It always sucks when you get a customer who seems to be determined to be as nasty as possible, especially since there's not really much you can do about it while on the clock. These aggrieved workers managed to have the final laugh, though, and these disagreeable customers got just what they deserved.
He Made It A Habit To Ruin His Day For Five Years, So The Revenge Was Extra Sweet
“I worked at a hotel several years ago and had to deal with insufferable people about a dozen times a day. The best/most evil revenge I ever got was on a guy that stayed with us four days a week for the entire five years I worked at the hotel. The big utility company in our area was having financial issues and he was the leader of the auditing team that was sent in to straighten it out. Anyway, I would interact with the guy at least a few times every day I worked, and he was ALWAYS very rude and condescending. As an example, one of his coworkers would ask me for a local restaurant recommendation and he would chime in with, ‘Yeah, because minimum-wage workers are known for their taste in fine dining.’ If someone asked me something personal, he would say something like, ‘Ask him what life choices he made to be here plunging toilets and writing down my preferred wake-up call time. Maybe he can share his wisdom so we all avoid his fate,’ stuff like that. He was just a jerk to everyone on the hotel staff and was always very demanding.
Since I saw him every day, I noticed that he had developed a relationship with one of the younger women on his auditing team. I saw their romance blossom from flirting to full-on groping and grinding in the hotel lobby. One day, he had just finished delivering one of his delightfully mean comments to me, and I was fuming. Then he screamed at one of my co-workers because she had a Filipino accent and he said he only wanted his room cleaned by ‘white Americans.’ I vowed revenge.
His wife called in to speak to him later that night, like she usually did, and I said ‘Oh, I think he’s sleeping in Ms. Smith’s room tonight. One moment, please,’ and then I connected his wife to her room. His wife must not have told him what I had said, because he didn’t try to get me fired.
They got a divorce. They didn’t have kids, but according to another guy on the auditing team, his wife got the house and custody of their dog. He stopped staying with us shortly after ‘the phone call.'”
This Is Why You Don’t Try And Fight People In Nightclubs
“I was working as a manager in a big nightclub about a year ago. I don’t wear a uniform, but have a radio and run the security team. The venue has a great smoking section that looks out onto the street. One night, the venue was packed so I did my usual roam, making sure that there were no problems. However, it was too packed to walk through the smoking section, so I walked down the street instead and could still very easily see into the smoking section.
One guy stared me down, then called me over, and started swearing at me for no reason, telling me that ‘pieces of crap like you could never even get into a venue like this.’ He obviously had no idea I was a manager, but I didn’t want to have security get into a fight inside with him. The guy kept telling me he would punch me out, etc. He was clearly trying to look macho to impress someone. So I agreed and told him to come and meet me outside, he could even have a free swing. He put his drink down, took off his jacket and stormed outside. Once he walked outside, I walked back inside and told security not to let him back in.
The look on his face when he realized I ran the place was priceless, and then the realization that he couldn’t get back into the club was amazing. It was the easiest and most fun removal I have ever done.”
He Soon Came To Regret Causing Such A Big Scene
“Years ago, I worked security for a major resort. We had two valet services, and people were horrible jerks all the time.
On one occasion, a guy parked his Maserati in the valet, didn’t leave the keys, and ran in. He yelled at the attendants, ‘Touch my effing car and I’ll have you fired!’ He was in the middle of the two lanes and nobody could get around or through the valet, which was a major ingress/egress. The attendants didn’t know what to do. On my normal patrol, my partner and I saw the car and asked the attendant what’s up. He told us the circumstances.
We made a snap judgment to get some Go-Jacks and move the car. So, we moved it across three lots, about as far as you can get from the valet. We told the valet guys to just tell the guy, ‘Security moved your car,’ and then take their time giving him our number. And then we put a boot on not one, but two of his wheels. We had dispatch put a camera on the car and went about our business.
About 10 minutes later, dispatch gave us a call. The guy was irate, screaming at the dispatchers, ‘I was only in there for five minutes! How dare you touch my car! I’ll have all your jobs! WHERE’S MY EFFING CAR?!’ Dispatch told him where he could go to get his car, but we’re not there. Our standard operating procedure was to wait 45 minutes from when we got the call to remove a boot to when we actually removed it because rudeness shall never go unpunished. So, we showed up, the dude was fuming. He’d called dispatch several times, threatened all of them and us with physical harm, the works. We got there, there were four of us, armed, none of us under 6’0 or 230lbs. He proceeded to be an jerk. We took our time with the boots.
