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From the retail PC business:
Had the typical customer bring in his 10 month-old PC.
“You’re in luck, it’s still under warranty, turn-around will be 7-10 days.”
“Why can’t you just give me a new one?”
“The manufacturer warranties it’s products to be repaired, not replaced.”
“But you should give me a new one. You can keep the repaired one when it comes back.”
“Sorry.”
“Bu-bu-bu-but I use it for my business. I will lose business. It’s going to cost me money!”
“Again, sorry.”
He’s pissed and leaves but returns 7 days later to pick up his repaired PC.
“Here’s your PC sir.”
“Thanks, here’s my itemized bill.”
“What’s this?”
“I lost business while without my PC. You guys owe me money for my lost business.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll make it easy on you. You don’t have to pay me cash. I will take reimbursement in store product or gift cards.”
“Not gonna happen. Bu-bye.”
Not quite in the same theme as some of these, but there was a call in the blood donation center once from a man who was very insistent on having his family donate blood for his upcoming surgery. Ok, we can possibly arrange that… except that his surgery was in three days. And his brother was coming back from Iraq tomorrow to donate for him. And his cousin across the country wanted to donate too, could we fly her blood out here for him if she went to donate somewhere tomorrow?
When I explained to him that it takes more time to process and test the blood, and his brother was likely to be deferred from donating based on his travel, he exploded at me for implying that his brother was “dirty” and his blood wasn’t good enough for us. Frankly, it’s a question of safety for you, mister, but go ahead and keep your facts backwards.
That was weird.
Also,some people want to donate blood for their own surgeries, but they put off calling us till the last second and try to insist we draw two units from them a couple of days before the surgery. Which isn’t safe, and which we refuse to do. And they get mad because we don’t think it’s safe to drain all their blood before they go get sliced open for a back surgery. We’re so mean! For the record, we do all we can to accommodate patients - surgery is scary, a lot of them are nervous and don’t understand the process, and are only there because their doctor said they should donate their own blood, just in case. They don’t know that we have rules about how much we can take at once, and how far before the surgery it has to be - the doctor’s offices do try and explain it to them, but some people are better listeners than others. I can understand procrastinating about something like that, since I’d personally be trying my hardest not to think about my upcoming surgery.
And don’t get me started on the unreasonable requests we get from some doctors. I understand that these labs are STAT. So are all the others I’m getting tonight. I’m doing my best.
When my ex-husband was a manager at McDonald’s, he had a guy bring back one bite of a Quarter Pounder and ask for another, because this one hadn’t been cooked properly. My ex went back to the kitchen, cooked up a well-done Quarter Pounder, carefully cut off one bite, and put the bite in a box.
He said the look on the guy’s face when he opened it was priceless. 
Here are a few stories culled and copied from recent emails I’ve shared with colleagues (edited for posting):
Some people should be forced under penalty of death to wear a big prominent red tattoo on their forehead that says I’M AN IDIOT. This gray-matter defect called to have us change the order of the names in her flight record (the first and last names got transposed). She booked this back in March of this year, and she is just now telling us that the names are in the wrong order. She called the airline and they documented the record, but that wasn’t good enough, so they advised her to contact the booking agency (that’s us). I told her that we cannot change the name once the ticket has been issued. She insisted that we could, and she was one of those people who knows she’s always right and doesn’t think her shit stinks. “I know how this works. Air France has a contract with you, so you should be allowed to change their flight records. I’ve been doing this for 30 years… yada yada”. Just shut the fuck up, lady! She wanted to speak to a supervisor, so I gladly transferred her just so he could tell her the same damn thing!
Moron wanted to fly from Washington DC to Port of Spain, Trinidad. The only flights that came up were on Delta with an arrival at 8:43 PM. That’s all there was, end of story. “I have to get in before that.” I told him, “sorry, but that’s all I am seeing.” “I did this last year and I got in at 4:00.” Sir, that was last year. Airlinesdo change their schedules and many of them have reduced the number of flights they’re operating. This went over about as well as explaining corporate tax laws to a three-year-old with ADHD.
