Former Employees Admit What They Did To Customers To Get Themselves Fired

If you've ever worked retail, you understand the nearly countless ways in which the idea that "the customer is always right" just doesn't work. Sure, as a concept the customer demand dictates what an establishment carries and some of it's policies... but that's not what we mean. As individuals, customers can be, and often are very, very wrong. Almost all retail workers have had that moment where they wanted to speak their mind, but they knew it could mean losing their job. For a glorious few, they did it anyway. One reddit user asked:

People who lost their jobs by going off on a customer, what is your story?

We gathered up our favorites that made us laugh, cry, cringe, and applaud. We didn't have the courage to go off on Chronic-Expired-Coupon-Lady when we worked at Ross that one Christmas, but we can live vicariously through these verbal victories.

Three Halves

I used to work at pizza place in a small town when I was a teenager. One night I took a phone order from some idiot woman. It went like this:

Me: Thank you for calling "pizza place", may I take your order?

Customer: Yes, I'd like a large pizza. Half pepperoni, half sausage, and half black olives.

Me: Ok, did you want the toppings combined or separated?

Customer: No, I want half pepperoni, half sausage, and half black olives.

Me: _Ok so you want 1/3 pepperoni, 1/3 sausage, and 1/3 black olives?_

Customer: No! I want HALF PEPPERONI, HALF SAUSAGE, and HALF BLACK OLIVES!

Me: _I understand the toppings that you want, but I'm not understanding how you want us to put the toppings on your pizza. Do you want them separated by thirds? Combined together? Or do you mean put half the amount that we usually put on?_

Customer: What's so hard to understand?! I WANT...HALF...PEPPERONI...HALF...SAUSAGE...AND HALF...BLACK OLIVES!!!!!

Me: Lady, there's only 2 halves to a pizza!

Customer: I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER!!!

I got fired on the spot. It was easier for the manager to just hire another person than it was to lose a customer in a small town.

Oh, and the lady wanted the toppings divided into thirds. She told the manager the same thing and he just went with her math. She also got it for free.

Playing Mind Games

Worked at Gamestop. Some guy came in and had over 100 used games to trade, all with games and cases mismatched. It took about 45 minutes to process his ticket. When I told him the total, it was low - because Gamestop, and also they were all old, scratched games. This man then proceeded to try negotiate with me to which I kept telling him I can't change the price which only made him angrier and louder. Eventually he yelled:

"Listen, I need at least $300 for all of this shit and you're going to give it to me!"

First of all, I don't even have the ability to change the price, at all. Second of all, my coworker proceeded to put all of his games in a bag, walk outside and tossed them into the parking lot.

Store manager came out of the back room and fired my coworker dead on the spot. The guy stormed out, and the second he left my manager said:

"Jesus what was his f*cking problem? Alright, get back to work."

My coworker didn't get fired; it was just theatrics. I felt like an idiot for just standing there, but it was taking everything I had to not hop the counter and hit the guy.

Thrift Shop

A woman came into a charity/thrift shop and complained about every single item loudly to the other customers. She would say things along the lines of:

"This is all sh*t. Who pays for this?"

Like we're some boutique with clothes from the back of a van.

She clearly didn't understand how rarely new clothes with tags are donated. Then she got in my face about it. I was so angry with her for chasing away the other customers that I lost my cool. There was nobody left in the store except her. She'd annoyed them into leaving.

I told her to get out and I 'didn't give a sh*t' about the clothes or her opinions. She screams her way out of the shop broadcasting it to everyone on the street.

She came back once the manager was off their break and complained about me. I lost my job. I can't blame them, I'd have done the same.

Buffalo Wild Walkout

Working at Buffalo Wild Wings, keep in mind New Year's Eve one of busiest nights of the year. Opening employees have be in by 8 AM to prep food and get the store ready. When they showed up, no manager is there to open the store. The two employees involved had walked to work and stood outside in cold for almost two hours when another shows up with a phone to call the general manager and ask what's going on.

