People That Work In Other Peoples' Homes Reveal The Worst Stuff They've Ever Seen
People That Work In Other Peoples' Homes Reveal The Worst Stuff They've Ever Seen
[rebelmouse-image 18351355 is_animated_gif=It's a rough business, going into other people's houses. Even if it is well-kept, it still might be very different than what you're used to. And if it isn't well kept... nothing can prepare you for the things you will be about to see.
Redditor SilverParty, perhaps a little too curious for her own good, asked:
People who have jobs where you go inside homes, what's the worst thing you've seen?
Here were some of the mortifying answers.
NOPE
[rebelmouse-image 18345950 is_animated_gif=Heating company person here. We went into a home to install a new furnace, but turns out he needed a new heat run put into the bathroom upstairs. I should also mention that the dude has been without running water, electric and gas for about 2 years. Guess what we found piled up all over the bathroom floor? I honestly don't know how he was living there, but we called some people to get him the help he needed.
(It was poop.)
Beyond Words
[rebelmouse-image 18351356 is_animated_gif=Used to clean up apartments after people had moved out / been evicted.
One apartment was Section 8 and the tennant who was receiving the Section 8 got cut off because she broke a bunch of the Section 8 rules. Aparently the last 6 months of her living there she had actually moved out and turned off services, but still let her kids live there (late teens to early 20's I think).
So the kids who lived there trashed the place, when I got there the floor was covered by 2 feet of trash / clothes / broken furniture. Food had been left to rot all over, and the place was filled with bugs and fleas and it smelled like a garbage dump.
The worst though was the bathroom. The water hadn't been on in a good long while, but they kept sh-tting in the toilet until it filled up. Then, when that had gotten full they sh-t into the bathtub and into 5 gallon buckets that they had left around the house.
All in all it was about 200 pounds of human sh-t in the tub. I had to bag it up in 1 pound bags, bag that bag, and then put no more than 5 bags in a sealable pail and take it to a special waste treatment site.
Second to that was the 5+ bedroom party house that a bunch of professional snow boarders had lived in for a year or two. They got evicted for not paying rent, or something like that, and they had thrashed the place before they left. The worst thing in that place was that there was a gap, maybe 3/4 of an inch, between a bathroom vanity and a piece of glass for the shower enclosure. Someone, or maybe all of them, decided that they were going to store their used condoms there, at least a 100 were stuck in there. It was gross, moldy, and eventually we had to rip out the vanity because that was the only way to ensure that it was clean.
The Cat
[rebelmouse-image 18351358 is_animated_gif=Ex removals guy. I started moving a fridge to find a rotted piece of fish in a pool of cat piss at the back. I didn't like it.
Wading Through A Window
[rebelmouse-image 18351359 is_animated_gif=I did remodels for a while. The worst one was a legitimate hoarder. That house was disgusting. She had to clear a path for us to get to the bathroom with our tools so we could work. Lots of cats too. The house smelled very strongly of cat piss. I'll never forget when I went to the back looking for the water hose. There was a pool filled with disgusting algae covered water and a dead cat floating in it. I was very happy when that job was over. At least her bathroom looked great.
Ammonia Pneumonia
[rebelmouse-image 18351360 is_animated_gif=I used to clean carpets. We went to a double-wide trailer once that had about 20 cats inside, plus 3 dogs. I didn't see a single litterbox, and by the time we were done, the slate-gray carpet was almost white again. The ammonia smell inside about made me puke, but the old couple that lived there acted like nothing was wrong...
Leopard Print Mystery
[rebelmouse-image 18351361 is_animated_gif=I used to work for a carpet cleaning company. Ive had some interesting stories but this one always takes the cake. We had this program where we hired special needs people part time. So we hire this new guy, bob. Bobs a rather large fella, not the fastest thinker but real nice to work with. Bob and I showed up to clean a couple rooms in this couples mansion. It was immaculate, two gay men in their 40s. Nevermind the paintings of half naked dudes all over the walls. So part of our job is to move furniture to clean under them. I had bob help move the bed, and this giant two foot leopard print veiny adult toy rolls out like a dead possum. Bob stares. No words spoken... I clean around it, kick it under the bed and move it back.
Bob and I finish the job and get in the van to leave. Bob turns to me and says, ' where did they get that leopards thing, and what are they gonna do with it?'
I still cannot tell this story without laughing.
The Carpet
[rebelmouse-image 18348506 is_animated_gif=I used to clean carpets for a living and we were sent to a section 8 home that had recently had the electricity shut off. We went in to survey the situation and, after locating a flashlight, realized the six-foot high mound in the living room was all dirty diapers.
We did not clean that carpet.
A Bed Situation
[rebelmouse-image 18351362 is_animated_gif=This one is bad, not so much for its gross factor but rather the circumstances. I used to work in pest control in a major city and this included so low-income rentals. I was inspecting for bed bugs when sure enough, I found them in one of the units.
Being that this was a number of years ago, it was and probably still is standard practice to toss out the mattress entirely. Have you ever tried to tell someone who probably has no disposable income that they need to throw out their mattress and buy a new one?
That pretty much killed my day...
Doggone It
[rebelmouse-image 18351363 is_animated_gif=I walked into a house where a family had two dogs that they'd trained to use those pee pads. But instead of throwing them out they just laid a new one on top.
The strench was bad, but the ammonia smell actually burned my nose. How people can go nose blind to that I'll never understand.
Had a hoarder once in a giant multi-million dollar home. I worked my way through a path to get upstairs and saw that the only accessible area was the master bed. And even then only a 2ft wide path. Down the hall I could just make out 6 bedrooms and probably a bathroom but crap was stacked up nearly to the ceiling making it completely inaccessable. The woman that owned the home said she hadn't been down to the end of the hall since the early 90s.
I've seen lots of hoarders. It usually catches me off guard because it can be any house or apartment. They can look completely normal from outside.
Unlivable
[rebelmouse-image 18351365 is_animated_gif=When I was in the Air Force I had to pull some first sergeant duty while the actual first sergeant was on leave. First sergeant was responsible for the morale and well being of the troops in the unit. We responded directly to the commander with any issues. We got a call to report to a troop's house in base housing. When we got there, CPS was outside and the cops were inside. When I got inside it was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen. Dog sh-t everywhere. On the floors, on the beds, counters. Piles of dirty clothes in the bedrooms. Dirty dishes piled up high. The troop was deployed to the Middle East, it was just his wife and kids in the house. The wife truly didn't understand what was wrong and why her kids were being taken away. Her husband got recalled from deployment to deal with it. I don't know what the final resolution was since the actual first sergeant came back and took over the case. I was happy to hand it over.
Defaulting
[rebelmouse-image 18348619 is_animated_gif=I work in the restoration business, deal with insurance companies claims for water, fire, mold etc.. I had just started my job a month before I was sent to the worst house I've ever been in. There was a house that the bank took from someone because they defaulted on the mortgage. I was sent in to clean the house out, she was a hoarder. She had no running water and had not once taken her garbage bins to the curb. Not even kidding, they were the cleanest things on her property, two garbage bins that were spotless, not a spec of dirt inside them. The house however had 18" of garbage covering the WHOLE floor of the house. Pringle cans everywhere full of sh-t. A pile of used pads beside her bed, as high as my waist and about 4' in diameter. Tea bags piled from the top of the counter, to the bottom of the upper cabinets. A pile of used toilet paper taking up every bit of her bathtub and about 4 feet higher then the top of the tub. There was a spot under all of the garbage that she was burnt clothes and a big burn mark into her hardwood floor. Mouse sh-t everywhere and dead mice. It was also the middle of the summer when I had to go in, was about 25 - 30 degrees Celsius out over the 4 days I was there. We filled 2 MASSIVE dumpsters up with garbage. That was easily the worst 4 days of my life.
Paranoid Delivery
[rebelmouse-image 18351366 is_animated_gif=I deliver food for my restaurant and one time I pulled up to the gate of this house. The resident told me to just come inside and deliver the food since she was wheel chair bound. Ok, cool. I get to the door and I discover a biometric finger print scanner that unlocks the door, along with a camera. I press the doorbell and the resident opens the door. I take the food to her in her living room and as I look around this lady has an electronic code lock installed on her fridge, pantry, and the backdoor to go outside is card-accessed only. The garage door is quadruple bolt locked and the windows have window-sized garage doors on the inside. I hurried the f-ck up outta there and told my manager to never put me on delivery runs again.
It's Been One Week Since You Looked At Me
[rebelmouse-image 18351367 is_animated_gif=Not a job, but I moved out of my apartment and told the girl living there that I'd be back the next weekend to clean MY room and the common areas (living room & kitchen & bathroom) She was notoriously dirty and I wanted to make sure that I received my deposit back. I took the items that I paid for (she was incapable of shopping for items). I took the remaining toilet paper, leaving the partial roll, my shower curtain, my pans & plates & dishes, my food and the rest of my stuff.
I came back a week later to find
Rice covering the floor
She didn't have pots or pans, and instead of buying one, she attempted to cook using one of her plates. (By the evidence of the half melted plate on the stove with congealing food in it...why the stupid girl didn't use the microwave...) She had also melted a kettle to the back burner...I had to buy 2 replacement burners for the stove.
She stopped using the toilet when she ran out of toilet paper, left it unflushed and started using the bathtub. Bits and pieces still clinging to the back of it where the shower head wouldn't reach.
