A customer called me earlier in the week to see if I could get some postcards printed for this weekend. ‘Yep, no problem just send me the artwork by Wednesday’.

Artwork arrives on time – decent enough for a DIY job. Correct A6 size with an image fading to white all the way around and even correct resolution. Dead easy!

She turned up an hour or so ago to collect and was completely dismayed to see the postcards had a white edge to them (as per the artwork sent, image fading to the edge), and proceeded to have a mega rant and mini melt-down about white space creating a negative aura – almost to the point of hyper-ventilating.

Just took me completely by surprise – I’ve done work for her for a couple of years now and knew she was eccentric, but we’d always got on fine.

Despite trying to explain and even the offering to amend the artwork and reprint at cost this was refused.

She paid, took them, and was still ranting as she went out the door and telling me she was never darkening my door again and how she was going to tell all her friend how rubbish we are!

Not quite the reaction I was expecting!

You should always treble check for art work. I was told off by a ad creative mate in the past for not confirming art work with a mock up.

Yeh, you always print a proof for final approval, if they want a bulk doing at two or three days notice, what to they expect, they asked for prints, not prints and photo editing..

Hmmmm, where to start. I had a customer threaten to kill me because his son’s bike came with white pedals not orange. Another customer doing something similar which he then attributed to “Christmas rage”.

I had a woman go absolutely apoplectic because I just nodded and agreed with her about bike not being very good……..she actually wrote a scathing email where she described me as being appearing bored, disinterested, vacant and displaying a complete lack of genuine concern for her issues while at the same time being aggressive, threatening and intimidating.

Then there was the guy who wanted to fight me because I told him there was more than one type of bottom bracket. Fun times.

Funnily enough after 30 years in the trade I sort of know what I’m doing!

PDF proofs were emailed back showing crop marks and everything, but in this day and age you are often sending back what you were sent in the first place. And people see what they want to see!

2 comments cards left in the restaurant I used to work at.

1) At lunchtime – Could you tell the table staff to cheer up they look miserable (I’m paid £3.40 and hour to deal with you you miserable prick, maybe if a) you tipped better and b) the cooks/managers were’t taking all the tips, I’d be happier about this arrangement)

2) At afternoon tea – Could you tell your table staff to stop smiling, he looks like he’s just murdered someone.

I left a few weeks later for a £1/hour pay rise to work at the heady heights of the Budgens tills. Thatcher would have been proud.

Not me, but I know of someone that having delivered another replacement “effin’ Amstrad Sky box” to a customer, ended up locking himself in the toilet and calling the police.

They were rubbish, to be fair to the knife-wielding maniac.

Yeh, you always print a proof for final approval

Maybe 15 years ago. Can’t remember the last time i saw a print proof, unless it involved critical colour matching, i.e. colour charts. Everyone signs off on PDF proofs nowadays, and have done for years

I do miss the smell of an old cromolyn proof though.

When I worked behind the bar in the Hac I once had some huge gangster drag me over the bar because I put too much coke in his brandy and coke.

When I was 15 or 16 I worked behind the bar of a local country pub. Not long after starting, one of the locals – Joe – threatened to come behind the bar and beat the shit out of me because I served one of the restaurant customers before him (despite it obviously being their turn).

Funnily enough we become good friends over the next three years of me working there. I was bloody glad I wasn’t the waitress who once dropped and smashed his tankard (which even had his name engraved on) though.

Had one earlier this week. Ranty email from a production admin lady about why the pilot batch samples of the product we were making for them hadn’t arrived yet.

Checked Fedex tracking number. Yep, signed for on Friday last week.

Who signed for them

‘Smith’

That’s in the lab, not in the warehouse. Why did you send to the lab?

Because that’s what was on the emailed order for the material.

Right, well i’ve got the material finally now so no harm done!

[hang on, we send the material to the requested address on the date requested, and yet even after clarifying not a single word of apology for acting like a bitch, just a snidey parting shot.

Guess whose christmas card will have my cock rubbed on it]

I do miss the smell of an old cromolyn proof though.

Cromolyns were great – unfortunately the final prints rarely matched their awesome clarity and shinyness!

I’d produced a digital marketing presentation for a new residential development in docklands and the woman running the place phoned up one afternoon going mental on the phone about how it’s not working, nothing is happening, the whole thing is useless and it’s all my fault.

