It’s a typical day at the store, and everything seems to be going just fine. You’re helping customers with your trademark smile, trying to navigate through their unique requests, when suddenly, it happens – that one customer who pushes all the wrong buttons. Maybe they’re having a bad day, or perhaps they’re just determined to cause a stir. Whatever the reason, their words ignite a spark in you, and before you know it, a witty retort escapes your lips. It feels satisfying, even empowering in the heat of the moment. But then reality sets in. That little burst of sass, however, warranted it may have seemed at the time, has consequences – big ones. As our brave storytellers will reveal, some of these interactions ended in the ultimate plot twist: an unexpected pink slip.
A woman came into a charity shop and complained about every single item loudly to the ten or so customers in there. Along the lines of “This is all sh*t. Who pays for this?” Like we’re some boutique with clothes from the back of a van. She clearly didn’t understand how rarely new clothes (still tagged etc) are donated. Then she got in my face about it. I was so angry with her for chasing away the people that came in that I lost my cool. There was nobody left except her since she’d ranted them into leaving. I told her to get out and I ‘didn’t give a sh*t’ about the clothes or her opinions. She screams her way out of the shop broadcasting it to everyone on the street.
She came back once the manager was off their break and complained again, so I lost my job fairly soon after. I can’t blame them, I’d have done the same.
Lost my position at a vet clinic. The story goes like this: a woman brought in her 5-year-old dog that had diarrhea for the past week and was untreated for it. She was tired of the dog messing in the house…so instead of having the dog treated for the condition she decided she would rather just have the dog put down. I proceeded to call her a dumb b*tch while explaining to her the responsibilities that are involved when you decide you want to have a pet. I was fired…I never looked back.
Working at Burger King many years ago. I was working the drive-thru register, which was close enough to the front registers that I could hear conversations. One of my co-workers was taking an order from a lady who kept asking how much her total was, and then cancelling food on it and changing her mind. I guess she was trying to keep under a certain dollar amount?
Well at the Burger King I worked at, any cancelled food on an order needed a manager’s password (thanks to one a**hole who stole money by putting in someone’s order, telling them the total, and then canceling out the order and pocketing the money). So the manager had come by 3 or 4 times at that point. This was during dinnertime, mind you, so there was a line of customers out the door waiting to order.
Finally, my co-worker pulled out a pad of paper and a calculator. He started writing this woman’s order down and totaling it out by hand. The woman asked him why he was doing that, and he told her “When you make up your mind about what you want, then I’ll put it in the register.”
This pissed off the lady, so she grabbed the notebook and tried to hit my co-worker with it. He snatched it back from her and told her “Get the f*ck out.” My manager was only going to write him up for it (since the manager agreed that the lady absolutely deserved it, but my manager had to follow company policy), but he already had two writeups on file so she had to fire him.
Many a year ago I worked at a home improvement store called Menards. I was a cart pusher, which was nice as I was outside all the time. Anyway, we gather about 25-30 shopping carts together and push them up to the entrance where they are stored inside. Now to get them there we do have to cross the main drive of the parking lot in front of the store. We always stop and let customers drive by. So as I push the carts up I stop because I see a guy in a pretty nice SUV. He is actually stopped in front of the entrance maybe he dropped someone off I do not know. So I’m waiting to see if he drives off and he then looks at me and waves me across, looks like he wanted to finish a call he had gotten or something. So I wave back and start pushing the carts across. I am on the other side when some clips me across the shoulder blades and it stung somewhat and pushed me forward. And at the same time, I heard glass shatter, I turn around and the guy in the SUV clipped me with his side view mirror. It had swung closed and shattered the window in the door, and I’m just standing there wide-eyed. 2 seconds later the guy gets out of his car swearing up a storm at me and how I’m a low-life piece of sh*t and how I’m going to pay for a new window and that I’m not going to get anywhere in life because I broke his window. Now I’m the type of person that if I was the reason I’ll take the blame and fix the problem. But this guy hit me, I blew up on him for about 5 minutes before a manager finally had the guts to come over and pull me away. I didn’t have to pay for a new window as it was on video, but I lost my job because we are not supposed to yell and cuss at the customer.
I used to work at a pizza place in a small town when I was a teenager. One night I took a phone order from some idiot woman. It went like this:
Me: Thank you for calling “pizza place”, may I take your order?
