25 Retail And Service Employees Share Stories About Rude Customers Getting Instant Karma

They say, “what goes around, comes around,” or “karma is a boomerang.” They also say “karma is a [female dog],” but it’s not quite family-friendly. The truth is that karma always catches up, likely when you least expect it. Or in 3..2..1… Gotcha. Sometimes within a matter of seconds.

#1

Image source: necrohonkey, Max Avans

Standing at the counter of the pizza place I work at. Lady storms in and slams a pizza down on the counter.

“This isn’t the f*****g pizza I ordered, what the hell are you going to do about?” She asked.

I look at the pizza then at my buddy Nick and turn back to her and say, “Nothing”.

She then goes on a long rant telling how we are going to be fired, how stupid and incompetent we were, she actually told me I must be r******d, then asked why the hell we weren’t going to do anything?

I said, “Because that pizza came from the pizza shop across the street.”

I think she actually managed to shrink in size and slink out looking so pathetic and beaten I almost felt bad for laughing till tears dripped down my face as she slunk off.

#2

Image source: anon

More than a few decades ago I worked at Denny’s. I had two male customers that decided to dine and dash. Got their license plate number and reported it to the cops and jokingly mentioned that they didn’t even tip! Later that night they got pulled over for DUI, cops recognized license plate number from the report, brought them both back to the restaurant and forced them to pay the bill. After he was done paying, the cop just stood there and looked at them and said well? The guy sheepishly handed me my tip.

#3

Image source: [deleted], Simon Kadula

Lady lays into me for the amount of the bill, called me every bad word in the english language. Says we overbilled her, she requested I go through her order. Come to find out we underbilled her by a $ 1000 dollars due to a misplaced zero. The silence on the other line was so beautiful.

#4

Image source: LadySmuag, Artem Beliaikin

Let me preface my story by saying I work near Baltimore. Yeah.

So, I manage a plus-size women’s clothing store. We actually get a surprising amount of… let’s call them ‘non-traditional’ customers. Guys who need a dress for a charity show, cross dressers, genderfluid people, transgender women, and drag queens aren’t unheard of.

So a drag queen comes into the store to pick up some shoes they ordered online. They must have been either coming from or going to a show because they were still in full makeup. I get their name and during our conversation another customer walks in. I call out a greeting and say something like, “I’ll be right with you.”

I go to the back room, and it takes a minute to go through all the web orders. I find the one I need and am on my way back to the counter, when the new customer throws her arm out to stop me from passing.

She then says, “I am a new customer and I’ve been here for 20 minutes and no one has spoken to me.”

A.) I greeted her when she came in and
B.) She had only been in the store for 5 minutes at that point

I resigned myself to groveling, but before I could say anything the drag queen stomps over, glares at the customer, and says, “B***h, she said *hello* to you.”

Complete with sassy finger snaps.

The Queen then made a big show of thanking me for getting her package, and gave me a big sparkly kiss on the cheek before she left.

The other customer sheepishly paid for her Spanx and didn’t make eye contact when I told her to have a good day.

#5

I’m not sure if being a public defender counts as a retail or service worker, but considering that I provide criminal defense to indigent clients facing deprivation of their rights and freedom, I’ll consider it service nonetheless.

I was representing a scumbag client who was a massive meth head who got high and beat the hell out of her eight year old daughter with a belt after she accidentally broke mommy’s meth pipe. She was charged with child cruelty and possession of meth, and, given her criminal record, the DA’s plea offer was three years of prison. Needless to say, my client didn’t want to go to prison for “giving that c**t what she deserved” and started freaking out at me when I told her that’s the best offer I was going to get from the DA, and it was either accept that offer or go to trial. I further pointed out the mountain of evidence against her, primarily: the photographs of her daughter’s injuries, the bloody belt that was recovered from her bedroom, the broken meth pipe w/ meth residue in it, and the fact that her daughter was going to testify against her at trial.

After she was done cursing me out, calling me a “public pretender,” and every other derogatory name she could think of, she fired me and somehow managed to hire a private attorney for the low price of $8,000 (I still don’t know how she managed to come up with that, but I have plenty of reliable guesses). The private attorney “guaranteed” her that he could win her case at trial, and that’s exactly what she chose to do.