Turns out the opening shift manager forgot they were suppose to open. So the General Manager shows up on her day off to let employees in. She stays until the scheduled manager shows up. Now, keep in mind everyone is nearly two hours behind on their opening duties. Mrs Late Manager shows up does nothing; she sits down to do her make-up! She then asked my friend to do her opening duties while she fixes herself up. He declined because he had his own work to do, and hey you know shouldn't been late and now your here do your own work.

About twenty minutes later after doing her makeup she then said she needs to fix her hair and again asks my friend to do her work at this point after standing in the cold for nearly two hours and rushing to get 3 hours or work into 1 hour because of her tardiness he snaps back:

"Why don't you do it yourself?"

She replies "Well do you just want to go home?"

He says "F*CK YES" and walks out.

General manager texted a bit later asking what happened and he said "She told me to go home so I did and I wont be back."

High Fives On The Way Out.

Had a customer that, for at least a year, came into our store and was a master tactician in getting free goods by making up complaints against our staff. He would do all sorts of maneuvers like wanting products he knew we didn't carry, to making up complaints about our staff, to even complaining that he had been charged incorrectly.

If this guy was in the store, good luck if you were another customer. He would suck up all the oxygen in the place and demand service from multiple people at the same time. He got reduced prices and free merchandise and tons of coupons for his efforts.

My boss would never challenge this guy or protect his own staff from being exposed to losing their job to a customer who would happily see a member of our crew fired so he could get $5 off his next purchase. My boss wasn't entirely at fault since this was a giant corporation and he was merely towing the fabled "the customer is ALWAYS right" mantra.

I was already planning on leaving for a better opportunity and was going to give notice of resignation one week when this customer started giving me an incredibly difficult time about an issue I had nothing to do with and couldn't help him with. It was extremely busy and he was holding everyone up with his bullshit.

I made a quick value judgment, realized I was already out the door and the only thing I was still there to do was to honor my appropriate resignation notice. I had no designs of ever working for this horrible company or any company like it ever again. I found myself in a unique situation and wasn't going to let the opportunity pass. This guy had made life difficult for all of us for a long time.

Payback time.

I cut this guy off mid-sentence and just went off on him in front of a number of customers and part of our staff. I told him he was nothing more than a cheapskate grifter and told him I would no longer recognize him as a living, breathing, member of our species.

Then I told him to go f*ck himself. The look on his face was so goddamned beautiful. The entire store fell into silence and I just stared him down. He asked to speak to my manager and I doubled down by talking over his head, inviting the customer behind him to elbow up to the counter. I apologized to the new customer about the bad behavior of the guy who, at this point, had steam coming out of his ears.

Eventually when he realized he was getting nowhere waiting on me, he stormed off to find a manager. I finished my shift. I came back in the following day, was intercepted by a corporate manager I had rarely seen, taken upstairs and was getting lectured. I interrupted the scolding, revealed my intentions to leave this place, and quit right there.

I got a lot of high fives from the other members of the staff on my way out the door.

"Well Within Your Right" - Still Fired

I cleaned cars for a rental car company. One day, a customer comes in, already in a very bad mood. He saw me standing at the counter, and apparently this offended him to the point that he began to yell at me.

Long story short, I yelled back at him. Nothing came of it for over two months, until I was fired without warning.

The district manager who fired me said that even though everyone in the company who reviewed all the evidence pertaining to the incident had decided I was well within my rights as an employee to yell at the dude, they had to fire me because he was some big shot at a company that had a very lucrative contract with my employer. He had threatened to drop the contract unless they fired me.

Gambling Your Job

I worked in the rewards call center for a casino in my youth. People would call in an book rooms or show tickets with their reward points. Naturally, everyone calling for a free room wants it on a weekend or major holiday - and that just wasn't available.

