The Suckiest of Customers.

[XCashier]

Witnessed at the Sterling Ren Fest.

Man in one of those electric carts kept ramming into the leg of someone in line to get food at one of the stalls. The cart driver was trying to get to be first in line since he was an entitlement whore for the fact that his legs were injured in Vietnam and he was a wounded vet.

Just because someone is handicapped doesn't give him the right to be a bully. Glad he got booted from the Faire.

[karma_gypsy]

O.k., I think I got one. Not as bad compared to the other stories though.

I was working in the Pizza business years ago. I was a shift manager and working the lunch shift. I'm the only inside person and I have one driver (lunch shifts are slow, two people can usually handle it).

It was sort of busy that one particular day. Not completely busy as to call in another person, but busy enough to keep the driver out of the store. I don't know what, but all of a sudden a bunch of walk-ins come into the store at once. That store I worked at hardly did walk-in orders, they were mostly deliveries. I'd say there was probably about 3 or 4 walk-ins come in at once. I could still handle them myself, my driver was on the road.

A side note: the store is fairly open. When customers come in, they can see almost everything going on in the store, making pizzas, running ovens, drivers clocking out runs and such.

So I take the orders and start making the pizzas. I don't even think I even got one pizza in the oven until she came in.

She was a scammer/entitlement whore times 10. I try not to judge people by how they looked, but I could tell she wasn't rich, let alone had any money at all . . . The other customers were pretty much soccer moms.

Well, she, I stopped what I was doing to take her order. She tells me that she had ordered a pizza the other night and there was something wrong with it and all she wanted was a re-make. Well, usually you have to call the same day if you wanted a re-make, she claims that we were closed when she called. O.k., so I ask her what phone number she ordered under (the computers held a very large database of customers addresses and phone numbers).

She gave me the number, nothing came up. If she had ordered the previous night like she claims, under that particular phone number, there would have been at least an address. She gives me another phone number. This number came up with an address, but it wasn't the correct address and the last known order under that number was years ago. Then she started freakin' out. This was years ago, so I can't remember exactly what she said. But she was freakin' out and screamin' and yelling. Keep in mind, the other customers are still in the store witnessing this whole thing.

This goes on for about half an hour, I'm still searching the computers - I even check the paperwork from the supposed day that she ordered - I came up with nothing. But there was nothing I could do or say that would get her to leave. I wasn't about to give her a free pizza. She was acting rude and I didn't want to reward that.

I call the owner on his home phone and tell him what's going on and about the customer. He's a pretty nice guy that's understanding, yet still stern at the same time, he said, "put her on the phone."

I put her on the phone to him and I don't know what he's saying, she's still freakin' out, I go back to making pizzas for a moment. She drops the phone and goes storming out of the store. Phew! I pick the phone back up and he's still at the other end. We chatted for a quick minute and I hang up (he didn't want to give her a free pizza either).

I get back to making pizzas again. One of the other customers approaches the counter, "how much longer is it going to be?"

"About 10-15 minutes, I working on yours right now." (at this point it's been about 45 minutes) Nope she acted like I had been standing around the whole time. "Oh, no, we can't wait that long . . . I'll just get a refund . . ."

Fine, I give her the refund. Her little outburst just cost the other customers another couple of minutes. I set the pizzas aside and start working on the other ones. The other customers were pretty understanding and were willing to wait. (I mean, they still got their pizzas fresh and hot, it's not like they were sitting on the hot rack for 10 minutes or so).

[ArenaBoy]

This is one that happend to my manager 3 years before I started working. She was working the VIP chains for Dave Matthews Band. This person wanted to cut through the chains, my manager tells him no. The guy is very drunk (Keep this in mind.) and goes on a rant. After he's done ranting, his gf starts to back in one of the parking spaces when all of a sudden, the car stops then goes right to my manager and hits her. Fortunately, presses were charged and everything. Apparantly, the drunk told his gf to hit my manager and she listened, the poor girl I think she was scared at the time.

[skeptic53]

The OP's uncle is a clone of my now-deceased father-in-law. He was sheer hell on waitstaff and clerks of all kinds, a complete narcissistic tightwad entitlement whore. You couldn't tell him anything, same as Uncle. He'd refuse to bring his walker and then be angry that people couldn't carry him around the mall. He would refuse to dress appropriately for the weather and then demand that other people give up their coat or hat or gloves or all 3.

