Few things test your limits as much as working with clients. Even one workdaycan bring so many bizarre momentsthat you might start doubting the brightness of humanity’s future.So Reddit userDashigosdecided to dig further and asked people to share the silliest questions customers have ever thrown at them.From pizza chefs to park rangers and call center employees, continue scrolling to check out what these and other professions have to deal with—whatever they’re getting paid, it’s probably not enough.This post may includeaffiliate links.
Few things test your limits as much as working with clients. Even one workdaycan bring so many bizarre momentsthat you might start doubting the brightness of humanity’s future.
So Reddit userDashigosdecided to dig further and asked people to share the silliest questions customers have ever thrown at them.
From pizza chefs to park rangers and call center employees, continue scrolling to check out what these and other professions have to deal with—whatever they’re getting paid, it’s probably not enough.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
I used to work at the UPS store in high school. Our last pickup was at 7:00 and we closed at 8:00 pm. Since we had private information and people’s personal mailboxes in the store, security was a big deal.It was 8:30. Our tills were counted down, the alarm was set, our copiers, fax machine, and computers were shut down, our lights were off, and we had closed and locked a ginormous red gate that separated the entrance from the rest of the store.Some woman ran up to the door, and like some demon in a horror movie, she hurled herself against the glass and screeched like a banshee.Keep in mind, we are very obviously closed with a sign saying we are closed, no lights on, and a giant red gate drawn down over the store.She began pounding on the glass and frantically yelling at us. My coworker worried something was wrong, like maybe she was being chased and needed help.He carefully opened the door just a crack to ask what was wrong. She immediately tried to wedge her hands and head in the crack and asked “Are ya’ll open?” We informed her that we obviously weren’t.Her logic was “well you opened the door so now you have to help me”.She began wailing and crying that she had to mail a package. We explained that even if we were open, our last pick up was an hour and a half ago and we couldn’t even mail it until tomorrow.She protested and protested and we eventually got the door shut and locked. So we just stood there awkwardly in the dark, hoping she would leave. She kept pounding on the glass and saying “I know you’re open!!!!”As we debated what to do and if we should call the cops, this lady pulled out her cell phone and called the cops herself!The cops arrived, we explained the situation, and the woman accused us of lying, despite the sign on the door saying we closed an hour ago at this point.Then, in front of the officer and on security camera, the woman launched herself at my coworker and hit him in the face. She immediately jumped back and began fake crying that he had assaulted her.We were dumbfounded. She ended up getting arrested and my coworker pressed charges.So the stupidest question I got was “Are you open?”.
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I used to work at Enterprise Rent-A-Car (We’ll pick you up!). I went to pick up a customer (worth noting she was renting a car for a weekend getaway), called her when I got to her apt, and she came downstairs and had this conversation:Lady: Ok, I’ll follow you back to the officeMe (confused): I’m here to pick you up and drive you back to the office.Lady: What am I supposed to do with my car?Me: Were you planning on leaving your car at our lot over the weekend?Lady: NoMe (more confused): Why are you going to follow me in your car? I can drive you back to the office, finish the paperwork, and you can take the rental car from there.Lady (not grasping the concept): Well how are you going to get back?Me: I’ll drive us both, in this rental car, back to the office, where we can do the paperwork and you can take the rental car from there. That way, your personal car is still at your apt. And when you return the car on Monday, you can drive the rental car back to us, we’ll close out the paperwork, and we’ll give you a ride home. Sound like a plan?Lady: That doesn’t make sense. You’re making this way too difficult. I’ll just follow you in my car.Me (thinking the customer is always right!): Ok!We get back to the office, I finish the paperwork (still astonished she qualified to rent a car), and hand her the keys to the car.Lady: Ok, how do I get my car back to my apt?Me: …Lady: Can you drive my car back to my apt?Me: I’m not authorized to drive your car. You’re welcome to leave it here on the lot over the weekend if you want.Lady: Ok, can you drive the rental car and follow me back to my house so I can drop off my car?Me: This is what I was trying to do when I picked you up! There was no need to take 2 cars.Lady: I’d like to speak to your manager.
This will be buried but hopefully it makes someone laugh. Worked at an animal hospital and a woman made an appointment for her dog for lumps on his stomach.She comes in, sees the doctor, only to be told that the strange lumps were the dogs NIPPLES.She dead a*s said, “But he’s a boy!“Apparently she has either never seen a man without a shirt or forgot that males also have nipples.
A woman came to the check out and handed me a bag of mozzarella. She asked me what the ingredients were and if there were any chemicals in it. I turned the bag around and started to read the ingredients out to her. She grabbed the bag out of my hand, angrily said “I could have done that myself " and stormed off.
