Yahoo News 29 Customers Who May Just Be The Dumbest People On The Planet (And That's Saying Something)
I asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share the dumbest things a customer has ever asked them. After reading hundreds of these, all I can say is y'all deserve a raise, at least a year's worth of free therapy, and then some. Here are 29 of the downright wildest stories people shared:
Are you a retail or service industry worker with a "dumbest customer request" story to share? Tell us in the comments below or via this anonymous form!
1."A customer once wanted a refund for incense she'd purchased as well as reimbursement for the curtain she burned because we didn't specifically tell her not to lean a burning incense stick against fabric."
—Anonymous
2."I was 18 and working at a fast food chain that sold large teas for $1. I had a lady come through the drive-thru and order two large sweet teas — one with extra ice and one with no ice. By the time she got to the window, I had her drinks ready. She paid, and I handed her the first of the two drinks. She took it, paused, and was immediately angry. She yelled that she had asked for extra ice, and this one had no ice. I explained that I understood, and the extra ice was in my hand. She stared at me like I was a complete idiot and demanded that I remake the drinks because I had messed them up. So, I took back the drink, walked around the corner where she couldn’t see me, waited about 15 seconds, then came back with the same drinks in different hands and gave them to her in reverse order."
"She rolled her eyes, said, 'Was that so f-ing hard?' and drove off. The best part was her (I assume) boyfriend was in the passenger seat, just looking at me with an apologetic stare but didn’t say anything. I think about him often and hope he’s OK."
—Anonymous
3."A customer walked into the coffee shop I worked at and asked if they could sprinkle some of their deceased loved one's ashes onto their latte. I politely declined and explained that it was against health regulations to serve food or beverages with human remains in them."
—Anonymous
4."Years ago, I was working at Lancôme. I had a customer come in and, after a brief consultation, she purchased a night cream. The next day, she came in to return it. I said no problem and got out the required paperwork for returns. I asked the reason for the return (for example: allergies, skin sensitivity, etc). She said it didn't taste good."
"I paused writing and looked at her, puzzled. My colleague, who was standing nearby, walked over and said, 'Excuse me, what?' The customer then proceeded to tell us that if you put anything in your mouth and it doesn’t taste good, then you shouldn’t put it on your skin because it’s not safe. Needless to say, we quickly processed her refund to get her out of there before she continued her rant.
5."When I worked in a bakery, we would get asked daily where we got the bread."
6."I worked at Burger King for only a few days in high school. I had a woman come through the drive-thru and ask for a plain cheeseburger. So, I put the order in as a cheeseburger with no toppings. She came back through several times, demanding we give her a plain cheeseburger. Which we did. A cheeseburger with no toppings. When she got to the shrieking stage, I asked her to explain exactly what she wanted on this 'plain cheeseburger.' Apparently, that meant everything but the burger patty and cheese to her."
7."I was working at a watch shop, and a customer came in demanding a refund because the watch she bought was defective. I said we'd be happy to look at it for her. It turns out she mixed up the minute hand and hour hand and has been reading the time wrong. The worst part is that she didn't believe me and insisted the product was defective. It was a standard watch."
8."One time, someone wanted to return a necklace because it broke. I said sure and asked if she had it with her. 'No, but I have a picture of it on my phone!'' She proceeded to show me the picture of the broken necklace (which was still at her house) and was confused as to why I couldn't do the return when she didn’t even physically have the product with her."
9."I work at an NHL arena. You know, ICE hockey. Had a girl look me dead in the eyes and ask me why it was so cold. ICE hockey, dear. ICE."
10."I had a lady on the phone yesterday tell me that she could no longer reply to an email we had sent her because she had forwarded it to someone else. I tried to explain, with no luck, that the original email would still be in her inbox unless she deleted it. She said she did not delete it, but restated that forwarding it meant she couldn't reply to it. We went around for a bit, and eventually, I just told her I'd verbally relay her message, but in the future, she needed to reply to our emails before forwarding them to anyone else."
