When it comes to any customer service job, dealing with rude customers is an everyday hassle. But what isn’t an everyday thing is seeing those exact same customers getting instant karma for their rude behavior. These employees share the satisfying moment when a rude customer got what they deserved. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Debit Card Transaction
“I worked for an online banking help desk and this 18-year-old lad phoned up saying he had seen a transaction for £7 to allpay.net and because he didn’t recognize it. He decided the bank was robbing him of £7 and that I was in on it, calling me a ‘thieving little prick.’
Then he got his dad on the phone who stuck up for his son, saying I was a pathetic scumbag for stealing £7 off an 18-year-old boy, even though it was a debit card transaction and I simply worked in the department which helped people use online banking.
But anyway, I phoned our debit card services to see if they could give any more information, and boy could they. I then had the pleasure of relaying back to the father the following:
‘Hi sir, thanks for holding. I’ve checked with our debit card services team and I now understand why your son would not have recognized the payee ‘allpay.net’. That’s a deliberately vague term used for discretion when the customer has subscribed to online pornography. That’s what it was for. Your son has been paying for online pornography. Would you like to pop him back on the phone so I can tell him it’s a payment for his pornography, or will you pass on the information?’
The father just muttered that the issue did not require any further investigation, thanked me for looking into it and hung up.”
Trashy Couple
“I used to be a nighttime manager at a pizza place downtown. We were literally around the corner from a direct competitor. They had a carry-out window and offered that service all night. We did not and closed our doors at 10:00 pm and only offered delivery service after that.
It’s also worth mentioning we were quite friendly with the local PD and they frequently sat in our parking lot at night to catch up on paperwork, watch for drunk drivers, etc…
One night at about 11:30 pm, I had a woman and a man started banging on our door. I politely, but loudly told them through the door we closed carry-out at 10. The woman went ballistic and started screaming and hitting the door while the man just stood there, trying to look hard.
I asked another employee to keep an eye on me in case the situation escalated, and stepped out another side door, in order to be able to actually converse with them. This woman was absolutely unclear at this point, screaming and cursing. I let her finish and then informed her that if she called and ordered, it was probably our friendly neighbors with the carry-out window.
Instead of seeing me as being helpful, she accused me of calling her stupid.
Me: ‘Can you check your phone and tell me which number you called?’
Woman: ‘I don’t have to, I know I call y’all and YOU took my order!’
Me: ‘Ma’am, there is absolutely no way I took a carry-out order after we closed carry-out.’
At this point, the man joined in and started taking a very aggressive posture and tone with me.
Man: ‘You better let us in to get our food.’
Me: ‘No.’
At this point, the man shoved me and tried to swing at me. I kindly repaid the favor, knocking him to the ground. At about the same time, the woman attempted to run at me there when there was a sound of ‘WOOOP WOOOP!’ and flashing blue lights behind them.
This didn’t stop them from continuing to try to assault me, however, the two uniformed police officers who happened to have just pulled in took care of that very quickly. Another squad car showed up, the two were cuffed and placed in the cars. The officers were then given a copy of the security footage.
I asked one of the officers, for the sake of curiosity, if he could possibly try to convince her to tell him the phone number she called. He walked me back out to the car she was in and somehow convinced her to do this. She recited the number while glaring at me, with so much vitriol and hatred in her voice.
Woman: ‘XXX-XXX-7272 you idiot.’
I smiled at her and informed her, ‘Our number is XXX-XXX-3030. We are Domino’s. That’s the number for Papa John’s. That’s why 7272 spells out Papa.'”
All For A Sale
“I work at a store where the majority of shoppers are elderly. It makes for a pretty sad atmosphere. It is stunning how many accidents we’ve had with the elderly pooping themselves. The first few times I heard that somebody pooped themselves, I was stunned, but honestly, it’s just annoying at this point.
Anyways, we had an incident in the middle of a busy Saturday during the summer, our second most hectic time of year. An elderly gentleman had a bad accident at the first of four registers (it’s a smaller store), so obviously, we directed customers to the already backed up three remaining registers. While I was standing towards the front of the register aisle telling people that this register was closed, a customer stalked me up, clearly upset already.
‘Do you work here?’ he asked, leaning in so that he was about six inches away from my nose.
‘Yes sir, I do. Is there anything I can help you with today?’
‘Yeah. That Miracle-Gro over there is priced at $6.99 when it should only be $3.99.’
‘I’m sorry sir, that ad ended two weeks ago. It’s not on sale anymore.’
‘No no no. The Miracle-Gro.’
He started accentuating his words as if describing something to somebody in a foreign country. ‘Meeeer-acle Growwww. You put it on plants. You know, to make them grow? It’s a fertilizer. I was just in here yesterday and it was 3.99. It should be 3.99!’