I worked at a convenience store while in college. This married couple comes in and they go get drinks. The lady asks me if the bottle water is fat free. I smile and just, yes and that brand is also calorie free. She smiled and said thanks. Her husband gets out his wallet, shakes his head, and pays.
When I was a teenager I had a customer try to fight me because we didn’t do the taco Tuesday discount for him.It was the weekend.
Customer: Aren’t those apples $2.49 a pound? Why are you charging me more than that?Me: motions to screen Yep. They’re $2.49 a pound and you bought 2.3 pounds and so, the price is correct because that’s how multiplication works.
No lie, I volunteer at Stonehenge and was asked when in the Bible it was created. That was more perplexing than the usual UFO questions.
I used to work in IKEA in the section which sold wardrobes. Big behemoths of things. Normally around 6 foot long and 60kg in boxes. Customers would regularly ask me would it fit in their car. After being polite the first few times asking them about the size of their car and guessing, I then just started asking them what colour their car was. The amount of people who’d answer unphased was amazing.
I once had a customer ask me if our wine was on sale because it was about to expire. Our good, aged red wine.EDIT: the customer also insisted that she get a discount because the wine bottle did not have an exp. Date..
I had a customer take up 10 minutes of my time saying that I didn’t know how to do my job because I couldn’t find the “nutritional facts” placard on a carton of cigarettes.Why, you who walk around with your head full of brains, may ask?She needed, NEEDED, to know if these Timeless Times pieceoshit cigarettes contained corn syrup in them. Because, dontchaknow, the corn syrup in bad for her.
Many years ago managing a pet store, a customer came in with an empty bottle of oral skin and coat supplement. He wanted a refund because it made his dog’s coat really greasy. So as I start working on his refund I ask a few questions, trying to find out why the product failed. I ask the standard questions, did you use too much, how often. Stuff like that.As we are conversing it started to click that he didn’t use this on his dogs food he used it like a shampoo and rubbed it on his coat. So I nicely explain that it is oral skin and coat supplement and it’s intended to be put on the dog’s food.He was embarrassed and apologized and started to leave refusing the refund. I gave him a new bottle in exchange for the now empty one and told him to give it another shot.The guy was really nice and understanding about it, but come on. The instructions tell you how much to put ON THE FOOD, and it’s called oral skin and coat.
When I worked in a call center for home phone service, I had a guy call and angrily ask why we were still charging him for his phone service, since he had unplugged his phone from the wall a month ago.
Worked in retail.Regularly had customers ask to take the clothes out of the store and come back and pay later.Like… absolutely not? Most were also flabbergasted when I told them no.
I thought it was the dumbest thing but it turned out not to be.I was working at a department store and this guy comes up to me and he shows me two of the exact same sweater. He’s like, “Which one is burgundy?” They were both burgundy because they are the exact same sweater and I’m like… what is this dude smoking? Or I thought I was being punked or something. And he sees me hesitating and he’s like, “Like… which one is more wine-red?” So finally I just point at one and he’s like, “Oh, thank you so much. I’m colorblind and I can’t really distinguish this range of color.”.
Working at a famous Mouse-based theme park “Can you shut off the rain now”, “is there pork in the pulled pork sandwich?”
Web developer here.I had a client who was absolutely livid – literally screaming at me – when I told her she couldn’t take the hyperlinked words from her webpage, transfer them over to her print ad, and still have them function like a link.
I used to work in a phone shop.Had someone come in asking why their phone wasn’t working properly. It was visibly scorched and melty. I asked why it looked that way. They said, it came up with an error message saying it had been too cold (not an error message I had heard of before, but I know phones can bring up errors for being too hot, so who knows) and so they had put it under the grill to heat it up.The grill.Their first point of call was to cook it.I said, that’s why their phone wasn’t working, and no it was not covered under the guarantee.
Working at a state park in Maine:When do deer turn into moose?
I sell stamps from my register at work. This was just a few days ago, actually. I had a lady come up and ask to buy some postal stamps.I asked her, “how many stamps would you like? We sell them in books of 2, 10, and 20.”Her: “…what? What does that mean?”Me: “it’s just the number of stamps in the book. Do you want 2, 10, or 20 stamps?”Her: (suddenly getting angry) “I don’t know what that means. What is a stamp? I don’t know what a stamp is”Me: ???I eventually sold 20 stamps to her while she was vaguely hostile and suspicious about the entire concept of stamps and stamp quantities? I don’t know how to explain this to you, lady, you’re the one who came to me for stamps.