11."When I worked at a gas station, I had a woman come in during a rush while I was the only one working. I had a line of 10 people waiting to check out, and she asked me how much a cup of ice was. I told her that a cup of ice was 52 cents. She got said cup and stood in line. Once it was her turn, I rung her up and, again, said, 'Your total is 52 cents.' She paid...with a credit card. She took her receipt and immediately demanded a refund because she thought I said 15 cents. So, I spent even more time giving her a refund to her credit card for 52 cents while the line behind her extended to the back of the store. Every single customer behind her talked crap about her to me when they came up."
12."I had a woman last week who placed two orders and got mad that...she placed two orders. I didn't want to deal with it, so I asked my supervisor if we could refund her, and she said yes. I told the customer I'd go ahead and do the refund and that she could just donate the second order. She said, 'No, I don't have the money for that!' I thought I spaced out and didn't say she was refunded, so I repeated myself. 'No, I want my money back!' she said. I told her that was what a refund was... and she asked to speak to my supervisor because I was being 'rude' and 'snarky.' Girl, I was giving you your money back for your own mistake, just take the W! 😭"
13."My best friend and I worked together at a fancy restaurant waiting tables. I turned around during one shift, and he was carrying a woman’s shoes back to the kitchen with an exasperated look on his face. I followed him to find out what was happening and learned that a customer asked him to microwave her shoes to warm them up because her feet were cold. In a professional restaurant kitchen. He knew the answer would be no from the chefs, so he just carried them back out of sight, told us what was happening, and we laughed at how ludicrous it was. After waiting a couple of minutes, he took them back to her and said, unfortunately, he couldn’t because of food safety laws."
—Anonymous
14."I used to volunteer for NOAA at a particular state beach, where I would talk to visitors and teach them about the various animals and ocean conditions, etc. Well, one year, we had a pod of Humpback whales move into the cove and just hang around for over a month. There were five adults and a very young calf. There was food aplenty, so apparently, they didn’t feel the need to continue their migration right then. Anyway, news of the resident pod spread quickly, and we were inundated with tourists who came hoping to witness the spectacular feeding lunges. One day, a woman who wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer asked me, in all seriousness, what time we fed the whales, because she wanted to be there to see it. I tried to explain that the whales were wild animals and they ate on their own schedule, not ours, but she couldn’t quite grasp that."
15."I work at a pharmacy, and there was a phone outage in the area, and so our phones were down. A woman came in irate that she couldn’t reach us by telephone and demanded that we fix the outage. Not simply the store’s phone, but the entire outage."
16."I work for an HOA Management company. In the summer, we take reservations for various clubhouses and pools within the HOAs. I had a woman call and yell at me because she rented the pool over the weekend, and it rained. She insisted that she made that reservation well in advance and that rain shouldn't have happened. I guess, in addition to reservations, she thought we controlled the weather!"
—Anonymous
17."I worked at a college with an open house event for over 1,000 future students. A mother called and asked if we could reschedule the 1,000 person event because her daughter had a cheer competition that day. She was NOT satisfied that we would not reschedule the event for her precious angel."
—Anonymous
18."I'm a hotel night auditor. I had a guest come late night/very early morning. They had just made a reservation online, and since it was after midnight, the reservation was technically for the next night. I told them I could either check them in right now and we would have to charge for two nights, or they could check in at 3 p.m. and only pay for the one night. The guest asked, 'Can I check in at 3 p.m. now?'"
19."Once I had a lady buy five bags of paper rolls for coins that held about a dozen of each denomination. After she bought these for $1 a piece, she just stood there. I asked her what she was waiting on and she replied, 'Just waiting for you to tell me where to take these for you to fill.' I looked at her dumbfounded and laughed. She asked what was so funny, and I explained that there was no such program, and if she found a place willing to give away $200-plus dollars on every bag, to please send me the address. Obviously, she asked for a refund."
—Anonymous
20."I worked for Ulta and encountered my fair share of interesting customers. My personal favorite was an older woman looking for a hand cream that would reduce the look of wrinkles. I directed her to a product that helps with just that and recommended she try our tester. We were rather busy that day so I asked if she had any questions about the product. She did not, so I told her I would be back to check on her in a bit after assisting another customer. Well while I’m helping this other customer, my manager radios over the headset that this lady is basically scooping the product from the tester into her own jar."
