All of us have experienced a weird customer service situation, but can you say you've experienced something this ridiculous?
Canadian McDonalds
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“Chances are this shall get buried but I shall post my tale nonetheless. I went to McDonalds a few years ago in Alberta. I went with a friend of mine, and we just both happened to be gay. In a laughing sort of situation he said that we should pretend to be dating. I asked if he was suicidal and he said “Well It’ll be funny to see the reactions.” He held my hand and put his head on my shoulder. We shuffled up and I ordered my food and I also said “And my fiancé here will have a (insert insanely fattening meal here)”. My friend, Jake, put this massive dopey grin on his face and reached up and kissed me. Me, being fairly good at improv, kissed back. The server, who before this had already seemed ill at ease, refused to serve us. He stood there with a defiant look on his face, refusing to fill our order. When I asked what was wrong he looked at me and said ‘I’m not letting some filth sucking homo-faggots get the right to eat here.’ I, taken aback, immediately responded with telling him to go get his manager. He refused. I asked again. He refused. Jake decided it was time to drop the charade and tried to explain that it was a joke. The server said ‘No, you’re both fags. I watched you kissed and I can see you both have a hard-on for shoving it in each others asses.’ I had no boner. We stood there for a few minutes, trying to argue sense into this moron and we saw a flash of a managers shirt outside. I told Jake to go get him. Jake runs out, gets the manager, and hauls him back in. The manager is standing there on the floor with me and Jake and I’m trying to explain to the manager how server is being a massive f*ck-tart. By now we’ve gathered a small group of people watching, including a couple of other servers. The manager looks at me and says “I don’t see what the problem is here. You don’t deserve rights” and walked away. One of the people in the ‘audience’ comes over. He’s dressed in a suit and he says he’s going to sue the place on behalf of us if he doesn’t serve us. The manager still refuses. The guy in the suit, who turns out to be a lawyer named Andrew, says that he needs to provide the owners information anyway. We get the phone number of the guy who owns the place. He says he’ll be right there and he arrives. He then proceeds to fire the server and the manager in front of us as well as giving us free coupons and a free meal.” Source
Weirdest Dinner Ever
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“Twenty years ago, my fiancé and I drove to Vegas for the weekend – we lived near LA, so it was about a 5 hour drive. Late Monday night, on the way back to LA, we stopped at the state line to get a bite to eat. In those days there were just the two casinos on either side of the highway, and not the mini-metropolis that is there now. The casino was almost completely empty, and the casino restaurant was deserted, except for us. The place had a weird airplanes-and-clowns theme, was way too brightly lit, and the colors were bright orange and yellow – it was hideous. Like a McDonald’s, but without the charm. Being so empty, late at night, being the state line, being so nauseatingly decorated, we were resigned to a meal a cut below Denny’s. We slid into a plastic orange booth that might have come out of a Taco Bell. The server came over promptly – it was like he just appeared out of thin air. He handed us the menu, but announced that they had a special – seafood, steak, whatever, I forget – but it sounded good and it was half the cost of of the highest priced item on the menu, so we went with it. The first thing to arrive was the Caesar Salad. Only instead of bringing out salads on plates, the waiter brought out a cart and parked it at our table. He then proceeded to hand craft the Caesar dressing right there, a little anchovy (he asked us first), mustard, and what ever the f_ck else – Worcestershire, lemon, garlic, capers, but it was like the Benihana of Caesar Salad right there. Chop, chop, wham, bam. And it was perfect. I mean, perfect – The anchovy was just strong enough, but not overpowering, everything else was in balance, the tartness of the capers, the sour of the lemon, all working together like a goddamn chamber orchestra. It was nothing less than amazing. Best Caesar salad I have ever had, before or since. The food came pretty quickly, and it was expertly prepared. It was f_cking exquisite. And you know how servers in already empty restaurants are sometimes like ghosts? You just never see them? This guy was a god among waiters – he knew exactly when to show up, not too much, not too little, just at the right times. Well, the food was incredible, and as the waiter cleared the table, he suggested dessert. I always need coffee, so a little dessert sounded good and the food had been so good we figured how the hell could we miss it. It’s a little hazy, but we ordered some sort of peaches and ice cream dessert. The waiter said he was going to need some help with this one, and he disappeared, only to return with another cart, and a woman he introduced as his manager. They set to whipping up a storm on the cart – evidently they had to make the syrup for the peaches right there with whiskey and what not – they created a couple of huge fireballs that went whoosh! Yeah!! And the ice cream had to be done just so – it was a f*cking spectacle. It was perfect. The perfect balance of warmth, a hint of alcohol, the tender juicy peaches and the sweet cold ice