Managers Reveal The Stupidest Reason Customers Have Asked To See Them

Lady, I think you've had enough.

Restaurant manager here.

We provide complimentary bread baskets on our dinner tables. One lady clicked me over (because who doesn't love that?) to tell me I was running the most unhygienic establishment that she had ever eaten in, and that, with her food hygiene level 3 certificate, she could and should have me shut down.

Why the fuss?

There was some "jam" on the bread, and I had clearly taken used breakfast stock and tried to cost cut by serving contaminated bread at dinner. I'd cut the bread not 10 minutes before, burning my hands on it as it was fresh out of the oven, definitely not leftovers.

I apologized profusely yet non committally, removing the offending bread amid increasingly patronizing comments about how I really ought to know how to run a restaurant and that being so thick as to do this blah blah blah...

On inspection, the red blobs of jam we're drips of red wine from the bottle next to the bread basket, that the lady had poured herself.

Needless to say, I wasn't shut down.

GingerNutsAndTeaBags

Nope.

I've worked in bars for 9/10 years, from a teen, right through uni and manage a bar. This happened when I was supervisor not manager.

Real quiet night, we have a horseshoe shaped bar so when it's quiet like to have one staff member on either end of the bar and one in the middle so all sides are covered and customers are served as quick as possible. The regular customers know how this system works.

The girl who was covering the middle of the bar had gone to the toilet/to collect some glasses or whatever. One of the regulars walks up and I head over to serve him, he refuses my service for no apparent reason. As soon as the girl who was originally there comes back the regular gets angry... "where the f#&k have you been? I've been waiting ages!" She explains whatever the reason was and he's still shouting, I head over and ask him politely to stop shouting and ask him what he'd like to drink (again).

He kept on and on and on, swearing at us both until I told him I wasn't getting a drink for the rest of the evening and to go home or go somewhere else. The guy gets even angrier, and lunges towards me over the bar with a clenched fist. What he obviously didn't pay attention to was the shelves above the bar for storing glasses, THWACK. Guy smashes his forehead straight into the shelf, all the other regulars laugh.

He loses his mind, and asks to speak to my manager (who was in sight of the whole ordeal and keeping a close eye on things), and tries to get him to punish me for causing him a "serious injury." We all laughed in his face and he sure as hell isn't a regular in this pub anymore!

TL;DR: regular customer gets angry for no reason, tries to punch me, whacks his head pretty hard, then asks my manager to punish me for causing him harm.

callumsill

Ohh...kay...

Used to be front office manager in a hotel. In our rooms we had three phones. One next to the bed, one in the bathroom and one on the desk. This is already a lot but in the past we also had an additional 4th phone on the side table. So one day a customer asked to see me requesting the 4th phone because you could clearly see the telephone socket in the wall (neatly covered) and thus his room was not complete. I asked him why he needed 4 phones in his room, he said because clearly in the past there were 4 phones and that's what he paid for (we didn't advertise online with 4 phones, but i had maintenance bring up a forth phone nonetheless).

steun88

Where it this crazy hotel?

(I also managed a hotel)

Front desk calls me and asks me if we have any spare Bibles because room XX is asking for one. I happily oblige and walk it over myself. I apologize and hand it over to the man. Casually ask him if he normally reads the Bible.

"No... I just like to have it. Just in case."

Me: (thinking to myself) Just in case what?! The rapture happens all of a sudden?!

"Oh ok! Good night sir."

huazzy

Managed a hotel in rural Georgia (the State in the U.S) and I get a call from our front desk clerk saying someone wants to talk to me.

I head over and this woman just wants to inform me that "she was going to stay at this hotel but noticed that we hire 'them Mexicans' (pointing at our housekeepers) so she won't be staying here anymore."

I politely told her they're Guatemalan and that I appreciate her opinion but don't need her business.

This set her off and she proceeded to go on a rant about how she knows the Sheriff and she'll report me for hiring Illegals (they weren't), and how we were racist, ageist, and sexist against her.

I told her to please do so and pointed at the CCTV.