Now please note, I was at this miserable place six, sometimes seven days a week, with a minimum of 55 hours. There’s no way I’d forget a sale from yesterday and I certainly wouldn’t forget this guy.
‘I’m sorry sir, that Miracle-Gro there is $6.99. It’s not on sale and hasn’t been for a while now.’
He rolled his eyes and huffed. ‘Get me your manager.’
At this point, I had to restrain from rolling my eyes. ‘Sir, I am the manager. The item isn’t on sale.’
He then burst out, ‘This is completely RIDICULOUS. YOU’RE THE MANAGER? THAT’S JUST GREAT. NO WONDER THIS PLACE STINKS, A TOTAL IDIOT IS IN CHARGE OF ALL THESE OTHER IDIOTS. I’M NEVER COMING BACK TO THIS PATHETIC JOKE EVER AGAIN.’
For a moment, I stared wide-eyed at what an incredible monster this guy was. The stock boy cleaning up stopped what he was doing and stared, and a few other customers in the other lines look over at the commotion. This guy stormed toward the exit and shoved past my stock boy. I tried to stop him, shouting ‘Sir!’ but he ignored me.
At that moment, Divine Justice shined down upon our mortal souls. Time itself seemed to slow, and then stopped, as this guy stepped once in a pile of poop, and then seemed to slow almost to a halt as the other foot slid forward, and then stopped completely as he slid and landed on his butt in a mound of rancid, orange diarrhea.
For a moment, the world seemed to have broken. Nobody said a word. All the customers stared in awe at the sight before them. I was silent and motionless, as was my stock boy. This guy was sitting stupefied in the mound of poop. Jesus Christ himself stopped and gazed upon the awesome might of such righteous karma.
Finally, this guy stumbled to his feet and furiously looked around at the 70 or so people staring and him, anticipation pounding in everybody’s hearts as we waited for a statement. He turned on his heel and stormed out, swearing and fuming all the way. We then glanced around at each other and erupted into chatter and laughter. My stock boy turned to me wearing the biggest smile somebody who was cleaning poop could possibly smile.
‘That was awesome!’ he hooted. And I must agree with him, for no truer words have ever been spoken.”
“Wanda”
“We had this lady come in the store the other day, who we’ll call, ‘Wanda.’ Now, we do buy phones and other small electronics, but ONLY if we’re going to be able to sell them. We aren’t going to buy your terrible iPhone 4, and we sure as hell aren’t giving you 600 bucks no matter how new your device is.
Wanda called first, asking for quotes on three phones and a laptop. Two of the phones were older and kind of terrible after a quick Google search. The laptop was an old Compaq, which should tell you why I refused it.
Wanda came into the store an hour later. Apparently, our other location in the next town had quoted her 50 bucks for all three phones and 150 for the laptop. I knew this was bs because the managers in that store were competent.
Me: ‘I can give you $30 for your personal phone since it’s nicer, but I can’t take the other two phones or the old Compaq.’
They were in terrible condition.
Wanda: ‘I can’t believe you can’t give me more money?! Your store has to take these items!’
Guys, it was 80 degrees in that store. Our AC had broken and we were hot, sweaty, and not in the mood for Wanda. She wouldn’t stop yelling at us. I ended up giving her $50 for the one phone.
Seemingly satisfied, she left, saying she’d be going to the other store to sell her other two phones and the laptop.
About thirty minutes later, she was back AGAIN, and this time hocking a sob story to my coworker (he dealt with her the second time because I was close to beating her with the laptop) about needing money for her sick daughter. She yelled at him too, until he finally bought the laptop for ten bucks. Then, FINALLY, she was gone.
Long story short, we checked the phone and laptop for resale quality. We found a text on the phone that said, ‘Give me back my laptop and all the things you stole from me, or Town Police will be called.’
We also looked up her name and found that she’d been wanted for theft back in 2010 in our district.
Not only were the cops called, but we also contacted of the owner of the stolen items and gave back his laptop. Now this woman has an arrest warrant once more – all thanks to two grouchy, hot twenty-somethings who paid her $60 to get out and never come back.”
Target Karen
“I used to work at Target. We were always told if a parent has their kid STANDING in the cart, we should ask the parent to have their kid sit down. Most of the time, the parents were fine with it. This one lady was not having it.
She was outside, and just put her kid in the cart. At the entrance, the ground had shifted a bit and there was a small lip to get into the store, and of course, the kid was standing at the very front of the cart. I politely warned the customer of the lip and the kid should sit down because there was a very high chance he would fall out.
She told me, ‘Get lost! You can give me advice about my kid when you become a parent yourself!’ while pointing her finger at me.
Alright, whatever. We couldn’t do anything after that.
