I have multiple 'worst customers'. One of my biggest general peeves is when someone returns an item I accidentally mispriced, and yells at me for a difference of a few damn cents. And then they use something that trivial to try and talk the customer service desk into giving them a bunch of free stuff.

That said, the 'best' customers are the ones who aren't anal about the stuff they're getting from the deli where I work. I find it infinitely frustrating when someone takes issue when their cheese or meat weighs in at 1.07 pounds rather than 1 pound. Again, difference of a few cents. The best customers are the ones that don't treat you like some soulless grocery automaton designed to serve their every whim. To them, I really do mean it when I say 'enjoy the rest of your day'. :P

I've been to Claire's during the 10 for $5 sale before, and I admit I've mixed up some items that were over $10 with the rest of what I want. However, I've never been rude about it! (If anything, embarrassed, but never rude.) Being unemployed myself, I don't have any "worst customer" stories to add to the thread, but I still wanted to comment about the Claire's thing. :3

I used to work in the food industry, and here is the tale.

A large man came up to order, he wanted a cheese burger with no cheese, I asked him if he wanted a hamburger, he insisted for the cheese burger with no cheese. I told the man it was a hamburger, he got mad. A day later I was fired. :roll:

good riddance

I work at PacSun. (where all of my employees around me are so rude to the customers.) I personally value customers on top of everything because if the store got a decline in sales then I would be losing my job. (either way, I want the commissions.) Probably the worst customer I ever had was this one women who didn't know what her son's shoe size was. She started to blame me because I work her and that I should know the average size for a sixteen year old man. Seriously! How am I suppose to know how big a man's feet size is? I don't ask for a customer's size and ask what age they are. I am already horrible at guessing people's ages so this was just horrible for me! I was highly offended that just because I work at the shoe department that I should know the average of each person's shoe size. (I may be the ignorant one but I was calm about it at that moment.) At the end I just told her to buy two sizes and to return the one that did not fit her son. It was easy on my part and her part.
The best customer I ever got was one who gave me tip because I had to go back and forth on shoe sizes. She was really nice so I did not mind. It was really fun too. I wish all customers were nice and considerate towards workers. We get payed minimum wage and working at the mall isn't that great too! (talk about the taxes! xD) I love my job, but sometimes, it is just better to ask for people's sizes and go to the back.

I work at the service desk/photo lab of a large grocery store.
Aside from the usual disgruntled customers because they were dissatisfied with a product, they aren't too bad.
My favorite customer is this doctor who's picture I process and print out frequently. He's single, really cute and has invited me out to his house a couple of times.

I work as a cashier at Tops and was stuck on register 1 during one of my shifts which is always the crappiest because it usually gets all the customers with really big orders who are in a hurry. This one guy comes through my line, he's like the really big intimidating man comes through my line and starts piling all these groceries on the belt and so I start checking him out.

After loading a bunch of stuff on the belt he comes back over to his cart and opens the lid of this metal box and shows me all these quarter rolls inside, like a million of them, and tells me that he's been without a job for a while and this is the last of his money stash and that he needs to pay the bill with all of the quarters. I tell him that I'm going to have to contact the manager about that and the manager said that we couldn't do that. I kept stopping running the items through because it seemed pointless to check them all out if he was going to have to return them but every time I did he'd yell at me to keep going.

The manager came back after confering with someone and told him that if he wanted to pay with the quarter rolls that he'd have to run them through the coinstar but the guy didn't want to have to pay the tax to have his coins rolled and complained that all his quarters were rolled at the bank but the manager replied that they could only take quarters rolled directly through the bank that they deal with and then they left me all alone with that creepy guy!

In the end I finish checking out the guy and he ends up paying with a debit card and going on his merry way. I was so angry... The little liar and his bull crap about being out of a job and not having any money... It was terrible. He was big and really really creepy. The whole time I was checking him out I thought he was going to hurt me or something...