People like this are the reason the ink on my MORON stamp never has a chance to dry out. He had 10,853 points. He wanted to use the points for a Southwest flight (not that this is really important for the story). When I told him he needed at least 15,000 points to use towards the cost of one ticket he got shitty with me and complained about how he’s a “good customer, spends craploads of money each month, pays it off on time…yada x 3…” He’s one of these insufferable jacksticks who feels he deserves some “entitlement”. He said his next call is to look for another card. Fine by me! We sure as hell won’t miss him! He’s also going to find that most other cards work in pretty much the same way.
Cuntlick called about seat assignments not being made on one leg of her trip. Seat map shows nothing we can assign. I told her that when the agent booked the flight and put in seat requests they were not confirmed. When I was referring her to the airline she said, “Now wait a minute, you can’t just book a flight and then leave me without seat assignments.” I said, “We can only request a seat, but it’s up to the airline to honor such requests.” “That doesn’t sound like the airline’s problem. You’re the ones who booked it, so I’d say it’s your problem.” My reply was, “I’m sorry, but I cannot make a seat assignment at this time; the system does not give me any options, so you will need to contact the airline.”
One incident that stands out in my mind comes from my days of working at Burger King. Before McDonalds secured an exclusive contract on all Disney movie tie-ins we got a lot of these, and Beauty and the Beast was one of them. We were severely undersupplied on the Kid’s Meals premiums (Burger King’s version of the Happy Meal), so lots of people were all pissy and whiny that we had to substitute other prizes. MInd you, these were grown adults who probably would pout and stamp their feet if they got a green gumball instead of a red one out of the machine.
This one lady in particular was giving birth to cattle over us not having Beauty and the Beast toys. It was a busy Saturday and she was holding up the drive-thru line being an incredible bitch in front of her kids (way to set an example to your kids, lady, so that they’ll grow up to be entitled assholes, too). She didn’t seem to understand that WE WERE OUT OF STOCK!!! She must have expected us to pull them out of our asses. Not getting it, no matter how many times I told her WE DON’T HAVE ANY, she demanded, “You’d better do something to dry up my kids’ tears!” I handed her some extra napkins and closed the window.
We have a number of field agents who use RSA keychains to connect to the network. For those of you not familiar with these, it’s a little plastic thing with a digital display that shows a series of numbers that change every so many seconds. You have to put in the series of numbers currently showing on the display as your password.
I had an agent call whose RSA had died. He had left it on his dashboard under the hot sun in the summer. The display was toast. He needed a new one ASAP because he couldn’t work without one. I told him I could ship one next-day-air, so it would get there the following morning.
This wasn’t fast enough for him. He had a meeting in a few hours and needed to log on to print something out for it. Technically, I could have linked a new RSA to his account and read him the numbers over the phone, but this was against our security policy and I could get in a lot of trouble for doing it. He understood that. He didn’t want me to read him the numbers over the phone. He wanted me to somehow get the RSA from Maryland to Texas in a few hours.
It was just boggling to me that he would be so reasonable about me not doing something that was possible, just against the rules, but then be so irrational about me not doing something that was completely not possible.
I swear I read this exact same story on Not Always Right recently but I can’t find it now.
I used to work for a courier service that did just that.
Local chip maker has machine break down, call for part from East Coast warehouse, courier picks up part, puts on next flight to local airport, one of our drivers meets package at airport, makes run straight to plant. All within a few hours.
Granted, this may not have been an option in your case but it’s not impossible if you want to pay the cost.
I blame Star Trek. After all, how many times did Scotty change the laws of physics and do the impossible? 
People do battle over the wrong things. It’s not wrong to fight for something that truly is rightfully yours. These people equate that to a free ride for them. They think they are sticking it to the Man when in reality all they are doing is wasting everyone’s time.
What I want to know is how a 38DD strapless bra is supposed to stay up sans underwire. Magic???
This reminds of this hilarious (and very long) thread on the Etiquette Hell forums:
Not Going to Happen 'Cause I’m Not Harry Potter (Impossible Patron Requests)
Nah, I think you’re remembering it from when she posted it here.
