Last place I worked at that actually banned customers was at a pizza place in a college town that did a lot of late night deliveries back when restaurants delivered their own food.
Bounced checks, being rude to employees, not being there when the delivery driver arrived were the biggest ones. After hitting a critical mass on fraternities we started banning the whole fraternity if we ran into issues and they sorted that out fast by getting their members to behave better and other people would volunteer to buy the pizza if the person fell asleep or couldn’t be found. Pretty much everyone who screwed up was given another chance by paying off their balance and the bounced check fee or apologizing to staff.
There was also one guy who never tipped and kept calling and saying is pizza was wrong so the owner made his pizza one night and delivered it himself, then banned the guy when he called and lied about the delivery. He was banned for life along with the people who were racist/sexist. The owner was a jerk when it came to his ridiculous capitalist expectations, but he did defend his employees from external assholes.
The owner was a jerk when it came to his ridiculous capitalist expectations, but he did defend his employees from external assholes.
The number of bosses I’ve had that were massive assholes, but had the mentality of “only I get to abuse these employees” is amusingly high.
I think some of them just lack people skills. I had this one manager that nobody liked and was rather prickly, but she very quickly kicked out an asshole customer and then immediately checked to make sure I was okay after. She cared, and actually did more for us than most of the rest of management, but her people skills were terrible.
Legit props to them, but my unpopular opinion: these people shouldn’t be bosses. Like, at all. At my job, myself and my coworkers do all the work compared to my direct supervisors. When my previous boss got sick for an extended time, the work still got done. When they retired, and a search process was in progress to find a replacement, the work was still done. All of it.
Management is about dealing with people and unexpected situations. If you can’t do that, why the fuck are you paid more than the people that put in the time and are literally solving the problems all day, every day!?
As someone without much people skills, I take this opportunity to say fuck your glass ceiling idea for people like me. Thank god for the free market, where if someone consents to work for me, they can.
Wow, classy. And what a lucky wage-slave they will be to get stuck with you…
It was the rare occasion of someone being so stupid that they accidentally started their own cell phone scam.
This guy could not decide on what phone he wanted. He had two plans with all of his relatives on them. Whenever someone became eligible for a contract renewal, he would buy himself a phone and give his old one to one of those relatives. He also was very picky, and would try to return his phones for dumb reasons like “I haven’t turned my phone off since I got it, and now it’s running slow.”
He would hop between different stores and customer service to get warranty replacements for his older phones, and exchanges for new ones, and because he was passing phones between accounts, a phone that he had for a year, would look like it was just bought a few days ago, so he would be offered a brand new one, or the option to try another model. When he came into my store complaining, something didn’t seem right, so I spent an entire day researching where all his phones came from and where they went. I discovered that for years, he was costing us thousands of dollars burning through brand new phones and requesting credits for his inconvenience.
The last time we told him that we couldn’t help him, he said he’d never come back, we thanked him.
I’m really glad someone out there is costing these companies money.
So many times it’s AT&T and Verizon selling you an “insurance plan” for your phone that still requires you to pay $99-$300 if you actuality need your phone replaced. That’s objectively worse than no “insurance”.
Maybe I’d feel differently about it if I had that pro-capitalist “your loss is my gain” mindset… and also owned shares in AT&T. But being a human capable of empathy and humanity, AT&T and Verizon just disgust me.
You’re not wrong. There were times I felt pretty dirty doing what they asked of me in order to close more sales. I worked with some decent people who cared more about the customer’s needs, and some shitty ones that cared more about that commission check.
This guy was a real asshole on top of it all, and he was trying to pull it off on my watch, so, no regrets on shutting him down. I’m sure he’s still pulling similar shit at other stores.
One of my previous customers was a mentally ill and delusional elderly lady. She called me about a non-existent plumbing problem in her house, supposedly caused by her neighbor, who she claimed breaks in and messes with her stuff. According to her, everything wrong inside or outside her house was because of her neighbor’s sabotage. She even mentioned plans to kill him. Not exactly the kind of person you want to turn your back on, but also someone who would have been extremely easy to take advantage of. I basically talked her out of redoing the entire plumbing in her bathroom, and we finally settled on me re-aligning her kitchen cabinet doors that - yes, you guessed it - her neighbor had ‘messed with.’
It was quite sad, really. She asked me twice whether I thought her stories sounded crazy, so she was clearly somewhat aware of her condition. I just didn’t know how to deal with someone like that. I refuse to lie, but I also don’t want to tell her she’s losing it. I don’t mind senile people, but I didn’t feel safe around her.
My brother in law is like that. He’s been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and his drivers license has been suspended after an unrelated episode 10 years ago. He’s harmless, and perfectly capable of getting it unsuspended if he puts in some effort, but he can’t because:
- His doctor is out to sabotage his life
- Someone is tapping into his phone
- This lady on the other side of town is stealing his mail
- His PC had been bugged
…allegedly.