@ Juniper - Yeah, they did it at least semi-stealthily though. For a while we didn't notice because everything still looked in place. What they did is they took CDs from a lot of different sections. They were just going up and down the eisles, but they always left at least two or three CDs in each space so it still looked full enough. That didn't stop them from getting caught though. xD

To be completely honest, Todd running out the door like he did put me into hysterics. Janice thought it was awesome too, but if something would've happened to him, the company could've been in trouble, so I completely understand why my general manager wasn't pleased. I was laughing so hard watching him running out that door after that girl, though. And there were a LOT of CDs, too. Well over eight hundred dollars worth. Mind you, stuff over fifty a piece (sometimes over thirty for CDs) are all behind glass... so that was a fuckton of CDs. Most of them were just around the normal CD price - somewhere between ten and fifteen.

@ Mushy Kylo Hendricks:
So you didn't have enough curtains for her in the store and she was pissed because you suggested helping her order the curtains? That's really strange. It's also strange that she wanted to give you her credit card info over the phone. Most of the people I've served are really paranoid about that kind of thing.

That's hilarious that she returned items and then told you that she was paying for your paycheck.

A metal pipe?! I would have had a breakdown too! That's really scary. Why did he have a metal pipe? I feel bad for his wife. I hate it when I'm with someone at a store or restraunt and their behavior is completely humiliating.

I don't know what I'd do if someone started personally attacking me like the guy calling you a dirty Mexican, but I'm glad you were able to handle it pretty well. He couldn't have been in his right mind.

@ Jaina Solo:
That's terrible about your dad getting reported when he didn't do anything wrong. As crazy as people are in stores, they're even worse on the road. I could never handle the stress of driving all the time like your dad. Does he like to drive?

So what has your favorite job been so far? I've never heard of Media Play, but I'm guessing it's something like Sam Goody? I love those kinds of old people! I get them in Claire's sometimes too, and they're always really into it when I tell them about Hannah Montana(geez that merchandise is popular).

@ Wynna:
Good job at getting him/her to calm down. Sometimes you just have to humor people even if they're being kind of crazy. I feel bad for your brother...and scared of that lady.

@ Pirogoeth:
It is really odd when people care so much about a couple of cents. You have to wonder what their true motive is. Surely no one is really so cheap that they can't spare a couple of pennies.

@ Luumi:
That sale is very confusing, I'll admit it myself. We just don't have enough time to sort everything out and keep on top of it(people mix it back up). I'm glad you aren't a psychopath about it though like that one lady was. Most people aren't...she was just really weird.

@ Urboros:
Lol, he sounds like he was very confused. Those are the kind of people you just have to go along with even if what they say doesn't make sense. It's kind of sad that you have to do that or get fired though.

@ Takuto:
The average shoe size for a 16 year old male? How weird. You definitely shouldn't be expected to memorize those statistics just because you work in a shoe department.

I agree, people who are friendly make things a lot more fun. You feel like you're shopping with them rather than fetching things for them. I got a tip for piercing ears too! It was really weird...but shhh, I don't think I'm really allowed to take tips.

@ zigbigadorlube:
Ugh, crazy managers leaving you alone with someone you were afraid of. That's one of the things I liked about Penney's. The managers took care of the bad customers, or at least helped me.

@ Ishoku Osero:
800 dollars?! Wow, that's a lot of money. It's harder for people to take that much in Claire's because our merchandise is fairly cheap. You're right, that's true that the company wouldn't have been in a good position if he got hurt. I just think yelling at him is a little much.

Ugh! xD
I worked at Arby's on the backline, so my complaints would mostly be of managers and employees. Some of the employees made it so hard to get trained, I'd ask questions and get different answers or no real answer x.x Yet later a manager told me I needed to take more initiative about my training and ask people questions! D: That was frustrating. And being left by myself to work the sandwich side when I was new because the other employee went to start doing their closing (so they could leave earlier), then the managers would still yell about not being fast enough. Yeah, let me get on that management job of yours for you and make sure you know where your employees are. :roll: They were always trying to find people. xP

Whenever I was closing lobby and I went out there to start cleaning, people would be really nice if they asked for help though. Like getting them an extra plate or something. So that was nice at the end of the day.

