I thought this was going to end with you reading in the paper a few days later “couple found dead, mauled by bears beside highway”.
Obviously, you simply don’t let the Black workers in the super-secret Whites only storage room. 
Anybody else thinking of that great Eddie Murphy SNL skit?
I’m surprised that black lady who wanted the red cap didn’t call Mahna Mahna a racist for ordering a black man about.
My first forays into the internet, while not as many geological ages ago as those of some of the folks here, were before the www had been invented; I still remember how my research advisor was almost bouncing off the walls when he installed that first browser and showed us a picture of a molecule that someone had made available for viewing…
In 1996 I spent a couple of winter months in Germany as part of a research exchange. A friend gave me this ftp address to an online game “for when you’re tired of Germans and snow”. I’d been in the game for less than a week when someone came in and said, in a channel that could be heard by everybody (about 40 people)
Someone: ‘hey guys, I realize this sounds real weird, but does any of you know of any place I can get information on sexual harassment?’
Within minutes, he’s obtained two adresses. Thanks us and goes afk. Comes back a few minutes later to explain that he’s got a small business and one of his customers had just managed to send an employee to the bathroom, crying in rage and shame, with a series of remarks along the lines of “with tits like those you oughta be a whore.” The documents were to hand them to the former customer as he was accompanied out of the door.
The game itself was cool, but what got me hooked was the community.
I’ve met one too - you just reminded me of him. Back 20 years or so ago to the leather shop - guy comes in, looks around and enquires about leather jocks. Yeah, we have a few varieties with buckles or snaps, plain or studded, etc. He wanted to know which would cover more of him because his downstairs neighbor had a heat ray and was trying to cook his testicles. :eek: 
:rolleyes:
Well duh.
No Jews either.
In fact, only perfect specimens of Aryan purity are allowed in… which unfortunately rules my dark-haired self out. I guess that explains why I couldn’t get the hat.
Aha! Always ask the blonde sales clerk first! [writes in little notebook]
Is there a connection to the fact that the ads at the bottom of the page now read “undo circumcision damage”?
Maybe I need to borrow that tinfoil’d hat (and/or leather jockstrap …)
I’ve had so many crazy customers in retail, I couldn’t begin to tell you about them all. Hmmm… Let’s categorize:
Odd returns:
Middle-aged man, a doctor, who had Tourrette’s (I’m assuming. He had some very distracting facial tics). He’d come in in the morning and buy a “coffee table” type bargain book, with lots of pictures of planes or gardens or what have you. Then he’d return it after lunch. He did it maybe every couple of months, but the books were in good shape so I had to take them back. I couldn’t figure that out, either. I thought maybe he needed some reading material for his break, or the toilet, but why not keep the books? Or check them out at the library?
Creepy stalkers:
Annoying stupid guy. Probably early 30s (once again, Borders, I’m 18). He liked to annoy me on my lunch breaks. He’d sit down at my table and just ramble on about the stupidest shit. He showed me some drawings that he was really proud of, that looked like a 3rd grader did them. I loathed my lunch break because of this guy. Finally, one day I got the balls to tell him to fuck off. He showed me some pen that some “Ayrab” had sold him, and it was such a rip-off, he was gonna get his money back from that stupid Hajii, blah blah. Aha! So I started yelling “You ignorant racist fuck, shut the hell up! My sister-in-law is Palestinian (true) you useless waste of space!” and I stormed inside. He tried to apologize a few days later for his comments, and I just told him to get lost.
Actually frightening stalker. He was close to my age, so when he asked if he could join me at my table on my lunch break I obliged. He seemed nice, he was cute, we talked about music and stuff. When I was done with my break he gave me his number on a folded up piece of paper that also said “I think you’re really cute.” OK, that was kinda cute in a dorky way. Until the next day, when I came in at 9 when the store opened, and there he was. Waiting for the doors to open to come in. He sat there all day until I left at 5, and I did some sort of ninja thing to sneak out without him noticing. He did this for weeks, just sitting there watching me as I worked, until I complained to the manager and he had him trespassed.