A lady called to get a free night in the top end suite on Valentine's Day with two days notice. She lost her shit when I told her no. She kept saying she spends so much money and we don't even care enough to reward her loyalty; she even attacked me personally. I just couldn't do it anymore. I calmly explained to her that:

"I see you spend about $20 an hour in the casino, yeah we really don't care about you. You could never come back here again and literally no one would notice. You need to start betting more than your entire family will ever be worth before we actually start caring if you come back or not."

I obliged her request to speak with my supervisor and started packing my things.

3 Strikes Policy

Working at Burger King many years ago. I was working the drive-thru register, which was close enough to the front registers that I could hear conversations. One of my co-workers was taking an order from a lady who kept asking how much her total was, and then cancelling food on it and changing her mind. I guess she was trying to keep under a certain dollar amount?

Well, at the Burger King I worked at, any cancelled food on an order needed a manager's password. So the manager had come by 3 or 4 times at that point. This was during dinnertime, mind you, so there was a line of customers out the door waiting to order.

Finally, my co-worker pulled out a pad of paper and a calculator. He started writing this woman's order down and totaling it out by hand. The woman asked him why he was doing that, and he told her "When you make up your mind about what you want, then I'll put it in the register."

This pissed off the lady, so she grabbed the notebook and tried to hit my co-worker with it. He snatched it back from her and told her "Get the f* out." My manager was only going to write him up for it (since the manager agreed that the lady absolutely deserved it) but my manager had to follow company policy and he already had two write-ups on file, so she had to fire him.

Fired For Refusing To Kill?

Lost my position at a vet clinic.

Story goes like this: woman brought in her 5 year old dog that had diarrhea for the past week and had not been treated for it. She was tired of the dog messing in the house. So instead of having the dog treated for the condition, she decided she would rather just have the dog put down. She would rather see it die than to have a vet treat a simple case of the runs. I proceeded to call her a heartless b*tch while explaining to her the responsibilities that are involved when you decide you want to have a pet.

I was fired... I never looked back

Still Wrong

I was working chat tech support for a web host. Customer chatted in complaining of slowness claiming our servers were having issues. I do all the standard steps and we determine that his ISP is having issues. He doesn't believe me and becomes obstinate. So I end the chat by saying:

_"You're wrong!" _

About 10 minutes later I get a new chat. I see the account name and the question. It was the same guy with the same question. Without letting him say anything I write:

_"You're still wrong." _

and close the chat.

Roll On

I was blacklisted from sonic drive in for standing up for myself.

The store in Oak Hill was shut down and everyone fired because the manager was busted selling pot out of the trunk of his car. I was one of the "dream team" of hand picked sonic employees selected from around the city to bring the store back up to speed.

Our new manager had the initials "JT" and he was very proud of the fact that he comes from 5-star fine dining restaurant manager, and this was his first fast food experience. He was strict and that is ok, we were expected to be perfect. But he had a temper. One day he comes in squealing his tires and as soon as he hits the front door, he's screaming and cussing. I'm trying to take orders while releasing the talk button as he''s cussing employees, like reverse censoring. When I finish taking the order and turn around to see what is the issue, I notice the other car hop run to the back crying. He turns to me and says:

"And YOU, you little s*"

... so this guy is 5'-4" and I'm 6' and in roller skates... I rollover to him and stop a bare inch away and in a strong, clear voice I say:

_"Excuse me, SIR! I am a human being and when you speak to me it will be with decency and respect, do you understand?!" _

To which he replied:

_"Give me your apron" _

So I walk out and go directly to home office and talk to one of the executives, son of the owner, and relate how I love my job, I had worked for 9 different Sonics, won multiple awards, over the last decade and had been invited to VIP movie premiers, and was featured in the news with his father - the owner. I tell them I can no longer work with "JT" for creating a hostile work environment and asked to be reassigned back to MY store where I had been working. I was told he would call.