Used to work at a movie store in the early 2000s, this dude with a thick accent kept calling in every other few weeks or so asking if we had this movie on DVD called “Churro Man"I mean this guy called a lot, and I told him that no such movie existed in our system but he was adamant he’d seen it on a release schedule.Finally a couple of months later, some guy walked up to me and asks me for the movie. I immediately recognize the voice and know who it is, after a few questions in person I realized what the movie was all along. The whole time he’d been looking for True Romance and it had indeed just come out on DVD, the accent threw me off.Turns out it wasn’t a dumb question and that I in fact was the dumb one.
I used to work in a pet store. One night a woman came in and said she had ordered a puppy off the internet and he would be arriving in the next few days. She had never owned a pet and asked several dumb questions, but the one that I’ll always remember is “Do puppies need water?”.
Karen - “I’d like to speak to the manager"Me - “I am the manager…..and the only person working here today"Karen - “I don’t like this policy. I want to speak to the owner"Me - “Good luck with that. Their email is on the company cards available on the desk. And I’ll include my cell number…..just because I’m interested to hear how it goes for you"Oh boy did I get a pissed off text from her later that night hahaha.
“What time do you close today?““We’re open 24/7.““Oh great! And what time do you close tomorrow?”.
Used to work at a car parts store. Customer walks in and asks if vegetable oil was better than regular engine oil and what isle it was on.
Customer: I’ll have a gin and tonic.Me: This is a brewery.Customer: Oh, can I get a glass of wine then?Me: This is a brewery.
Context - I was 16 during thisI work at chick fil a and I’m taking orders as you do, guy walks up and asks “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”. I look down at the clock and see it’s 6 pm. I look at him confused and say “No it’s 6 pm”. He asks again, I say the same thing again.Then he yells “Alright, F**K YOU” and leaves.
Is the fire of your pizza oven organic?
Standing next to a pallet of eggs, with boxes of eggs in my hand and freshly unloaded ones on the shelf in front me. “Do you sell eggs?”.
Do you have Raisin Bran, but without the raisins?Bran flakes?>No, that’s not it…
IT, got a ticket from a lady saying her screen is blank. I call, because I saw her in orientation and to be honest she seemed to have never used a computer before (despite being 19, and her title as a receptionist).“Ma’am is your computer on?““I don’t know, how would I check?"coworker next to her grunts and turns on computer for her“Oh! Ok it’s on, now do I have to type out my username AND password to log on?"”………………………..“No words could properly describe how I felt in that moment.
“Can I return the box for a full refund? The thing was stolen so I don’t have any use for it now.“Umm, not here, no. Call your insurance company.
A client asked me if I had the day off. While I was at work.
I’m a chef at a grill. We also have a buffet for people who don’t want something we grill.One night, the special was a type of seasoned fish. An old guy came up and asked “is this freshly caught?” I thought he was kidding so I kind of chuckled as I told him that no, we order it and get it frozen. He was pissed and made a scene as he left saying that only a crappy restaurant served frozen fish.I was in south-central Pennsylvania.
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In the realm of client interactions, there’s an often unspoken truth about the trials it can impose, much akin to the world of parenting. Just as a mother navigates the complex interactions with her teenage child, professionals face equally challenging and unpredictable scenarios with clients.This dynamic is reminiscent of the struggles parents face when setting boundaries, as explained in the concept of ensuringenforcing necessary limitsfor teenagers.
In the realm of client interactions, there’s an often unspoken truth about the trials it can impose, much akin to the world of parenting. Just as a mother navigates the complex interactions with her teenage child, professionals face equally challenging and unpredictable scenarios with clients.
This dynamic is reminiscent of the struggles parents face when setting boundaries, as explained in the concept of ensuringenforcing necessary limitsfor teenagers.
I worked at staples and I had a customer ask if the printer toner was ‘ethically sourced’.This lady really thought laser printer toner was squeezed out of squids or some s**t.
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I work in IT and one day received a ticket from a customer very angry that a link on our website was broken. When I asked what the link was to or where it was trying to go (because our site has thousands of pages), they were incensed that I dared to ask them questions and wouldn’t just fix it immediately. Sure, dude, I’ll get right on checking the hundreds of thousands of links on our site and hope I find the one you clicked on in the next 3 minutes because you refuse to give me more information.They complained to my manager.
hands me bag of gummy wormsHer: are there chemicals in this?Me: yeshands me bag of plantain chipsHer: what about this? It’s natural!Me: ma’am, there’s chemicals in everythingHer: fine! I’m just take this thenhands me a bottle of diet coke.
It wasn’t a question, but I once had a customer threaten that she’d “never shop here again!”… two weeks before the store closed for good. There were signs all over the store and this was pretty big news in the city so there was no way she didn’t know how empty her threat was.