Most of my experiences with people being casual about credit cards like that either mean 1. They don't believe that they could ever have it happen to them or 2. It's stolen - not hers. :/ Considering she did returns, and all the people I worked with checked identification, I'm going with her just being very full of herself. ^^;

The metal pipe guy...ugh. I'll never forget that. Note: NEVER work at a hardware store. The tough guys who do physical labor all day have very little patience. >>; That's where metal pipe guy and anti-Mexican guy came from.

I've had some really sweet customers too. I helped one lady for forty-five minutes and she bought well over $1000 in sales. She was decorating a bathroom/bedroom for a guest, and we tried to keep it at a minimum. She about took me home...I swear. XD She was a lovely lady. :3

Sometimes you help someone and they don't buy anything, but they're nice people and you feel like you wish you could help. :(

@ Mushy Kylo Hendricks:
I had the funniest incident about credit cards when I worked at Penney's. This old woman was signing up for a JC Penney credit card and we're supposed to have them write down the last 5 digits of their social security number and have them say the rest to us quietly. So after she wrote down the last 5 I asked her for the rest and she was like "I can't give that to you! You're not supposed to ask for that! I've never had to give the first numbers to sign up for a credit card before. You could steal my identity if I did that."

It was really bizarre...I mean what am I going to do with an old lady's social security number besides go sign up for a new card...which according to her I should have been able to with just the last numbers. I really had to hold my tongue with that customer.

Believe me, I wasn't planning on working in a hardware store in the first place...but now I definitely won't.

Wow, that's awesome that you sold so much to one lady. Did you get commission...or at least some sort of recognition?

I just wanted to share with everyone that I haven't had a single customer yell at me in months...well at least 1 month. In fact I haven't had any really difficult customers at all lately. Yay!

Hi everyone. I needed someone to rant to about my issues last night at work, so I figured I'd use this thread.

So I was doing TONS of piercings all in a row. I would be doing one and then have multiple people come up and ask me about getting their ears pierced in the middle. So that gives you an idea of the kind of mood I was in...kind of flustered. The guy I was working with came up and told me that the register had run out of paper in the middle of a transaction, so a guys reciept had printed onto nothing and he wanted me to take care of it.

Our registers are ridiculous and won't let us reprint a reciept. So I start to handwrite a reciept on the paper we're given for emergencies like power outtages. And he gets all annoyed saying that a handwritten reciept isn't good enough proof that he paid with his credit card. So I decide to just resell him the merchandise so that he can get a reciept, but of course halfway through I realize that means that I'd have to swipe the card through again.

So I decide to do a return and then resell the merchandise to him. There's a huge line at this point and the guy is berating me in front of everyone because it took me so long to figure out how to fix the problem. I was so embarrassed and was having panic attacks(they aren't too noticable to others though, the biggest difference in my behavior is that I get really "far away").

I gave the guy 20% off when I resold the items to him(because he honestly was waiting quite a while for his reciept and I felt bad about it) and he told me that didn't mean that would have more money on his card...which made no sense to me, but I was panic attacking so I was just like "ok". I was on the verge of tears when the transaction was over and there was no way to take a break or calm down before dealing with other customers.

There was a really sweet girl who had witnessed the whole thing and was being really nice to me though. I was very appreciative of her. Even if it was my fault for being slow, I needed someone who understood so that I could feel better and focus on the job again.

I was going to talk about a couple other customers, but this is a wall of text as it is. I guess I'll restrain myself for now.

Originally Posted by juniper_silver

@ Jaina Solo:
That's terrible about your dad getting reported when he didn't do anything wrong. As crazy as people are in stores, they're even worse on the road. I could never handle the stress of driving all the time like your dad. Does he like to drive?