I tried talking to her to get to the bottom of it but she wan’t having any of it and wouldn’t answer any questions, just kept telling me she wanted someone to come and sort it out. So late on Friday afternoon I make my way over to docklands, walk into the marketing suite to be met by another barrage of abuse. Walked over to the monitor, looked round the back and plugged it back in to the mains socket. Apparently the cleaner had unplugged it the night before to do a bit of hoovering and forgot to plug it back in.

To be fair to the now slightly embarrassed woman she did drive me back to West London and was overly nice every time we spoke from that point onwards. She’d just wound herself up into a bit of a tizzy.

Guess whose christmas card will have my cock rubbed on it

Watch out for paper cuts.

I worked in a petrol station years back. Customers would regularly come in and ask if they could borrow a petrol can. One man came in, grabbed a petrol can, said “I’m just borrowing this.”. I think I stopped him and said we couldn’t do that, he started complaining loudly and my manager came out and backed me up. He turned for the door and through the petrol can across the shop just missing a little kid. Another time on night shift a couple were wobbling their way across the forecourt and she had a cig hanging from her lips. I pointed out that smoking wasn’t allowed so he grabbed it from her and started to exaggeratedly puff away on it before swearing and ranting at me. As there was nobody else about and the doors were locked I just walked through the back and put the kettle on. When I stuck my head back round the corner he was spitting all over the window above the hatch. Those were the days, lot of stories from those nine months.

I used to work in Olympus Sport in Brent Cross shopping centre.

We had an old dear come in with a pair of absolutely knackered black Adidas running trainers; the sole was almost completely worn away in an odd pattern.
It turns out they were her husbands who drags his feet when he walks because he’s disabled, but she didn’t think that 12 months of wear was acceptable. I explained that they weren’t designed for that type of wear & it’s to be expected that they haven’t lasted much more than a year. She went mental & the manager gave her a brand new pair of black Adidas trainers; so probably worth her kicking off…

Another time, a large bloke came in complaining that his very expensive basketball trainers had ‘just ripped’. They hadn’t, he had clearly run a sharp blade along them and he had no receipt to prove they were even bought from Olympus.
The deputy manager stood his ground and told him he couldn’t get a refund, but ended up getting thrown across the shop for his trouble.
The security staff took about 15 mins to wheeze their way to the shop, by which time the bloke had left after threatening to kill the deputy manager once he left that evening. He ended up getting a policeman to walk him back to his car….!

I remember a lady in B+Q asking me where the light bulbs were in the Chester branch and i said yeah they are down the far end pointing down the central isle. I was just turning round and she practically screamed “how dare you walk off I want you to walk be directly to them” its a fair walk and i said sorry but ive got to go, she replied “right wheres the manager lets see what he has to say”. I said to her sorry i dont know where he is I don’t work here… Now to be fair i had a top on the did have a logo on it but not a B&Q one. some people are nuts though..

Aged nineteen, I had a bar job at a busy pub that was a popular pre-club destination.

In the nine months I worked there, not one lady customer made a pass at me. Not one. The flippin’ cheek of it.

Aged 14 I had just delivered a daily mail to the old dear on my local paper round. Just as I jumped back on my bike (a Peugeot I think!) and began heading down the street I hear her screaming and running after me in her dressing gown:

“OI YOU! COME BACK! Where’s my bloody Weekend magazine?!?!”

Me:

“It’s Friday”

Fair play to her she did give me a decent tip that Christmas.. £10 I think, which was more than my weekly wage from the papershop!

When working for a web hosting company we had a customer threaten to “drive through the front window off your office, pour petrol over you all and burn you **** to death”.

Oddly enough we weren’t that scared.

PJM1974 – Member
Aged nineteen, I had a bar job at a busy pub that was a popular pre-club destination.

In the nine months I worked there, not one lady customer made a pass at me. Not one. The flippin’ cheek of it.

Working in a bar is a bit like playing guitar or riding a motorbike. The myth says they’ll get you girls, the reality is somewhat different.

[video]https://youtu.be/GV72IDAvTHQ[/video]

I put too much coke in his brandy and coke.

Someone in the Hacienda complained about too much coke?

Does not compute.

worked in a service station. Family comes in at 7am complaining that it was cold. They were wearing holiday clothes having just got off a flight from Cyprus.