After one boot was off, I noticed, on his floorboard, a small baggie of a white substance. I asked him what it was while my partner called the police. He started backtracking, ‘Oh man, please just let me go. Don’t call the cops, oh no man, please!’
‘If you weren’t such a slimebag, we would never have been here, and we would never have seen your stash. You got you in this situation.’ The cops show up, find that baggie and 5 more, plus a scale.”
She Crossed The One Lady At The DMV That She Should Have Left Alone
“I used to work for the Department of Motor Vehicles and the one I worked at had pretty limited parking, surprise! I had left for lunch, came back and was having a hard time finding a place to park. I finally found a spot so I drove up to it and put my signal on showing that I was waiting for it. People, in my experience, usually respect this and continue on. Not this time.
Just as the car was backing out, after I had waited a few minutes, a car came from the opposite side of the lot, made eye contact with me and then shot right into the parking space. I was so mad because now I would be late after looking for a new spot. As I drove past the woman who had taken the spot, I just shook my head. She responded by shrugging her shoulders, smiling, mouthing the words, ‘Oh well,’ to me, and then ran her finger from her eye down her cheek as if to mock me crying about it.
I continued into work, got in trouble for being late, but had actually forgotten about the incident until who’s number gets called to my station, but Miss Spot-Stealer herself! The look on her face was priceless!
Keep in mind that I’m not your average DMV worker, I understand that stuff happens and waive penalties all the time and treat my customers with respect because I believe that what goes around, comes around and I know how crappy it is to wait at the DMV all day. I’m usually so nice about getting penalties taken off of people’s accounts that I get in trouble for it at times.
So, I greet Spot-stealer as nice as I would anyone else, in fact it may have been nicer than I normally would be. She may have thought I didn’t recognize her. Her registration was FAR past due, with hundreds due in penalties. I let her tell me her whole sob story then finally told her that she owed in full because she was aware of her due date. She argued it a little until, out of sight from my manager, I mouthed the words, ‘Oh well,’ and dragged my finger from my eye to my cheek, mocking her tears. At that point, she put her head down and proceeds to take out her card and pay the full amount because yes, we do take debit cards.
What goes around, comes around!”
He Walked Him, Step By Step, Over Everything He Did Wrong
“I worked for a call center when Priceline first came out. At that time, it was a bid only site and you got what you got. No transfers, no refunds, no changes except for IMMEDIATE family death (cousins, uncles, friends were a no go) or PROVEN medical disability discovered AFTER date of purchase.
I worked on the ‘Resolutions Team.’ That meant all day I got the people who were already ticked off. It was essentially the art of saying no a thousand different ways. At first, we were centralized in one area, but after a time they had the bright idea to assign a Resolutions Agent to individual teams.
One day, I heard the girl in the cube next to me crying as she is talking on the phone, so I put myself on away and hot jacked into her set. Customer on the line was calling her all sorts of filthy names and demanding to be refunded. I put her on mute, told her to take a break (probably not authorized to do that, but didn’t give a crap) and made my mic live.
‘Hello sir, this is Craig with the Resolutions Team. How can I assist you today?”
Immediately, he said something to the effect of, ‘Finally, that dumb bimbo wouldn’t refund my tickets.’
So I asked a few questions, turns out he had spent something in the neighborhood of $6,000 on three tickets to Milan for a business meeting three days prior. The meeting had been rescheduled and he wanted his money back.
So, I asked him if he had access to the internet where he was now. He said yes. So, calmly and clearly, I walked him through the Priceline website where you bid for tickets, all the way up to the point where you put in payment information. Along the way, the site forced you to confirm no less than three times that you realize and accept that the tickets are non-transferable, non-refundable, and non-alterable.
As we get further through this, I heard the resentment creeping back into his voice. He started to swear at me and I cut him off with, ‘Sir, if we can’t keep this on a professional level I will disconnect the call and direct that any further attempts to contact us come to me.’ So he sulked.
I ended the phone call by saying, ‘Now, I could have referred you to the President’s Team for special exception review, but I am not going to do that. You chose to spew vile filth at a human being who I personally know as one of the nicest and most caring people I have ever met for not being allowed by her employer to reverse a decision YOU made. I am noting all of this in your file, any further attempts to contact us will go to me or management. Consider this a $6,000 lesson in manners, Mr. Smith. Thank you, and have a wonderful trip to Milan, I hear it’s beautiful.'”