cream…damn. Naturally the coffee was outstanding as well – rich, black, and smooth. Then the bill came. You know how I said the special was half the price? The total bill, with dessert, salad and meal, for two of us – was less than twenty dollars. Less. than. twenty. dollars. Best goddamn meal I have ever had. The setting was hideous, the expectations were low – but the service was excellent, the food was amazing, and the price was downright shocking. If I recall correctly, we gave him a twenty dollar tip, too. It wasn’t enough, but hey, just over 100%, and I didn’t have too much money in those days. I’ve gone back and looked for the restaurant, but it’s gone now. They have built and rebuilt the places so much, nothing’s recognizable, and to be honest I am not sure which side of the highway we were on. I’ll never forget that goddawful decor, though.” Source
Chain Of Command
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“This was a few years ago when the Dark Knight came out. My dad and I were waiting in line to get into the theatre. We were both pretty excited, as seeing Batman movies together had been a tradition since I was a little kid. My dad and I are chatting when he said he hopes the show starts soon. At that point, the staff member motoring the line storms over and yells ‘what did you just call me?’ Nothing, my dad said, we’re just waiting to see the movie. Turns out the guy thought my dad had called him an asshole. ‘No, I know what I heard. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ I step in and say there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. Then the staff says ‘get out, and take your shit of a son with you.’ Not wanting to make a scene in the line, my dad and I left. We went downstairs to the ticket counter, and ask to talk to the manager. My dad explained what happened, what was said, and that seeing as we couldn’t see the movie, we’d like our money back. The manager says that the employee had already called down to him, and said he believed him over us any day, and that we had to leave out else he’d call the cops. We ended up calling the head office, and told them what happened. Last we heard, both got sacked.” Source
Ghost Waitress
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“My parents and I decided to try a new, trendy pizza place right around the corner from my apartment one night last month. We decide to sit outside because the weather was nice and they had a big patio and a side deck. Everyone working at this place had an attitude, from the hostess who seated us to the waitress taking our orders. They made us feel like a huge inconvenience, but we were hungry and had heard the pizza was good so we tried to look past that. As soon as we are seated on the patio the girl offers to lower the shades because the sun was setting and was directly in our line of sight. We say that would be great and a guy comes out and lowers the blinds for us. We order our drinks and look over the menu. Not even five minutes later a young guy comes to our table incredibly pissed off that the blinds were lowered. In a very condescending manner, he tells us that he’s going to have to raise the blinds because they trap heat in the patio ultimately raising the patio temperature about 20 degrees. My dad politely tells him that the sun is in our eyes and that they really shouldn’t offer to lower the shades if it’s going to cause a problem. The guy snaps. He is incredibly disrespectful toward my father and goes on a tangent assuring us that the sun would set and even going as far as to take his sunglasses off of his head and offering them to my dad. He’s young, maybe 25, and treating us like we’re imbeciles saying that our request to lower the shades would make the other customers less comfortable. Whatever, they raise the blinds and we question whether or not we’ll stay to order food. We stay. Our drinks arrive and we take a few more minutes to look over the menu. The waitress is nowhere to be found. We sit they in awkward silence trying to get past what had just happened. Other tables are seated and the hostess offers to lower the shades for each table. We finish our drinks and the waitress still hasn’t returned to take our order. We contemplate leaving but she finally shows and we order. The food came out cold, but one of the managers was walking around asking how everything was. We told him about the sunglasses prick and he was furious. I haven’t seen the guy working there since.” Source
Must Be Good Cuban Sandwiches
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“Once I went to a place known for it’s cuban sandwiches with my family. We were all really excited, because we like food in my family. So we get our drinks and everything seems fine. We were seated immediately and everyone was really nice. Our waitress brings us our drinks and says she’ll be back in a bit to take our food orders. We’re conversing and such so we don’t notice immediately how long it is taking for our waitress to come back. We wait another twenty minutes just in case. The place is pretty empty, so eventually we ask another server if they know what happened to our server. He says he’ll go check, but that he’ll take our food orders if we’re ready to speed up the process. Things seem on the up and up, so we stop worrying. About 45 minutes later my dad is about to explode. It doesn’t take that long to make 4 sandwiches. He’s about to go complain when, as if on cue, our waitress comes running and screaming out of the kitchen and goes right on out the front door. Everyone goes completely silent and just watches the front door for a couple seconds. It turns out she had a nervous breakdown right about when we ordered her food. She had been just pacing around in the kitchen slowly becoming unhinged. The manager apologized and we got free sandwiches. The moral of the story though, is that you never know what is going on with your server. Maybe they’re going a bad job, but they might be on the edge of snapping entirely. Source