I had a woman call me in tears because her health insurance policy hadn’t been set up yet. She submitted the form 24 hours before so we hadn’t had a chance to process it and though when I reviewed it I could tell she would be approved I couldn’t force them to process her information any faster. Then she explained that she needed to pick up a prescription that was really important to keeping her alive (don’t remember quite what it was at this moment but it was really, really expensive and important) and also a narcotic. She was in tears because without her medication she would actually die and she didn’t know what to do since she couldn’t afford the medication out of pocket.
Being the generous soul that I am I asked her for the number to her pharmacy and I called the pharmacist there. I explained who I was and that I needed him to front this woman 48 hours worth of her medication. I offered to send him a cake and call him with her ID number once I had it in my system so he could bill the company if he would give her enough medication to keep her from dying over the next two days. He kindly agreed and set aside 2 days worth of medication for her under the condition that the moment I had the number I was to call him so he could run the bill.
I called her back and advised that I had great news! Her meds were waiting at her pharmacy and she should pick them up right away. Her response was, “I accidentally gave you the wrong number. That is for a pharmacy in New Rochelle. I can’t go out there to pick up my meds. Can you call my pharmacy here in the city and have them hold them for me?”:smack::mad::rolleyes:
Look lady, I have somehow convinced a pharmacist to risk his license to hold a narcotic for you so that you will continue to live. I am not going to get that lucky twice. I have done this despite the fact that you did not send in your application 10 days ahead of time like we told you to and instead sent it in yesterday. This is your error. Get your ass on a train and go to this pharmacy and pick up your goddamn medication and be grateful! Argh!
I’m sorry but this seems incredibly petty and screwed up. The way i’d heard it was that the customer exchanged the very last bite left of the hamburger because it wasn’t cooked properly and got a small piece of a new hamburger back. How else was he supposed to know it wasn’t done right if he didn’t take a bite out of it first though? I would have rightly thrown a fit if some asshole did that to me.
If the burger is not cooked properly, it stands to reason you’d figure it out within a bite or two. If you ate all but one bite, it couldn’t have been that bad.
I’ve heard of this being a common scam to get free food.
What exactly strikes you as petty and screwed up? Of course he had to take a – as in ONE – bite out of it to know how it was cooked. But he sure didn’t have eat 95% of it to know that. Eating virtually all of a meal belies a claim that it wasn’t satisfactory, and fairly shouts lying scammer trying to get something for nothing. That kind of shenanigans is what I’d call screwed up.
And bosses who will give the customers anything they want, no matter how unreasonable, period.
I have been tempted to ask them to PROMISE to never darken our door again.
I’ve heard of this being a scam, too.
It’s one thing to take a bite of something, realize that it’s not cooked properly or is too salty to eat. One or two bites should be more than enough to be able to tell that the whole item is just wrong. It’s quite another thing to be happily eating your food item, and halfway through it you find a cockroach cooked into the item. Then, the proper thing to do is to take a VERY firm grip on your innards, so you don’t puke all over the table. After the first wave of nausea is dealt with, then you call the manager over, and let him/her know that you will not be paying for this meal, and you will not be visiting this establishment in the near future, if ever again.
Oh, and my favorite…we used to get customers who’d swear that the service, selection, and prices were all much, much better over at our competitor’s place. I always wondered “Then what the hell are you doing in THIS place, then?” but I never let those words pass my lips.
When I was on the phones in customer service I would let these guys tell me how wonderful everything was with our competitor, say things like “Really?”, and generally let them lay out a Nirvana of a plan that we could never match. Then I would give them the best option we had, and when they rejected that (presumably because they thought I was making an opening offer of the worst thing we had just as they had made an opening offer of the best thing they could think of) I would advise them that there was no way we could match what the competition had offered them, and advise them to take it.
I had technically done everything I was required to do, and given the customer the best advice I could.
From there on they either went through with a cancellation and had to find a new plan which, strangely enough, wasn’t as good as the one they described or as good as the one they had, or they became much easier to deal with.
Brinksmanship can be quite a lot of fun as long as you’re sure your butt is covered.
I haven’t seen that ad. If true, It tempts me to set up a test. Anyone wanna bet on whether or not someone will come in to get the kid’s passport?
Joe