Long story short, the private attorney clearly never even read this woman’s file before trial. The trial lasted roughly three hours, the jury was literally out for only five minutes, and the judge sentenced her to ten years of prison.

It was a good day.

Source: WizardLawyer

#6

Image source: Bootstrings, Guillaume Meurice

Repost as I’ve told this story before.
It was about three years ago. An employee, we’ll call him Dave, was working at my retail store when two customers walk in at about the same time, one black, one white. Dave was being trained on register after being there for only a month or so with the manager standing behind him. The two customers get to the register at about the same time, but the black man beat him there. The black man then has the audacity to ask how good the product was before he bought it, and the white man behind him said,”Do I really have to wait for this f*****g n****r to be done?” The black man was unfazed, but Dave said “Sir, please don’t use slurs like that or I am going to have to ask you to leave.”
White man: “Oh, big man? you going to make me leave, big man? Because I called this n****r a f*****g n****r?”
Dave(6″5′): “Yes, I am a big man, and you have to leave now.”
White man: “F*****g fight me then, big man! I’ll f*****g destroy you!”
Dave: “Alright, I will. Let me clock out and grab my stuff and I’ll meet you outside.”
The white man was a little surprised by the fact that he accepted. Dave turned to the manager and said, “Thank you so much for the opportunity, but I’m afraid I have to quit.”
Manager: “Dave, I get it, but you don’t have to do this.”
Dave: “Yes I do.”
The white man was getting himself pumped up outside as Dave clocked out, grabbed his coat and his Pepsi, and walked outside where he sucker-punched the white man in the cheekbone, sprawling him out onto the curb. Dave drove off.

TL;DR: Dave politely quit so he could knock a racist customer out with a single punch.

#7

Image source: anon, Jonathan Cooper

Working drive-thru at a Tim Hortons and some a*****e in a massive black truck parked too far away from the window and expected me to lean super far out to give him his change. He was real impatient and just really rude. I just shook my head and so he gets all pissed off and finally gets out of the truck and the door shut behind him. It was locked and he sat there for like 15 minutes and we had to call a tow truck. Sure it pissed off everyone behind him but at least they were all pissed off at him and not us! He acted like it was the biggest embarrassment of his life.

#8

Image source: thelostcanuck, energepic.com

Worked at a telecom in Canada (I am no longer an employee, thank god)

Lady comes in with a broken iPhone is demanding to get a new one for free. If you don’t know, in Canada the iPhone 6s is going for about $400 upfront on a two-year contract at a minimum $80 plan. She had a good plan but wanted it for free. She called up our loyalty team in store and spent the next two hours screaming at them. Finally, they agree to a deal, and she is getting it for zero. She looks at me and goes I do not want a case, and AppleCare is a scam. (We work on commission, so this essentially meant I was getting nothing and ruining my numbers). She keeps telling me to hurry up through the setup and I was trying to get them out of the store with everything transferred over and set up. She grabs the phone and starts marching off saying I was a terrible employee. She gets three steps out of the store and drops the phone. Shattered screen, and white screen of death. She ran back in asking what I can do. I shrug and went ‘Sorry, but AppleCare sure would have helped eh?’

EDIT: The cell phone dream got me gold… Thank you, kind stranger

#9

Image source: Tevesh_CKP, Pixabay

Late to the party but whatever.

Back when I worked at a Blockbuster we’d occasionally deal with thieves. The standard was just to let them go, not endanger employees or customers.

One time this guy Grabs some stuff and bolts. My manager runs after and points him out to two cops that had parked in our parking lot. They give chase. This guy dodges and weaves through people and traffic. He successfully crosses the street with cops on foot. Desperate to lose them, he jumps down some stairs to gain a lead but breaks both legs.