It Wasn’t Just Her Overdue Fees That Kept Her From Renting Movies That Night
“When I was 15/16, I worked at a local video rental place. It was privately owned and was shady as heck. I’m pretty sure the owner used it as a front for something illegal, but that’s neither here nor there. The boss was too cheap to pay more than one person per shift, so I had the slow Wednesday/Thursday night shifts all to myself. We were in this wicked rich, yuppy town (Concord, MA) and 90% of our business consisted of local soccer moms bringing their kids in for a movie night. Most of these women were terrible people, overlords to their spoiled flock who would throw credit cards around without thinking twice and would condescend everyone they deemed ‘beneath’ them.
We had a very basic computer system at the time, and there was a built-in function that wouldn’t allow someone to rent another movie if they had over $10 of late fees on their account. The employees had the ability to overwrite this, at their discretion, or to lower the fees if they thought it appropriate. One day, this woman came in with a bunch of kids, if I remember correctly it was five or six roughly 12-year-old boys. The kids were running around, pulling things off the shelves, making lots of noise, punching each other, ticking off other customers, and ticking me off as well. The woman didn’t do anything about it, basically sat there gossiping on her cell phone, not caring about the scene her kids were causing. Being a very timid person by nature, I didn’t say anything, and just figured I’d clean up the mess when they left.
So the woman finally comes up to the counter with, like, eight different movies, a few video games and a bunch of candy. She was standing there on the phone still and shoved the stuff at me across the counter, not even acknowledging my presence. So I look up her account. Boom. $120 worth of late fees and four titles rented for over six months and still not returned. So I tried getting her attention, saying something like ‘Ma’am…ma’am?’ while her back was turned. She waved me off. So I stood there and did nothing.
She finally hung up a minute or so later, turned to me and said something snarky like, ‘Well, what’s taking so long??’
So I explained, ‘Ma’am, you have a very outstanding fee on your account and I can’t let you rent any more movies until this is paid and the missing movies are returned.’ She flipped out. Started ranting that her daughter rents things in her name, never returns things, doesn’t pay fees, and that she herself has done no wrong and the fees should be cleared and she should be able to rent. I nodded, but said, ‘This account still owes $120 and I can’t allow you to rent until it’s paid. Company policy, ma’am. I’m sorry, but I don’t make the rules.’
She started going off again, saying ridiculous things like, ‘I know the owner, he’ll wipe out the debt in a heartbeat. You’d better let me rent or I’ll complain to him about how terrible his employees are.’ I told her he’s out of the country, which was true, and couldn’t be reached, and she still owed $120. She whined some more and finally pulled out the card.
We had this ancient machine that, for reasons unknown to me, would only read a magnetic strip correctly if you wrapped the card in a plastic grocery bag. I have no idea why, but it was the only way it worked. So, as you can probably guess, I ran the card with no plastic wrap. Denied. Tried it again just for looks. Denied. I printed out a receipt and asked if she had cash. She didn’t and she was wrecked about the card. I showed her the receipt saying ‘Card Not Accepted’ and feigned indifference. She walked across the street to the bank, came back a few minutes later with the money and practically threw it at me. I took the payment and said, ‘Now, about those overdue movies, I don’t suppose your daughter would like to return them for you so you can rent these movies?’ I got the worst death glare I think I’ve ever received (and my mother can practically shoot lasers from her eyes) and the woman abandoned her stack of movies and stomped out. Not sure if we ever saw her again, but at the time 15-year-old me was so proud of myself for staying cool under pressure while messing with this woman.
And seriously, screw overprivileged soccer moms.”
With Everything He Put Him Through, He Knew His Revenge Had To Be Perfect
“I used to work for Dick’s Sporting Goods in the outdoors department. One of my regular responsibilities (because I made the mistake of being good at it) was to put out all the signage for our weekly sales. Since our sales always started on Sundays with a flyer in the local papers, that meant I was condemned to working nearly every Saturday.
Well, lo and behold, one week I had Saturday night off without even asking for it. Nice! I enjoyed my night off, then came in Sunday morning to open the store. Almost immediately after arriving, I noticed that the person working the night before had screwed up the sales signage. See, we had two different shotguns made by the same manufacturer. One was a budget semi-auto that was normally $300 and frequently went on sale for $250. The other was a fairly nice double-barrel that normally went for $700 and hardly ever went on sale. The person who did the sales signage had put the $250 hang tag on the $700 shotgun. But no worries, I switched them out and went on with my day.