I said ok but it would take a while for it to heat up, maybe a couple of hours……threatened with a punching for that and a manager came up and sided with the customer who was threatening to punch my lights out

Guess whose christmas card will have my cock rubbed on it]

OK so I have now till christmas to firstly get on the christmas card list and then annoy you 😉

I volunteered as a gardener at one of those large country properties, house and garden, open to the public. One moron complained (not to me) of the sound of a grass mower, and added ‘You should be doing it at night’.

As a local Bobby I wrote a polite letter to the Secretary of the local cycling club. The letter advised him that there had been some complaints about the way cyclists were riding through one of the villages. The letter was just for information and not in anyway judgemental.
The next thing I know, I am surrounded by a gang of ranting cyclists, waving the highway code in my face and quoting the Magna Carta at me!

I remember a lady in B+Q asking me where the light bulbs were in the Chester branch and i said yeah they are down the far end pointing down the central isle. I was just turning round and she practically screamed “how dare you walk off I want you to walk be directly to them” its a fair walk and i said sorry but ive got to go, she replied “right wheres the manager lets see what he has to say”. I said to her sorry i dont know where he is I don’t work here… Now to be fair i had a top on the did have a logo on it but not a B&Q one. some people are nuts though..

I’ve had exactly this happen to me. Oddly enough, I think it was in B&Q also (the benefits of a black polo shirt I guess). I tried to be helpful anyway and she properly threw a Benny at me. She was still going even after I said “why don’t you ask someone who works here?”

Nice one Cougar!

Best I really had was the guy who ranted and raved at me for charging £200 to recover his yearly accounts from a faulty Netware volume, not installed by me, on a Saturday before his returns were due.

I offered to re apply the corruption if he was in some way dissatisfied 🙂

Watch out for paper cnuts.

Sorted. 🙂

I had a customer absolutely apoplectic with rage over the fact that a supplier had given a £25 credit for some shit stock plastic pedals as a warranty settlement for his £300 bike and not supplied actual pedals. He would not accept that I had some pedals he could have that were way better, he wanted the exact pedals that came with the bike and nothing else. They were absolute crap but he just couldn’t see that the £25 would get him a substantially better pedal. I can’t remember the last time someone went that nuts at me over something so easily sorted.

I was also mistaken for a staff member in another bike shop once when some bloke started asking me if i was ever gonna f-ing serve him. I just turned away and walked off. He got quite shouty.

@gonzy, I can’t decide who I’d rather have turn up now to settle that sort of situation- Ice Cube or Dante’s girlfriend with a fire extinguisher.

@gonzy, I can’t decide who I’d rather have turn up now to settle that sort of situation- Ice Cube or Dante’s girlfriend with a fire extinguisher.

how about Baby D? 😀

Oddly enough, I think it was in B&Q also (the benefits of a black polo shirt I guess). I tried to be helpful anyway

I successfully helped a lady in a B&q like shop (can’t remember which) a year or two back. Lugged a heavy pack of something or other down into their trolley. I thought she was a bit frosty when I said I didn’t know where whatever the next thing she wanted was- it was only when I paid at the till opposite her and she went bright red and looked very sheepish I realised what had happened!

Definitely something about polo shirts that makes you a target

I saw a complaint to Tesco on Facebook from a woman who was “traumatised” after finding a dead insect in a lettuce

My old boss had a right spat with a wet round the lug holes shop assistant in s farm shop one year whilst buying a Christmas tree. The kid kept moaning about how the pine needles were hurting his hands and how the tree was too heavy.

It was only when Kenneth’s dad shouted at him across the car park that it dawned on him that Kenneth was nothing more than an innocent loiterer in the Christmas tree aisle.

Not a customer, but…

My eldest started his paper round before he was thirteen,so for two weeks I rode with him, as per shops request.

One wet, dark November morning, old chap almost pushes him off his bike in front of me, and starts massive rant about no bikes being allowed in this bridge, how we could kill him and his dog etc etc. big shouty and starting to swear lots when I say…

“Do you not mean the other bridge? This way is the cycle route….”

“Eeeeerrrrrrrrrr…..”

Followed by sharp exit… 😆 8)

Fill your boots: https://notalwaysright.com

One of my favourite regular websites. I read a few tales on their RSS feed almost every day. Never fails to amaze me how incredibly self-centred, entitled and thick some of my fellow humans are.