Customers generally always think they're in the right, even when the retail worker trying to help them knows that's not the case at all. Sometimes they're not only wrong, but they're downright snobbish about it. These entitled customers thought they could throw their weight around and get their way, but stupidity and arrogance gets them nowhere! Content has been edited for clarity.
VIP Reject
“My mom and I were at the airport checking in when a ridiculously overdressed chick with an entourage waltzes in and cuts through the line beside us. She then tosses her entourages’ passports in front of the lady checking people in. I guess they’re used to people like her, because she returned it to the fancy lady and firmly told her to wait in line.
This chick suddenly gave her an attitude and asked, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
The lady didn’t even look at her when she simply said, ‘No,’ and proceeded to check in the ones in line. This chick was raging, and she slides off the other passenger’s passports from the counter to cut in. She says VERY LOUDLY that she’s some politician’s wife, and that she’ll report the lady for being rude. People just started laughing, and I guess her entourage got the message and tried to calm her down and pull her away.”
Overflowing Snobbery
“I was waiting tables and this rich family came in, and I overheard their daughter say, ‘I don’t understand people taking loans out for college. If you can’t afford to go to school, you probably shouldn’t go.'”
“What Kind Of Circus Are You Running Here?!”
“I worked at EB Games when I was 18 in Alberta, a city known for its rednecks.
A man in his 40s came in and spent at least 3 hours browsing every single title on the wall. He refused my help several times. He eventually came up to the counter with 5 brand-new games on almost every system we carried. After ringing in his selection of Cabela’s hunting, NASCAR racing, and UFC fighting games he paid and left.
Several hours later, the man returns! He throws open the front door and yells, ‘What kind of circus are you running here?!’ He is red in the face and stomps towards me and throws his bag of games onto the counter.
‘NONE OF THESE WORK. THIS IS A GARBAGE STORE. WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS-‘ This man rants and yells at me for a minute or so before he decides to take a breath.
I asked him, ‘You tried the games in your Xbox, PC and PlayStation, and NONE of them worked?’
He replied, ‘I just got that new player from Wal-Mart THIS AFTERNOON and NONE OF THESE GAMES WORK!’
Of course, he doesn’t know the name of ‘the disc player’ that he bought was. After several painful minutes and him showing me the Wal-Mart receipt out of his pocket, he bought a DVD player.”
Manager Is Here To Save The Day!
“When I worked as a cashier in a large supermarket chain, I had a woman complain about everything in the store to me while I was scanning her products. Nothing was without fault. The cherry on the cake was when I asked her for her club card, and she got highly offended and told me, ‘I don’t usually shop at this kind of store!!’
I just shook my head, took her money and sent her on her way. Then a few minutes later, she comes storming back inside, claiming that I’ve shortchanged her, despite the fact that she bought the most expensive (and therefore best) steak we had. I ask her to wait until I have finished dealing with my current customer. She shoves the receipt and change into my face. I calmly do the math, and I can see that she’s wrong. I point this out to her. She asks me to show her again. I do. And this time I finish with, ‘Would you like a calculator?’
She complained to my manager, who had fortunately watched the whole thing. Never got in trouble. Seriously, if this woman had been any more indignant and snobbish, her monocle would have fallen out.”
Too Good For Pennies
“My sister works at a grocery store in a very affluent area. Some guy’s total came to $10.04, and he handed them a $10 bill. When she asked the man about the rest of the cost, he said, ‘Oh, we don’t care about pennies in this town.'”
Deli Disaster
“I’m a female shift leader to a deli for a large grocery store chain in my area. I had been working in this deli for 3 years at the time, and I just gad gotten promoted from associate to shift leader. Basically, I was all the other associates’ boss when neither the assistant manager or manager were on duty. I was supposed to reprimand anything of the sort that was not supposed to be happening in the department (anything against regulations/code/what have you). I was 21 at the time, and most of the deli associates at night (my main shift) were 18-23. Except one.
He was a 40-year-old male who had never worked at a deli previously before. He stormed out on me and left the building one night (which qualifies for termination right there) because he was apparently doing something MAJORLY against code. He then came back the next day to yell at my manager. According to him, because he was male, he has no reason to listen to some lowly female who was 20 years younger than him. And he should be given my shift leader position right then and there. The thing is though, my boss (the deli MANAGER) was a 25-year-old female that absolutely adored having me around. You can guess what happened, so I’ll just say, it was not pretty.”
