me with this sort of sociopathic stare and said ' I know you have some in the back'

I very kindly explained to her that, we do not have any, our semi-annual sale in which we do sometimes have some older fragrances has ended and what you see is what we have. She didn't believe me. I went to back to 'look' to humor her but our backroom is the size of a closet and I was well aware we did not have this.

She threw an absolute fit, accusing me of lying, insisting the scent was not discontinued, and somehow she got the idea I was just 'too f-ing lazy' to climb the ladder because it was probably on the top shelf.

She blamed me personally that we didn't have it, and basically told me she knew about my conspiracy to hide shit in the backroom. She was completely nuts. - Megling1285

15.

I worked at McDonald's for a while during high school to fund an overseas trip. I was about 3 seconds into my shift when a man storms into the store with a cup and slams it down on the counter, yelling 'WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???'

I wasn't even working when he purchased it, so I didn't know. I told him so, and he said 'I ASKED FOR A CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE, A CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE!!!'. I looked inside it.

'Sir, this is a chocolate milkshake.'

'WELL IT'S NOT CHOCOLATEY ENOUGH!!! I WANT A REFUND!!'

I refunded his money, and as he was walking out of the store he called me a slut. Later that evening, he came back to buy dinner, and made a beeline straight for me. He seemed rational and calm.

He asked for a free VIP drink with his meal, and the chaos began again.... I asked to see his VIP card, and he screamed and ran out of the store. I thought he was gone, so I was about to cancel his order, but he ran back in with a VIP sticker obviously torn from his car.

We aren't allowed to accept drive-through VIP stickers in store, customers have to use a VIP card. He waved the sticker in my face screaming 'IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?'

I was scared, so I just let it go and gave him the free drink. Unfortunately, the guys in the back had neglected to put more fries in the fryer, so there was going to be a 5 minute wait on the fries. Inconvenient, but not at all my fault.

The guy screams some more, and then sits in the corner of the store. When the fries are ready, we served them up really quickly and gave them to him. They were still very hot and covered in oil, straight from the fryer. He noticed this, and decided it would be appropriate to throw the fries into my face and run out of the store. - lordcheesus

16.

I worked in retail for about 4 years: Circuit City, some bullshit 'surf clothing' store, another bullsh$t 'surf clothing' store, and some other nonsense for a few months.

What I hated more than anything else in retail, was when management and/or corporate implemented a new policy that was aribitrary, bogus and pissed off customers.

What would happen is that you would enforce this new rule 'Sorry, all sunglasses must be returned within 3 days for a full refund,' and then the customer would flip out, 'What the f%k?! How am I supposed to know if they fit in only 3 days?!'

The manager would hear the commotion, 'An unhappy customer? Oh no!' The manager would waive the arbitrary rule and talk to you as if you're vindictive to the customer.

'Oh, come on! Give 'em a break!' the manager might say with a smile. Then comes the reassurance from the customer, 'Thank you,' they'd say to the manager.

So you looked like an ahole for a policy that management asked you to enforce, and when shit hits the fan they decide not to enforce it.

Good job, ahole. And that's why I walked out on my manager with no explanation other than 'go f%k yourself' at the age of 19. I was an angry kid. - [deleted]