IW: Yes, I’d like a large pizza. Half pepperoni, half sausage, and half black olives.
Me: Ok, did you want the toppings combined or separated?
IW: No, I want half pepperoni, half sausage, and half black olives.
Me: Ok so you want 1/3 pepperoni, 1/3 sausage, and 1/3 black olives?
IW: No! I want HALF PEPPERONI, HALF SAUSAGE, and HALF BLACK OLIVES!
Me: I understand the toppings that you want, but I’m not understanding how you want us to put the toppings on your pizza. Do you want them separated by thirds? Combined together? Or do you mean put half the amount that we usually put on?
IW: What’s so hard to understand?! I WANT…HALF…PEPPERONI…HALF…SAUSAGE…AND HALF…BLACK OLIVES!!!!!
Me: Lady, there are only 2 halves to a pizza!
IW: I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER!!!
I got fired on the spot. It was easier for the manager to just hire another person than it was to lose a customer in a small town.
Oh, and the lady wanted the toppings divided into thirds. She told the manager the same thing and he just went with her math. The b*tch also got it for free.
I have a speech impediment and back when I worked at Starbucks, this young African-American kid would come in every day after school and order a caramel frap.
Every time I told him it would be “$3.50”, he would laugh uproariously and ask me to say it again. After a few weeks of this, he’d start bringing in his buddies as well. Each one would order the exact same drink and then ask me to keep repeating the price for them again and again.
After a few months, I broke down. “You boys should know how much the drink is by now!”
My manager overheard and claimed I was being racist by calling them ‘you boys’, even though they were all middle school age! Anyways, I still see the kids around town and they always shout at me: “How much are those caramel fraps again?”
Worked at GameStop as a GA (game advisor) some guy came in and had a figurative load of games (over 100) to trade, all with games and cases mismatched. It took about 45 minutes to process his ticket when I told him the total it was low (because GameStop and also they were all old, scratched games). This man then proceeded to try to negotiate with me to which I kept telling him I can’t change the price which only made him angrier and louder. Eventually, he yelled, “Listen you stupid nigger, I need at least $300 for all of these and you’re going to give it to me”. First of all, I don’t even have the ability to change the price, at all. Second of all my coworker proceeded to put all of his games in a bag, walk outside and tossed them into the parking lot and told the guy to take his “racist, cousin somewhere else and to f*ck off”. The store manager came out of the back room and fired him dead on the spot. The guy stormed out and the second he left my manager said “Jesus what was his problem, alright get back to work”. My coworker didn’t get fired it was just theatrics for the racist c*nt, I felt like an idiot for just standing there but it was taking everything I had to not hop the counter and hit the guy.
My sister was the manager of a women’s clothing store. At the time she was dealing with some personal issues regarding depression and anxiety so she wasn’t in the greatest state of mind to begin with. A customer came in with a pair of pants that had ripped along the inner thigh seams, which were well past the return period and had clearly been worn/washed.
The customer, who was a larger woman, went off on a sales associate, stating she’d only “tried the pants on” and that caused the seams to rip and she wanted a refund. She brought the associate to tears with her ranting and finally demanded the manager, my sister.
Enter my sis, and the customer starts yelling at her too. Sis promptly tells the customer that her pants split because she was a fata**, she wouldn’t get a f*cking refund, and get her out of the store and never come back.
Sis then went in the back, called her boss and quit before she could be fired. Her boss actually was willing to let her stay but she chose to leave anyway until she could get her depression issues under control. Took a solid year but she’s much happier and healthier now.
I was a stockroom assistant at a well-known fashion chain in the UK & US. Didn’t go off on a customer but I bloody well wish I did now.
Happened to be behind tills changing hangers boxes when a customer explodes at the trainee cashier demanding to know where her order was. She’s screaming her head off at how it’s “unacceptable I paid extra” and how she “made a specific detour” to collect her package.
She had ordered a jacket in another branch and had paid for next-day delivery to the store I worked in. Customers aren’t supposed to come to collect their orders until they get an email saying their order is ready to collect.
The poor cashier started last week and is basically cowering for dear life. I take over and ask to see her email which she explains she “doesn’t need” because she “paid extra” so her package “must be here”.