Yeah, he likes to drive. We both like to travel a lot.
He knows where everything is too. Like the most scenic back roads and parks. Everything. He drives all day and he's still willing to randomly go on a drive with me for like an hour, which is really cool because I get stir crazy. xD
My mom's totally the opposite. She hates driving more than she had to. She's not afraid of it at all, but she just doesn't like it. You've got to give her advance notice that she needs to stop at the store or she gets put out. lol

So what has your favorite job been so far? I've never heard of Media Play, but I'm guessing it's something like Sam Goody? I love those kinds of old people! I get them in Claire's sometimes too, and they're always really into it when I tell them about Hannah Montana(geez that merchandise is popular).

Yeah, Media Play and Sam Goody were actually owned by the same people. Our Media Play gift cards were good at Sam Goody too. xD
Hannah Montana scares me, to be frank, it says something about the ability popularity has to completely brainwash people into selling their souls. xDDD (I guess she's like the new Spice Girls.) Since they were fanatically popular when I was younger. Or going further back Ace of Base.

I worked in a supermarket once, was putting stock out on the floor when this woman comes bustling up to me and says "Do you know those children just stole some sweets?".

I didn't even see any children and, if I did, what did she want me to do about it? I was only 17 myself so hardly in the best place to be telling of others XD

Oh man, I work in a book store right now, a Canadian book store! Right now the Canadian dollar is hovering around par with the American one. Sometimes the loonie is worth more, some times less, but it is always down to a matter of pennies.

The difference in the pricing of books is rather drastic between Canadian and American, and to fill such a gap takes time. Months in fact. However, people don't seem to realize this! No matter that we give them slips of paper explaining this with every purchase, no matter the sighs we have in the store, no matter that the store's website has all this information people will still run in grab a arm load of books expecting the pay the "American" price, and when they find out they can't they drop the books right where they are! The jerks.

I don't know how many times I have had to explain to people just what is happening. They are never happy with me.

But, despite all that I think the worst customer we have at the store is not really a customer at all! This guy comes in every week takes a book out of the True Crime section reads it cover to cover and then leaves. Like we are a library! He bends the spines so they break, creases the covers, sometimes ever dog-ears the pages! We can't sell the books after that! No one wants to buy a book that looks like it has already been read from a book store that does not even sell used books!

Every time I see this guy I carefully, and with my best customer service, make him so uncomfortable that he leaves without finishing the book. Heheh. "Can I help you with anything?" is like code for "If you are not going to buy that book then kindly get the hell out of my store." But only for that jerk. DX

OH jesus where to begin xD;

I work with games and consoles, so its always something different :P I HATE the first few months after christmas xP its a killer, seriously, SOOOOOO many xbox 360's with problems (the count right now is 50 something that have died since december) or stupid kids killing their DS lites (i had a customer's kid leave theirs outside in the rain xDDD; but he was only 3 so its really the parents fault) and people killing their wii remotes while they are extreamly hard to get at the moment xPP

Anywho, the most resent annoying customer that pissed me off was a lady who brought a DS lite for her girl for christmas, went away on holidays and she broke it, come back and wait another few weeks before calling us up and demanding a new one (this happened last week just so you all know). I told her it was out of the 30 day store warranty from the day she purchased it and that she should of called us the first day it did break down and we could of done something, or email us if it was too expencive to call.
She told me thats not good enough and demanded a new one again. I asked if she got the extended warrenty on it (basically an extra year ontop of its warrenty with nintendo, except anything they don't cover for free we do, and yes that means if you damage it yourself we replace xD) and she said no one offered it to her, which is a lie because we had a competition going on in the company for the store with the most warrenties and i told her that we asked every single person who purchased something and she accused me of lieing saying she was never offered a warrenty and that the person who served her (which happened to be our best warrenty seller xD; ) never offered it and was now demanding her money back because her kid broke it and she didn't want to pay the postage for sending it to nintendo to fix it.