Plates stuck to the floor under the couch.
Snotty tissues covering her bed, so she was sleeping in her snot tissues. (She had flunked out of the graphic design program and took it rather hard)
Food IN the bed (crackers, pancakes, syrup were just some of the recognizable foods).
Food EVERYWHERE actually.
I found that she had been stashing her empty slim fast cans in her dresser.
There were just so many things to clean...it was gross.
Moldy Brains
[rebelmouse-image 18351368 is_animated_gif=I used to work for a company that did fire, water, and mold clean ups. We got called to a mold clean up due to water damage, and these people were hoarders. Useless sh-t stacked to the ceiling. All of it had to get tossed due to being in contact with a really toxic form of mold. So once we reach the basement and we're tossing sh-t, we find TWO cat carcasses. The whole basement smelled terrible. We knew something was up, but we couldn't really put our finger on it until we found the decayed cats. The owners just shrugged it off. Disgusting people.
Phallic Consequences
[rebelmouse-image 18345360 is_animated_gif=Friend is a realtor with a bunch of crazy stories. She said she had a client wanting to sell his house. No problem. My friend sends a coworker out to take pictures of the place. When the coworker shows up she says that it might be hard to use the pictures because the house was damn near covered in phalluses It was like a d-ck museum.
The Worst Way To Die
[rebelmouse-image 18351369 is_animated_gif=Not a current job that I hold, but I used to be a Funeral Director and I had to go into someone's home who died and the police had to kick the door in and call us out.
It was the worst thing I have ever seen, she had rubbish everywhere and looked like she never chucked anything away. She had a cat and we couldn't see any litter tray anywhere, just Cat sh-t/piss in random corners and more hair on her clothes/furniture than on the cat likely (we never saw the Cat so I bet it was buried under all her rubbish).
The worst thing was how she died. She must have had some form of stomach cancer because she had died choking on her own poo as she vomited it up. What happens is that if you have an obstruction in the gut such as a tumour, sometimes it gets trapped and the body forces it upwards.
Litter Room
[rebelmouse-image 18347339 is_animated_gif=One of our clients had a water line breakage in their home and called in a claim. Our claims adjuster went out and then called us back immediately telling us he had just got done throwing up and we needed to get off this policy IMMEDIATELY.
It turns out they had converted a bedroom into a litter box room. Instead of using litter boxes, they just dumped new litter into the room on the floor. He said the litter was about 2 ft high, filled with excrement, and the whole house smelled so bad it made him sick. It was also a horder-esque type situation with piles and piles of "trash" everywhere.
We had to go out and investigate and his descriptive phone call didn't scratch the surface of how bad this home was.
How Sad
[rebelmouse-image 18346812 is_animated_gif=It's strange. Had a lot of jobs. Been in prob thousands of homes and I've forgotten almost all of them. Few stand out though. Yeah there are the roaches, spiders falling out of vents. The smells, the trash. People are pretty gross but the worst was sad.
Olderish lady who made me take off my shoes. Perfectly clean house and not a spec of dust. Plastic on the couches and not a thing out of place. I realize I needed to get in a room and told her and she immediately did the "no no it's terrible in there. It's my daughters room" and as always I'm like, no it's fine. I've seen it all and a messy kid isn't anything to be worried about it. After some prodding she finally let me in. Mattress was torn up and bloodstained. Holes in the walls and trash everywhere. The lady started crying and then she (mom) told me she (daughter) was an addict and she's (mom) tried redoing the room multiple times but she'd (daughter) always tears it up again.
Real sad.
Too Rich
[rebelmouse-image 18351371 is_animated_gif=TV repairman here. I've seen my fair share of nasty houses, a couple outright hoarders, etc.
But I'm going to go with the most memorable sign of money.
I was working on a bedroom TV and there were a couple maintenance or plumbing guys working in the bathroom attached to the room. The home owner was bumbling around, and at some point the plumber says to her "we just got a call and the new tub finally arrived from Italy. We can get it installed next week if we pull out the old one today, but you won't have a bath in the master bath over the weekend."
She goes "Paul, don't be ridiculous. We have nine other bathrooms in this house I think I'll survive a couple days."
It really wasn't the worst in any way, it was just absurd.
The Dumbest Things People Were Ever Scared Of As A Kid
Reddit user _Veron_ asked: 'What was the "dumbest" thing you were scared of as a kid?'
Hindsight is 20/20, but our ability to look back and realize that a situation wasn't as bad as it seemed won't lesson how hard that situation was in the moment.
This is also true for children and the irrational fears they are facing. Learning later on that those things are irrational will not change how scary those things were at the time, but it's fascinating to look back and see what we feared the most.
Redditor _Veron_ asked:
"What was the 'dumbest' thing you were scared of as a kid?"
The Sweet Potato Man
"'El Señor de lo Camotes' or 'Sweet Potatoes seller.' In Mexico, there are people who sell sweet potatoes and bananas with cinnamon, candy, or honey, and they bake them on a tricycle with an oven with a chimney while they walk the streets."
"The sound of the chimney is a bit creepy and loud! I was terrified as a child, and even more so when my dad told me that the sound was from bad kids that the man was burning on his tricycle."
- KerenGO
Godzilla
"Godzilla. The old school black and white cheesy fake dinosaur looking one. I could not sleep for days."
- Mamadog5
The Cowardly Lion
"The lion in 'The Wizard of Oz..."
- seekthegiant
"Consider yourself lucky you weren't shown 'Return to Oz.' So much nightmare fuel. I still remember chunks 30 years later and I certainly haven't rewatched the thing."
- m0le
The Quaker Oats Man
"The Quaker Oats guy. He reminded me of Reverend Kane from 'Poltergeist.'"
- Ronnieb85
"I totally forgot I used to be afraid of this guy, lol (laughing out loud). My grandma always had some when I was a kid, and I don't know… He just had a creepy stare, and his eyes followed me no matter what."
- Fates_The_Great
The Loud Popping Noise
"Popping a balloon."
- SuvenPan
"When I was a kid, lots of birthday parties had a game that involved sitting on a balloon until it popped. I was terrified of that, but the adults made me do it anyway."
- UltraRunner42
Dun-Nuh Dun-Nuh Dun-Nuh, Shark Kite!
"Kites. Especially shark kites."
"When I was very little, family friends and my family went to fly kites in Sacramento. The older of the two boys had a shark kite and the corner of it poked him in the eye. There was blood everywhere and screaming/crying. After that, any kite being flown triggered me."
"Meanwhile, a year earlier a dog literally attacked my face… but did that deter me from loving dogs? H**l no. But a shark kite? No f**king way, man. Those things are dangerous."
- theWildBore
Omniscient Bears
"My brother and I used to set our stuffed animals/toys up and stare at them from a long distance using binoculars. We would take turns, but each of us could only last a few seconds before freaking out, squealing, and handing off the binoculars, because we were just CONVINCED that they were going to start moving or looking in our direction."
- AquamarineCheetah
"Toy Story: Horror Edition."
- madmonkeman
Theme Music
"'Unsolved Mysteries' intro song."
"I loved the show, but for some reason, the intro music scared the s**t out of me. Many times, I’d make a point to go to the bathroom when the song played so I didn’t have to hear it, lol (laughing out loud)."
- PhotographIcy600
'The Ring' Movie
"'The Ring' movie, which I never even saw. Someone recapped it and it haunted me for years…"
- Mr_Trumpets
"I would recommend that you never see it then. Because it is the images that stay with you."
- Dr_broadnoodle
"I had to unplug the TV in my room for like a month as a kid before I stopped being scared. It wasn't even a big enough TV for that b***h to crawl out of. It was probably a 12-inch screen."
- panda388
Something Out There
"UFOs. The first time I saw a spotlight in the sky (was a car dealer having an event), I nearly passed out. I was probably around 10."
- Ruseiriousmars
The Worst Possibility
"Those outdoor stairs where you could see through the steps down to the bottom, I was convinced I could fall through."
- LibraryVolunteer
"Or unfriendly hands reaching out to grab your ankles."
- Bladenkerst_Baenre
The Concept of Impermanence
"One of my earliest memories is of my mom telling me to hurry up and eat my ice cream before it melted. It was the first time I learned about things melting and that concept scared the s**t out of me for some reason."
- acct4dumbQs
Santa Claus
"I was terrified of Santa Claus as a kid. He just looked big, fat, and scary to me. He used to freak me out to the point of tears!"
- Elizabeth_Winters
"'He sees you when you’re sleeping.'"
- Madmonkeman
"You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout. Santa Claus is coming to town."
"Are we sure this isn't a warning?"
- Outatime76
Spontaneous Combustion
"When I was a kid I watched a tv show about spontaneous human combustion while I was sick with the flu and was 100% CONVINCED I was going to burst into flames. The fever dreams afterwards did not help."
- Chapstickie
The Loading Sound
"The PS2 startup sound. I used it to play games and watch DVDs but I would turn it on then run and hide then wait for the 'scary part' to be over."
- plutodite222
"It's certainly kinda spooky, can't blame you for that."
- ooo-----D
We can all look back on our childhoods and point out things that we irrationally feared or believed, but while we may think those things are silly now, that will not change how the kid version of us perceived it back then.
While it may be funny now, it was pure nightmare fuel then.
Everyone dreams of putting those pesky Kevins and Karens in their place, especially when they decide to wreak havoc on poor customer service employees. These satisfying "gotcha" moments prove that karma really does exist.
