Employees Are Sharing The Dumbest Things Customers Have Ever Asked Them, And I Fear They Do NOT Get Paid Enough For This Nonsense
A hot minute ago, I asked BuzzFeed readers with customer-facing jobs to share the wildest, dumbest, and most entitled things customers have ever said to them. Listen, I was expecting some pretty jaw-dropping stories, but I severely overestimated how much common sense the average customer has, it seems. So, here are 27 positively wild encounters they shared:
Hey, you! Yeah, you! Are you someone who works in a service industry or a customer-facing job like these people? Do you have a dumb or entitled customer horror story? If so, drop it in the comments or in this completely anonymous form for the chance to be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community article.
1."I once worked at a local bakery cafe. This man ordered a cup of water and a cup of apple cider. I gave them to him, and he came back five minutes later, asking which was the water. I slowly said, 'The cup with clear liquid…'"
—Anonymous
2."Worked at a hardware store. A customer was buying bolts and didn’t know how to tighten them. I told him to turn it clockwise. He didn’t know what that meant and said all the clocks in his house were digital."
—Anonymous
3."I work for a National Forest. There's been a lot. I have a little old lady who calls every so often to ask, in complete seriousness, if there have been any sightings of Bigfoot recently so she knows where to avoid. There was a guy who complained about too many trees....in the National Forest."
—Anonymous
4."I work at a hotel in New Mexico. I get at least one call a month asking if we accept 'American dollars' to pay for the hotel stay. I wish I was joking..."
—Anonymous
5."I worked for a major internet access company doing phone tech support in the early 2000s. A customer was having trouble accessing some of their products online, so I asked them to use their username and password in an online email platform our service company also owned. This was a frequent test to narrow down the issue between typos in passwords or authentication server issues. I asked the user to go to hotmail.com. After a long pause, I asked if everything was OK. He said there were naked men on his screen. I re-emphasized hotMAIL.com."
—Anonymous
6."I worked in customer service at the phone company, back when we had landlines. A customer called to complain that the cord from the wall to her phone was too long. She asked if we could pull on it from our end to make it shorter..."
—Anonymous
7."I once worked at an Island Resort surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. The resort was on a bluff overlooking a beautiful cove. The bar's view was down the cove to the open waters. I can’t tell you how many times a patron would ask the servers for the name of ‘that lake.’"
—Anonymous
8."A customer walked into the coffee shop I worked at and asked if they could sprinkle some of their deceased loved one's ashes onto their latte. I politely declined and explained that it was against health regulations to serve food or beverages with human remains in them."
—Anonymous
9."I had a lady on the phone yesterday tell me that she could no longer reply to an email we had sent her because she had forwarded it to someone else. I tried to explain, with no luck, that the original email would still be in her inbox unless she deleted it. She said she did not delete it, but restated that forwarding it meant she couldn't reply to it. We went around for a bit, and eventually, I just told her I'd verbally relay her message, but in the future, she needed to reply to our emails before forwarding them to anyone else."
10."I was asked, 'Do you have Shakespeare, but in English?'"
—Anonymous
11."I worked at a Whole Foods, and this woman brought in a receipt for bone-in chicken thighs that she had bought the night before. She said she wanted a refund because she put the chicken thighs in the blender to cut them up and they broke the machine."
—Anonymous
12."I'm a hotel night auditor. I had a guest come late night/very early morning. They had just made a reservation online, and since it was after midnight, the reservation was technically for the next night. I told them I could either check them in right now and we would have to charge for two nights, or they could check in at 3 p.m. and only pay for the one night. The guest asked, 'Can I check in at 3 p.m. now?'"
13."I work at an NHL arena. You know, ICE hockey. Had a girl look me dead in the eyes and ask me why it was so cold. ICE hockey, dear. ICE."
14."I worked at Starbucks, but at a licensed store inside a grocery store. At the height of COVID, we were the only Starbucks open in my town, as — being in the grocery store — we were deemed 'essential.' I remember having a customer come up to the counter and ask for their 'regular.' I had never seen this person before, so I had no idea what their regular drink was. I explained this to them, and they said, 'Well, the workers at the other Starbucks know my drink.' No, Starbucks employees do not report their regulars to the other stores. This person thought that the employees from that store would have reported each person's drink to us because we were the only one open."
—Anonymous
15."I worked on a cruise ship for several years. One day, I was on a stairway going up. There was a flat area just ahead of me. A lady was standing on the flat area when she called down to her elderly husband and said, 'Honey, be careful, there's gravity up here.'"