She stormed off and the Sheriff never showed up.

huazzy

When you try to pull a fast one, and it backfires spectacularly.

I had this insane woman flag me down at a Chinese Restaurant I used to manage.

She very loudly told me she found a hair in her Mongolian lamb, and showed me a long sauce covered blonde hair. For reference, I had short black hair at the time and the entire kitchen and wait staff on that night had relatively short black hair. The woman had long blonde hair.

Instead of letting her cause more of a scene, I apologized and got the kitchen to make her a new serving to replace the meal (even though she and her kids had essentially eaten the entire serving already.)

The part where sh!t started to really go down was when she came up with her family to pay. She refused to pay her ENTIRE bill due to the "HUGE THICK HAIR I FOUND IN MY FOOD" which she loudly announced to the room. At this point, the restaurant owner came out and started having a screaming match with the woman for trying to rip us off. Her kids appeared to cry on cue.

I sent my boss back to the kitchen and said I would figure it out. I turned to the woman and explained calmly that I would be happy to take the Mongolian Lamb off of her tally (despite the replacement serving) so long as she paid the other $90+ for the rest of the bill.

She refused and called the cops because my boss had yelled at her. No joke.

Best bit was the cops ended up telling the woman she needs to pay her full bill and that emergency services shouldn't be called for such petty reasons.

Happy I'm not in that industry anymore haha...

TLDR; Lady tries to use her own hair to get out of paying for her table's food. Aussie Cops provide quality sass.

ness_davis

When a customer doesn't know how beer works.

Because a bartender properly poured a beer. It was Stella in the Stella chalice. It's listed in the menu as 13.5 oz and that's the fill line. Dude asked the bartender to top him off as the head had died down a bit. Bartender does so and the guy wants the head completely poured off. Bartender points out the fill line and says that he can't just pour away beer (head is mostly beer). Customer takes this as attitude.

Dude doesn't like it and comes to me and since I hadn't heard this, I immediately point out the fill line. He ended up returning the beer.

I like to think that he had to go to the bathroom where he would have walked passed that lame 9-step perfect Stella pour poster that we have that specifically references the fill line and that the beer is supposed to have head.

Oh, and I had to spend a solid 5 minutes explaining sales tax and how it applies at a restaurant, but not at a grocer.

HikerTrash5102916

All this over half a dollar.

Quite a few years ago I was working at a pizza chain and I had someone call in and ask an employee if we would honor a coupon that was over a week expired. My employee told her that we couldn't honor it but he would ask me. Before he got the chance to ask me she decided to make a big fuss/was fairly disrespectful to my employee and wanted to speak to me about it directly. She complained saying it was only expired by "a few days." I backed what my employee had told her, we wouldn't be honoring it.

About 20 minutes later we got a call from her again and this time I had answered. She didn't make it the whole way through asking if we would honor before I told her the answer was still no. We had caller ID so I knew it was her again.

About an hour after the second call the employee who took the first call comes back to me saying there is a woman at the front of the store who wanted to speak to me about him not honoring a coupon. It was the same expired coupon. She told me that she would be going elsewhere for pizza from that point on because our service was terrible, specifically that not honoring an expired coupon for a loyal customer (I had never seen her before and we had no records of orders from her) was "bad business." I told her she was welcome to go elsewhere.

The ultimate kicker is that the coupon was for 50 cents off any order. It wasn't a big deal and I would have absolutely honored it had she not treated my employee like sh!t on the phone.

Tl;dr - customer was rude to my employee so I wouldn't honor her expired coupon.

themonkeyswrench

I have nothing to add.

Asking me what the showtimes were.

They demanded I come over to guest service where they stood tapping their foot impatiently. Keep in mind I am in another part of the building, so it takes me several minutes to walk all the way there.

I get to guest service and ask them what the issue is. They say "We need to know the show times for today" I give them a weird look, as the box office is literally right outside the doors with a huge marquee displaying the digital showtimes. We also had a huge digital maquee sign on the inside of the building in the lobby displaying all of the current showtimes. It was also a weekday, so it was slow.

"We have the showtimes outside on the display board in box office.." I mistakenly told them.