After 10 minutes of me trying to explain why her package isn’t ready to collect and her trying to challenge Krakatoa, she storms off shouting that she’ll be “having words” with the guy who owns our company. I hand it back to the cashier and carry on with my day*
The next day I’m prepping our delivery and I get called for a meeting with the store manager. I’m told I’m being let go for gross misconduct specifically “being unhelpful and challenging” to customers.
Turns out the customer was a “journalist” for the DailyMail and she called our head of the company who she did indeed know personally and got me fired specifically.
I used to cut hair. I was cutting a lady’s hair when the child of the lady waiting started running around the shop. I told the child several times to go sit with her mother and asked her mother to please keep her child seated next to her. Well, in the middle of cutting around my client’s ear, the child ran into my work area, ran into me and almost caused me to cut my client. I looked at the child and firmly said “You need to go sit down with your mother now.” Well her mom didn’t like that and came running back to me and yelled “Don’t tell my child what to do, I’m her parent.” I responded with “Then act like it.” She glared at me, grabbed her child and stormed out. Everyone in the shop was relieved the child had left. A few days later the owner came and tried to fire me for it.
Had a customer that, for at least a year, came into our store and was a master tactician in getting free goods by making up complaints against our staff. He would do all sorts of maneuvers like wanting products he knew we didn’t carry making up complaints about our staff to even complaining that he had been charged incorrectly.
If this guy was in the store, good luck if you were another customer. He would suck up all the oxygen in the place and demand service from multiple people at the same time. He got reduced prices and free merchandise and tons of coupons for his efforts.
My boss would never challenge this guy or protect his own staff from being exposed to losing their job to a customer who would happily see a member of our crew fired so he could get $5 off his next purchase. My boss wasn’t entirely at fault since this was a giant corporation and he was merely towing the fabled “the customer is ALWAYS right” mantra.
I was already planning on leaving for a better opportunity and was going to give notice of resignation one week when this customer started giving me an incredibly difficult time about an issue I had nothing to do with and couldn’t help him with. It was extremely busy and he was holding everyone up with his b*llsh*t.
I made a quick value judgment and realized I was already out the door and the only thing I was still there to do was to honor my appropriate resignation notice. I had no design of ever working for this horrible company or any company like it ever again. I found myself in a unique situation and wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass. This guy had made life difficult for all of us for a long time. Payback time.
I cut this guy off mid-sentence and just went off on him in front of a number of customers and part of our staff. I told him he was nothing more than a cheapskate grifter and told him I would no longer recognize him as a living, breathing, member of our species.
The look on his face was so godd*mned beautiful. The entire store fell into silence and I just stared him down. He asked to speak to my manager and I doubled down by talking over his head, inviting the customer behind him to elbow up to the counter. I apologized to the new customer about the bad behavior of the guy who, at this point, had steam coming out of his ears.
Eventually, when he realized he was getting nowhere waiting on me, he stormed off to find a manager. I finished my shift. I came back the following day, was intercepted by a corporate manager I had rarely seen, taken upstairs and was getting lectured. I interrupted the scolding, revealed my intentions to leave this place, and quit right there.
I got a lot of high-fives from the other members of the staff on my way out the door.
I worked in the rewards call center for a casino in my youth. People would call in and book rooms or show tickets with their reward points. Naturally, everyone calling for a free room wants it on a weekend or major holiday and that just wasn’t available. A lady called to get a free night in the top-end suite on Valentine’s Day with two-day notice and lost her sh*t when I told her no. Saying she spends so much money and we don’t even care enough to reward her loyalty and even attack me personally. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I calmly explained to her that “I see you spend about $20 an hour in the casino, yeah we really don’t care about you. You could never come back and no one would notice. You need to start betting more than your entire family will ever be worth before we actually start caring if you come back or not.”
I obliged her request to speak with my supervisor and started packing my things.
I used to work for a popular pub chain here in the UK, called Wetherspoons.
I had been there for three years, I had been promoted to Team Leader… I wasn’t really too bothered about the job as a future, because it was only money to keep me through university, but money’s money.
One day we get a customer in, an American, who has just stepped off the plane. And all his preconceptions are off. He comes in, has a seat and waits for a waiter, who obviously doesn’t come (keep in mind it’s not unusual for people to come in and sit and wait for friends and whatnot). He comes storming up to the bar, claiming he’s been waiting for “a godd*mn half hour”. One of the bar staff, very confused, asks him “What have you been waiting for?” with 100% sincerity… The man seemed to think the bar staff was being sarcastic and rude. He started shouting. As TL, I stepped in, and did the diplomatic:
Me: “Excuse me, Sir can I help you?”