Later in the day, this guy came up, took one look at the double-barrel shotgun, and almost immediately went into Jerk Mode. Apparently, he was in the store the previous night, saw the hang tag on the wrong gun, and was now ticked that it wasn’t actually $250. I calmly explained that that signage was incorrect and apologized for the confusion, but this guy was already belligerent and firing off every retail person’s favorite Customer Talisman: FALSE ADVERTISING.
I summoned my manager, who backed me up and refused to discount the gun to $250, though he did offer a smaller discount. My manager further mentioned that he’d seen this guy in the store before, and that he was pretty sure the jerk knew the regular price and knew that sale price was wrong. This, of course, didn’t do any wonders for the jerk’s mood. Finally the guy stormed off, but on the way out the door he assailed a cashier into giving him a business card for our district manager.
A few days later, we learned that the guy had gone home and proceeded to bark his way up the corporate ladder until he spoke to one of the executives. And of course, the word came down that we were to sell him the gun for $250. And of course, the guy came in and I had to help him while he was all smarmy and laying I-told-you-so’s on me and my manager.
But there’s a catch: to buy a gun, you have to submit to a background check and fill out an ATF form, which includes such useful information as your name and address. Pro tip: Don’t tick people off and then give them your address. It’s just bad form. A coworker (‘Dan’) and I, who were good friends, discussed many options for revenge. Dan favored such direct tactics as leaving a flaming paper bag of poo on the guy’s front door step, but I felt that this was not a wise plan. If we were going to mess with the guy, it should stop short of anything that might be vandalism.
Then, one night at home, I had an epiphany. I pulled up Google and searched for ‘free catalog.’ I then spent the next hour or so signing that guy up for every free publication I could find. Fashion catalogs, adult toy collections, erectile dysfunction literature, herpes support groups, etc. I went through about ten pages of search results all in all.
Sadly, the nature of this action meant that there was no way I’d ever know what effects it had on the victim, short of me sitting in a car outside his house and waiting to see him retrieve his mail. But I liked to imagine him going to the mailbox every day and finding five new and disturbing catalogs, and shaking his fist at the sky in angst. But probably he just tossed them and went on with his jerk life.”
Dance Moms Can Be The Worst, But Dance Grandma’s Are Actually Pretty Awesome
“I work in local theatre and we have a lot of rude, awful women who are part of local ballet schools come through our venue. The worst ones are the mothers of the dancers. Once, this woman called up wanting seats to an almost sold out ballet performance that had been on sale for four months. She called the day before the show, and did nothing but abuse me for five minutes because she left buying them too late. She whined about how she shouldn’t have to pay to for her kids, whined that we should get a bigger venue (it seats just under 500 people) then put me on hold while she rang three of her relatives to see if they wanted seats, too. She was positively awful. The seats I was about to sell her were the only ones in the theatre left, and they were good seats. While I was on hold, a grandma of one of the ballerinas came up to the desk and asked if we had any seats left, as she’d been in the hospital and couldn’t buy them earlier. She said she’d understand if we were booked out. I put the phone with the on-hold music down, sold this old lady the last seats for the show, and gave her an invite to our next year’s dance season for her granddaughter and herself, so she’d know exactly when all the important dates were coming. She thanked me over and over, and she’s now one of our regulars and brings her grandkids to our shows. Two minutes after the old lady left, the lady on the other end finally took me off hold and said she wanted the remaining seats that we have left. I told her, ‘Sorry we’ve just sold out while you had me on hold, I’m afraid. Better luck next year, anything else I can help you with?’ She was choking with rage on the other end of the phone, it was fantastic.”
He Was Usually A Pretty Easy-Going Cop, But He Made An Exception For This Punk
“Being a cop in a small town, I would get a few large parties (150+ kids) with a lot of kids coming from outlying areas. I’m generally pretty nice to the young adults who live in the area I police, and am generally well liked. But to the kids who come from different towns to party, well, they obviously don’t know/like me. Anyhow, this one party, I pulled up and started walking around, turning a little bit of a blind eye to the underage drinking. I talked to the homeowners’ son (parents were away), and just asked him to try and get rid of some people, move the party indoors, and close the windows, as there had been too many neighbor complaints. He said he’ll do what he can. All nice and cordial.
Anyhow, this one punk was just standing there with a can in his hand. He started mouthing me off and bragging to his buddies. Just average crap like, ‘Hey pig, eat any donuts, yet?’ Just generally swearing and saying how I can’t do anything about what he’s saying, and that I can’t arrest him since he’s on private property.
I didn’t give him any satisfaction of acknowledgment. I have a thick skin, else I wouldn’t be a cop. But I had other calls to attend to, so I left. No further complaints about the party, as the homeowner asked many people to leave.