"Well its COLD outside."

This really baffled me as it was nearly 60 degrees that day and the husband was wearing shorts (60 is warm as I live in the northeast) After reading them some showtimes they got mad "Well don't you have anything right now??"

I told them that no, we did not have anything starting in the next five minutes.

They stormed off without buying any tickets.

Don't know how someone ends up that entitled/stupid and complains about standing outside in spring weather.

CatBusExpress

Of all the stories on here, this one confuses me most. What did they hope to gain by making you repeat the showtimes? How bored do you have to be to find enjoyment in that, and then not even stay for a show?

sardonyxLostSoul

There always seems to be a paradox between these people having extremely high standards for the delivery and certain little aspects of the product but extremely low standards on the product itself. She was willing to see any crappy movie that started soon, obviously not some kind of film buff that just flew in from Cannes. Same with these people that have melt downs over fast food, or long lines at them. I witnessed a lady at a very crowded convenience store (surrounded by several nice coffee shops btw) yelling at a busy worker because they were ALMOST out of lids and cream, she was able to get everything but every time he tried to ask her what she needed she yelled "just do your job!"

Goose1963

If you're gonna sneak in, be nice.

Was the casino beverage manager in Vegas and was covering the pool bar manager that day.

It was in the middle of summer and the pool team calls me saying an irate woman wanted to speak to the manager.

I make my way out there in 100F heat, while wearing my suit and tie.

This lady was seated in the VIP area and was complaining that her margarita had melted within 10 minutes and wanted me to give her a replacement as it "melted too fast".

Last I checked, being a beverage manager didn't give me control of the elements nor the laws of thermal dynamics. But, I tried to reason with her that it was 100F and we can't prevent ice from melting (but I sure as hell was melting in the sun with my black suit). She was totally livid and insisted that either we get her a replacement or to put her partially consumed drink back into the blender with more ice. Reblending the drink was never gonna happen as it violates a bunch of health codes.

I turned to the pool manager and asked, "Did anyone verify her VIP status?" as VIP guests have an assigned casino host which would liaise with me directly, or I would know who the VIP guests are during the pre-shift brief.

Long story short, she snuck into the VIP area, so I got security to kick her out of the pool in a blink.

Vooshka

This is wholesome content.

Good ending story,

Was a manager for a Music/game cd store back in 2007-9.

Was called in for an old grumpy man returning a CD which was not working.

He was nearly crying, the CD was expensive. It was all very scratched like it went through sandpaper.

We had a no-return policy after the package was opened, as these were original CD's. He came in claiming that the CD was not working.

We usually tested if the CD, if it played and didn't skip, we just gave it back. I tested the CD it actually played.

After a conversation, it did not work in his car, which was parked just outside the shop.

I went with him, perhaps he was not pressing the wrong button.

After arriving at the car and looking at the stereo, it had no CD player, he managed to jam the CD between the dash and the tape player, it did not play, so he removed part of the dash and took it out, and tried again.

After explaining this to him, he literally was crying.

I was unable to refund the CD under the policy. And the CD actually played because the plastic was damaged, but the top was not.

Thinking he will have a heart attack, and feeling sorry for him, I offered to copy the CD to a Tape, and he can keep the CD for when he gets a CD player.

I copied the CD to a tape, he was happy, and later returned to the shop many to buy tapes, was really friendly to me, saying I remind him of his son who died in the war (while being super grumpy at everybody else) and brought pastry his wife made as gifts every time he came.

TL:DR Gramps stuffed CD in tape player, messed it up, I copied CD to Tape. He became a regular and brought homemade pastry.

Thejagwtf

What a surprise.

Customer comes to the bar and demands to speak to the manager, won't say why, won't deal with anyone else. He's told I'm not working for another 3 hours and says he'll wait, stands at the bar angrily. Staff call upstairs to me (I live up there) and explain he's just standing there tutting. He realises they're on the phone to me and gets angry because I'm upstairs and won't speak to him.

Went down and asked the problem. "When X ran this pub he used to have Mild on tap for me. You don't. It's disgraceful, what am I mean to drink now?"