I worked at a Dollar Tree on Black Friday. “where are your Black Friday deals?” “We don’t have any. Everything is still a Dollar.” People were pissed.
Customer: “Why is it so dark outside all of a sudden?!?“Me: “The sun went down, mam”.
“why doesn’t my app make any money for me? it is published and people are installing it!“app price: freein-app purchases: noneads: nonegee guy, I f*****g wonder.
I work as a nurse at a hospital. On multiple occasions during small talk, my patients will ask me what I do for a living.
Many years ago I worked at Home Depot.One time I had a customer come up and ask me how to access the parking lot that’s on the roof.I told him that we didn’t have a parking lot on the roof.He didn’t believe me, got super pissed off, and stormed out of the store to look for the access to the rooftop parking lot.__Another time I had a customer looking for a replacement cartridge for a faucet that he didn’t have with him. If you don’t know, there’s literally hundreds of different types of cartridges.Anyway, I asked him what make and model of faucet he had, and he responded with:“You’re the one that works in the plumbing department. YOU TELL ME.“I told him that there’s absolutely no way I could know what type of faucet he had in his home. The guy labelled me as racist and then stormed off.__Another time I had a customer come up and ask me where the cat food was.
“I’d like the sirloin, medium rare with no pink.” Literally my first week on the floor waiting tables.Also “you charge for drinks from the bar? Why didn’t you tell us?”My favorite is when a guy asked what we charge per 2oz shot compared to the cost of the bottle and then said we were ripping him off. I really wanted to condescendingly explain capitalism to him but I didn’t have time.
I used to work at a Turkish kebab/fish and chip shop with a wee sandwich cabinet.A customer asked if she could have a ham sandwich and I told her that we didn’t sell pig products as we were a Halal store.She than said “ok in that case can I have a bacon and egg sandwich?“No.
I used to work at a retail nursery in the tree and shrub department. I had a customer tell me to extra water a bush he was buying because he didn’t want to have to water it until he planted it in two weeks.
customer walks in the front door (company name on the door he opened), looks around, sees me “Am I in the right place?“I don’t know buddy; you tell me.
Customer; “Why can’t you honor CVS’s sales???“Me; “Because this a Walgreen’s, ma’am.“Customer; " SO??“Edit: To those mentioning a price match option, you are totally correct, and this was a gross oversimplification of the situation, and I apologize for that.What I was meaning to get across was the sense of entitlement that some customers could show.Sometimes a customer got confused, thinking that they were in a CVS and when something wouldn’t ring up ‘right’ they got very irate, very quick. They would ask; “isn’t it supposed to be on sale”, while rolling their eyes and handing me a CVS sale booklet.Kinda like that thing where you wear your work shirt to another business and people start asking you questions, only to get mad at you when you say you dont work there lol.
My first Christmas Eve working retail I had a customer ask for a LEGO set that the store was out of. I politely told him this and he followed up with does another store have it and I informed him that no store within 150 mile had it. His finale question was if we were going to be getting anymore before Christmas and I told him no again. Now, this wouldn’t have been so bad, except, he came back and repeated the three questions every half hour.
Lady walks into the empty restaurant, looks around, asks “is this a furniture store?”.
(Answering phone calls at local zoo)“So what do ya do, come in and look at animals?”.
“Do i need electricity for the internet to work?” Specifically when refering to cable internet.
I worked as a cashier at a supermarket and someone said that the prices in the store are high. She then asked if I could do something about it.
“The line is huge, and this thing is not expensive at all. Can you give it to me for free?”.
Customer walks into Home Depot: Where’s your shoe department?WTF.
Is this organic? pointing at sour patch kids.
I had a customer asked me where we sold alcoholic water. Not hard seltzer, literally bottled water with alcohol in it. She refused to believe me when I told her we didn’t sell it and proceeded to ask three other people where it was.
“Do you guys serve spaghetti?” I work at a Jimmy John’s. We dont even heat up the subs. He was a semi regular customer too.
“So you know those yellow glasses for night driving? Do you have those for night driving but in a reading glass?“You want to wear reading glasses… While driving. At night. Yeah. Uh. No. We don’t have reading glasses for night driving.
Worked at Starbucks. A guy requested “extra macchiato” on his caramel macchiato. I looked at him and asked “You want me to extra mark the foam?”. Then he looked at me and asked what macchiato even was.
If a bacon cheeseburger comes with cheese on it.
Yes does the PBJ have peanuts in it?
Had a homeless woman try to buy vodka with old recipts and random business cards and such. I had to explain that the dollar amount on an old recipt is not currency and cannot be used to pay for something.
Customer: “What’s my Facebook password?”.
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