1. Just Being Neighborly
One of my favorite stories from my brief time in customer service was when a man who called up the night after a minor hurricane started screaming that his service didn't work. He said that he had complained multiple times and this was the last straw. Clearly our service sucked, and it was our fault his cable was out. He kept cutting me off and calling me rude names. But I had the perfect response.
Finally, I just interjected: Sir, your cable isn't out because of an issue with our service, your cable is out because a tree branch fell across the cable line. What's that? How do I know? Because I saw the branch fall. I'm the one who went out in the rain last night to get the branch out of the street. In fact, I know you know it's a branch, because I could see you looking out your window at me moving the branch that fell on your property.
Not only that, but when I was done, I went inside and called into work on my day off to arrange a bucket truck to come out and rerun the cable so you could beat the rush of calls that came in all across the island due to the storm. You didn't even have to call. A truck is already on route. Well, that shut him up.
2. Nickle And Diming
I used to work for a grocery store in high school as a cashier. One busy Saturday, an older lady came through my long line with about $150 worth of groceries. Among her items was a prepackaged piece of meat from our deli department that is normally priced by weight. Her meat did not have a printed sticker on the package and I would've needed to find a bag boy or manager to run to the deli to get it priced.
Because we were super busy, I decided to wing it, and set it on my scale. "Looks like it's almost a pound, so...let's say...$2.77? Does that sound fair?" I began to ring it as a miscellaneous item. Her answer sent a shiver through my spine. "No it does NOT sound fair!" she yelled in a screeching voice. "You need to get that priced!" Groans from the line began behind her, as I found a bag boy to run to get the price sticker.
A manager came by to see what the commotion was about and the lady explained the situation. I explained why I had made the decision I made. The manager of course stuck up for the lady (which we laughed about later) and she accepted the apology. We then waited for what seemed like an eternity of eye-contact avoidance and thumb twiddling.
The bag boy came back and handed me the pork. I smirked and showed her the price. "$2.78. Huh, I would've saved you a penny!" The man behind her chortled. Never saw her again.
3. What A Gas
I was working at a gas station in a very rich part of town. During a nice summer day, a prime example of the douchebag variety of the human species drove his super-expensive Lamborghini in and, in that haughty, I'm-rich-so-you-must-do-what-I-say voice, demanded that it be filled with premium. Which the attendant started to do, only the guy immediately snatched the nozzle from him and screamed that "you're too stupid to do this on your own".
We're in Oregon, by the way, where you can't pump your own gas because of state fire laws. Well, being that he's a douchebag and an idiot, gas spills out from the nozzle all over his sparkly douche-mobile. At this point, he truly flips out. He storms into the store, where I'm working as the cashier and de facto manager. He immediately demands to speak to the owner, and that we are going to pay to have his car repainted AND he's not going to be paying for his gas.
I try my best to calm the situation, but he's got a good rage going and doesn't want to be calmed down. While he's spewing forth, I notice that an officer from the local department is about to come into the store to get snacks or a drink or some such. This gives me a nice idea. "Sir, I'm afraid that the gas is in your tank and you pumped it yourself, so you are going to have to pay".
Cutscene of an explosion. Douchebag then asks, "So what, exactly, do you think you can do if I just go and get in my car and leave?" Thank you, good Lord, for timing. He says this, at full bellow, right as the officer walks through the door. My response? "Well, personally I can't do much, but the nice officer standing behind you will probably be able to do something".
Douchebag turns around to see the officer, with a very predatory smile on his face, nodding vigorously. Yeah, he shut up, paid, and we never saw him again.
4. Watch Your Manners
I used to do cellphone customer service for a call centre in Canada, though it was an American cellphone company. Got a call from a right-angry Texan who had been passed around from agent to agent with no one really listening to him, making him even more angry (and understandably so). So, he gets to me and he's just a whirlwind of yelling and swearing.
I can barely make out what he's saying. In my sternest Person-In-Charge voice I say, "Sir, that's no way to talk to a lady!" Right away he calms down and goes: "Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am". And we resolved his issue within a couple of minutes. Oh, Texas. I love your old-school gentlemen when they're not drowned out by your extreme fundamentalists.
5. Take A Picture, It’ll Last Longer
I worked at a photo printing lab, and we got people in all the time who claimed we were stupid and had messed up their pictures. One woman had us print 800 vacation pictures. They were bad quality, dark, and out of focus. Basically a nightmare to work with. But that wasn’t all. When she came to pick them up, she insisted that we had ruined them, that they were perfect in her camera, and that she had a very expensive camera and so there was no way the pictures could be dark or out of focus.
We finally gave her her money back, even though we had done nothing wrong and were out a lot of time and paper. She called us 30 minutes later and told us she was at a store across town, and they had reprinted all of her pictures and they were beautiful, in focus, and nice and bright. I had to tell her that the same person who owned our store also owned the store across town, and that not only would it have taken that store several hours to reprint 800 pictures, but their printer was down that day, so they couldn't have printed anything. She hung up on me.
6. Owning It
I used to work at a restaurant chain that started about 15 or 20 years back and has about 15 stores in total. People all the time would complain and release their vague threat "I know Tommy! (The owner, guy who started the chain) Do I have to call him to get some good service?" It came from so many people, but we had to put up with it because that's what you do in the restaurant business.
But one time when this happened, Tommy was actually in the restaurant. He would come in once every couple months or so and just act like a regular customer, just to kinda evaluate how things were running from a non-owner perspective (of course everything magically went smoother for him than any other customer, imagine that). Anyway, this lady (that had been a total witch the entire night) starts complaining, talking about how her meal was cold or bad or whatever, even though she had powered through 4/5ths of it.
She wants her money back for this atrocity! And then she drops the bombshell. “I know Tommy! He wouldn’t stand for this!” The only thing was, Tommy was sitting almost directly behind her, and pretty obviously didn’t know her, and she didn’t recognize him. After getting a bit of the old discreet “Go ahead” nod from him, I just said, “Ma’am, Tommy is in the restaurant right now. If you could just point him out I’d be glad to let him know what you think of his restaurants".
She stammered, gave the, "No he's not, I would've seen him!" until the owner stood up and said hello. He put on the kind of sickly sweet personality, where you're ever so polite but totally awful at the same time. She shut up and paid pretty quickly after that.
7. Milking It For All It’s Worth
I worked at a concession stand for a children's baseball park. It's a large park (nine or so fields) and we get lots and lots of customers. Having lots of customers, we have to make things in large quantities and the quality isn't especially swell. But hey, it's a concession stand, not a restaurant. Anyhow, it's about 20 degrees out and people are ordering hot chocolate by about five cups at a time.
Only two of us are working. The process for making hot chocolate is putting an extremely large container of water in our extremely large microwave, and then stirring in an extremely large amount of cocoa powder. It's nothing fancy, but it tasted pretty good all things considered. Late in the day, I was working the register, and my co-worker is running around making everything.
A lady came up to the side window, screaming at my co-worker about how he's ruining the hot chocolate. My co-worker can't hear her, seeing as how she's yelling through a window. At a guy working around a lot of refrigerator fans, among other things. She finally comes to the front counter and tells me he's ruining it. "Why" I asked. Her: "He's going to ruin the milk! He's going to ruin it in the microwave!"
Me: "There is no..." Her: "HES GOING TO RUIN IT!" Me: "Peter!" Co-Worker: "Yeah?" Me (pretending to get super angry) "DON'T RUIN THAT MILK!" Her: *stares at me* Co-Worker: "What milk?" Me (still yelling): "THE HOT CHOCOLATE MILK!" Co-Worker (comes up to the front looking VERY confused): "There is no milk!" Me (to the lady): "Hmm. I suppose we don't use any milk". She left looking very scared to talk to us ever again.
8. This Comes Right From The Top
I used to work in an old family-owned gas station/garage in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Since it was family owned, about 90% of the business came from regulars who had either business accounts or got their families’ cars fixed at the shop (and had for generations on both sides). As such, the random passers-by getting gas on their way to and from cities on either side of the town made up a mostly negligible amount of business.
The gas station side of the business made up maybe 2% of the business, and of that maybe .5% was non-regulars. So my boss couldn't care less about some of the annoying customers who came in. One day we got a particularly witchy soccer mom. This was during the summer a few years ago, so the gas was very high compared to the rest of the year.
She was convinced that our pumps were purposely calibrated incorrectly so that less gas was pumped. Her proof was that she always got $XX.XX in gas and it always went to XX% full. Well we had just had our equipment recalibrated for the year and knew it was all good. She kept complaining to me about it, and being a high schooler I didn't care, either.
But I kept up appearances and was polite, kept telling her that we had just had our pumps calibrated. She didn't care and kept complaining. Eventually she asked for the manager. But I knew something she didn’t. The office was right behind the counter, and my boss was in there listening the whole time. As soon as she asked for him, he simply yelled out “SCREW OFF!” And that was about it.
I just shrugged at her, and she left. My boss was awesome with jerk customers.
9. Stop, Drop, And Roll
A customer was lighting up in a supermarket, and a staff member asked them to stop. They refuse to stop. Customer escalates to me, as customer service manager at the time. I grabbed a fire extinguisher (large, CO2), walked up to the customer, and said "If you don't put that out now, I will be forced to assume you're on fire and act accordingly". Customer dropped the smoke, stamped it out with her foot, and left the store.