Him: “You better hope you can, because I’m about to call your manager in buddy!”
Me: “Well, hopefully, I can, what is it I can help you with?”
H: “This… This ‘steak’ burned”
M: “I’m very sorry, I’ll order a replacement and give you a full refund sir” (standard op when dealing with food complaints of quality).
H: “Not good enough! I don’t want another piece of sh*t like that, you hear me. Give me my god-d*mn money!”
M: “Excuse me, sir, there is no need to be rude, I’ve offered you a refund, I’m happy to do that for you, but you will not swear at me, sir”.
H: “I’ll swear all I want kid, that trash you served up is not a godd*mn steak, and I want a full refund plus gratuity, or you can kiss your job goodbye”
M: “That is a steak presented sir, I’m sorry if it’s not to your liking, but I have offered the resolution, allow me to go get your money”.
H: “Hurry up about it! And that was no d*mn steak!”
M: “Then do you mind if I ask what you think it was, then, because it definitely wasn’t a chicken” (I was pissed off at this point and the guy was a d*ck).
H: “GIVE ME MY GODD*MN MONEY AND GET YOUR MANAGER YOU LITTLE SH*T! NOW! NOW!”
At this point, he’s reaching across the bar and pointing at me. I don’t like people shouting at me. I hate people pointing at me.
M: “Actually, no. I won’t get my manager. And I don’t have to offer a refund (which is actually true, he can go to HQ and get it directly but it’s a myth to say staff have to give it there and then). I was happy to give you one, but you’ve pissed me off now. So take your coat, and get the f*ck out.”
H: “You little sh*t, I’ll call the cops”
M: “Do it. Then they can take you out for me”
This goes back and forth for a while, gathering quite a bit of attention from the other clientele.
The manager walks up, a man shouts at him, manager calms him down. Man demands I be fired. I get pulled into disciplinary, manager breaks the rule (and not an unwritten one, a legitimate, company-mandated rule) that says managers take our side. He says he has to let me go.
I was fired, appealed, and owned him and that d*ckhead so hard in the tribunal. Got payment for the 4 months I had been without a job, plus a little extra for the hassle, my record of being ‘sacked’ struck off my record and offered my job back.
She worked at a burger joint restaurant and on a busy night this one table ordered mashed potatoes, the server tells them that mashed potatoes aren’t on the menu but they have baked potatoes. They keep on insisting that they want mashed potatoes but eventually, they seem to agree that a baked potato is fine. So when the order comes out so does the baked potato that they ordered. He puts it down on the table and the customers go “We wanted mashed potatoes!” The server has had enough at this point and goes “Mashed?! You want them mashed?!?” He raised his fist and smashed it down on the baked potato, giving the customer exactly what they asked for mashed potatoes. The management however did not find this dedication to the customer very professional and let him go.
I was assistant manager at a brand new Mexican place. We’d been training for weeks, and this was the Sunday after we opened the previous Thursday night for friends and family. The grand opening was Friday night.
I was 17; it was my first salaried job, my first management job, and the first time I’d ever been asked to work more than 12 hours a day. As a matter of fact, by that Sunday’s lunch, I’d worked over 45 hours since Thursday afternoon. I was completely drained. Servers had quit, the kitchen manager had melted down, and the training team, owners, and general manager were losing their cool. We’d comped about a third of the tables since opening Friday due to incorrect orders, slow service, and various other complaints. It fell to me repeatedly to deliver the check and apologies to diners as they chewed my a** and berated every aspect of the restaurant I’d been proud to represent until the opening sh*tshow.
It’s the end of the church crowd lunch rush and we’re emptying out. I’m looking forward to two days off starting in just a few minutes as soon as my relief arrives. A table of eight tells their server the food was bad, cold, and took forever to arrive after ordering. They didn’t get their drinks refilled, their appetizers came out after the entrees, and the check was wrong. Great. I comp the check on the register, gather my will, and head to the table. I’m so tired and stressed that I make a very bad decision. I’m going to calm them down with my innate humor. I step to the edge of the table, wait till I have their attention, and open my mouth.
