Who was the weirdest/funniest/most memorable customer at your work?

You first!

I went to my first big trade show with my new company and walked the floor with my boss and stopped by an old ex customers booth. I was chatting it up with the owner when he looked up and saw my boss behind me….his face turned beet red and points directly at him and he screams out….“YOU!!! YOU ARE THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE I EVER MET!!”

I was like HS what is THAT all about? I still LMAO thinking about that moment!!! XD

There was a little old lady who used to cook up whole feasts with fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, sweet potato pies and a bunch of other stuff for our staff whenever she came in.

Two come to mind, both from when I was working in a night club.

The first was an old german woman who came in on a real slow night, she had the dance floor to her self, and the way she was drunk-dancing you could tell she fancied her self as a stripper. All it took was a little Hot Chocolate – I believe in miracles, and a red spotlight to confirm the theory.

The second one was a guy who was acting weird, how weird? well, I’ll put it this way, he was trying to capture beams of light in an ashtray. Not the mention the afro wig and protective construction glasses.

I worked at a local college, and enrolled a lovely lady of 92, yes that’s correct ninety-two, into the French class. She told me she had always wanted to learn French, and thought at her age, it was about time she went to classes. I was quite astounded that someone of her age would still want to learn a subject. She told me when she was in school a foreign language wasn’t available to her. She had never been to France, but thought a foreign language was what she wanted.

I was at the college when she started her classes, and she came to me because her classroom was on the third floor, and she wasn’t tall enough to press the lift button to get to her class. I took her to the lift, pressed the button and told her to come to me each week and I would take her to her class. I couldn’t help but admire the lady for her tenacity at wanting to learn French at her age. I got to know her quite well and we became very friendly. She had a walking stick with her, and so linked my arm while I helped her get to the lift and take her to her classroom. Again when she finished her class I would collect her and take her back to the waiting taxi. We chatted away and she told me about her family and friends. I think she joined the classes for the company as well as learning her chosen subject.

She always turned up on time, complete with her literature, and notebook and always had a smile on her face. She began to speak to me in French and I was really happy she was doing so very well. She was so excited that she was, at the grand age of 92 achieving her goal in life. I often spoke to her tutor, and he also was quite astounded at how well she was learning to speak French. She became quite a celebrity within the college. I think perhaps she was the oldest ‘student’.

One week she didn’t turn up, and I thought perhaps it was because of the weather. She didn’t turn up again the next week When she didn’t turn up for her class on the third week I became quite concerned. I decided to telephone her home number, and when someone answered I enquired as to where she was. I was utterly devastated when I was told by a member of her family that she had died.

This family member said that (her mother) had spoken fondly about me, and how helpful I had been, and thanked me for all I had done to help her get to her classes. She said her mother had so enjoyed learning French and would happily speak to her family in a ‘foreign language’ whenever she had the opportunity. She had, to some extent, achieved her goal. I so miss this lady even to this day. What a champion.

I did not have “customers’, my customers were law violators.

Miss Vickey was one in particular that would make us laugh. Miss Vickey was about 65 years old and worked as a prostitute downtown. yep, a 65 year old prostitute. Miss Vickey loved alcohol. Saturday nights were her nights to howl. she would drink the wine and sell her body for a bottle. Miss Vickey never wore underwear under her dress. each time we arrested her, she would say “you coppers want a piece of the action?” she would then flip her dress above her head, exposing her 65 year old body. we had to laugh at her. this was a Saturday night routine for many years for Miss Vickey.

When I worked at a fast food place, we had this one guy we called Fish Man. He would come in when it wasn’t busy, open the door, and start yelling “FISH!” as he walked up to the counter (about 30 or so feet). He’d repeat “FISH!” every 2 or 3 seconds until he got to the register, and then get angry if the cashier said anything other than his total for a fish sandwich.

At the same job, we had this weird mother-daughter couple who would come in every Tuesday (for a long time, I used to close every Tuesday as manager) about 30 min before closing time. I’d say the mother was about 60 and the daughter was about 35. They’d order their meal and then sit forEVER eating and chatting. They were pretty weird; they dressed in what looked like second-hand sweatshirts with kittens or wolves on them, and seafoam green sweatpants, that kind of thing. And the mom wore adult diapers (you could see them through her sweatpants, and smell her too!).
At first, I tried to be the nice manager, politely letting them know that the restaurant was closing and that they’d have to finish up. And remind them of that, every 10 minutes until they left.
Then they started to bring in food from other places. I know our coffee wasn’t that great, so if someone brought in a Tim Horton’s coffee to have with their meal, I didn’t really care. But it got to the point where they were bringing coffee, chicken, fries, all kinds of stuff. I told them more than once that we didn’t allow outside food, but they didn’t care. Over the months they kept staying later and later after we closed, even after I had turned out all the lights aside from those in their section. One night, they stayed an hour after we closed. I had finished everything I had to do: counting tills, balancing the safe, getting my deposit ready, etc., and my staff had finished everything (if anyone has ever worked in a restaurant, you’ll know that there’s lots to do after closing). I had to go out there and tell them, “Look, we’ve been closed for an hour, my entire staff has gone home, and now there’s just me waiting for you to leave. You have to go now.”
They got mad and never came back. What a blessing.