He sometimes takes his meds, but it’s rare. Those are the days when he’s out and about and reasonably normal.
how old is he? it tends to get better the older the person gets. (quick edit as I just realized what people will think. it will not go away. I mean get better in that they tend to get better about taking medication and are less likely to go off and do the really nutty stuff)
45ish
She asked me twice whether I thought her stories sounded crazy, so she was clearly somewhat aware of her condition.
Not necessarily.
It’s very likely everyone in her life were telling her it’s all in her head, she gets mad and says she’s not crazy…
Then calls random repair people, tells them the story. And asks “am I crazy” because most businesses would never say that to a client. She was looking for validation, the same way people go fishing for compliments saying stuff like “I’m so bad at my job, I don’t know how you all put up with me”. Even if it’s true and they’re dead weight, most people will be polite and reassure them.
I just didn’t know how to deal with someone like that
Tell them that they should relay their concerns to a medical professional if they’re concerned.
If they’re seriously doubting their delusions, they’ll go get help and thank you for the advice.
More likely they’ll realize you’re not giving them what they want, get mad, and often blame you for being involved in the conspiracy.
But there’s a chance they actually get help.
Any kind of acceptance of their beliefs, no matter how tentative, reinforces it and drives them further into the delusion. Depending on how involved her family is, she might have called them immediately, and after cussing them out said even the plumber agrees she’s not crazy.
Hundreds of gigabytes of horse porn, right in a folder on his desktop called “horse”. The thumbnail of the folder made it incredibly clear what the folder was and what was in it, which was made extra clear by the max zoom his desktop icons were set to. (it was like, no joke, almost 1/10th the screen).
Fun fact: that was the day I learned my state doesn’t have mandatory reporting laws for animal abuse, only csam.
That moment when you take the advice to ride a horse the wrong way.
bill helped his brother jack, off a horse
bill helped his brother jack off a horse
Commas are important, who knew? If only he had paid attention in English class!
This was on a company computer? It was humans + horses? I initially thought this was horses + horses until your last paragraph. Just a weird dude who really enjoyed watching horses get it on with each other lol
Personal computer taken to a company help desk, humans + horses
Freelance welding on my days off. A customer wanted to hire me to make a fence gate, but he didn’t have solid blueprints. He had a crude sketch drawn on a scrap of paper, but no specific measurements. I offered to come by and take measurements, but he didn’t even have a fence base to take measurements off of.
Essentially, he wanted me to construct a property fence gate of unspecified size and install it to a nonexistent perimeter fence. I told him these issues, but he didn’t care. He wanted me to build this fence gate, but he didn’t know what size, what materials, and where to install it.
I fired him. A welder’s reputation means everything. I’m not about to make a thing for a customer who doesn’t actually know what he wants. I did him a favor by walking away and not taking his money.
I would have made a gate per the drawing.
To 1:1 scale.
The spite sounds fun, but giving the customer what they ask for when they want a shit job is still going to reflect badly on you. A lot of the time, potentially problematic customers should just be directed elsewhere to make their data someone else’s problem.
Whether or not you gave them exactly what they asked for, if they don’t have a realistic vision/hardware/site you’re setting them up for a bad time, and they’ll bitch about you because you couldn’t translate the ephemeral concept of an idea that never left their skull into something that looked good or they wanted, and they’ll be sure to tell everyone who made the mess they’re unhappy with.
No tiny gate for you, then!
He touched a waitress in a way she didn’t want to be touched.
He was creepin’ on other customers. When he was asked to tone it down, especially when it came to talking to minors, he got mad and started yelling and shoving chairs.
Worked in a little delicatessen shop for a couple of years. The local drunkard got banned because they got cross with the owner of the neighboring tobacco shop (this was back when those were still common) and did a protest pee inside that shop.
Word spread fast among the shop owners in that area and the drunkard was banned from all of them.
Once, they wouldn’t leave when I asked so I went up to them and showed them out. On the doorstep they turned around, looked me in the eyes and pleaded that it was their birthday. Pretty sad. Probably a lie but pretty sad nonetheless.He made threats at gunpoint.
Maybe don’t point a gun at them and they’ll be less agressive.
Woman was clearly mentally ill, extremely belligerent, seeking tech support. At some point, store manager was saying something about trying to accommodate her and she said, “You don’t get points for trying.” Store manager turned around and said, “Call security.”
Phone support later called us to arrange help and I explained that she wasn’t welcome and would have to go to a different store. Fortunately, there are many where I live and she didn’t have to travel very far if she accepted that answer (dunno the outcome).
I can’t say exactly why, other than maybe causing drama or simply because nobody wanted to enable her addiction, but where I used to live there was a well known alcoholic homeless lady that was banned from every single store in town that sold alcohol. I always felt bad for her, being the very epitome of the stereotype of homelessness. Where you couldn’t just give her money, because she would just drown herself in booze. Made running into her awkward because she was, at least to me, nice as hell but fuck if I knew how to actually help.