“Jaime tells me you’re a bunch of complainers and asked if I’d come over to kiss your a**es so she can still get tipped and maybe you’ll even come back another day. Your lunch will be on us, because hey, we wouldn’t want you to have to just forgive us for not meeting every unreasonable expectation, right?” I smile, and chuckle, to show I’m joking, then wait for the laughter that’s sure to follow from the table.
Nothing. Not even a smirk. One woman’s mouth is open in surprise. An older man at the end is scowling and his face is alarmingly red. The older woman chokes on her sip of water. The silence grows and deepens. Other tables since there is a great disturbance in the force and begin to crane their necks like drivers cruising past a car wreck. In seconds, the entire building is so quiet I can hear the dishwasher in the kitchen singing something in Spanish and the beep of a timer on a fryer. The owner sees my pale and panicked expression from the host stand and hustles over.
I stand, head down, sweating lightly, as he hears the entire tale, starting with the drinks and ending with my “obscene and incredibly rude” comments. He turns to me, looks into my face, and says, “You’re fired. Get your things and leave right now. I’ll mail your check.”
The good news is that later, I dated the owner’s daughter a few times, and she told me her dad would be happy to write any reference I wanted because he’d realized it was far too much to expect of someone my age and inexperience, and would be glad to hire me as a server if I wanted to come back. I went to college instead and haven’t worked in food service in more than 15 years.
I went off on a bad manager. I was 17 and it was my first job. I worked at a movie theater. This happened on a night that was supposed to be slow. I was working concessions by myself. We randomly got an influx of customers. It took me a while to get it done. The whole time my manager was standing in the lobby telling 3 other people not to come to help me. After all the customers cleared out, I said loudly, “I love how I’m working my a** off while my managers are preventing their employees from helping me!” Or something a lot those lines.
My manager was pissed she wrote me up and got fired a week later for it. It was stupid. I overreacted in the situation, but I had a sh*tty manager too.
Disneyland. I worked in the ticket booths. If you’re an annual pass holder, and you’re on a monthly contract, Disney takes automatic payments from your credit card. If your card expires or otherwise has to be changed, and you don’t call to put a new card on file, the auto-payments stop and your pass freezes. No big deal; Disney doesn’t hit you with fees or penalties. You simply call or come to the booth, and we handle it right then and there — zippety-doo-dah, and in you go.
One day, I met a middle-aged couple whose passes froze. The man was upset and ready to talk about it. A common question from guests is “Don’t you send out late notices?” No, Disney doesn’t because they’re not practical, and again, there are no penalties anyway. Just come see us and we’ll straighten you out. The man says to me in a disgusted tone, “You don’t send notices when a pass freezes? How does that work?”
I said, “Well, you receive your credit card statement, you see that a recurring charge is not present on it, and you can expect the service related to the recurring charge to be interrupted, and that it must be related to your card having been replaced recently.”
The wife smiled, the man’s face reddened, and he leaned in and barked, “Get your supervisor. I want to talk to somebody smart.” To my shame, I said, “Of course. Would you like someone smart enough to stay aware of their credit card use, or merely smart enough to read contracts they sign?”
My booth lead happened to come over as soon as she heard “supervisor,” so she was standing behind me when I said the emotional thing. It isn’t how I wanted to go out (I was five days away from leaving for a new job), but I looked at it as a vicariously cathartic mic drop goodbye to my fellow cast members. For them, it was a thrill.
I work at a local pizza place, there were a couple of guys sitting at the end of our bar complaining about the price of LITERALLY everything in the store. Our pizza is considered “high end” as we only use fresh ingredients and make the sauce and dough from scratch. The bartender is a hothead, but she’s handling these guys with grace. Finally, after ordering their pizza, one chimed in with “We could get four dominos pizzas for this price.” Bartender loses it, and starts yelling “Well if you want to get dominos pizzas, go to f*cking Dominos!” Probably would have gotten away with it, except the dining room was pretty full and the manager had to save face.
I was a bartender/manager at a restaurant we will call “dirty bird”. It was a super busy Monday night, and we were honestly not staffed for it.
Think Friday night sales on a Monday. The kitchen was trying its best, servers were in the weeds, and I had a full bar, as well as a printer that wouldn’t stop.
We came out of it, okay, most people were totally understanding, except for the mushroom burger guy. (MBG)
Every Monday MBG would make a to-go order. And always complained, and always resulted in a free burger. He came in with his voucher and left.
