Weirdest customer you have ever had to deal with in work

Once had a customer accuse me of "throwing" her change at her.

Used to work in a national Irish video rental store, the security guard kept a giant wad of cash(close to 5000 Euro he claimed) on him at all times in case he saw a car he "fancied". Guy talked alot and mentioned he had been shot, stabbed and beaten and proceeded to show me shot embedded in his skin from a shotgun blast he had taken to his arms. As if this was not enough I remember he mentioned both his wife and daughter were heroin addicts, and he himself was on methadone. He once fell asleep in MY chair(the ONLY chair in the store) for like 2 hours, right under the security camera.

I have alot of stories about the people I have worked with, I stopped working with customers a while ago thankfully.

when I was 16 I worked as in a shop selling car accessories.

A middle aged women asked me about steering wheel locks, and she asked me about one particular one which needed a battery (for an alarm too), she asked me very loudly was the battery for lock, so it would act as a vibrator.

Since my dad was manager, I went a certain crimson colour, as the loack was about a 1m long

once a woman came back 20mins after having paid for something, saying she had given me €50 not the €20 she had actually given me!!

she had this big long story about why she would only have a fifty on a thursday!

anyway i checked the float and it was all perfect, and told her to come back at the end of the day and i'd check again!

so i forgot about her, presuming that she had chanced her arm, not gotten away with it, and moved on with her life!!

but five o'clock comes and who turns up again only the lady!

so i proceed to check the cash again, and again its bang on!!

she's now saying that ive pocketed the money and basically robbed her!! i said fair enough if thats what she believes she can go take it up with my boss!

off she goes and is in my bosses office saying i had robbed her, my boss says she doesnt believe her, and is going to have to call the guards if the lady wants to pursue her complaint!

the minute the guards are mentioned the lady changes her story, and may infact be mistaken over the amount of money she gave me!!





i cant remember what i spent the €30 on :cool:

I had a chap one day several years ago ask about a Maxtor 120GB hard drive. I told him I didn't have any in stock but that I did have IBM drives. I mentioned that I thought these were a better drive but that I could order the Maxtor one for him and that it wouldn't be a problem or any extra charge. He took the IBM drive and went away seemingly happy.

A letter came in a few days later where he said he had the IBM drive forced down his throat, that I had left him with no choice and he was upset at the experience. Everyone was a little surprised as I had been as nice as pie to him and had offered to get in the drive that he wanted.

Now no offence to anyone but he was a white south african. We used to get a seemingly disproportionate number of these guys in causing trouble. They really seemed to have some sort of superiority complex. I menioned it to a white south african lady I knew and she assured me I wasn't making it up and that they could indeed be difficult and that was partially the reason she didn't date men from her country. Thankfully we don't seem to have that issue these days.

(My apologies to any sound white south african males)

ashyle wrote: »

A great one I had recently was, 'do yis sell Durex paint?' I laugh. They freeze. '**** I mean Dulux!!!! I can't believe I said that I'm mortified!'

Not a work story as such but when I was a little Earthhorse I once walked into the local Centra and asked for a Double Dick.

Double Dip. Double Dip.

eamon234 wrote: »

There was this crazy bitch when I used to work in Galway years ago - first time I met her I was managing an electrical store she came in moaning about a broken kettle she bought years ago - when I told her politely that it was a out of warranty she went nuts (I don't even think she'd bought it in that shop!)
Started screaming around the place then started saying she was a diabetic and proceeded to faint. We put her on a chair and she came around then we said we'd call an ambulance and she refused took about two hours to get her out of the feckin shop turned out there was feck all wrong with her.
A year later I was working in a mobile phone shop in the city centre and lo and behold, in she walks and starts going off at the other girl there because of something stupid wrong with her phone - ten minutes later and she's fainted again! I tried to explain to the girl but she didn't believe me and the same scenario ensued as before.
A couple of months later I was in Casualty really sick with a stomach ulcer and rolling around in pain waiting to be seen. I hear a ruckus in the cubicle beside me - guess who! Pretending to have an attack again and giving me about a half an hour's more pain than I needed to have I could have killed her.
It's funny she looked normal enough, well dressed early 50's but what a feckin attention seeker!!

I think I've seen that episode of House MD.

Summer job in directory enquiries back in college a few years ago...

Me: "Hello 118**, how can I help?"