@john65pennington I am sure Miss Vickey brightened up your day :)))

Partyparty, we knew when Saturday night rolled around, that we would receive a call on Miss Vickey. I believe she has the world record for prostitution arrests.

I can think of several dating back to when I worked at a pancake house my senior year of high school and the first several years of college.

There were the heavy duty scary bikers who arrived in a herd, all wearing leather with various amounts of unusual facial hair arrangements, one of whom consistently ordered a big glass of milk. It just didn’t fit the “Got Milk?” image. They were good tippers too. Which made up for Violet, the little lady who ordered tea and could stretch the one bag all evening. She never tipped but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that money was in short supply.

The most memorable was the group that arrived during my two hour shift Christmas morning not to long after my Dad had died. I should point out that this was 1978 and things were different. I wasn’t expecting any customers except a few stray travellers and was the only waitress in the place. There was one cook and a manager present when a party of about 20 muslims descended on the place. The men all sat at one table and all the women at the other. Obviously they didn’t eat pork (and we didn’t have all that many servings of tuna salad nor other fish thawed on Christmas morning at a pancake house where, most mornings, we serve sausage and bacon as a rule).

I had to wear a shit brown polyester uniform with a matching stupid apron. Passing the men’s table, my apron strings got pulled. I thought I had caught it on something. Not to long after, when bringing refills on beverages, my apron strings got pulled to where the apron came off and one of the men smiled. The third time, he pinched my backside. I politely said, “Sir, that is not ok!”

Now, I wanted to be home with my family for our first Christmas without Dad. I had 20 people to serve all by myself, the cook couldn’t produce the food fast enough to allow me to bring it all out at once, I was stressed out (and only 18), but the next time he pinched my ass, I slugged him. This knocked him and his chair back onto the floor. All the men stood up when this happened and I was scared. Gratefully the manager had been watching the situation escalate and he called the cops (who frequently ate at our restaurant, so they came quickly) and kicked them all out of the restaurant and let me go home without issue.

Curiously, this is one of my mother’s favorite stories to tell about how I made it home for Christmas. It is a strange world.

Kayak8, you mentioned a dirty biker in your answer. this reminded me of an unforgettable sight my wife and i witnessed the other day. it was a dirty, big biker with all the Harley emblems and black leather. his boots were huge and he wore a red bandana on his head. he had a full beard and smoked a cigar. i looked at my wife and she looked at me and we just screamed laughing out loud. instead of a big Harley hog cycle, he was on a bicycle !!! apparently, his hog had been repoed. he pedaled away as we wiped the tears from our eyes from laughing so hard.

I worked in a fancy-schmancy grocery store. We used to get the folks who had no connection whatsoever to the natural processes of life. Some people thought that the entire meat department served up “soy meat,” because since it came from [store] it must be vegetarian. (I hope they enjoyed their hamburger.) And some others who were wacky in the other direction would tell their kids that soy milk came from cows who only ate soybeans.

This is one of my favorites.

Customer: Ugh!! Why is there DIRT on my lettuce?!
Produce Girl: Sometimes it doesn’t all get washed off before we stock it, sorry.
Customer: So you dropped it on the GROUND?
Produce Girl: No, but it does come that way from the farm.
Customer: What do you mean, from the farm?
Produce Girl: (takes a breath) Lettuce is grown on a farm. They plant it in the ground.
Customer: So this GREW in DIRT?!
Produce Girl: O_o
Customer: That’s DISGUSTING!

Also great:

—Customer asks Deli Girl for a pound of the chicken salad. Deli Girl fills the container, gets it to 1.03 pounds. Customer complains, “I said to make it ONE POUND! This is TOO MUCH!” – opens the container and dumps the chicken salad on Deli Girl.

—Cashier is punched out, after work, and is sitting on one of the benches in front of the store, waiting for her ride to come pick her up. She is out of uniform. A married couple of customers walk by, and the Husband crumples up his receipt and tosses the trash AT the off-duty cashier. Wife is aghast, “Why did you DO that?!” Husband says, “It’s okay, hon, she works here.”

—Customer approaches the store manager on duty and asks him, “Hey, can you help me out for a second?” Manager says “Sure, what do you need?” The customer then wipes his hands (which were sticky from honey or peanut butter from the bulk section) up and down the front of the Manager’s apron to clean them off. “Thanks!” said the Customer, walking off with clean hands.