So he called. Turns out, JT had sold his restaurant as part of a messy divorce and invested several million dollars into the Austin Sonics Association of Franchise Owners, becoming full partner and part owner of almost every Sonic in the city. And he had me black listed.

I can no longer work for Sonic. I tried again to get a job several years later, but I was told they couldn't hire me still.

"You F*cked With The Wrong Clown!"

My first job was when I was 12 for a flower shop in town. They used to hire a kid to wear a clown costume and wear a sign that said "Roses 9.99/dozen."

All the job entailed was walking back and forth along a 20 foot strip of the sidewalk and wave at cars. Paid 30 bucks per 2 hour shift with cash at the end of every shift. It was awesome. Didn't work too hard and was allowed to listen to my music while I worked. Some people were really nice and occasionally would stop and ask if they could buy me a soda or something from the convenience store beside the flower shop because it was so hot. Other people were pricks who threw things at me from their car.

Anyway, one normal Saturday morning about 15 minutes before my shift was over, my dad pulls in to the parking lot to wait for me to finish up. A couple minutes later, some kid about my own age, maybe a little older, walking down the sidewalk spits in my face as he's walking past. That pissed me off to no degree. Like throw sh*t at me, whatever, but spitting in my face was fucking gross and I had enough.

*This clown snapped. *

I ripped off my sandwich board and kick the guys legs out from under him. Jump in to my best MMA mount and start raining fists and elbows as if I'm going for the clown college bantamweight championship. He's yelling and bleeding and I just keep hammering in to him and screaming that he f*cked with the wrong clown! My dad runs up and pulls me off of him and carries me in to the flower shop.

I was promptly fired. My dad took me for ice cream because he said nobody deserves to be treated like that, I did what he would have done and it was the funniest thing he's ever seen.

Busting More Than Blocks

I was working at Blockbuster while 17 and in high school. A middle aged guy came in and instead of using the drop slot to return his movie he casually tossed it across the counter and it hit a register hard enough to pop the case open. The people working the registers, myself included, kept an eye on him because our store was a hot spot for kids to come in without adult supervision to mess things up.

He chose a few movies, and walked up to the front of my line and waited for me to help him. I got his information up on screen and let him know we couldn't rent the movies he wanted unless he paid his late fee of $6. He flew off the handle, reached over the counter and grabbed my shirt threatening to have me fired. I punched him in the face trying to protect myself and chased him out into the parking lot.

When I came back in my manager took me into the back room, let me clean myself up and told me they had a zero tolerance policy for altercations in the store and fired me. On my way out there were customers that actually shook my hand and told me they would've done the same thing. That job was s* anyways so I was glad to be gone from there.

Got Hit By A Car, Still Got Fired

Many a year ago I worked at a home improvement store called Menard's. I was a cart pusher, which was nice as I was outside all the time. Anyway we gather about 25-30 shopping carts together and push them up to the entrance where they are stored inside. Now to get them there we do have to cross the main drive of the parking lot in front of the store. We always stop and let customers drive by.

So as I push the carts up I stop because I see a guy in an pretty nice SUV. He is actually stopped in front of the entrance maybe he dropped someone off I do not know. So I'm waiting to see if he drives off and he then looks at me and waves me across, looks like he wanted to finish a call he had gotten or something. So I wave back and start pushing the carts across. I am on the other side when some clips me across the shoulder blades and it stung somewhat and pushed me forward.

And at the same time I heard glass shatter, I turn around and the guy in the SUV clipped me with his side view mirror. It had swung closed and shattered the window in the door, and I'm just standing there wide eyed. 2 seconds later the guy gets out of his car swearing up a storm at me and how I'm a low life piece of s* and how I'm going to pay for a new window and that I'm not going to get anywhere in life because I broke his window.

Now I'm the type of person that if I was the reason I'll take the blame and fix the problem. But this guy hit me, I blew up on him for about 5 minutes before a manager finally had the guts to come over and pull me away. I didn't have to pay for a new window as it was on video, but I lost my job because we are not suppose to yell and cuss at the customer.