A few hours later, I was driving back to the office and pulled over a car for doing 15 mph over the limit on the highway. Usually, I give cars at least 20 mph on the highway before pulling them over, since that’s what I normally do on the highway – wouldn’t be right to give people tickets for something I do all the time.
Well, it was the punk driving who’d been mouthing me off. Amazing how nice he was to me at this point in time, complete attitude change. I didn’t let him know that I remembered him from the party. Plus, I now had his name and vehicle plate so I could always look out for him in the future.
Long story short, he got tickets for speeding, only having one active headlight, failure to display an ‘N’ sign (new driver law here, N on rear of vehicle lets other drivers know this person just got his license), having more than one non-family member passenger (another new driver law), and not wearing a seatbelt. As I remembered him drinking, I also demanded a roadside breathalyzer test. He wasn’t over the limit but wasn’t at 0 either. So I also give him a 24-hour roadside prohibition from driving and towed his vehicle.
I slept well that night.”
They Thought He Couldn’t Understand A Word They Said
“I used to work for a major bank and while doing my stint there, I came across a ton of jerks. I was taking a deposit for a lady and her daughter and I heard them speaking a Middle Eastern language. At first, I wasn’t paying attention, but when I realized they were speaking Farsi, I was all ears.
Reason: I speak Farsi.
They were talking about how much of a loser I was, how this job as a teller was the only thing I had in my life, that I probably didn’t have a girlfriend and didn’t attend school. Throughout this conversation, I spoke only English to her and every time she responded to my requests, she would smile and then say something nasty about me in Farsi.
At the end of the conversation, I switched up the language and said, ‘Just because I work at a bank doesn’t give you the right to say things about me behind my back. I’m in grad school to become a Psychotherapist and this job is for spending money. This isn’t how Persian people behave and you should be ashamed. Is there anything else I can help you with?’
Her daughter left the building and her mother was beet red, embarrassed, apologized profusely, and left. I never saw either of them again.”
He Got Every Possible Upgrade, Then He Dropped The Bomb
“I used to work as a front desk agent at a boutique hotel. A guy who was obviously very full of himself came in with an online reservation that he had booked at a shockingly cheap nightly rate (around $40/night, we usually book rooms for around $160/night). He proceeded to give me a hard time about EVERYTHING, from telling me he shouldn’t have to give me his credit card info since he had prepaid his reservation (we need it for incidental purposes like if he broke the tv and just left, things like that) to telling me, ‘Um yeah, I’m pretty sure I can find the elevators, I’m not stupid.’ Just being an all around jerkbag. About ten minutes after checking him in, he came down and demanded that we give him a bigger room with a king bed and a view, even though he had booked a standard queen bed online. I complied, as we had extra king beds available. Ten minutes later, he came down again to complain about the size of the room. He told me, ‘I’m only going you one more chance to make me happy,’ and asked for the general manager. After much arguing between him and my manager, we ended up giving him our nicest suite (two rooms, kitchenette, and a great view) AND free parking since we had ‘given him trouble.’ He got all this for $40/night! And get this, he informed us shortly after the ordeal while on his way out to dinner that he was not even going to be in the room for the majority of his stay, as he was visiting friends and would be staying at their home. What the heck! SoI made it my personal mission to reset his room keys every time I saw him leave the hotel (which was quite frequently, 3-4 times a day/night). It was particularly funny when he came back tired from a night of drinking and had to come all the way down to the front desk to get his keys fixed. Needless to say, he was very frustrated by the end of his stay. I doubt he’ll be staying with us again.”
If Only Fayva Had Treated Every Return Like This, They Might Still Be In Business
“I worked at Fayva, which was a shoe store. We took back everything, no matter what. A stupid policy, but then again, Fayva isn’t in business anymore.
One day, a woman walks in during Communion season and wanted to return a pair of boys dress shoes she’d bought three days earlier. The kid must’ve played football in them, they were literally covered in mud, grease, and scuff marks.
This was the ONE person I refused a refund. She went nuts on me, yelling, screaming, demanding a manager. So my manager came up behind me, and I just know he’s going to give this woman her money, and I know she’s gonna smirk at me as she exits the store. I actually braced for it.
Instead, Mike (my manager) walked up, took a look at the shoes, and told the woman no. She went bananas, telling him, ‘My son wore these shoes ONCE, to his communion, and they fell apart like this?’ To which Mike calmly said:
‘Ma’am, it looks like your son wore these shoes to the Normandy invasion.'”