Like Mother Like Children
“I’m a waitress, and I get a lot of snobby remarks. The absolute worst is during the parent’s weekend (I live in a college town). The kids can be monsters, but their parents will be even worse. I had one lady scream at me (and her kids) for almost 10 minutes, in a full restaurant with a line out the door, that her table wasn’t close enough to the TV. If I had room to seat her next to the TV, I would have done so. She then proceeded to have a problem with everything I served her.
‘This glass has a finger print on it. I need a new one.’
‘I asked for one side of ranch, not two.’
I was insanely busy with all my other customers, yet I was bending over backwards for this lady. She tipped me almost nothing.”
Desperate Time Call For Desperate Measures
“When I was working internet tech support, I had a customer call us up because his internet wasn’t working. He said he hooked everything up but, ‘The stupid thing just won’t let me email.’
He then said, ‘The cable you sent me was too darn big.’ I told him that shouldn’t be the case, and he said he had to re-size it to make it fit into his computer. After a little more questioning, I found out he just took the box that had his network card, his modem, and most importantly that CD with a huge red sticker on it that says ‘RUN THIS FIRST BEFORE SETTING UP EQUIPMENT’, and he chucked all that stuff aside. He then took out the ethernet cable and tried to plug it into his 56k modem. When it didn’t fit, he took a knife and carved it down to make it fit.
I just kind of sat there as he was furious because his service didn’t work, and apparently we sent him useless equipment. When he finally let me get a word in, I told him he was supposed to run the CD and use all of that other equipment. He said he didn’t want the service anymore and told us to cancel it, but I told him he signed a contract. I could set up an appointment for him for a technician to come out. He wasn’t interested.
I hated that job sometimes.”
She Lost Her Mind
“I’m sitting next to a mother and son at the Cheesecake Factory. While they were still eating their appetizers, their meals was brought out to their table. The mom loses her mind. ‘Can’t you see that we’re still eating? How can you expect us to eat this now when we haven’t finished our appetizers yet?’
The waiter is dumbfounded until he asks if she would like for him to take their meals back. She agrees with this tone like she was waiting for him to finally ask. After he leaves, the son (who is now embarrassed because of his mother’s scene) asks if it was really that big a deal. She responds with a lecture as to how unacceptable the waiter’s behavior was and how she HAD to say something.”
Horrific Hotel Guests
“I worked in a luxury hotel not long ago. One of our guests complained that their refrigerator wasn’t cold enough and demanded we bring them a new one. We actually did, even though the ‘refrigerator’ they’d originally been complaining about was actually a beverage cooler.
Another guest complained that their sheets were on inside out. And yet another guest complained that there was dust on the back of their couch, which is up against the wall. And here’s the worst one I’ve heard: one guest checked into their room, used the shower and the bed, then complained to the front desk that the bathroom floor was wet. They complained so much about their own shower puddles, we gave them a new room. Which reminds me of the time a guest complained that he had seen a spider in his room, so he up and left the hotel without another word.”
They Were Pompous
“Overheard at a fairly nice restaurant in Albuquerque from two old women: ‘I am supremely disappointed with the amount of quiche available, they should have a more diverse palette.’
Same conversation, a few minutes later: ‘I was out at the stables, and I couldn’t help but think, how many horses should one have?'”
Mountains Of Nonsense
“I work front desk at a hotel, and I hear so much nonsense on a daily basis. Mountains of it. Most complaints aren’t really snobbish so much as just dumb, but I’ll try to give it a go.
One day, I checked in a woman whose reservations made absolutely no indication of the floor she wanted. We have 3 floors, and unless you tell someone what floor you want, there is a possibility you may be put in a floor you don’t want. DUH.
I finish checking her in, hand her the room keys, and I tell her where her room is. She then says, ‘What!? I need the first floor, I have children!’
When I point out the fact that we have these things called elevators, she turns up her nose and says, ‘Fine,’ before marching off.
Like, are all your children’s legs totally broken? Last time I checked, being a child doesn’t exclude you from walking up stairs. Not that they had to, because hotels have functioning elevators.
Later on that night, a housekeeper comes to the desk and tells me about a room he just came from where the guest was screaming about how the room was ‘dirty’ She demanded that he change the sheets on the bed because the comforter was untucked in one corner. Naturally, she was livid over this grave injustice.
You guessed it, she was the same guest from before.”
Demonic Salesman?
“I once had a customer service rep call me to the front of the store because a couple were screaming at her, saying that I sold them the wrong game for their console.