A Cutting Exchange

I used to cut hair. I was cutting a lady's hair when the child of lady waiting started running around the shop. I told the child several times to go sit with her mother and asked her mother to please keep her child seated next to her. Well, in the middle of cutting around my client's ear, the child ran into my work area, ran into me and almost caused me to cut my client. I looked at the child and firmly said "you need to go sit down with your mother now." Well her mom didn't like that and came running back to me and yelled:

"Don't tell my child what to do, I'm her parent."

I responded with:

"Then act like it."

She glared at me, grabbed her child and stormed out. Everyone in the shop was relieved the child had left. A few days later the owner came and tried to fire me for it, but luckily there were enough other stylists and clients that came to my defense about the danger of the situation and I only got a write up.

"I Miss Working There."

I worked at a furniture store as a sales associate. One day a husband and wife come in wanting to furnish their sons apartment that's going to college. They find all of the furniture pieces they want and I go to check stock on multiple items. Everything is in except the table top on the dining room set they wanted. I go back and tell the couple.

The husband throws an absolute hissy fit saying that he can't believe that we don't keep our products stocked (keep in mind that we are a huge furniture store). I calmly explain to him that we can't possibly keep all of our product in stock at all times and since the dining room table he wanted was a very popular set, it tended to go out of stock rather quickly. So, we would have to wait for that vendor to send us the table top which was about two weeks. I even tried to show them another table top that was in stock that was very similar to the one they picked out and he would not have it.

He started telling me that I was incompetent and how dare I insult him. He starts increasing his volume and now he is full out screaming at me about 10 inches away from my face. My manager walks from around the corner and looks at me questioningly (like the "do you got this?" face) I nodded at him that I had it, but he continued to stand within earshot. I then looked back to the customer and said in a nonchalant tone:

"I'm not going to help you, in fact no one here is going to help you. Now please get out of my store."

The customer looks at me bewildered and in full rage and demands to speak with my manager. Since my manager is standing right around the corner- he had heard everything. He goes over to the customer and says, "Well, you heard the lady." and asked the customer to leave.

I miss working there.

The People's Car

Back around 1969, I saw a service advisor at a VW dealership get fired for telling an irate customer "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have bought a Volkswagen."

The Smartest Place On Earth

Disneyland. I worked in the ticket booths. If you're an annual pass holder, and you're on the monthly contract, Disney takes automatic payments from your credit card. If your card expires or otherwise has to be changed, and you don't call to put a new card on file, the auto-payments stop and your pass freezes. No big deal; Disney doesn't hit you with fees or penalties. You simply call or come to the booth, and we handle it right then and there -- zippety-doo-dah, and in you go.

One day, I get a middle-aged couple whose passes froze. The man was upset, and ready to talk about it. A common question from guests is "Don't you send out late notices?" No, Disney doesn't because they're not practical - and again, there are no penalties anyway. Just come see us and we'll straighten you out. The man says to me in a disgusted tone, "You don't send notices when a pass freezes? How does that work?"

I said, "Well, you receive your credit card statement, you see that a recurring charge is not present on it, and you can expect the service related to the recurring charge to be interrupted, and that it must be related to your card having been replaced recently."

The wife smiled, the man's face reddened, and he leaned in and barked, _"Get your supervisor. I want to talk to somebody smart."

_To my shame, I said, _"Of course. Would you like someone smart enough to stay aware of their credit card use, or merely smart enough to read contracts they sign?"_

My booth lead happened to come over as soon as she heard "supervisor," so she was standing behind me when I said the emotional thing. It isn't how I wanted to go out (I was five days away from leaving for a new job), but I looked at it as a vicariously cathartic mic drop goodbye to my fellow cast members.

For them, it was a thrill.

H/T: Reddit