"Samples are only given at the boutiques (MAC, Clinique, Lancôme, etc) and made by an employee. This lady was straight-up stealing product. My manager explained to the lady that testers are for testing product in store only, not for taking large amounts of product home with you. The customer did not like this, so after arguing with my manager, she located me in another aisle (still helping another customer) to tell me that she was never coming back here and that she would tell everyone she knew to stop coming here, and that my manager needed to ask for a refund from school/college, since she clearly didn’t learn anything, then stormed off. Myself and the customer I was helping before being interrupted by the lady were speechless.
21."I worked at a Five Guys. I’ve had people ask me for lots of things we don't sell — pepperoni pizza, garlic Parmesan truffle fries, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, and so on. But the weirdest request I got by far was from a very interesting lady. She asked if we could take a large soda cup and fill it with chocolate syrup from the milkshake station. We obliged, and then she grabbed a cup of the free peanuts and dipped them into the chocolate syrup, eating them shells and all. I don’t think I’ve ever fully recovered from that."
22."My ex worked at Disneyland and he got a lot of ridiculous questions on the regular. Like, 'what time do the 9:25 fireworks start?' He also had a lady ask him to turn down the air conditioner because her aunt was cold. They were outside. Apparently, a concerning amount of people think Disney parks are built in some kind of temperature-controlled dome."
23."I work at a university research library and once a patron asked me to clear her negative credit report. She insisted that there must be a way for me to erase all of her bad credit and significantly increase her credit score on the spot. When I explained she had to contact the credit reporting agencies to contest inaccuracies, she said, 'It's not inaccurate, I just need you to remove all of the negative things in my credit history! She argued with me for 20 minutes, not accepting that there was no way to fix her poor credit except to pay her bills on time, be financially responsible, and wait."
—Anonymous
24."I used to work at a sex toy store, and you'd be amazed at how many women would take the demonstrator model and try to touch their nether regions with it, and then give an absolute look of bewilderment when I told them they couldn't do that."
25."I had a guy order a plain, toasted bagel at a coffee shop I worked at. He told me he wanted it heavily toasted, so I made sure that it was a nice dark brown. It wasn't good enough and he told me he wanted it darker. So I set the toaster to the highest setting and cooked another bagel that came out nearly black. Still wasn't good enough. So I ran the third bagel through the toaster twice on the highest setting. It literally caught on fire. I brought him this charred, burnt husk of a bagel and he was finally happy. He walked away eating a chunk of charcoal with cream cheese like it was the best thing he ever shoved into his face. To this day I still don't understand."
—Anonymous
26."I worked on the phones for a major TV service in the UK, and I had two separate customers rant to me for a combined ~45 minutes, demanding that I tell my higher-ups to find new golf presenters, as they didn't like seeing women on TV presenting sports. One of the two said that he wasn't concerned that the women didn't know enough about golf, rather he simply disliked turning on his TV and seeing women there at all."
27."I was doing calligraphy on holiday ornaments at Disney, writing family names and the year on them. A guest walked up to me and pushed her finger into my forehead. I looked up and she screamed, turned to her friend, and asked, 'How can they make the robots so real?' Stunned, I told her, 'I am real.' 'No. No. No. Robots shouldn't be able to interact with people like this,' she said, as she grabbed her friend by the arms and pulled her out of the store as fast as she could."
—Anonymous
28."A concierge on a cruise ship I was on got a call from a passenger. She said she was trapped in her cabin and couldn’t get out. He asked her how exactly she was trapped. She said there were two doors in her room — one went to the bathroom, and the other had a do-not-disturb sign on the door handle."
29.And finally, "I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for nearly 10 years and have heard just about everything. One day at lunch, a lady at one of my tables waved me over aggressively and said she had a question about the menu. I happily obliged her until she asked, 'What’s the difference between the sirloin steak and the salmon?' I paused, thinking she couldn’t be serious. But she, in fact, was. I simply responded, 'The species.'"
—Anonymous
Service workers of BuzzFeed, now it's your turn! Have you ever had a bonkers customer experience like these? If so, tell us about the absolute dumbest thing a customer has ever asked of you in the comments below or via this 100% anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