Bitchy customers:
This guy wanted to return a book he’d bought for some class or test, like an SAT study guide but not. He had his receipt, which indicated he’d paid with a credit card. So I ask for the CC so I can credit it for the return. Oh no. He wants cash. I apologize and tell him that store policy is that you are refunded the same way you paid- I can either put it back on his card or give him store credit. Well, store credit isn’t good enough, because we don’t carry the specific book he needs, how is he supposed to pass this test, blah blah. He’s screaming so the whole store can hear. I call in my manger, who tells him the same thing- store credit, or credit the card. My manager (who was awesome for these types- he’d rather tell a bitchy customer to fuck off than kiss his ass) also points out that not only is the refund policy printed on the back of the receipt, but it’s also spelled out in letters 4 inches high on the 16x5 ft board above the cash register. So the customer storms out, bitching, to which my manager yells even louder, “Maybe next time you should pay attention to the return policy, dumbass.”
I never understood that guy- where the hell does he shop that they’ll give you cash regardless of how you paid? Why wasn’t crediting the card good enough- couldn’t he drive his happy ass across the street to Barnes and Noble and buy the RIGHT book with the money we’d refunded to his card? Also, who gives you the right to scream at US for YOUR mistake?
Then there was the craziest, and bitchiest, of all customers. The Chai Lady[sup]TM[/sup]. Apparently nicknamed this by the poor folks in the cafe who bore the brunt of her rudeness. She was some well-to-do woman with 2 insane kids. Her husband was a millionaire (I can’t remember what he owned, but it was something major like the local sports team). She was an entitled bitch. Her kids were the spawn of Satan.
She’d stop in, let the kids run wild in the children’s section, and harrass the cafe staff because they never made her Chai right. Her kids, on one memorable occasion, pulled all the books off the shelves in the children’s section, spread them out over the floor, and jumped all over them. Then the little boy pissed right there, on the floor and all the books.
So her kids were banned from the store. So she’d still come in, although leaving the kids in the car. She’d steal the mugs (real mugs and cups, for in-cafe drinking, not the cardboard ones) they’d give her, until they started putting the electronic tags on the bottom of them that set off the alarm. Oh yeah, that embarrassed the hell out of her. Seriously, your husband’s a millionaire, and you can’t buy your own mugs?
Well, needless to say, she was banned as well. Then we heard she’d started frequenting the stores in other parts of our county, and in the next county over, getting banned from each one. Some people. :rolleyes:
Great stories, RedRoses. Made me shudder, anyway.
I used to work, now 20 years ago, in the family sculpture business. We made ceramic elephants in little dioramas - fairly expensive, as they were handmade and we did a lot of special orders.
There was one customer in particular that we all dreaded - we called her the Perfume Lady, for her most obvious characteristic. She drenched herself liberally in some expensive perfume that, no doubt, would smell nice if one dabbed a tiny drop on … as it was, her presence was announced by a cloud of stench that arrived before she did and, unfortunately, lingered on long after she was gone. It was so potent as to be, quite literally, a health hazard, leading to watery eyes and runny noses - and this among a set of sculptors who regularly used all sorts of dangerous fuming chemicals, kiln fumes, paints and glues.
We’d run the fume hood to clear the place out after she was gone.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. This lady was never happy with anything. If we sold her something, she would reject it three or four times - guaranteed. She wanted changes made.
That was okay in a way, as she paid each time - money was absolutely no object to her. But it meant that she, and her horrible stink, would be back multiple times.
I often wondered - did no-one tell her? Did she not know? How could she not? Was she trying to cover up some sort of skunk-like BO?
Edit: it strikes me that I still remember that smell, more than 20 years later.
My first day of my first ever job. I was 16 years old, working for a government backed bank. I hadn’t yet realised that to the public, we were the face of the government and the logical representatives for abuse of said government.
But my first day really beat all the rest.
A customer walked in, big guy, big attitude.
Big Guy: “My wife was in here last week and you stole $100 from her. Give me $100.”
Me, confused: “I wasn’t here last week.”
Big Mean Guy - leaning over counter: “You stole my money, give me $100.”