So basically im on the phone for half an hour fighting with this lady that she wasn't going to get her way due to carlessness and she was all 'im never coming back to you's, im taking my busness elsewhere and a whole bunch of swearing that i ended up hanging up on her for because she was a rude little bitch xP

edit - the moral of the story is kids, if you get the extended store warrenty on electronics, i will save everyone hassle :P

@Tre Le Coco - I got to have that fun last year! I use to work for EB Games; don't you just love the 360s?! A little trick I used to get people to buy extended warranties on their 360 stuff was to show them a disk that had the "Ring of Death" on it. You know, when the laser burns a ring around the disk. Oh, good times. XD

aha, i just quit my part-time job yesterday ^-^ i worked as a promoter, in a boutique ( sort of )..

my worst customer : not really that worst, but she's terribly annoying >.>; she wanted to buy a pair of jeans for her hubby, she told me she wanted a size of 30..so i gave her, then she came back like 5 seconds after that and asked for size 33 or 34...then her husband came back and said he wants size 32 *while returning back the pants sized 30* so the girl pissed of and said to me "why did u give me size 30? i want size 32!" so i said back "u asked for 30 first ( duu'uh im not deaf ;S ) then she get's blurry, and ask again for 33..
so , i get pissed off but i still search for 32..,
but that size is finish, so i told her..
then my senior took over..i guess she didn't believe me so she asked again, "i want size 32"...
my senior search for it and said there's no size 32...but she said again that she want's size 32...
so i simply said " u're funny, search for it as many times as u want, u won't freaking find it" ...
but she still didn't give up...
my senior got some work to d ( to author the pants )..
so now, MY FRIEND took over...and she asked again for the same pair of jeans, size 32...
that's how dumb she is ;__;

my best customer : well, i have a few...they're the best because they chat with me XD i mean, they're the kind of a person which doesn't just ask for size, but tells story too..like my son likes to wear pink , blah blah he said he'll blah blah..do you like pink blah blah and so on ^-^ i like that kind of a customer ;P

I used to work in an icecreamshop. Italian one, and it was great, I got to eat icecream all day on rainy days.
The worst customers must've been German people (Nothing against german people, my german just sucks butt), or bigger groups of children.

One kid can be terrible, changing his mind from chocolate, to strawberry, to banana, and back to chocolate, two kids too. But twenty of them, gawsh, that's really my nightmare forever.

Ouch.. Sounds like one annoying customer.

I've had lots of annoying costumers while I've been either working a summer thing or whatever, but I really don't have a 'job'. As I work on homes helping my friend who actually does it all, sometimes he just needs a second guy to get the work done and I'm him.

Some nice lady one day, as we're cutting out carpets, by the way a horrible, horrible job. All the filth thats under the carpet is just creepy and the moving of the furniture and bagging some of it, gah.. Still afterwards, hauling out some roles of carpets I see a cup of tea and a sandwich out for us, I'm always happy when people are nice like that.

Originally Posted by xemsax

@Tre Le Coco - I got to have that fun last year! I use to work for EB Games; don't you just love the 360s?! A little trick I used to get people to buy extended warranties on their 360 stuff was to show them a disk that had the "Ring of Death" on it. You know, when the laser burns a ring around the disk. Oh, good times. XD

...evil person! *chases with a pitchfork*

i work for game :lol:

anywho, i hated them before i started, and i hate them now xD; lol i've scared customer's away by showing them that stuff like that (there was a few weeks where we had some of the broken consoles sitting behind the counter in clear view because we ran out of room to store them till we could ship them out xD)

its funny tho how people still think they are better than ps3's because they are cheaper :lol:

What is the worst customer you've ever had?