@partyparty What a lovely story! It’s great that you could help her meet her goal.

I work at a little gourmet market so most of our customers are regulars. It’s interesting learning all their little quirks and habits, and most of them are very nice people.

We have one lady who comes in nearly every day. She grumbles out loud to herself about how expensive the food is, how the government is screwing her over, stuff like that. Sometimes she buys stuff, and she’ll slam the money down on the counter and say, “Here. Take your damn money.” Mostly, she wanders in, sits and reads the paper, or just talks to us for a while and then leaves. We just see her as part of the local color in the neighborhood.

One day our district manager was in the store with us. He is a really nice guy. He’s affable, outgoing, energetic, and enthusiastically does everything he can for the customers. So he approached this lady with a smile and asked how he could help her. She scowled and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Aw, go fuck yourself.”

@Haleth Just love your story. It takes all sorts of people to make up our world… good, bad and indifferent. I am sure you must laugh at her cantankerous antics :)))

At the navy hospital Naples labor and delivery ward we had a local national “noblity” once. She was a 35 year old Italan contessa who had married an American diplomat. She knew nothing about her own body apparently. Ater the birth the duty nurse and I were with her helping her nurse the baby for the first time. She was having difficulty getting out of her nigtown and she finally said “Is this really necessary?” The nurse and I made silent eye contact, but continued to help her. She was wearing a bra underneath. The nurse said, “Well ma’am, you need to bare your breast for this to work.” The woman looked horrified and said ”My breast?”
Sigh…
When I ran the Colpo clinic at another hospital one of the women who came in every month always asked for one doc in particular. She was always cheerful and outgoing, I rather liked her. Then she told us, while she had her feet up in the stirrups, that she had shaved especially for this doc. I could see his little ears turning pink while he struggled to maintain a straight face. I personally bit a hole through my lip. Later, he gave me the only military order he ever gave in is life. He said I order you to never schedule her with me again!”
For days he would not shut up talking about it. He kept saying “ohhhhhhhh god, she shaved her beaver for me.”

Working as a guide for cruise ship tourists at an Alaskan National Park, I was rendered speechless by one New Yawk lady in furs and heels when she stepped off the bus at the only glacier she’ll ever see in her life and ordered her husband “Don’t waste pictures on scenery!”

We had a client who is now in our hall of fame for “stupidest human ever”. NSFW and kind of gross.

A middle aged male client brought his dog in and she had an open pyometra. That’s a horrendous uterine infection, “open” referring to the fact that it’s draining, producing a large, constant volume of odoriferous mucopurulent material (pus). A pyometra requires surgical intervention (an ovariohysterectomy – spay), but an open pyo is somewhat less life threatening because the drainage provides relief, while a closed pyometra can actually rupture, flooding the abdomen with the infection and causing septicemia.

He had limited funds, so the doctor agreed to dispense antibiotics with the understanding that the client would take his dog to his regular veterinarian for surgery the next morning (a potentially less expensive source of surgery). Her verbal instructions to the client included the direction to “monitor her vulva for discharge”.

Client: “Her what?
Doctor: “Her vulva.”
Client: “Say it in people terms.”
Doctor: “Her vulva. Her genitals.”
Client: blank look
Doctor: “Her vulva. Her genitals. Her vagina.”
Client: blank look
Doctor: “Her hooter. Her coochie. Her junk. Her cunt. Her twat.”
Client: “You mean her shitter?”
Doctor: “Close enough.”

I offered her twenty bucks if she could say “twat” to another client that night. She lost.

I will never for get this. A couple years ago I was a cook at an italian restaurant.

One night we had a customer who ordered a chicken alfredo. Gave the waiter a bit of a hard time left a crap tip if i recall correctly as well. Well he goes home and comes back ~45 min later.

When he gets back he asks to talk to the waiter and the cook who cooked his meal. So he comes in the back and he goes to the waiter “what color was I wearing when I left here?”

The waiter looks at him for a min and thinks about it and says “uhhh i believe brown sir”

“yes, thats right, I was wearing brown, as you will notice, I am now wearing entirely blue.”
so we’re just looking at him like uhhhh yeaaa and

and then he goes “welll i had to change because on my way home I SHIT MY PANTS! YOUR FOOD MADE ME SHIT MY PANTS!!!”

To hold back complete and utter laughter at this point was nearly impossible.

We ended up compin his meal for the night but just damn….. like ok the food made you sick whatever, but to go in a kitchen and tell everyone that you shit your pants…..? like really?

@uberbatman Win!

I processed film at Walgreens after I graduated high school.
One man had a LOT of photos of animals having sex… at the end of the film was his child’s birthday party.
When he was reviewing the photos at the counter, he jokingly said.. oh! I forgot I took these!

It was… very.. very strange.