Self Checkout
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“Getting away from restaurants, last year I was going trough the self checkout at Kroger late one night. There were a few other people at said self checkout, but it was far from busy. I attempted to scan an item that was on clearance, and it brings up the ‘wait for attendant’ message. I see the kid working the section talking to another coworker about 20 feet away. The hand modules they use have an ignore function, so they don’t have to come over every time someone doesn’t know how to use the machines (95% of the time). Dude hits the ignore button. I know it wasn’t gonna scan without his approval, so I hit the “call attendant” button. He presses ignore again. This happens 8 times. When I finally went over to ask him for help, he bolted to the back before I could catch him. I wasn’t pissed, just annoyed. So I left the self check to go get in a regular line. Just so happened that a manager was walking by and asked if I was having issues, since I was leaving self checkout. I told her what had happened and she was furious. Never saw that kid at Kroger again.” Source
Bad Experience
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“In America there is a place called ‘Denny’s’ and it is always open. The food is so-so, the service is usually good. The breakfasts and treats are pretty good. My wife was very sick, and in the hospital. One of those things where you spend days in the hospital just waiting to get better. I would stay with her after work until the hospital shooed me out a couple of hours after the end of visiting hours. Then I’d realize I’m tired and famished, stop to grab a bite at the local burger place then go home. Tonight was going to be different though, it was 9:30, and I wanted dinner. Denny’s it was! I ordered the chicken fried steak with side veggies from the menu, and got a soda, and started reading a book as I waited for my order. The book was really good. 40 minutes later, I realized I didn’t have my food! I called the waitress and asked how long it takes the chef to cook dinner, and she went to check. She returned with my food, a very cold Chicken Sandwich with fries. WTF? Okay, apparently it’s someone else’s dinner. So I complained. She went back to the kitchen. A few minutes later I see her walking out the door, and saying ‘Goodnight’ to the other servers. Another waitress comes to my table and asks me if I’m ready to give my order now. I’ve rarely been this mad in a restaurant. I was quietly furious, and asked what the hell happened to my chicken fried steak? The new waitress didn’t know so we got the manager over. Apparently there had been a shift change. New waitress, new cook. Me left between the cracks. So I told them, ‘Fine, I’ll take my chicken fried steak dinner, on the house.’ ‘I’m sorry sir,’ said the manager. ‘It’s after 10pm, and we don’t serve some dinner items after 10.’ ‘It was on the menu!’ ‘Yes, it is on our regular dinner menu, after 10PM we use the ‘late night’ menu.’ ‘I ordered my chicken fried steak BEFORE 10, so I expect that for dinner!’ ‘I’m sorry sir, but our day chef is gone. Our night chef isn’t familiar with that item.’ That was it. I made a scene. I blew up and yelled at the manager. Then I left. Source
Hotel Problems
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“Last weekend I went to the beach with my friend. We had booked a hotel room with TWO queen beds. For whatever reason, there was an administrative error and the hotel had forgotten to reserve our room. We get there are and there are no rooms with 2 beds left. The front desk agent was very apologetic and offered us an extra room at no charge (because duh, they fucked up) until the owner of the place moseyed on in and instead said ‘NO, if you want 2 rooms, you’re going to pay for 2 rooms’ and asked us why we couldn’t just sleep together in a king bed, which is not really his business and if we WANTED TO SHARE A BED we would’ve booked a room with one bed instead of specifically booking a room with two. If we had known they were out of rooms, we would’ve gone somewhere else. At that point he insisted on us staying in one room with a cot, which I said was bullshit because one of us is sleeping on a cot, and it’s not something we agreed to pay for. Eventually, after 2 hours of arguing, he f*cked off and his son (who is the part owner and the one who suggested giving us 2 rooms for the cost of one in the first place) let us have 2 rooms. His dad is clearly in the wrong fucking business.” Source
Come At Me Bro