Well I have a million per day. I seriously think that peoples brains and courtesy leave the store as soon as they walk in. they all become very stupid and rude. I work at hobby lobby which is were I have to be in about an hour, and I really hate it there but I'm head of craft department and one day this couple comes in like usual looking for something they want but don't know the name of it. Now, this was in the middle of the day before my second break and I had already helped out more then my fair share of stupid people. this couple had decided the item was a Crayola product. and it had something to do with gold. so I showed them the isle were the Crayola products were and walked away. they came back to were I was standing in the paint isle on a ladder. the man proceeded to tell me in was in this area and he pointed to the scrap booking section in front of me. now this was an old couple so I had to have some patients with him and I asked him again what the product was called. and he said Crayola again. so I preceded to explain that all those items were over there and if it's not over there we don't carry it. well this went on for about ten minutes before he finally walks into the paint isle and looks at the paint pens and grabs the 18k "KRYLON" paint pen and smacks me with it. and says, "this is it." and walks off to a different isle. his wife looks at me and says, you better watch your self,you should know better, you're a professional, he's old. and then walks off. I'm left standing there bewildered and I say to myself I get paid minimum wage. my co worker is standing in the isle in front of me just staring. so I tell her I'm going on break. before I was about to yell at this stupid woman.

What about the best one?

my best customers have got to be my usual ones that come in buy what they want talk to me about other things besides work and then leave.

The worst costumer I ever had - I had a temp job at my oncampus bookstore for the seasonal rush period recently. And this asshole came up to my register on the very busiest day and asked me to ring his couple books off. and he hands me the cash and a bunch of change so I put the cash down and count the change and enter it and the draw opens and I put the change in and shut it accidently without putting the cash inside the register. So I was like "OH! I didn't put the cash in! I'm sorry" and he was like "yes you did" and I see him pocketing money. and I was like hmm...I wonder if he took it. and I was like "Look - I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure I didn't so I'm going to ask my manager to open my drawer and I can easily count it" it was all in 50 dollar bills so it would have been easy to count because I had only 2 50-dollar bills before he came. so I get my manager and the guy got really pissed at me saying that I was stupid and shouldn't be allowed in college and that this was my job and he didn't have time for this that he had class to get too and I was just and idiot.
So my manager comes over and was like "here let me open it and I'll go count it" and he opens it and sees me super upset and was like "why don't you come with me" and I was like "Okay" and so we went back and I'm crying and crying because I knew he took the money and was trying to steal the books. and I ended up being short the money for his books.
But the bad thing was - while we were back there counting - the other manager was talking to him and he was screaming and making a scene. and she came back and was like "99% of the time the customer is right - so I let him go because he said he had a class. But if I had known you saw him pocketing money I wouldn't have done that." So he got away. Luckily all I had to do was fill out a police accident report and I didn't have to pay the money so I was good :D.

I don't work directly with customers, but I work with them. I'm a phone tech for Dell Computers. We get some crazy people calling into us. Lots of people wanting to order pizzas...

Anyways...

Worst:
Me: Thank you for calling Dell. How may I help you?

Customer: My computer don't turn on.

Me: Okay, what does it do when you push the power button.

Customer: It shows Dell, Windows, and then my screen saver.

Me: It boots right into your Screen Saver? Doesn't show any icons?

Customer: I have a Start Button, My Computer, My Documents...

Me: That's not your screen saver, that's your desktop.

Customer: I know that. But my computer doesn't work.

Me: Can you click on anything?

Customer: Yes.

Me: What can't you do?

Customer: I told you! My computer don't work! I need you to fix it!

Me: ...Okay...Can you just go online and go to dellconnect.com and I'll just remote access your system and you can show me what isn't working.

Customer: I can't do that.

Me:...Why?

Customer: Cause my computer is broke.

Me: *eye twitch* Your computer or your internet?

Customer: My Computer you stupid girl! The damn Internet Explorer doesn't work! My computer is broke! *string of swears*

(Ugh...that call went on forever...)

Best:

Me: Thank you for calling Dell. How may I help you?

Customer: I got a bad hard drive. Here's the service tag. The system was making some clicking noises and wouldn't boot into windows. I ran diagnostics on the hard drive and got error code 1000-0142.

Me: Thank you, Sir. Can I get the address?

Customer: Of course. Here's the address. We need parts only service. No windows media needed. Anything else.

Me: Nope. That's about it. Thank you, Sir.

(I love when people know what's wrong and just tell me everything flat out. Makes it so much easier than guessing.

Sorry for the length.)