10. If The Shoe Doesn’t Fit…
I work in a shoe shop. One of the services we supply is to check how well school shoes fit on our younger customers. Once a staff member has signed to say they are a good fit, the customer is able to bring them back if there are any problems. This one time, a mother came back in with her son a week after being fitted with a pair, loudly mouthing off that the shoes were too tight and causing blisters.
Even though she was being a psycho about it, we offered to get her a new pair. Once back in the kids department, she spotted the girl who fitted the original shoes and went crazy at her, demanding that the girl should be there while a better pair was fitted so she wouldn't make the same mistake again. Despite the mom saying some pretty degrading stuff about her, the girl agreed to sit in on the re-fit in an attempt to help out.
She remembered the customer, even to the point of remembering the child’s name, and was visibly upset about doing a bad job. Returning to the till, the fitter offered to put the exchange through as a final gesture of goodwill. She then froze, realization dawning on her. "These aren't your sons shoes" she said to the customer. They have a name tag inside saying Tommy, and your son’s name is Billy.
Turns out the kid had swapped his shoes with another boy in his class. Laughed that witch out of the shop.
11. The Truth Hurts
A customer wanted to return a computer that was about a year old when I worked in retail. I asked him what was wrong. "It just don't work". I powered it on, it gets into Windows, connects to the wireless network, goes online. I open Office, everything seems to be working properly. I show it to him, ask him what's wrong. "It just don't work". I asked him what was actually wrong with the machine (let alone why would you return a computer a year later).
"It just don't work. Are you saying if a car don't start, it works fine?" At this point I had enough of the guy: "No sir, I'm saying if there was a car and everyone could start it except one person, I wouldn't blame the car".
12. You Get What You Pay For
I was eating at a Taco Bell once, and I was waiting to ask for some sauce while another customer was yelling at a kitchen employee. She had pulled apart her burrito and was complaining that there wasn't enough stuff in it. I shut her up with one sentence. I leaned over and said, "looks like 89 cents worth of food to me!" She stormed out.
13. Lady In Shining Armor
I worked at a Walgreen's photo lab right after high school, and it was my first job. There was a really nice lady who used to come by every now and then to have her pictures developed, and whenever they came out we would chat about them because I thought they were great. One day while we were talking, another customer arrived. When I asked her how I could help her, she started yelling at me because she didn't like the way her photos came out.
She threw them on the counter and was really angry with me and wanted to speak to my manager. I called for my manager and she came over and tried to calm the angry lady down. The angry lady started pointing at me and said that I messed up her photos, and blah, blah, blah, threats, better business bureau, yak, yak, yak. I don't know what to tell her other than I'm sorry and that I didn't know what was wrong.
I told her I processed them like I was supposed to and that most of the work was done by the machine, to which she immediately replied "then what good are you?" Suddenly, the nice lady with the cool pictures pipes up in this authoritative tone: "How dare you? How dare you say that to him and accuse him of ruining your pictures? He already said he was sorry. Do you realize that what you said is going to cost him his job? Shame on you".
The angry lady just got quiet, realized how she was acting, and left. I thanked the nice lady, and it made me tear up a bit afterwards because having someone stand up for you feels good.
14. Get It To Go
My friend was in line at KFC when a woman began rattling off a long order. I'm talking two family buckets of extra crispy, sides of biscuits, bowls of gravy, you name it. At the end of the order the female cashier asks the large woman, "For here or to go?" The woman blows a gasket and screams, “GIRL, I CAN'T EAT THAT MUCH!" To which the cashier replies, without the slightest bit of hesitancy, "GIIIRRRRLLLL, I DON'T KNOW YOUR WORLD". It was the most boss thing that has ever occurred in a KFC...to my knowledge.
15. Putting Him In His Place
Recently I put a customer in place in Best Buy. I went to do an exchange at Best Buy. Guy walks up behind me, starts complaining about the wait to pick up a .com order, and I tell him to get in the line with the giant hanging "BestBuy.com orders here" sign. He then complains to a manager about how lazy his staff is, and how he has been there for 30 minutes to pick up a Monster Cable...hilarious as that purchase is.
I called him out, and the guy turns red from embarrassment and anger, then storms off. Then I debriefed the manager on how he was there for less than five minutes before being helped and the staff was doing a great job. The manager gave me a $20 Gift Card for calling the guy a douche to his face. I just didn't want the Customer Service guys to get in any trouble for this guy's slander.
16. Speaking In Tongues
I worked at a drug store in high school. I had a German couple check out at my register, and they were incredibly rude. They were complaining in German about the customers behind them in line, using vulgar language and whatnot. Apparently, I wasn't moving fast enough for their liking, and the woman called me a name in German. But she didn’t know one thing.
She was obviously not aware that that was the terribly impractical language that I took in high school. When I finished their order, I stared her in the eye and said thank you in her native tongue, and they both looked shocked and embarrassed. It felt good, man.
17. Do It Yourself
I work at Jimmy John's. At JJ's, if you've never been, it's mostly self-service; you get your napkins, and if you need a bag, you get them yourself. Our sandwiches are wrapped in a way that you generally don't need one, and everything is made "to go". A lady came in one day and ordered like 4 or 5 sandwiches. As always, I redirect them to the end of the bar to pick up their sandwiches and grab whatever napkins and bags they want.
Now, if someone asks us to bag something FOR them, we will. People generally don't (unless they're really old in which case we'll do it for them regardless) but nobody minds if they do. This lady never asked once for someone to bag her food. She stood at the bar, quiet, bagging all of her sandwiches up and then left. 15 or 20 minutes go by. Then the other shoe drops.
Her husband calls the store and asks to speak to a manager, AKA me. I pick up the phone and the conversation goes like this, mostly verbatim: ME: Hi, how can I help you? GUY: shouting Yeah, since when is it ya'lls policy for people to bag their own food? My wife just came from there and told me she had to bag everything herself! ME: I'm sorry sir, but it's technically always been our policy. Everything is self-service here at Jimmy John's. We certainly would have -- cuts me off GUY: WELL I'M GOING TO BE SURE TO TELL EVERYONE I KNOW ABOUT THE KIND OF SERVICE YOU GUYS OFFER OVER THERE.
ME: Okay, well, thanks, I guess? I mean, it isn't any sort of secret. hangs up
18. Up And Down
I stopped to get gas today, and while talking with the cashier I mentioned that she was probably tired of people yelling at her about the price of gas—but that since she is the one standing there she probably gets it a lot. She said that every day someone complains to her, like she can do something about it. A guy then came in and demanded, "Why the heck is gas $3.76 a gallon?'
Without missing a beat, she said, "Because it went down 10 cents this morning". He just looked at her, paid and left.
19. Playing Games
I worked in electronics at Target. Over at Guest Service one day, I saw a woman with her teenage daughter heatedly speaking to the guy at the counter. After a few moments, he pointed over at me in electronics. The woman's head whirled round, dragon like, toward me. The rest of her body realigned with her head and she stomped in my direction.
When she reached the counter I pleasantly asked, "How can I help you?" She slammed a receipt and PS3 controller on the counter, "I paid 55 dollars for this and I can only return it for 40!" I asked, "May I see your receipt?" She nodded and I picked it up, "See, 55 dollars!" "Yep, I see that," I said, "You bought this last week when the store gave away a 15 dollar gift certificate with the controller".
"So what!" "You would shop at Target again, right?" I asked. "Not if this isn't resolved!" she spat. Her daughter next to her was embarrassed. "Hypothetically, if there wasn't an issue, I'm guessing you would and you would use that 15 dollar gift card on your future purchase. If we let you return this controller for 55 dollars then you would have a free 15 dollars. That is why the return price is 15 dollars less...I can do the return for you over here if you don't want to go back to Guest Service".
"I didn't want to return it, I just wanted to know why the return price was so much less," she said. She picked up her controller and receipt and began to walk off. Her daughter, clearly ashamed of her mother, thanked me and followed her mother out.
20. Citizen’s Shaming
My boss once had a customer snag her shirt on the register counter. She went ballistic in ten seconds flat. She began shrieking about us replacing her shirt, that our counters were unsafe, and that she wanted compensation for her shirt. My boss is a very, very calm man. He apologizes, says he'll have someone from maintenance fix the counter, but the woman isn't satisfied.
She's holding up the entire line and refusing to complete her purchase, and the other customers seem pretty annoyed at her. The woman wouldn't give up, and finally the guy behind her in line has had it. He gets his wallet out, hands her a $20 bill, asks her if this makes her happy, then tells her to please shut up and leave the nice man (my boss) alone.
The woman made some terrible noise, left her items on the counter, and stomped off. The line applauded the man with the $20 (who still had it, the woman didn't take his money), and my boss gave him a hefty discount.
21. All Hands On Deck
I used to work at Tesco, in England, as a team leader. Basically doing a manager's job, on a bit more than checkout operator’s wage. I wonder why I gave that up to become a teacher...oh yeah. Anyway, at Christmastime, for some reason, we were quite busy. We had a good 35 checkouts in the store, and 35 of those 35 checkouts were open.
Yet there were still lines. Ultimately, if thousands of people decide to do their Christmas shopping terribly late, and you have every single till open, what can you do? Anyway, this woman comes over to complain that she had to wait. I explained that the checkouts were all in use, and we could do nothing. She asked why I wasn't on a checkout.