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“There’s a Subway that recently opened right across the street from my house. I started eating $5 footlongs every day. It was glorious. Not only was it extremely convenient, but the service was better than any subway I had ever been to, by far. Fast, the sandwiches were made great, the girls were talkative and flirty. There was one downside. The guy who worked most nights was a short, surly bastard who was always being an asshole or trying to intimidate you, which was pretty easy due to his bulk and full sleeve tattoos, also those tear drop tattoos, which if I’m not mistaken are prison tats. Every time I’d go in there, I’d say ‘hey hows it going?’ he would answer with a grunt or just ask ‘what sandwich you want.’ I’d get through my order has he threw meat and veggies around all willy nilly creating the most disheveled, sad looking sandwiches I’ve ever seen. After going there a few times with this experience, me and a girlfriend of mine go in one night. I go through the same routine. My friend asks a question about the gluten free sandwiches and dude drops his mop to the ground (he had started mopping right after my sandwich was made without asking girl if she wanted anything) and says “Are you serious? CAN’T YOU SEE THE PICTURE?!” and gestures toward a picture of a gluten free sandwich. My friend is shocked and says something like ‘you know what, fuck you man, you’re a prick’ and storms out. I say ‘wow great customer service man.’ He answers ‘What?! You asked a question and I answered it!’ He was doing the ‘come at me bro’ stance and had a fury in his eyes as if I had just insulted his entire immediate and extended family. Asshole. Source
Lucky Hostess
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“I used to be a hostess in a Pizzeria chain that based out of Chicago. I came to work in one in NY and I’ll never forget this family of 8 gave me –THE HOSTESS — a $25 tip on a $50 bill all because they hated their waitress and I was the one that kept refilling their drinks. Waitress was beyond pissed, but manager said to her ‘Should have been paying more attention..the tips is hers.’ Best day ever. Source
Cutesy Email Girl
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“Well, I have one from the opposite side… I used to work at the cancellation dept. of a major ISP (who shall remain nameless) our schtick was basically they call, try to cancel, we either talk them out of it, or bribe them out of it with free time, or refunds or whatever it takes. Now, it was a stressful job, because this ISP sucked, and because it was lower end and the customers tended to be not on the more technical side of things. So, we got a great variety of calls that made us feel like sh*t on a daily basis. Once, when the servers were down I spent 12 hours getting screamed at by people because i couldn’t cancel their accounts. One man put every single member of his entire family of 5 on the phone to scream at me. sigh. Anyway…this one time, i get a woman. she sounds young,and she has a cutesy email address. i go into my schtick about her bill, and how its important to have internet. I hear kids, so i go into the whole important for school thing. So, I try that. She’s pretty nice, and tells me that she would love to keep it but she can’t. So, I go through the whole, well, if it’s something we can fix yada yada. nope. She tells me that her and her two sons have just moved into a homeless shelter, and that her husband died. She really wants to keep the account, and she wants to desperately keep the email because she has a bunch of resumes out. But she can’t even afford the 2 dollars to keep the email account open. So, I put her on hold and go to cancel her account. I must have sat there for a few seconds thinking. Just staring at her billing history. She had paid religiously. So i had an idea. I refunded her. Every single payment she had ever made. It took me a little while, and when i went back to the phone I tried explaining to her that because of her financial trouble she was getting a refund. She didn’t understand at first. I had to repeat myself a few times, and then explain exactly what i had done. Her card had been cancelled because of nonpayment, but I had just dumped several hundred dollars in refunds into it. I had payed off her credit card. She wept. Not just sobs, or sniffles. Openly wept like a child. It got all emotional, thanking me and crying and having her little kids say thank you. It was nice. Source
Not My Dad
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“I was at an awesome bbq place in Fort Worth with a bunch of friends. Our server was a bit goofy. He was funny, really nice, but kind of distant. He just seemed like he didn’t seem suited to waiting tables. He got our drinks and orders wrong, but it was hard to be upset. The WTF? moment wasn’t bad or good. It was just weird. He had a huge red beard, and I said, “Dude, your beard is awesome!” He then said, “Thanks! My neighbor has one just like it. Some people think he’s my dad, but hes not my dad. I’ve met my dad.” Then he just walked away without saying anything.” Source
Don’t Say That!
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“I was out to dinner with my family. We sit down, order out drinks, and so far everything is going nicely. The waitress comes, and we order. When it gets to my mom, she orders what she wants, and the waitress responds with ‘If you’re on a diet, you don’t want that.’ My mom had said nothing whatsoever about being on a diet. She is slightly overweight, and I mean very slightly. She is self conscious and it’s difficult to even get her to come out to eat with us. My mom simply said ‘I’m not on a diet’ with a cold stare. The waitress turned red in the face and walked off to place our orders.” Source
Go Back To School
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“I’m from New Hampshire. When I was going to college in Florida, I had a gas station cashier refuse to sell me cigarettes because I showed her my ID and she didn’t believe that New Hampshire was a state.” Source
Too Complicated
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“I’ve been refused alcohol in NC because my NY license was too ‘complicated’ The lady thought that because it had all the crazy holograms on it, that it was a fake.” Source