We had packed the mushrooms in a separate container so as to not turn the bun into mush, gave him 4x the amount of fries, free Caesar salad, and extra cheese. Hoping this would be the last of it. He called in and asked to speak to the manager.
He then complained he had no mushrooms, the bun was soggy, his fries were overcooked and the Caesar salad was dry.
I f*cking lost it. But I had a plan. Through my seething anger, I asked if he would willing to drive back, and I’ll give him a gift card for the meal.
( I personally packed up his order and made sure it was perfect, but at this point, I was tired of the free meal we give him every week.) He accepted and came back.
When he walked in the door, I asked for his ID, under the guise of “new corporate rules to deter fraud”. He handed me his ID, I went into the office and photocopied it, and wrote DO NOT SERVE under it.
I handed him back his ID, taped the photocopy to the wall, and said “Sir, I’ve had enough of your b*llsh*t, we’ve fed you every Monday for months, and enough is enough, you are banned from the restaurant, I’ve blocked your number, and you are no longer welcome here”.
He said my 4 favorite words
“Get me your manager” So I said ok.
Walked into the kitchen, went out back, had a smoke, calmed down, and then walked back out front.
Came up to him and asked what the problem was, he starts screaming about wanting the manager, at which point I said “I am the manager, and you have 10 seconds to leave, or I’ll be notifying the police of your trespassing” Cue more screaming, and an off duty cop with his family, who politely escorted him outside.
Got a call the next day for a meeting, showed up and was fired. So I did what any reasonable person would do.
Took the liquor license off the wall in walked out. It was in my name, so I brought it with me.
I work at a restaurant that makes burritos. A customer comes in and the manager says she’ll take care of him. As it turns out, she had dated the guy and they had issues or whatever, and had a messy breakup. This is the first time they’ve seen each other since. The dude just showed up at her job. So he starts talking to her as she takes him through the line, and he’s saying things like “I still consider you a friend even after all this time” and other mushy b*llsh*t. She’s obviously not interested. Doesn’t say a word until she gets to the end of the line.
She rolls the burrito and takes a giant bite out of it before wrapping it in foil.
He kind of stares at her for a minute, dumbfounded. And then he asks, “Did you just take a bite out of my burrito?”
She says, “I mean, you said we were friends, right? So what’s the problem?”
He ended up emailing the GM to complain and she got fired.
This happened two years ago and still gets me heated.
I worked for a small chain of camping supplies and gun stores. Think Bass Pro Shops or Cabela’s, but not nearly as successful. And I had the biggest piece of sh*t store manager.
A little context, about three months before I got fired corporate uncovered a massive item insurance fraud happening in our store, which was started by our store manager. Instead of taking the fall for this, he fired 50 store employees a weekend before Black Friday. This was half our staff and meant everyone else spent a solid 3 weeks of 60-70+ hours a week. This was roughly the time I got guardianship of my 17-year-old brother, and was living in a sh*t hole apartment with my 5-year-old daughter and then-boyfriend (now fiance).
I was in a major car accident a few days before with my brother and daughter, where I walked away with a concussion, my daughter had a broken leg, and my brother had spinal swelling that left him paralyzed for about two months afterwards. I was told to come to work or lose my job. I needed the money.
Because of the concussion, I had a limit on how much I could lift. I had some fat-a** lady ask me to help her lift a gun case onto a flat cart. Normally, I could have, but there was no chance in h*ll I was risking my life for that f*cking job. She didn’t like being told no and soon got pretty verbally violent. A few gun salesmen stood up for me and I walked away.
About two hours after, I got called into the back office and was fired for what they said was me assaulting a customer. I decided not to fight it, I’ll just go file unemployment. But, d*mn, did that store manager fck up. As I was walking out, I caught the tail end of him calling me a retarded lying cripple (I tore my ACL&MCL in high school, never healed right).
Ended up taking his a** to court, and there were too many witnesses to his endless harassment. I got fired, but got a seven-figure settlement out of it within a year, paid out for the next 10. Paid for my brother’s college, my daughter has a trust fund, and I am currently starting a small business. Last I heard, he got fired not too long after I was and does night stocking at Walmart.