I went up to the front, and they shifted their screaming back and forth between the two of us, but it was mainly directed at me, because I was apparently a greedy salesperson who purposely sold them a game that was incompatible with the Nintendo DS (that I had also sold them) all so I could roll around in my filthy money while cackling away at their misfortune.
Anyway, in between the yelling, I managed to glean from them that their issue was that the game cartridge wouldn’t actually fit into the console. So I picked up the game cartridge and slid it into the machine with no problems. They both shut up and stared at it for a second. The wife began to yell at me again (something about tricking them and making them look bad), while the husband shushed her and apologized. He explained that they had gone home and handed the whole lot to their 4-year-old to figure out, but their 4-year-old kept trying to put the cartridge in backwards.
Apparently, it never occurred to them to look into the matter themselves, as their toddler had things well in hand. The obvious conclusion was that I had sold them the wrong thing. On purpose.”
Who Would Treat An Old Man Like That?!
“I used to work as a cashier in a grocery store and a woman cut in front of an elderly man saying, ‘I am faster and I don’t want to smell bad.’ She was obviously talking about accidental contact with this man in the line of him soiling her because he was standing too close and ‘smelled homeless.’ It blew my mind. I would have said something, but I wasn’t a manager and the witch that was my manager would have sided with anyone over me.”
Have She Ever Used A Door Before?
“I work in a motel and this happened a couple days ago. We get our fair share of weirdos and odd complaints, it just comes with being in hospitality, but this lady. Oh, this lady. It’s a pretty busy Saturday night, and the motel is almost completely full, when a guest comes to the front desk. She is complaining because she was injured in one of our rooms. Okay fine, it happens, protocol says to fill out an incident report, console the guest, and inform the manager. So I give this lady a piece of paper and have her write out what happened, to which she replies, ‘This is not a time to be writing! I am very dissatisfied and I may have to go to the emergency room!’
After this, she fills out the report (full of grammatical errors of course), and when she talks to the manager, she insists on taking him to the room to show him how it happened. She is still extremely serious and says that we all seem uncaring about the situation. She wants to know if we have someone trained to handle this type of situation.
Apparently, she had trouble opening a door and after yanking on the door, she didn’t realize she should move out of the way. She hit the door with her face, because the latches aren’t high enough on the door.
So no, ma’am, we actually do not have someone trained for this situation because most of our guests know the basic logistics of how to open a door.”
Math Genius
“I used to work at an insurance agency. A guy came in for a quote on auto insurance, and let’s say it came out to $300 (I don’t remember the exact numbers). He said he’d think about. I told him the quote was only good for 30 days, and if he came in after that, I’d have to run his information again. He said that was fine.
Well, he came back in and it had been more than 30 days, so I had to redo the quote. This time it was $250. He was furious.
‘THIS ISN’T WHAT YOU TOLD ME BEFORE!’
I calmly said, ‘Sir, I told you before rates can only be guaranteed for 30 days. Also, this is lower than your last quote.’
He said, ‘NO IT ISN’T!’
‘Sir, this one is $250, and the last one was $300, so this one is lower.’
‘NO IT’S NOT.’
At that point, I knew I had lost the argument. If a man refuses to acknowledge that one number is greater than another, there is simply nothing more I can do. I just kind of looked at him, dumbstruck, until he walked out angrily.”
Cashiers Are People Too!
“When I was bagging groceries, a little girl started to take them off and put them in the cart (mind you, I’m also cashiering, so most people do this because it makes sense and there’s always a line), but the mother said to her daughter, ‘Don’t do that, that’s what the cashier is supposed to do. It’s her job.’ It wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t say it in such a disgusted, elite tone of voice while talking on her cell phone in a business suit.”
Stupidest Reason To Walk Out
“I went to the restaurant a few weeks ago, where a guy a few tables away started screaming at a waitress. He was yelling that his carrots weren’t cut thin enough.
He knocked over his drink and stormed out, shouting about how he was too rich for ‘this garbage,’ and he would not be returning.”
His Poor Ears
“I heard a kid complain to a parent about how they were flying business class and not first class. He explained that they would be closer to the middle of the plane and therefore be exposed to more noise from the engines, which was bad for his ears.”
Cringy Kohl’s Shift
“My sister works at a Kohl’s in Marlboro (a snobbish town in New Jersey). One day, while she was cleaning up and folding clothing, she overhears a woman talking to her daughter. She sees the woman going through clothing, and when she’s not satisfied, she drops it on the floor saying, ‘It’s their job to clean up after us.’