This was something often asked, with the simple answer being that if I'm the one who has to sort out any problem in case any of the 35 checkouts break, or needs something, or a customer can't walk the five paces to change their broken packet of biscuits—and I'm on a checkout—nothing would be done. Anyway, this woman demanded that everyone should be on the checkouts.
Which they were. "I want to see the store manager!" she demanded, "You need to have more people working on the checkouts. Where can I see the store manager?" "Well," I replied, "He's currently sat on that checkout there, because we are so busy". She shut up. I really don't know what she wanted us to do.
22. With All The Toppings
I used to work at an amusement park, and between department transfers, I started in food. My stand made funnel cakes and corndogs. The average wait time on a busy day could be upwards of 30 minutes in the sun, which I'll admit sucks. It's not any cooler in the stand standing over a 450 degree fryer. Anyhow...This guy comes up, orders four corndogs.
I ring him up and ask him if he wants any ketchup or mustard brushed on. He declines. I take his money and hand over four corndogs. His little girl bites into one and then tugs on daddy’s arm and says she wants mustard. I politely inform him that since she's already bitten out of her food, we can't brush it on; however if he'd head 50 steps to an adjacent building, he could skip the line and just grab some condiment packets.
Apparently this was unacceptable. Up until this point he was just a normal guy. Then suddenly he changed to a monster. "DO YOU KNOW WHO I WORK FOR?! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!?" I tell him no. He then half-chuckles to himself and points out his pregnant wife sitting at a nearby table and then begrudges the time he spent in line. I again reassure him they will give him some mustard packets if he walks next door.
He loses it.
"I'M THE GOSH-DARN REGIONAL REP FOR COKE IN THIS AREA, I WILL BUY AND SELL YOUR BUTT, KID". This self-aggrandizing and demeaning talk towards me lasted a full 60 seconds or so. Then I told him "we only carry Pepsi products". He was flush with embarrassment and rage, and anyone within earshot is laughing at him. To spite me (really his little girl) he didn't go get mustard packets. He forever was known as MustardMan.
23. Good Parenting 101
I worked as a lifeguard for my first "real" job. One night, at the indoor water park, a child came up to me. He asked me very quickly where the bathroom was. I pointed him in the right direction and he quickly said, "No I need one closer!" I swore in my head as he pooped himself in front of me, poop running down his leg. I radioed him into first aid and we took him in and paged his parents.
Eventually his dad came in and we chit chatted about his son, no big deal (it happens more often than you think). His dad told us to change and clean him, though, and me and my manager refused. The dad was furious and yelled why not. We replied he's not our son. That shut him up.
24. A Helping Hand
I used to work at a video store, and after a while I got pretty desensitized to people throwing little hissy fits about late fees. One day a gentleman tried to rent a movie and I had to let him know he had accumulated some late fees on his account. Cue standard rant about having returned them on time, blah blah blah, "...and I'm just going to cut up my membership card when I get home!!" I couldn't help myself after that:
I reached under the counter and grabbed a pair of scissors, held them out to him and said, "Well, you can do that here if you like". He gave me a venomous look and left the store in a huff. And it felt so good.
25. I’ve Got A Package For You
Working at a shipping store, a customer tried to drop off a package to be shipped back to Clearwire (an internet company). He had the box wrapped in shipping paper and twine. Instead of a prepaid shipping label, he had printed out the directions on how to obtain the shipping label. I tried to explain to him that he needed to go back to his email, click on the link, and print the shipping label.
He was adamant that he did everything correctly and kept saying he was going to leave the package there and that it was our problem. My boss, hearing this, comes from the back and explains that if the customer leaves the package, my boss will throw it out the door. The guy turns around, leaves the package, and says again, "Not my problem". He got exactly what he asked for, and then some.
My boss, true to his word, follows him and throws the package towards the customer. The package bounces a few times on the sidewalk right past the customer and the guy keeps on walking. The package stayed outside for 15 minutes in heavy rain before my boss relents and took the package inside. The package was still under a counter four months later when I left the job.
26. Paying The Price
We had a building where I ran a family sewing factory with a small store attached, which my mom ran. One day a guy comes in to deliver some rolls of fabric and this woman decides to park in the middle of the lot. Not even in a parking spot...she just turned off her car wherever and got out. Then she went shopping elsewhere. The trucker had to leave, so I had the car towed so he could get out and back on the road.
The next day I hear a very loud voice demanding to see a manager. He shoves a ticket in my office manager's face and says, "You're paying for this". I walk in and ask what the problem is (I'm 6'6"). He tries to get all up in my face and asks sarcastically, "Who's paying this ticket?" I got loud and replied, "You mean where I had to tow a car because they were too cheap to put a quarter in a parking meter on the street and parked in the middle of my lot?”
I was a good 10" bigger than he was...he left. Then I called the authorities and made a complaint against him for threatening behavior to my employees, just in case he tried anything funny.
27. I Know You Are But What Am I
My roommates and I decided to go grab some subway before we went out one Friday night. One of them is half-Ecuadorian, and the Subway employees were both Hispanic. While I was in the process of ordering my sandwich, the two workers were speaking to each other in Spanish. When it was my friend’s turn, he ordered in Spanish, which I thought was simply a gesture.
I couldn't figure out why both employees looked like ghosts and stammered their way through the entire ordering process. When I got back in the car, my friend told me the real story. He said that the two workers said, "Look at this pretty boy, pretending to be cultured. What a loser, he doesn't even know the language". At which point my friend decided to place his entire order in Spanish, and thank them at the end of the transaction.
28. Checking It Twice
I was working in food service at a cash register. A customer came up and placed an order, I rang it up, and she wasn't happy with how much it cost. She started whining and being a real witch. My co-worker came up and stood next to me, looked over what I did, and just kind of stood there polishing a counter. She squawked, "Get me your manager!" I say, "Ok sure, but ma'am this is the correct price".
Co-worker standing next to me is actually the manager. He looks at the woman and goes, "Yup," and continues polishing the counter. "Buh... wha... uh... ok fine!" shouts the woman and walks away. The two of us crack up laughing.
29. A Case Of Mistaken Identity
I used to work in the main office for a large chain of furniture stores in the UK. I worked in the evenings, phoning customers to let them know their furniture was in, and arranging a delivery date. One night I phoned and asked for Mr. or Mrs. Jones. The guy on the phone starts ranting to me about people phoning up his elderly parents trying to sell things.
He went on and on and on and wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise. I think he may have even used the toilet while he was ranting at me. When he finally wound down, I said, "Are you finished now sir? This is ---- Furniture and I'm phoning to arrange a delivery date for your parents’ new three-piece suite". Yup, that one shut him up completely.
30. The Best Man For The Job
I was working at CompUSA a few years before they closed. A well-to-do looking gentleman and his high school-age son approached the counter and ask to return a 2.5" hard drive enclosure. I overhear him telling the girl that the enclosure was defective because his drive will not fit in it. She says that sounds unusual because we sell a lot of them and hadn't seen any returned.
Upon hearing this, he tells her in a very condescending tone that he "is an engineer and his son attends (insert expensive private school) and they could not get it to work so it must be defective". The customer service girl calls me over since she didn't really know much about computers and would rather have an "expert" look at it.
When I come over he has the drive enclosure and his hard drive sitting on the counter. I immediately notice that he never removed the OEM bracket from the original drive and that was why it wouldn't fit. I say, "I think I know what the problem is and just need to grab a screwdriver". To which he responds, "If neither me or my son can figure it out, I doubt you'll be able to".
I proceed to take the bracket off and slide the drive into the enclosure in about 10 seconds all with a grin on my face. He picked it up and hurried out without saying anything or making eye contact.
31. Too Good To Be True
A well-dressed business passenger bought a plane ticket on Continental from Indianapolis to Manchester. There are no direct flights, so he would have to connect in Newark, New Jersey. After arriving, he strolls over to the Manchester gate and sees a small 50 pax regional jet parked outside. He thinks nothing of it and boards the airplane a while later.
After taking his seat, and just prior to the boarding door being closed, the flight attendant makes an announcement: "Welcome aboard flight #### service to Manchester, NEW HAMPSHIRE!" This guy goes completely wild. He starts scrambling to get his things and get off the plane, all the while yelling at the flight attendant, gate agent, pilots, and other passengers.
He was trying to go to Manchester in the UK (airport code of MAN) and he bought a ticket for MHT. The gate agent was getting completely verbally harassed by the guy at the podium as she tried to rebook him to the proper destination. She took it all in stride and was really trying to help the guy even though he was being a complete jerk and going on and on about how it was a mistake in the computer.
And then she saw how much he paid for the ticket. Her exact words were: "You only paid 300 dollars for your ticket and you really thought that was going to get you to England?" He was quiet after that.
32. Ironing Out The Details
I work at Ikea in Customer Service. On a daily basis, we have customers come in with items that have been used, broken, old, without their receipt, some even not Ikea products, and they are DEMANDING a refund. But the couple that really takes the cake tried to return to me a broken and rusty ironing board. It was obviously used and without a receipt I'm limited with my options.
We can only offer store credit if the item can be returned to stock in original packaging. Obviously, it wasn't. With a receipt you have 90 days to return your item in any condition. After I refused the return, they asked for my manager. My manager offered to look up their receipt, couldn't find it so we couldn't take it back. They then asked for her manager.