When she walked towards the door, the kid was still standing and hit the lip. The kid flipped out of the cart and bashed his face on the floor. If anyone knows about the ‘carpeting’ in the entrance vestibules, it’s basically like having a piece of paper draped over a slab of concrete. There’s no padding whatsoever. This kid had a GIANT lump on his forehead and must have hit his nose too since he was bleeding everywhere. I told my managers, and the lady got the help she needed for her kid, but she was still being extremely rude. Told you so.”
Maybe Next Time He Won’t Get Wasted At An Airport
“I work at a shop in the airport, so maybe seven out of ten of my customers are already pretty rude, and nine out of ten times people will buy the wrong charger for their phone. One day, a guy came into my store obviously very wasted and asked me for a charger.
I asked him, ‘For an iPhone or Android?’
He said, ‘Android.’
So I showed him my cheapest charger, which was $32 after tax. He then started screaming at me, yelling at me for stealing people’s money, calling me so many unmentionable expletives.
He wanted it anyways, so I asked him one more time, ‘Are you sure this is the right charger for your phone?’ Because we don’t do returns on opened electronics.
He said something along the lines of, ‘I’m not totally stupid!’ and walked out.
Maybe like half an hour later, he was even more wasted, and he came in screaming how I sold him the wrong charger because he had an iPhone. If he was polite or even apologetic, I would have called my supervisor to do the return, even though we weren’t allowed to.
Well anyways, I told him, ‘I can’t return it and my supervisor is on lunch.’
He became irate and was screaming more expletives at me before he stormed away. So my day was over maybe an hour later, and as I was heading out I saw him screaming at the customer service agent because he missed his plane. Apparently, he was at the bar and didn’t hear them calling him over the PA. The agent was not taking any of his nonsense, and he had the police called and they took him out.
So not only did he not catch his flight, he won’t get a refund because it was his own fault he missed it. He also most likely got put in a holding cell for being publicly wasted. Justice has never been sweeter.”
Employee’s Mistake, But Did The Customer Take It Too Far?
“This was actually partially my fault, but the ridiculous reaction made me lose all sympathy. I was an assistant manager at a paint store, a ‘mid-size regional company,’ not a big national/international company, so we didn’t always have the best supplies or equipment. Sometimes we would run out of printed labels for the paint cans, and not be able to order more, so we would use sharpies to write the color numbers on the can.
Anyways, it was a Saturday, we were closing early to do inventory, and I was younger so not surprisingly I was pretty hung over. An elderly gentleman (60-70 years old) came in with a paint can with a color number written on it in sharpie. He wanted another gallon, so I said OK. But when I went to make it, the last number was smudged so we took a guess.
After I made the gallon and showed him the color, he said great, paid, and left. Seemed good to me, I was hungover and didn’t care too much. Hours later when we were closed, the whole staff was counting for inventory. This same elderly gentleman peeled into the parking lot in his pick up truck and started pounding on the door.
He could obviously see people were there so my boss went to the door to see what was wrong. The ‘gentleman was throwing a temper tantrum that the color was wrong. My boss let him in to replace the gallon of paint to just resolve the situation. No problem, seems like a reasonable solution. My boss told him we had to guess the number and we were wrong, so we would just replace it with one number back.
He calmed down for like 30 seconds until he saw me. He ran up to me and started screaming in my face about what a jerk I was, how I was trying to rip him off, etc. A sixty-plus-year-old man throwing a temper tantrum like a child. One of the other employees backed him off while I was like WTH?
My boss gave him the gallon and told him to chill out, and just leave. The guy cussed him out too, before storming out.
He then took the gallon, threw it in the back of his pickup, slammed the tailgate, and got in his truck. He squealed the tires like a douche as he backed out and sped away. However, slamming the tailgate didn’t close it at all, as not only did he have the mental maturity of a 5-year-old, he apparently only had the strength of one too. So as he peeled out and drove away, out the back of the pickup truck went the gallon of paint. It made a small mess, but we didn’t see him back.”
Device Protection
“I used to work in a retail phone store. After every smartphone that we sold, we had to offer the device protection that covered physical damage. One customer in particular was rude during the entire transaction, sighing and snapping at me every time I asked him a question or needed something from him.
When I got around to asking him about the protection, he looked up at me and nearly shouted, ‘I’ve about had it with all your questions! No I don’t want the stupid protection! Do I look like the type of idiot that would throw my phone around?!? What on earth is wrong with you people?!’
Me: ‘I understand sir, however, if you don’t take the protection, I would at least recommend picking up a case to make sure-‘
Customer: ‘Are you deaf?! I said I’m not an idiot! I am careful and take care of my stuff! No more stupid questions!’
Eager to just get him out and be done with him, I finished the transaction and sent him on his way. He was not even five steps out of the door when I heard the sound of a brand-new iPhone smacking face down onto the concrete walkway. I looked up just in time to watch him slowly pick it up and turn bright red with what I can only assume to be a combination of embarrassment and frustration.
Needless to say, my coworkers and the other customers waiting in line laughed about that for quite some time.”