Crazy old lady: "Can you tell me how to dial eleven please?"

...

Another time...

Me: "Hello 118**, how can I help?"

"Have you got the number for Angie two doors up please"

...

syklops wrote: »

I know for alot of people this is the case with many companies, but we were open from 7am and closed at 10pm, 7 days a week.

Maybe he worked for your company.

The Scientist wrote: »

Call Centre one from back in the Day too...
Rang a Customer in the UK and i asked to speak with a Mr Ridgeworth (not real name). He scowled back down the phone in the poshest of English Accents; "I beg your pardon, you'll address me by my proper title of Lord Ridgeworth".
I told him he was listed as 'Mr.' on our database... He went nuts and accused me of Treason to the Crown! :eek:
I told him i was calling from the ROI and said that title meant nothing to me.
Needless to say he didn't buy what i was selling.

This wouldn't have happened to have been in a certain ISP for the UK that had offces here would it ;-)

Cos that story sounds uber familiar.

I used to work in a shop in a certain shopping centre in South Dublin. We'd get a lot of odd balls coming in and out regularly and grew to know them and their habits so we could take lunch breaks at certain times or hide in the stock room while the last person out on the floor would have to stay out on the floor.

Firstly there was the man that would come in, ask one of the guys a question and then proceed to fiddle with himself while the person was answering his question. After a couple of times of him doing this, he got barred.

Then there was the odd couple. An elderly man and woman who'd come in and ask about our largest most expensive items. The old lady would wear bright red socks, had blonde hair, really expensive clothes while the elderly man was really dapper looking. They'd then ask you lots of questions about the item. You'd answer them of course, they'd promise to put a deposit on it in a few minutes. You'd then leave them to talk about it of course, and just as you were running hastily away you'd hear them arguing REALLY loudly over nonsense. They'd then leave ten minutes or so later of their own accord.

Next there's the infamous Squeeky Bum seen in many of our shops throughout Dublin. He'd come in half an hour before closing time with a Dunnes Stores bag full of shopping in each hand and an umbrella with a pointer protector (?) at the top of it, whether it was blazingly sunny out or not, stare at all of our products and generally refuse to leave the store after closing. We'd knock off all the TVs, stop the music, knock off all the lights, and he'd never get the message. You'd tell him to go and he'd start asking you questions.

The one story that I have that tops all of these crazy customers that we got in was one particular crazy Nigerian woman. She turned up to our store to return a TV that was over a year old. It was a big 50 inch CRT yoke that weighed a tonne so she decided to put it diagonally into a trolley. She got to the door of our shop and was shouting at us in Nigerian. We didn't have a clue what she was saying. When we got her to calm down, she started speaking to us in English very loudly. We then of course had a clue what was going on. Basically, her TV was broken. We could only offer a repair cos it was over a year old (and obviously really badly treated). She went off on a mad one and lifted the TV (note, it probably weighed about 50KG) from the trolley, and threw it to the ground saying that she wanted a new one. We had to get the centre security guards to get her out. It was a bit of a crazy night. She came back a few weeks later but I never found out what happened.

Working in retail for over 3 years, I'm a wealth of stories.

Working at a 5 star hotel as a waiter in the lounge serving drinks sandwiches, high tea etc. part time during college days.

Of course this type of establishment tended to attract a well to do crowd, who were for the most part really nice. But I remember one day a family who were real complaining bastards, nothing was good enough for them. The dad sat there and said loudly to the son "You better make up your mind to study now and get enough points, or you will end up like one of them" while pointing at myself and a colleague.



Also we had a wedding one night and caught a couple shagging in the sandwich chefs station (little room off down a corridor) and someone took a massive, 3 bowler dump in the sink there the same night. The family was involved in the business of working with tin, and it was a lesson learned for the wedding boss, who was from a different country and must have missed all the warning signs when planning the thing with them.

Im sure there are plenty of better hotel stories out there.:)

sam34 wrote: »

i remember once i prescribed meds for a patient, and painstakingly went through what he cold expect from them etc, and that they would take a while to work. he rang me the nrxt day, really irate, to say they werent working. so i said, "yes, remember i told you they wouldnt work straight away?", to which he replied "well, to be honest, i havent taken any of them, theyre still in the chemists bag".

Seen this one before, only difference is that they were meds for his son. Nice try though.