Every time they got a “no” they asked for the manager above. Eventually it got to our store manager. They quickly found out they’d messed with the wrong guy. This manager is a BOSSS, 6'5", hulk-like, and Swedish; he started as a cashier and made his way up literally from the bottom to owning the store. He came on down to the belligerent couple who were causing a scene because our customer service was apparently SOOOO poor.
After inspecting the item and removing their iron cover (which none of us did before, the item was that appalling we really didn't want to touch it) he finds the date stamp. It was from 2002. The couple got real silent because the entire time they said they've had it for less than three months. Our store manager said in the calmest voice I have ever heard in my life, "I think it's about time you leave my store".
33. Too Big For His Britches
I worked at the local CVS for a summer back in college. I was at the register one night when a lanky teenager came up carrying four different boxes of rubbers. He put them on the counter, produced a receipt, and asked for a refund. I noticed that each of the boxes had been opened. I told him we couldn't refund the items given that he had opened them.
He looked me straight in the eyes and said seriously that he had tried one from each of the boxes and that none of them fit because they were too big. I didn't know what to say to that except that we definitely could not give him a refund. Without any embarrassment, he scooped up the boxes and left. They were all "XXL," "magnum," and "plus-size" brands.
34. That Took A Turn
I used to be a low-level manager in a call centre, it paid the bills…anyway, a customer had called us and been perfectly pleasant, giving us his account details, and business got underway. At the end of the call, he asked for one more thing that we couldn't have done, and was informed of this. He immediately got extremely aggressive with my member of staff.
At this point her hand shot up in the air (cue me) and she handed over the headset and chair so I could view the details. I was called a bunch of names, and then we got down to the grand finale. The threat. I'm paraphrasing but here's how it went: Him: “Listen, I can see your company's address on your website, I'm going to come down there and mess you up".
Me: “Good, you gave my colleague your name and address details first then, I'll make sure to hand them over to the authorities somewhere in the few hours it's going to take you to drive down here. We'll be waiting". Dial tone
35. Getting To Know You
My folks used to own a Tastee Freez in South Carolina and I worked in it most summers as a teenager. Since it was a small town, everyone knew each other and most went to the same church. One Sunday night, one of the ladies from church called in at about five minutes after 10:00 and tried to order a 20 piece chicken nugget, and when I informed her that we closed at 10:00 and the grill and fryers were already cleaned and closed for the night, she got irate with me.
She started yelling in my ear about how she knew the owners of the place and she was going to get me fired and did she know who I was talking to. I calmly replied that yes, Mrs. Greene, I knew exactly who I was talking to, since my parents and I lived right across the street from her and she had asked us in church that morning what time we closed for the night.
We were never on speaking terms again.
36. The Honey Trap
I used to work in a Deli restaurant, and this lady comes in and rudely orders her food. I told her that everything should come out all right and that I will double check for her to make sure her order would be correct. She insisted on getting LOTS of honey mustard on her sandwich. I typed in extra honey mustard on the ticket. Sure enough her order comes out and there seemed to be plenty of honey mustard there.
But when I deliver it she yells at me for not having the extra honey mustard I promised her and told me to "get a ton more honey mustard" for her. I go to the back of the store, get an entire new gallon jug of honey mustard, and plop it on her table. Her friends were laughing and she was steaming mad. She complained to the manager, who thought it was hilarious and actually laughed in her face.
37. The Human Touch
I used to work as a croupier at clubs, and during a shift change my colleague accidentally made a wrong payment to a playing customer. Gamblers being what they are, the complaining that ensued was pretty awkward and no matter how much my colleague said he was sorry, the customer kept on wining. Finally, I just had to take over the situation with the perfect reply.
I said: "Sir, people make mistakes, we are not robots. If you want to play with machines, there are slot machines in the other bar". He shut up and the other players seemed relieved.
38. They Grow Up So Fast
I worked in electronics at Target at the time, although it wasn't the customer who suddenly shut up, it was me. This was around 2004, when GTA: San Andreas just came out. An older woman walks up to the electronics desk and addresses me. Customer: “I’d like to buy Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". Me: “Is this a gift for someone?” Customer: “Yes, this is for my 4-year-old grandson".
Me: “Well, ma’am, just to let you know, this game has been rated ‘M’ for Mature, and has a lot of aggression, profanity, drug use, and other adult content". Customer: “That’s okay, he’s already been exposed to all that…”
39. Out Of Pocket
I worked at a pharmacy as a technician. This patient brings in a prescription for a very expensive, name brand only drug, but has good insurance. I fill it and the patient causes a scene at the cash register because the copayment is 30 dollars instead of the usual 10 that the patient pays for generic drugs. The patient whines and moans about the "broken healthcare system" and “those insurance companies".
I inform the patient that, without insurance, the drug would cost her thousands of dollars every year out of pocket. Patient then proceeds to shut up.
40. A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
Once upon a time, I worked at a Kinko's, which is famous for having irate customers. But we had a secret weapon to deal with jerks. We had a guy on our shift with honest-to-goodness Tourette's where he would tic and swear loudly, then continue the conversation. We found that if we told the irate customer that he'd have to "talk to the supervisor," then send up Mr. Tourette, they'd be shut up by having someone swear in their face.
I think it just shocked them out of their panties-in-a-bunch state. Worked great.
41. Don’t Keep Me Hanging
I worked at a hotel front desk in a ski resort in Lake Tahoe. People would call (with disturbing frequency) several MONTHS in advance of their reservation to ask: "Is it going to be SNOWING the day I drive up on April 5th?" The best solution was to say, "Hold on, let me check" and then the staff would take cockfight-style bets on how long the customer would sit on hold before they gave up. Sometimes it would be like 15 minutes.
42. Sticker Shock
I work at CVS. Items are usually marked up higher than places like Target or any supermarket. One customer comes in and buys some useless item. When she sees that it's $10.99 or something similar, she goes off at me. "YOU CAN'T LIE TO ME ABOUT THAT PRICE. THAT IS $6.99 AT TARGET THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN TELL ME THAT'S $10.99!" All I could say was, "Well if you really want to pay $6.99 for it, then go to Target". She got the heck out of there.
43. Crossing A Line
I work at Best Buy in the warehouse, and we cover breaks for the guys working the cameras up front. A co-worker was covering a break when this guy came up to one of the front lane registers. There was a bit of a line and we only had two lanes open. One of the front lane guys is handicapped. It doesn't affect his job, it just takes him longer to walk around.
The customer finally made his way to the front of the line and paid with a credit card. The front lane rep needed to see the last 4 digits of the credit card and asked to see his card "real quick". The customer FLIPPED OUT. He said, "Oh NOW you want to do something real quick". Then he muttered just loud enough for everyone to hear: "I should have known not to get in the short bus line".
My co-worker who was observing the cameras saw everything and was not very happy. He walked up to the customer, grabbed all his merchandise, and said, "Nope, you're not buying anything today. You can leave". Never been so proud of him.
44. Can’t Defy Physics
I work at Toys R Us. That should be bad enough. But for a specific story, I worked the back of house. Those are the guys who bring down bicycles, power wheels, and other large items that are purchased from the back of the store up front to the customer. This one time, this man purchased a large power wheel (Barbie Jammin' Jeep '08 model I believe).
When I brought it out, I see the customer standing next to his car. A small, two-door Nissan. I immediately inform the man that the box will not fit in his car, and that we can hold it for him if he wished to come back later with a larger vehicle. He said that wouldn't work; he had to get the jeep now because he's been searching for weeks for it. I again tell him how the box is larger than his car and it will not fit.
He tells me that's bull and has me attempt to load the car into the trunk, then the front seat. After 20 failed minutes, I tell the man I can no longer spend time on this. I tell him I can write down his information, put the jeep on hold, and wait for him to return with a different car. He says he's going to continue to try and put it in his car. I leave him be and resume my work.
About a half hour later, I get a call from the customer service desk that I have to bring a returned jeep back to the storage area.
45. A Little Sunday Shopping
I used to work at Home Depot over the summer as a cashier. The very best was the woman who came up to my line with a cart that had only a single small box of nails. Odd, I thought, but maybe she just didn't find what she needed the cart for. So I ring her up and she says, "Well what about the rest of my order? I need 800 lbs of Quickcrete, 50 10' 2x4s, ten 8' 4x4s...”
She starts reading off all of the ingredients she needs to make a massive deck, or a dock, or something. She then asks me sweetly if I'll help her get them while she waits in line, holding up the 10 people behind her while I pull an entire back yard's worth of lumber and concrete out for her. I told her we couldn't do that, and gave her the number to call to have her order pulled.
She freaked out. Spent about 20 minutes screaming at me, even after I called the head cashier and had him handle her. See, she would run over to my lane while I was with other customers to tell me how "unprofessional" I was being, and that this is why everyone goes to Lowe's nowadays, because there they care about the customer.
46. Dedicated To The Game
I was working in an indie model/wargame/TCG shop. A group of kids around 13 years old turn up after school to play Yu-Gi-Oh inside. As their game drags on, one kid asks us where the toilets are. We direct him to the bus station, but he complains about the 30-second walk. He remains playing. Suddenly, we hear laughter from this kid and a pool of moisture forming down his trouser leg and onto our carpet.
My boss and I stare in utter disbelief as this kid shakes his leg, and remains playing his card game. Boss goes crazy and forces the kid to clean the carpet before banning him for a week. Kid returns next week to the nickname Wazzers.