Me, a bit annoyed: “I haven’t stolen anything.”
Big mean and now scary guy: “I will kill you if you don’t give me my $100 right now.”
Me, retreating into the official government rules in panic: “I’m not allowed to give you money without an account.”
Big mean scary guy with spittle dribbling down his chin, screaming: “I’m going to *kill *you!”
Me: “…”
At this point my supervisor came over, teeny tiny little lady who only came up to my shoulder even with her six inch clogs on.
Supervisor: “If you speak to my clerk like that, I will come out there and bloody kill you.”
Big suddenly not scary guy: “Oh, okay, hee hee hee!”
He walked out of the office, still giggling.
Apparently he’d go around all banks in the neighbourhood checking for new staff.
Writing it out 25 years later, I still feel shaky.
These stories are taking me right back to the bad old days when I dealt with the public. Fortunately, enough time has passed that I can mostly just laugh at it.
The funniest phone call that I can remember was when I was a volunteer at the animal shelter and a man called up intending for me to help him win a bet with his friend. His friend said that opossums have teeth, and the guy on the phone expected me to tell his friend that opossums don’t have teeth, just a beak like a chicken. He got really mad at me when I said that opossums have teeth and that in fact it’s one of the really noticeable things about an opossum.He ended up yelling at me and hanging up.
Here’sa photo of an opossum’s skull that really shows off the teeth.
In the States, he’d be on the way to jail at Warp Factor 9 for that stunt.
Southern stereotype–I used to work at a bookstore. Woman comes in.
Her: Where are the smut books?
Me: We don’t carry that kind of material, ma’mm.
Her: I’ll be the judge of that!
Sure enough, she made a beeline for the Art Section, & found a book on Renaissance sculptures, some of which were nude.
She starts screaming in the middle of the store, actually screaming, about the “Un-Godly filth” and “pornography” that…wait for it…that I was selling! :smack:
She promised a picket line that would close the store.
The manager came out & calmed her. And we got rid of the Art section.
20+ years later, our town has an Adult movie store. <shrugs>
[Danny Ocean}
The People that You Know, like me better.
[/DO]
He was treated as an extra training session for new staff. It wasn’t a wealthy area, there were plenty of people willing to try almost anything, we had to be able to handle them.
Pens were chained to walls and replaced almost daily. People would walk in, grab a pen, yank it and it’s chain out of the wall and give us the finger on their way out.
One in the eye for the damned government, yeah!
I am kind of afraid to post this, because I would not be surprised if one or both of the two people in my story are Dopers. But in any case, this is not a “The Customer Was a Terrible Crazy Bitch and I Hope She Dies in a Fire” type story. This is a “The Customer was Completely Crazy and Completely Made My Day” kind of story.
So here goes:
Has anybody ever heard of Prehistoric Creature Day? It’s on Friday the 13th. Every Friday the 13th is Prehistoric Creature’s Day.
I used to work as a server at an upscale-casual suburban steakhouse. One Friday the 13th, probably a half-hour before I was due to be cut, my manager comes up and tells me to take table thirteen. “Have fun with it,” he tells me.
So I go over to greet table thirteen - it’s a man and a woman, maybe in their mid-forties.
And twelve stuffed dinosaurs.
Friday the 13th, I was told, is Prehistoric Creature’s Day. If you have any prehistoric creatures in your house, you have to take them out to a nice dinner on Friday the 13th, or else they will become angry and rampage through your house, creating a huge mess. So this couple, not wanting to spend the next day cleaning up after a squadron of angry reptilians, had brought their brood of dinosaurs out to dinner.
Most of them were kind of small (the kind of stuffed animal you could put on your desk at work), but there was one rather large triceratops, to whom I offered a booster seat. The rest of the dinosaurs sat on the table.
A dinosaur ordered a bottle of (expensive) wine.
A dinosaur tasted the wine, and declared it good.
The man and woman ordered their respective entrees, with plenty of side dishes to feed the rest of the crew.