—Anonymous
16."Many years ago, I was a bank teller. An irate customer came to my window once and demanded to know why the bank was bouncing her checks. I looked at her account, and sure enough, she was severely overdrawn. When I explained this to her, she responded, 'How can I be overdrawn — I still have unused checks in my checkbook!'"
—Anonymous
17."I bartended at this bar, and they had a sign over the bar that said, 'Free beer tomorrow.' This one guy came in, saw the sign, and asked if it was true. I said it was and he waited until after midnight, wanting his free beer. When he asked, I told him to read the sign again. He got pissed off and left. You guessed it — he came back again the next day and waited until midnight again for his free beer. I had to let him off the hook and tell him that it was a joke sign because he was so serious. I never saw him again, after that, thank god!"
—Anonymous
18."I work for an HOA Management company. In the summer, we take reservations for various clubhouses and pools within the HOAs. I had a woman call and yell at me because she rented the pool over the weekend, and it rained. She insisted that she made that reservation well in advance and that rain shouldn't have happened. I guess, in addition to reservations, she thought we controlled the weather!"
—Anonymous
19."We actually had a 'stupid question box' at a restaurant I worked at. We would throw in a dollar with every dumb question we were asked. We read them after closing on Friday nights and awarded the pot to the person with the worst one. Some of my favorites: 'Can I get the crab bisque without the crab?' 'Are the Alaskan king crab legs local (we were in South Carolina)?' 'Can you heat up my steak without cooking it more?' and the classic, 'How many come in a dozen?'
—Anonymous
20."A friend of mine worked in a bookstore in a college town. Two college-aged ladies came up to the counter and asked what the difference between fiction and non-fiction was. Guess there’s a reason Oklahoma is ranked 50/50 in education."
—Anonymous
21."I worked at a Michael’s craft store. One day, an older woman walked in and asked me where she could find the paint for glass. I took her to the aisle where the paint for glass and stained glass was. She immediately became frustrated and said, 'No! I want to paint glass! Like a picture of glass! Like on a canvas! Where’s your clear paint?' I explained to her that if she wanted to paint a picture of glass, it required painting with all types of colors, depending on what was actually reflected in the glass. Now more frustrated at the fact that she had to put in the work to be an artist, she said, 'So, you don’t have any clear paint?' I replied, explaining that it wasn't how painting a picture of glass was done. She left, angry that she still couldn’t grasp how to do it."
—Anonymous
22."One time, someone wanted to return a necklace because it broke. I said sure and asked if she had it with her. 'No, but I have a picture of it on my phone!'' She proceeded to show me the picture of the broken necklace (which was still at her house) and was confused as to why I couldn't do the return when she didn’t even physically have the product with her."
23."I used to work at Trader Joe’s. A customer came in and was standing near the frozen fish section. I asked her if she needed any help, and she asked where the grass-fed fish was kept. Knowing full well that there is no such thing as grass-fed fish, I politely corrected her by saying, 'Oh, do you mean the wild-caught fish?' and showed her where it was. She got upset at me and said, 'NO! I want the grass-fed fish, I buy it here all the time. Now where is it?' I just said, 'Lady, fish DON’T EAT GRASS,' then turned and walked away."
—Anonymous
24."I work in airport security. I had a woman insist her bottle of wine didn’t count as a liquid because it was 'dry wine.' The worst thing is, I’ve encountered this misunderstanding MULTIPLE times. I also had a woman who brought a five-page essay she had written on why dry shampoo wasn’t a liquid. It included pictures and citations from the government website with the rules. She’s not wrong — it isn’t a liquid. But the exact same website she was quoting from clarified it still fell under aerosol and was restricted to 100ml or less."
—Anonymous
25."A customer gave us a bad review online because the bath toy boats they bought from us floated...just like they are supposed to."
—Anonymous
26."I work at a restaurant. I've had customers ask what type of cheese was on the turkey and cheddar melt, if the BBQ pork ribs were pork or beef, and order virgin daiquiris, then complain that they can't taste the alcohol."
—Anonymous
27.And lastly, "I worked in a hospital as a financial counselor years back. A patient had given birth and asked for assistance completing her portion of the birth certificate application. I asked her if she’d picked a name for her baby girl. She said the baby's first name was Female —the name given by the doctor when the baby was delivered, and that was written on the bassinette..."
—Anonymous
Service workers of BuzzFeed, now it's your turn! Have you ever had a bonkers customer experience like these? If so, tell us about the absolute dumbest thing a customer has ever asked of you in the comments below or via this 100% anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