47. Extra, Extra, Read All About It
During high school, I worked at a Burger King. There was this one woman who would always come into drive thru during the afternoon and ask for a Whopper Jr with extra onions. And I mean, a LOT of extra onions. And no matter how many we put in, she always came into the store and complained that there weren't enough. Still, this was in the middle of the afternoon, so we didn't care.
However, one day, we had four buses full of US Army enlistees at the store at the same time. Convoys of chartered buses would go by periodically, and they usually stopped at our store because the bus drivers knew my boss. Now, these people were always the nicest, most respectful people you can possibly imagine, which was a welcome change after dealing with jerks the whole day.
They also always ordered a ton of food—all king-size, tons of double and triple whoppers, the whole nine yards. My boss would always have me give them the "senior discount" (15% off), and they enjoyed that immensely, because it said that they were getting a senior discount on their receipts. Anyways, nice as they were, they strained our store to the limit because they ordered so much food.
So we were almost literally going hammer and tongs to keep up, and then the worst happens. Onion woman comes into drive thru. My boss told me to just grab two handfuls of onions and put them on the sandwich, because she didn't need a scene when we were as far behind as we were. I could barely close the burger because of the onions, but I managed it and we gave it to her.
Now remember, the store is completely full of US Army enlistees. They probably have not had fast food for weeks (I think they were going from boot camp to get their first assignments). And the line was out the door. So onion woman pushes her way past all of these people, rudely shoving them out of her way, and comes up to the counter screaming that she didn't have enough onions.
My boss is angry, so she takes the sandwich, hands it to me, and tells me to do whatever I want with it. I knew just what to do. I dumped the ENTIRE TUB of onions on this (probably about 1.5 LITERS of onions), and wrapped it up really, REALLY tight, and taped it shut (Note that the wrappers were somewhat elastic...). My boss hands it to the woman, and she opens it right on the counter to "make sure we have enough" even though it's like six times bigger than normal.
The thing EXPLODED ALL OVER. SO freaking awesome. All the guys trying not to laugh. One of their officers (a quite young 1st Lt.) was waiting by the counter for his food, and finally he just gave up and started laughing his butt off. The men took this as a cue, and she had about 250 men dying laughing at her.
One of the best days of my high school life. She didn't come back for a month, and she never, EVER complained about not having enough onions.
48. Wet And Wild
I used to work in Best Buy services. It was sort of like Geek Squad before Geek Squad and it dealt with everything like TVs and VCRs and junk. One day we had a guy come in and complain about his little video camera not working. I agree to take a look at it even though there's not much I can do but send it back to the manufacturer for him.
It will take some time, but that was 90% of the problem people had with services. Naturally, this guy wants a new one on the spot and he starts getting REALLY loud about it. So I call the manager. While I'm waiting for them to come up, I'm still tinkering with the camera in the back. I get some tools out and, hey, look I got the thing open for the guy. When I saw what was on it, I knew we had him.
A minute or so later I come back out when the manager gets there. The manager is talking to the guy as I move a computer up to the counter. I jump in and say, "Hey, I don't think we should give this guy a new unit". The guy gives me dagger eyes and the manager is like, "Oh? why's that?" Then I play the footage of what is unmistakably someone running around a pool, dropping the camera, which tumbles into the pool.
He had taken out the tape but it was recorded to the memory stick. Guy takes his camera and quietly leaves the store.
49. Sticky Fingers
Used to work in a pawnshop. We got lots of jewelry in and a lot of times the person bringing in the jewelry would have no idea that some of their stuff was fake. Nine times out of ten they would get angry and leave their stuff with us to be thrown out. My co-worker accidentally left a really gawdy but fake gold chain out on the desk one day. A customer came in, noticed the chain, and told us that we'd better put it away before someone took it.
I was about to. Then I realized I could have some fun. We ended up leaving the chain on the desk and would casually watch people as they came in to do business. Indeed, we caught a number of people trying to lift the chain. One guy in particular was talking us up and gradually pulling the chain off the counter. When he had successfully pocketed it and left the store, my co-worker and I began to crack up.
Sure enough, about a week later the guy came back in with the chain and tried to sell it to us. When I refused to buy it, he got angry. Then we showed him the security cam footage of him taking it. We weren’t even mad. Someone that dumb deserves to live his life that way until he walks out in front of a bus or into a wood chipper.
50. The Old Switcharoo
When I was a server, I was that server that everyone claims they would always be if they did one day become a server in a restaurant. I filled up glasses when they needed to be refilled without asking, I brought out a bowl of lemons if you asked for lemons; if you wanted extra ice, you got a whole extra glass full of ice. Heck, I was even careful enough to write down every order even though I could easily memorize it and get it right.
One particularly busy night, I’m working a party of about 20 people. It’s a Friday night and the kitchen is slammed. Everything was going smooth, I thought—until I bring out the drinks and salads. There is one idiot that starts off saying I didn’t bring her anything right (wrong dressing, drink had a lemon, too much ice, etc.). I play the gracious and apologetic server correcting the issue despite knowing she is wrong.
The meal comes out. It goes from bad to worse. She explodes about how I can’t seem to do anything right and what a screw up I am. I proceed to congratulate her on the fine example she is setting for the kids at the table on how to treat another human being, and what classy language she was using. I then proceeded to show her where I wrote down everything she asked for.
The type of salad, the dressing she wanted, how she wanted it on the side, pulled the straw I gave her from under her bread plate and told her that I did give her one. I also talked about how I heard when her sister had ordered another dish, that she told her sister that she wanted that dish instead, and advised that she maybe should have simply asked for me to change the order instead of trying to play it off as if I was truly a “screw up” as she claimed.
I said maybe next time she would do a better job of making sure the server was not in earshot when she says something like that. I then told her that I would go and have the kitchen fix the meal she really wanted, instead of the one she ordered, and that it would take about 10 minutes before it was ready. Needless to say, the whole table was quiet. Then came the most glorious moment.
Her father piped up and simply said, "Honey, It's about time someone called you out on your antics". The old man gave me a $100.00 tip when he paid for the meal, strong handshake, and a thanks.
51. On The Edge
When I was a kid, my family owned several pizza places. I didn't hang around them much because I was fairly young, but my older sisters worked at the big one waitressing and cashiering.
She told me that one night, the well-dressed father of a large family that had ordered several large pizzas tried to get out of paying for them because the pizza didn't have sauce/cheese/ingredients all the way to the "edge".
The family had eaten the entire pies except for the crusts. My sister refused to refund his money, he threw a huge fit and reduced my sister to tears. He kept yelling and demanded to see the owner—my dad. Dad came out, saw my sister sobbing, and got the story from one of the cooks. He didn't say a word.
He just slammed the guy's head through the wall and well into the store next door. The guy had to be taken away on a stretcher. The staff and a couple of customers told the authorities that the customer had tried to hit my sister so my dad wouldn’t get taken into custody. Dad didn't get physical often, but when he did, he played for keeps.
52. Greasing The Parts
At the time, I was the front desk receptionist at a car dealership that had an attached service and parts department. I dealt with all kinds of people, but this one customer particularly left me dumbfounded. It was around 7 pm, about an hour after the service and parts department had closed. The sales department was open until 8 pm, so I was just going about my business as usual.
A woman walked up to my desk and slammed a 19-liter jug of motor oil down on the counter. That scared me since I was looking away at the time. She immediately demanded that I sell her the oil. I was confused and just kind of...looked at her for a moment. There was no checkout counter at my desk as we were in an entirely different part of the building.
Also, where did she get that? The parts department was closed and the window into the storeroom was locked with a fold-down metal cage. I finally got myself together and told her that the parts department was closed and that I would be unable to sell anything. Her reaction was priceless. She immediately got angry, blowing her top while gesturing to the closest window demanding that I give her the oil.
I suggested for her to go to another shop nearby, as they were open until 9 pm. Surely, she could get oil there. She didn't like that answer and scoffed at me. "I need Kia brand oil, for my Kia brand car". She said it incredibly matter-of-factly and stared at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet. That again caught me off guard.
I have pretty bad anxiety, so I was still mentally and physically reeling from her slamming the bottle down and I was not getting very collected thoughts. I tried to explain that any brand of oil would do and that I'd be happy to help her figure out what would work best so she could pick it up there...but she just kept shaking her head at me.
Finally, she shouted out that she would just come back the following day, that I had been absolutely no help, and stormed out. I noticed then that she had a kid with her. What a great example she set for her children. I did figure out that she had pulled the oil jug down off of a display case in the service department. That was extra amusing to me, imagining someone taking something off of a clearly not-for-sale display shelf because she was mad.
We've all seen one of those comedic films or cartoons where one of the characters intends to eat something delicious and accidentally grabs something gross or inedible instead.
And surely at least a few of us have reached for the cookies and grabbed out of the box of dog biscuits next to it instead.
But some of us have accidentally eaten some truly disgusting things, and we may never be the same after reading some of these stories.
Redditor thestonefree asked:
"What's the worst thing you have accidentally eaten?"
Does This Still Count as "Stir-Fry"?
"I had been driving across the country for days without sleep, and my girlfriend wanted me to stop by some buffet restaurant she used to go to with her family."
"I put a variety of items on my plate without much thought, she walked off, and I didn't know where she went."
"So, instead of wandering around to find her, I sat at our table and proceeded to dig in as it had been several hours since I had last eaten. I noticed people were looking at me funny and seemed disgusted (especially the waitress), but I was too tired and hungry to care."