I explained that yes, X did stock Mild and when I arrived I audited the stock and realised most of the barrel was getting wasted every week. So I stopped ordering it and switched to an ale that would sell. Dickhead is still angry and says if I order it he'll drink it. I tell him he'll have to drink 9 gallons in 3 days. Still adamant I should order it. So I told him I'd order a barrel, and if it didn't sell he could pay for the wastage.

I got a spare barrel from another pub, tapped it, waited and surprise surprise, he had one pint that week and sheepishly vanished forever.

lastorderstime

These people are so annoying.

I worked at a Toyota dealership and a salesman said his customer asked to speak to the manager because Jesus told her that we would provide her with a car. I asked her if Jesus was paying cash or financing. She literally expected us to just go, "Oh ok, well...pick out whatever tickles your fancy!"

UncleCornPone

As a server I got "Tipped" in Jesus pamphlets every Sunday. I thought about asking them if instead they could pray that Jesus would pay my light bill instead of sending me Bible pamphlets.

Randibug91

The nerve!

Not a manager, but I once had a woman ask me, very rudely, to get her a manager "this instant" because my behavior was "completely unnacceptable."

She'd asked me where something was and I simply said "It's over in (section), I'd show you over but unfortunately I'm tied up with another customer at the moment. Once I'm finished with her I can meet you over there and we can look for it together, or I can call on the radio and see if anyone's able to meet you there sooner."

tappytapper

"It's over in (section), I'd show you over but unfortunately I'm tied up with another customer at the moment. Once I'm finished with her I can meet you over there and we can look for it together, or I can call on the radio and see if anyone's able to meet you there sooner."

Woah woah how the hell do you type these words here? It's the internet, kids can access this stuff!!

Leeiteee

The best part is the other customer was with me and as soon as we left the rude one she went "the f*ck was her problem?"

tappytapper

When they think the rules don't apply to them.

I get called over for a price match for a Lego set. I get there, and it's clearly a clearance price from a different location, which is a policy exclusion, of which I inform him.

shows receipt "It's from a different location! You have to honor it!"

"Clearance differs from store to store, but regardless, the price match policy excludes clearance pricing."

"So I'll call customer service and if they overrule you, you'll do it."

I walk away while he makes his call. Of course, he doesn't get his way because the policy is available for literally anyone to read before doing all this horse sh*t.

TL;DR: Just because it's clearance there doesn't mean it is or is going to be here.

smartasskeith

Ahh hahahahaha. Damn you physics!

I worked at a marine business for a number of years. I was the head buyer for a long time. One of the things we sold was anchor chain, we sold a lot of chain for boats. We would buy it in bulk and sell it for the same amount as online retailers when you account for shipping. In a lot of cases we sell 250'+ to a single buyer.

I had a customer come in and want to buy 250' of 3/8" chain, this stuff weighed right around 2lbs per foot. He wasn't happy with the price that was listed and asked the sales staff for someone higher up, I was the only one available and had to go deal with this. He pulled up the internet and showed me this place that was 3 states away had it for sales slightly cheaper than what we sold it for. I told him we wouldn't price match and he'd still have to pay shipping. The guy says "No I don't, I'll drive to go get it." Great, go get it.

Fast forward two weeks, guy comes in and I asked about his purchase. Yes, he did buy it and yes he did drive three states away to pick it up in his HONDA CIVIC HATCHBACK. He blew out both rear shocks because the dumbass didn't account for the weight of 250' of anchor chain in the back of a car. It was pure vindication.

-Glaxx-

He blew out both rear shocks because the dumbass didn't account for the weight of 250' of anchor chain in the back of a car.

I used to work at a lumber yard driving a forklift and I can't tell you how many times someone screamed at me for not putting 2,000 pounds of cement block or concrete in the back of a small S10 truck or loading 700 pounds of lumber on top of a luxury SUV. People are just dumb.

DasBarenJager

These are the same people who expect you to show up at their house and help unload it for them.

Attention_Defecit

It must be for free and god help you if tell them there will be a delivery charge.

-Glaxx-