Somebody else dropped off the food, and when I came by a few minutes later to make sure everything was ok, the table had been rearranged to accomodate all of the dinosaurs and their different culinary preferences. The carnivores were positioned around the steak. The herbivores gathered near the broccoli. The fish-eaters were crowding the fried lobster tail.
Everybody was a fan of the bread, and I brought over a refill.
While they were eating, I went over to my manager. “Manager,” says I. “These are by far the coolest, weirdest people we have ever had in here ever. We have to buy them a free dessert.”
Manager agrees, and so after the plates have been cleared, I go back to the table with the dessert menu, and tell them that, in honor of their special day, we would like to offer them a complimentary dessert.
One dinosaur -I think he was a brontosaurus- was very excited by this. Aided by the man, the dinosaur runs very excitedly to the end of the table, eager to look over our desserts! He loves dessert! He loves - oh no! All of a sudden, the chipper brontosaurus wilts in the man’s hands, and drags back to his place on the table. The man explains “He’s sad because he doesn’t read English. But dont worry, we’ll read it to him.”
They ordered dessert, everyone enjoyed it.
I forget if the man or the woman paid the bill - I just know it wasnt a dinosaur, which makes sense, as it was their day. They were being treated.
And that was by far the best table I ever had in my year and a half of waiting tables.
love
yams!!
Oh, great googly, moogly, yams!!. That’s wonderful!
(giggling madly - which hurts, since I pulled my diaphragm yesterday. And I don’t care!)
That was a beautiful story, yams!!.
I loved the dinosaur story, too! The wilting brontosaurus won my heart. I want to get my own bunch of stuffed dinos now and take them out for dinner.
Holy schamoly, you did what???
I used to work at AOL. I handled escalated tech and billing issues for a while.
One day while I was doing customer escalations I talked to an insane man. I’ll call him Mr. X.*
I don’t mean just kinda nuts. I mean full on bat-shit crazy. The issue was that his account was canceled for non-payment. The customer was upset and swore he sent in the payment and wanted the account reactivated. We had no record of the payment so the account would not be turned back on.
This is what happened.
I get the call from the billing rep. I pull up the account. There are numerous calls. Each call was escalated. The last activity on the case had a note somewhat like the following:
‘I explained to Mr. X that we have not received the check. Mr. X proceeded to use extremely foul language. I explained to Mr. X that this type of language is not acceptable. At that point Mr. X told me ‘You’ll take it. You’ll bend over, take it and like it, bitch’. At that point I disconnected the call.’
The ‘Bend over, take it and like it’ is an exact quote.
So I pick up the call. The man starts ranting immediately that his account should be turned back on. I explain that we have not received the check, but if he faxes in a copy of the check from his bank showing that it has been cashed we would reinstate the account. At that point the man, screaming at the top of his lungs, tells me that he can’t do that because the bank won’t give him a copy of the check. Still screaming he tells me that he has proof, that ‘Fernando’ saw him mail the check. I tell him that still isn’t enough. He starts screaming ‘Here, listen to Fernando, he’ll tell ya I sent in the check!’ and then the phone went silent.
For almost three minutes.
Mr X. then got back on the phone screaming “See, Fernando told you. I sent in the check! Are you calling me and Fernando liars?!?!?!?!?”
I explained that regardless of what Fernando said (I didn’t feel that bringing up the fact that there was no Fernando), we still needed a copy of the check. Mr. X started screaming at the top of his lungs about how Fernando saw him send the check.
I explained that his language was not acceptable and that I also canceled the account for call center employee abuse. I explained that AOL no longer wished to do business with him and that if he called again the call would be disconnected. I then hung up. I noted on the account that no one was to speak with him and that if he called to disconnect.
A couple weeks later I got home from work and turned on the T.V. I flipped it to the news and they had a story about Mr. X. Turns out Mr. X had killed his gardener/live in lover**. I followed the story for a bit. Mr. X got sent to a mental health facility for the rest of his life 'cause he was batshit crazy.
Slee
*Note, Mr. X came from a rather rich (and I mean full on loaded family, think hundreds of millions). If your google fu is strong you can probably find a story about the guy.
** I don’t remember the exact details but the guy, IIRC, was his gardener/lover. It was an odd story.