"After eating a couple of surprisingly bland and cold vegetables, I decided to chow down on what I had mistaken for dessert and realized I was eating frozen raw meat. It was a build-your-own stir-fry restaurant, and you were supposed to take your plate to get fried up, but I had no idea until my girlfriend came back with her plate..."
- SteveDeFacto
Those Weren't Raisins
"40 years ago, I ate Raisin Bran for breakfast one day, and it was stale and chewy. I ate it anyway."
"When I got to the bottom of the bowl, I noticed that it was full of maggots. I ran to the bathroom to vomit. I never ate Raisin Bran again."
- BulletDodger
A Taste for Space Travel
"When I was about 14 (1990), I was at my friend's house. He was talking about how he had just visited the space museum."
"He went to the bathroom and I saw he had some astronaut ice cream on his desk. I took a bite. It was horrible."
"When he came back, he informed me that was a piece of the shuttle heat shield."
- Whitworth
Enough Said
"Have you ever heard of a spit cup?"
"Yeah..."
- xipisiw577
Never Eat the Crumbs Again
"I ate the leftover crumbs of a bag of chips. They were kind of chewy and weird tasting. My dad put his toenail clippings in there."
- nadoba1473
Bad-Smelling Cookies
"My cat p**sed on a plate of cookies, and I figured it out the hard way."
- Breadfan69
Inconsistent Milk
"One time, I poured a glass of milk and it looked fine. I took a swig of milk, and it was fine, but then I took a second drink and got a big curd of congealed milk."
- matt-sikes
Traveling Bugs
"Bugs. So many bugs. Been riding motorcycles for the better part of 40 years. I've tasted many bugs from Pennsylvania to California. Louisiana has some real nasty tasting ones."
- khreper
Smoked Sprite
"I once drank from a large McDonald's soda cup (through the straw with the lid on), and the remnants of some Sprite and about 10 cigarettes and their ashes came up. My mom never smoked in the car again."
- xipisiw577
Not Easter Candy
"A robin's egg."
"I was a child, it was small and blue, and I thought it was candy. I felt SUPER guilty thinking that I killed a poor baby bird and it was only later that I realized the egg was already a goner when it ended up on the ground."
"Also, the egg was still white and yolk, I think I would be messed up to this day if it was a little birdy."
- mkicon
Stopped Up Gardening Hose
"Just a few days ago, I was trying to join two different kinds of tubing for a garden pond project and used super glue because that's what I had lying around."
"But no water came out, so to see if it was clogged, I sucked on it. Got a wad of still-uncured super glue stuck to the roof of my mouth and tooth. Luckily I didn't swallow it. It was weird but it just came off after a while, no permanent damage."
"It seemed extremely clever up until the moment it happened, upon which it seemed phenomenally stupid."
- msty2k
Faux Mashed Potatoes
"I ate pure hardened fat in the fridge thinking it was mashed potatoes."
"It took me three bites before I figured out my mistake."
- vaplex759
"Wh-why did you bite more than once?"
- MSRX-78-2
"Literally blind optimism, lol (laughing out loud). I thought ‘These are the weirdest textured mashed potatoes ever'... and then ’wow, there’s, like, no flavor’…"
- vaplex759
"WHY DID YOU BITE A THIRD TIME!?"
- MSRX-78-2
"I think I had too many tabs open in my brain while I was doing it."
- vaplex759
"That’s probably the best answer."
- MSRX-78-2
Caramel "Apples"
"You guys know caramel apples? Well, I ate a caramel onion. Some a-hole made them and put them on the counter as a prank. Fricking nasty."
- xayep54383
Angry Chips
"A bee. I was eating chips at recess and a bee flew into my chip bag and I didn’t realize."
"I put my hand in my chip bag, grabbed some chips, and a bee was mixed in with them and it stung the crap out of my tongue. 10/10 don’t recommend eating a bee."
- CanadianMuaxo
Chewing Something Else Instead
"I ate a fly in the ice at the bottom of my drink last week. I realized what it was just as I bit down to chew the ice. Horrifying."
- Taste_The__Rainbow
We are nothing short of unwell after reading these accounts of things that have accidentally been eaten.
From having too many tabs open in our brains to not realizing that there's an infestation in our home, these Redditors had no shortage of nightmare fuel to share.
The line between romantic relationships and friendships can be a blurry one.
But can you really be friends with someone you have sex with on a regular basis without crossing over into relationship territory?
No-strings-attached sex can work with some people and not so much with others.
It all depends on the chemistry between the two parties involved and how far they're willing to go.
Curious to hear from those who have consensually crossed the line with their friendships by fulfilling their carnal desire, Redditor Odd_Speech_2692 asked:
"People who has had friends with benefits, how did you feel and what is your relationship with them like now?"
There's no drama. It's just sex.
No Regrets
"Still friends."
"Was great, no regrets."
"You both need to be on the same page though that there is no romantic connection/compatibility and it’s just 'fun.'”
– captnmiss
"Same. Still fantastic friends, we talk everyday."
– pixiejane
Sexually Compatible
"I know them very well. Over 12 years."
"I’m having sex with them because I find them ABUNDANTLY attractive (they’re my type physically but not personality wise)."
"I also don’t know if I’m a good average data point. I have a way too high sex drive and don’t see sex/emotions the same way others seem to."
– captnmiss
Scratching The Itch
"Had a similar arrangement in my mid 20s with a friend I had known since 2nd grade. She used to come over to my apartment like 3 afternoons a week. After a couple weeks of this, she straight up told me that we should start having sex on her visits but just for fun. Made it VERY clear that it wasn't going to be romantic in any way, and we would just be two single people basically scratching an itch for each other and having fun together in a slightly unconventional way."
"It actually turned out great and lasted for about 3 or 4 months. She was awesome in bed, we had a lot of fun together, and are still very good friends to this day. She was one of my wife's bridesmaids in our wedding, and her husband was my best man. They are our best couple friends."
– BrilliantWeight
No One Needs To Know
"I have a few friends like this. Turned out great because we knew what we were getting into. It was great fun but don't let others know."
– TwinTTowers
The arrangement didn't work for everybody.
"We were on when neither of us had a boyfriend or girlfriend. When one of us was in a relationship we just stayed friends. It was super cool and chill and we could remain close without the sex. Then I got engaged, and she lost her sh*t. She was under the impression we were both playing the field until we got serious with each other. She drunkenly called me out at a friend's wedding in front of my future wife. I had to end the friendship. I never saw any of this coming."
– Scoob1978
"I had a wonderful FWB who I reconnected with many years after we both left the same school."
"I got a friend request some years later - turned out we worked near each other, and we met up for lunch in our respective lunch breaks. One thing led to another and soon we were meeting regularly just to shag each other. This carried on for several months, possibly longer."
"Then she caught the feels, and tearfully told me she couldn't do it any more. I felt awful. As far as I was concerned, we were great friends who shagged each other and we both knew what the score was. But she felt it had gone too far and didn't want to carry on because she knew she couldn't have me in the way she wanted."
In hindsight, she handled it in the best way. We've remained friends - we don't see each other, but we're still on each other's facebook.
A few years later, we did randomly bump into each other at a concert. We were both with our partners at the time and all four of us had a chat. My girlfriend didn't know her, and had never met her, and even though the banter was nothing more than friendly and not a bit flirty, for some reason my girlfriend clocked immediately that we were ex shaggers.
– eezgorriseadback
Common Outcome
"Typically they end with one side catching feelings and ending the friendship. I have a few that I still keep in touch with when I’m in their city."
– MFKaelSinister
When One Got Emotionally Attached
"100 percent correct. Had a fwb for about 10 years, met in college. Very random and infrequent hang outs. Once or twice a year. Once we got to late 20s and she was single, we did a couple happy hours that ended at my place, she caught feelings big time. I declined. She doesn’t talk to me anymore and that’s over."
– I-bmac-n
These FWB couples didn't see this coming.
From FWB To Couple
"It felt hot and exciting but also like close friends. He was very attractive, super fun to be around, and had a lot of qualities that I like (gamer, geek, funny as all hell). I was looking for a good time and he was down. After a few weeks, I needed to move and he offered to come live with him while I found an apt. Then the Pandemic happened..."
"We've been together since. I call it love, he calls it Stockholm. Was looking for silver, ended up with gold :)"
"Edit: Wow, I didn't think so many of you would appreciate our 'from FWB to couple' story! My partner is also a reddit user and we've enjoyed reading your comments and seeing this pop off. Thank you for the awards kind strangers! As for the person who gave the gold award: I see what you did there... well played xD"
– auramistress
Started As Fooling Around
"It's was fun. Was during college, a 100% zero commitment and just fooling around."
"Now celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary and have 4 kids. Someone didn't get the memo on just friends with benefits, but sure worked out nice."
– euesquecimeunome
Six Years Later...
"It felt exciting and fun. We got along very well. We'd often hangout and chill together."
"Anyway, we've been married 6 years."
– mkicon
Based on the responses, sexual situationships can work, but it's hard to determine whether or not it can last.
There are many variable to having an emotional disconnect with someone while enjoying an intimate, physical connection.
People's situations change as new people come in and out of their lives.
But the one thing worth contemplating when pursuing sex with someone on varying levels of acquaintance is, is it worth jeopardizing the friendship?
What are your thoughts?