He would bellow "Is the food any good here?!" when he walked into a restaurant, waving his cane, and demanding instant seating and instant service. He was never happy with his food and never left a tip of any sort.

We took him to his birthplace in Slovakia when he was 75. It was like traveling with a 3-year-old who had seniority. In a shuttle bus at the Paris airport he would loudly ask other passengers if they were American. When they quietly said "no", he'd bark "Well, you look American!!" In the Czech and Slovak Republics he kept berating bartenders for not making a proper martini. He'd yell at anyone speaking German (he had fought in WWII). I know it sounds like he was demented, he wasn't. Just juvenile beyond belief.

When he wanted, he could turn on a weird "These are not the droids you're looking for" sort of charm. He failed the driver's license eye exam and somehow got the female clerk to tell him the letter sequence so he could "pass" it. He got a grocery manager to price-match a sale price on a pork loin from a competing store, *and* got the manager to deliver it to his house! He was constantly getting managers to refund the difference on products he bought months or years before a sale, so that his net cost was the sale price.

He got set up with Meals on Wheels and home chore service, to qualify for this you had to be homebound. It took months of paperwork and red tape to get him signed up. He blew it in the first week, driving off to get a donut. He threatened legal action agains the Meals on Wheels people.

He could not stand to not be the center of attention. If the conversation drifted away from him, he'd yell "I'm not a potted plant!"

When my wife and I got married, he showed up with a male acquaintance, some old coworker he barely knew, who proceeded to get blasted at the reception and hit on all the young women who were there.

There's more but you get the idea. He never quite reached the level of the fishing incident, although he came close...

[repsac]

You know, It's rather ironic by my Uncle is short...and bald.


He struck again today. Conned me (read bribed by the family) into taking him to the local grocery store. At first, I started to head to one called "Hills". I list the name for a few reasons. For on, this store is nearly ancient. I kid you not, it started out as a general store and NEVER changed. Not since the early 1900's. Meaning it's an awesome place to wander around in. The decor is straight from the early seventies, and it always smells like cooking food. (No deli. That's just them smoking the hams...which are amazingly good by the by.)

Back to the story. He screams and squalls at me that no, he doesn't want to go there, they don't have what he wants to buy. Come on, this place has everything. Including ammunition...

So, I take him down to the other store. "I'll be back in a few minutes." he says. Dragging out my laptop, I start monkeying around on it. Two hours later, my battery dies and I look up. He's STILL in there.

Okay....

About fifteen minutes past that, the local chief of police arrives. She and I talk a moment and then she heads inside. Not long after that, my uncle comes out, escorted by she and the store manager. He is ticked! Why? Well, even though he was banned, they figured that he'd learned his lesson. So, they let him shop. Turns out he made another scene. This time, the chief had to tell him bluntly, that if he ever comes back, she's going to arrest him. (This happened inside.) Would you believe he had the gall to tell her that she won't dare lay her N***** hands on him, he ain't done anything wrong? The only thing that kept her from arresting him on the spot was the fact I had driven him up there. She did however issue him a written warning stating he was not allowed to come back on the property.

bout an hour later, I ran into town. It's then when she told me much of this. I told her quite honestly, that I'd much rather she had arrested him. Make his stupid butt stay in jail a few days and see if he straightens up.

[Buglady]

Good Lord, Repsac. You say he's always been like this? Has he ever had a psychological evaluation, that you know of? Because those outbursts really seem to go beyond the whole "rude idiot customer" range and well into emotional disorder territory. (Bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder and a few of the more entertaining personality disorders come to mind).

(I speak from experience; BF has had some *doozies* of sucky-customer outbursts, and we just found out he has probably been suffering from Biploar Disorder since he was a small child. Coinkidink? Not so much).

[Jester]

Buglady, there is also the possibility that Repsac's uncle doesn't suffer from any disorder but, much like my sister, is pretty much just an asshole.

[Rapscallion]

I used to have a grandfather who would turn off the stove gas before turning his bacon over in the pan, allowing the remaining heat to cook the other side. For my father's birthday, he'd send cards saying "I've knocked another twenty pounds off what you owe me" instead of a real present (my ftaher had managed to damage his car many years earlier).

I used to think I had it bad.

Rapscallion

[friendofjimmyk]

I dislike eating at restaurants with my father. He is very demanding and does not tip very well and he calls all servers "Stosh" and speaks down to them.

The worse part about my dad is when I was still tending bar, he'd come in and drink to his hearts content, run up a huge tab and not tip his own daughter!