My dad worked 25 years in the warehouse withdrawal of merchandise from IKEA, two years before his retirement they changed the computer system that manages your order. During this period people could wait two hours before getting the stuff, and a lot of people became really angry, I can understand that. My dad managed this situation for two months without incident, but a lot of pressure. But one day, a guy became really really angry, he tried to punch my dad, and my dad just pushed him a bit because he was crossing the staff line. The guy screamed: YOU KNOW THE CUSTOMER IS THE KING, I WILL MAKE SURE THAT YOU WILL BE FIRED TONIGHT. IKEA fired my dad, the same day. Recently we learned that Ikea was just waiting for a reason to suppress one position in the depot because it was too expensive.
By now every time a friend goes to IKEA, I’m really happy to grab what I want for free, because, you know, the customer IS the king.
I was a hostess last September. For background, I had just been to a funeral for someone I loved very much.
I go to work that night anyways. My face is happy in front of customers but around the staff, I let them know what’s going on and that I’m not upset. Just sad.
I go to check tables and someone sat a family at a completely dirty table so I cleaned it off. The table in front of them had s complaint. Normally the server would handle their needs but I was right there so I did it. The guy says his sweet tea isn’t sweet. I went and got him another. He said it wasn’t sweet so I remarked how that was strange because it was in the pitcher labeled sweet tea. I asked if he wanted me to ring him back sugar, and he said a butt load. I bring him the sugar and said with a smile that I hope that was all the sugar his heart could desire. He complained about that and I got fired. It wasn’t until he and his group were leaving that I noticed the neo-nazi tattoos on his upper arm. I didn’t dispute it with the manager, I didn’t tell anyone. I went home and cried over my uncle.
Worked for a pizza joint and a guy complained about the pizza after eating half of it. Then proceeded to b*tch the entire time that I started working on a new one for him; which wasn’t long because I snapped and picked up his unbaked, half done pizza and walked past my manager (to whom I looked and said ‘sorry’), and proceeded to throw the pizza in his face and told him to go f*ck himself. The manager looked at me and says ‘You know I have to fire you now right?’ I just nodded and told him it was worth it. The a**hole deserved it.
When I started in the engineering department of a factory almost two years ago, there were two other guys about my age (mid-20s) and our manager. One guy quit, and the other guy’s visa ran out. So it was just my manager and myself for most of a year doing everything for the engineering and sales departments. Things had been crazy busy for months, I was staying late and still wasn’t able to get all my work done. One day one of our biggest customers announced that they were having a conference call/presentation at 6:30 am, two hours early. I attended but the call was completely useless; they talked about the company’s history, the kind of machinery they have, the new building they’re buying… Absolutely nothing to do with my job. Two days later there was a survey to see how useful the presentation was, so I said it was a waste of my time and if they made the conference a little earlier, I would have made a blanket fort and slept in my office. It was an anonymous survey, but the customer tracked the IP address of my response and passed it along to my manager. He called me into his office and asked me if I knew anything about IP addresses. They fired me a few days later.
I worked in a wine bar and had a group of four very pregnant women come in, to celebrate ‘their last month of being pregnant’ (i.e. their condition was unambiguous). I declined to serve them, citing their condition. They proceeded to pull up all sorts of new-age pseudo-science, including crystals, the position of the moon, and auras. I agreed with them, that studies indicate a modest amount of alcohol might not be bad, but I still didn’t feel comfortable serving them.
They complained to the manager. He told me he understood where I was coming from, but I either had to serve or walk. I walked. Never regretted it.
About 8 years back, I worked part-time at Macy’s. Now, before I get into this, understand that I’m no racist, but I will say whatever I need to, in order to piss someone off. Anyway, my buddy who got me the job was also a part-time employee. He’s a very respectful Sri Lankan fellow. This black lady and her husband get to the register and she starts complaining about something. My friend was trying to help her out, but she was being a total b*tch about it. The husband just stood there, like he was embarrassed by his wife.
So, this lady eventually tells my friend to go and get whatever the heck she wanted and made the comment, “You’re here to serve us customers,” like her comment was going to get the other customers on her side or something. So, I stepped in and kindly explained, “One, we are not here to serve you. We are here to assist you in ensuring you have an outstanding experience.” The ‘Outstanding’ was a Macy’s thing, back then. I then continued with, “Also, you of all people should know how demeaning it is to be called a servant.” I knew exactly what I was saying/implying, and worded it so she knew exactly what I was getting at. The whole time, the husband just kind of stood there, with a smirk.
My manager came out and told the lady, “We’re not servants. Let’s just be clear about that. Now, you can get out of my store.” He then took me into the break room and fired me.