Another customer walks into the store ten minutes before closing, starts trying on numerous outfits, and upon being asked to leave, they reply, ‘I don’t have to leave. I pay for clothes here.’ They then tried on more clothing for half an hour and left without buying a single thing.
Some people.”
I’m Not A Television Wizard!
“I had a caller yell at me for nearly a half hour that we had various network and local football games on all our channels. He had promised his ‘bride’ that he would never be like other men and watch football all day, and we’re doing his marriage harm by showing these games in our area. He didn’t understand that I couldn’t put different programming on just his television.”
I’ll Send A Complaint To Mother Nature
“When I worked at Arby’s, I had the pleasure of taking a phone call in which I was yelled at for 10 minutes because this poor, poor woman came through the drive thru. Upon returning home, she got rained on going from her car into her house. Apparently it was my fault that she got so wet.”
Longest Ten Minutes Ever
“When I worked for the US census in 2000, I visited a few very wealthy households. A couple in their late thirties with a couple of kids, several giant SUVs parked in the driveway, and a large, luxurious home spent 10 minutes of my life explaining to me why they wouldn’t take any time out of their lives to answer any questions for the census. Doing so takes at most 15 minutes for the long version of the questionnaire, is done only once every 10 years, and it is mandated by federal law. They refused because it was so unfair that their taxes were so high, the lowest tax rates in the western world. They expected me to feel bad that they had paid more than me and many other people. The country that made their insane wealth possible couldn’t get a few minutes of their time in ten years because the low taxes weren’t low enough. They were two of the biggest bozos I’ve ever met in my life.”
Mysterious Sour Cream
“I had a lady at the grocery store complain that our location didn’t sell sour cream, just as she was standing right in front of an entire wall of sour cream. When I pointed this obvious fact out to her, she said in the most annoying tone, ‘Oh now where did that come from?’
She Had No Idea What Vegetables Were
“I waited tables at a popular chain restaurant when I was in college. Some woman complained that her corn had ‘hair all over it.’ I pointed out that it was actually corn silk, but she wanted to exchange it for another vegetable. Fine. I took it back, and replaced the perfectly good corn on the cob with a Chinese vegetable medley. She immediately waved the manager over to complain that the ‘potatoes’ weren’t cooked. They were water chestnuts.”
Everyone Was A Doctor
“I was taking a registration over the phone for a medical conference. There was an extra session that was free, but it had limited seating, and the event had already been sold out for months. The caller wanted to attend the session. When I told her it was full, she started screaming, ‘But I’m a doctor! I absolutely need to go to this session!’
My response was, ‘Ma’am, this event is only open to doctors. Everyone else is also a doctor. The session is still full and I cannot make an exception.'”
Was She From Another Planet?
“In high school, I worked in a pizza place. An elderly woman called in one day and said that her grandkids were coming for the weekend, and their mother had suggested pizza for dinner. She called us up and asked, ‘What exactly is pizza?’ This led to a forty-minute phone call in which I tried to explain all this to someone who lacked even a basic concept of pizza what was. This included how you order, explaining each individual topping, popular combinations and how to serve it to the kids. When she came in to pick up her order, she still looked completely confused by what a pizza was. She kept peeking into the box to try to figure it out.”
Pasta Kerfluffle
“I was at an Italian café type place when this snobby 15 year old walked up to the cashier, complaining about the spaghetti. He claimed he was a regular and something was off about the pasta. The manager came over and explained that they had recently begun making the pasta in house (which is awesome by the way). He then proceeded to blatantly tell them, ‘That’s just stupid,’ and he demanded they bring him out a new dish. He argued with the manager for a good five minutes about how they should go back to the old way and how idiotic of a decision it was for them to start making pasta from scratch.”
Building A Barrier With School Supplies
“I used to work at a call center located way up in Montreal. The exact phrase will always stay in my mind. My team and I had to work from a satellite office for a few days. This other girl and I were working at the help desk, as in we wouldn’t talk to the users on the phone, we’d be support for the front end agents.
We usually have our own designated desk, separate from the agents. Anyway, at that satellite office, there was no separate designated area for us. The other girl I worked with made quite the fuss and said, ‘I have to sit next to them?!’ in a disgusted tone.
They are not lepers, they are our colleagues! She ended up building a wall with binders so we couldn’t see her. I realize now that I should have said this a long time ago: Patricia, you’re a total monster.”