[MadMike]

Taking some time to dig up some repressed memories, I can think of a few bad customers, but I think this one is the worst. I never actually went off on a customer, but I came pretty close this time.

It was at the home improvements store. I worked in the lumber department. One day, a customer wanted to buy a board and have it cut to a certain length. We had a band saw that we kept in a locked room just for this purpose. The board had a huge knot in it that would have run right through where I needed to cut if I had chosen to cut from that end, so I cut it from the other end instead. For anyone who doesn't know, trying to run a band saw thru a hard knot isn't exactly a good idea.

When I handed the pieces back to the customer, she went apeshit on me over the knot in the piece she wanted. She told me that I should have cut from the other end so that the part with the knot would have been cut off. I tried to explain to her that the knot ran right thru where I would have had to cut, and even if I had, part of the knot still would have been there. I also pointed out that she didn't tell me she wanted me to cut from a certain end.

That turned out to be the wrong thing to say. She told me that "common sense should have told me to cut off the piece with the knot." I felt my blood begin to boil as I responded by telling her that common sense would also tell my not to try to cut thru a huge knot like that. I'll admit I said it in something of a smartassed tone, but she was really starting to piss me off.

This went back and forth a few times, when the department manager, who I'll call Bob happened to overhear the exchange, and apparently noticed that I was about two seconds away from a meltdown, and decided to intervene. After hearing both our stories, he told her that I was right not to try to cut thru that huge knot, but if she wanted to pick another board, I'd recut it.

This seemed to satisfy her, and she picked up a piece without any major knots in it (Why the f didn't she do that in the first place? And I'm the one lacking in common sense? ) I took that one into the cut room and cut it to the length she had requested. When I came out, she was gone, but Bob was waiting. Thinking back now, I might have slammed the door when I went in, so I guess she decided it might be a good idea to be gone when came back out. He told me he'd take it to the customer, and to just go back to whatever task I had been working on.

A few minutes later, he came back and handed me a dollar. He said it was a tip from the customer. I'm guessing she realized she had behaved badly, and wanted to make amends, but for some reason it felt like she was just trying to pay me off, which only enraged me further. Bob ended up sending me on my break so I could cool down.

[Buglady]

Buglady, there is also the possibility that Repsac's uncle doesn't suffer from any disorder but, much like my sister, is pretty much just an asshole.

There were just a few too many alarm bells ringing. There's asshole, a species with which I'm quite familiar, unfortunately, and then there's the crossover into irrational. Hard to say from just a few stories of course.

I may be oversensitive here because I do know someone whose family and friends pretty much wrote him off as "just an asshole, needs to grow up, etc". Turned out he'd been suffering an undiagnosed mental illness and with the right meds was able to come out with his true personality. What if no-one had ever seen that? He was miserable, frustrated and full of self-hatred... like a lot of the stories on this board.

[Buglady]

I used to have a grandfather who would turn off the stove gas before turning his bacon over in the pan, allowing the remaining heat to cook the other side. For my father's birthday, he'd send cards saying "I've knocked another twenty pounds off what you owe me" instead of a real present (my ftaher had managed to damage his car many years earlier).

I used to think I had it bad.

Rapscallion

My great-grandmother was like that. She was the embodiment of every unfortunate stereotype of an Edwardian Scottish lady.

[Dreamstalker]

He was sheer hell on waitstaff and clerks of all kinds, a complete narcissistic tightwad entitlement whore. You couldn't tell him anything, same as Uncle. He'd refuse to bring his walker and then be angry that people couldn't carry him around the mall. He would refuse to dress appropriately for the weather and then demand that other people give up their coat or hat or gloves or all 3.

When he wanted, he could turn on a weird "These are not the droids you're looking for" sort of charm.

That's exactly what my grandmother does. If my mom and/or I are the only ones around, it's nonstop verbal abuse (generally directed at us). If anyone else is in the room, she's all sweetness and light.

(OK, who let the OP's uncle into the cloning facility?)

[draftermatt]

I have never met my best friend's Grandfather, but have heard of him. He owns something like 12 lawn tractors from K-mart because he would make them sell the damaged ones for cheap.

The worst one was this.

He asked his grandkids if they wanted some sidewalk chalk. They told him no. He winked and said "watch this" Went up to a worker and asked how much. "$1.99"
He ranted for a while about how expensive that is since it's going to be used up right quick. Clerk, obviously put off, offers it to him for $1.00.

"No thanks I don't want it"