#10

Image source: Cooper0302, Andrea Piacquadio

I was waiting at a hotel reception while a young staff member checked me in. A really obnoxious woman flounced over, interrupted what the girl was doing and proceeded to b***h about the standard of the kettle in her room. She ranted on and on about only having a “normal kettle” until I told her to wise up and get in bloody line behind me. She shouted that she had been traveling all day and that the room was not a suitable standard. I pointed out it was a f*****g airport hotel, we’d all been traveling all day and that she should just get lost. By now the girl at the desk was blood red and tearful. The woman banged her fist on the desk, demanded to see a manager, and then had a fit of coughing. She promptly shat herself all through her beige trousers. She didn’t hang around after that.

#11

Image source: mayonays, Hitarth Jadhav

Worked at Best Buy 10 or so years ago, this happened on Black Friday. Most of the customers were in bad moods since they’d been waiting hours to come in and stand in more lines.
But this one lady was a raging b***h. After yelling at everyone in my department about how she NEEDED the laptop that was on sale despite it being sold out, she proceeds to tell us she’ll have the store closed down because she “works with the city and knows the fire marshall and we have too many people in the store.”
So she calls him, we tell her to leave, and nothing happens to the store. However we called them as well to report what she’d said, and she got fired from her job for abuse of power.

#12

Image source: Reesesbuttercups

I worked in this fancy clothing store in this posh town at the seaside. It was a busy Saturday when suddenly a very pretentious girl walked in with her boyfriend, ignoring us as we greeted her and even giving my colleague a demeaning look. She went on to browse around in the store and eventually took some clothes with her in the changing booth.

After a while I notice a heated conversation arising from the booth between her and her boyfriend. I see the boyfriend running back and forth between the booth and some clothing racks, in the mean while me and my colleague were being chased away by her (she refused any help and didn’t leave the booth) as if we were a couple of ebola patients.

So me and my collegue continue working and helping other costumers. I was working the register when suddenly the girls turns up next to me, completely pissed off, and she starts ranting about “how our store/brand really should work on the fitting of our clothes and how we were complete f**k ups”. I was completely caught off guard and right when I wanted to ask her what the exact problem was, I see my collegue looking at the girl while bursting out this horribly loud laugh, tears and all. What had happened was that the girl had taken with her a clothing piece she thought was a strapless dress. Well, it wasn’t a dress. It was a skirt. The girl had tried on all sizes and got completely fed up, yelling at us and her boyfriend because the FREAKIN “DRESS” WON’T FIT. So she walked out in a crowded store, making a scene, with a skirt pulled up to her tits.

I have to admit, after she left I laughed till crying.

#13

Image source: faxinator, Donna Spearman

As a teenager I was working part time at a convenience store. I was being trained by the late night cashier. This dude comes in and grabs a bunch of cans of vegetables and such, and comes to the counter and stacks the cans in a very specific way, like a weird kind of pyramid on the counter.

As the experienced cashier (my trainer) takes each can off the pyramid and rings it up, she reaches the end of the stack and we realize that the weirdo has his c**k out and has it laying on the counter behind the cans.

Without saying a word, the trainer grabs one of the big heavy metal cans of beans and slams it down as hard as she can on the guy’s d**k. He screamed an incredible scream of searing pain, grabbed his c**k, and ran out of the store.

**She to me:** (calmly) “You get all kinds on the late shift.”

#14

Currently at a consignment shop. We have two stories of furniture, and it’s only things people bring in for us to sell for some of the profit.
A lady came in her with her son (he was 5 or 6) and she looked around. We had two bar-stools and she came up to the desk and said “I’d like to order two more of these bar-stools” I smiled and said “We can’t do that, those belong to someone and that’s all they had to consign with us.” She looks back and says “Well why the f**k can’t you order ones like this?! I’m sure you can find them online!!” I clench my teeth and smile again, saying “Ma’am we really can’t do that. If you’d like to go online you are more than welcome to look for yourself, but I can’t help you and I’m sorry.” She huffed and started walking to the door, talking about getting me fired.. Making a horrible review of this place..
She then got a nice big face-full of door. It’s a push door and it was locked. She looks at me and screams “*WHY THE F**K IS THIS LOCKED?!*” I have no idea. Then her son looks at her and says “Mommy you were mean to that lady and I don’t wanna go till you say sorry”.
Best. Kid. Ever.

Source: Abee34

#15

Image source: OffdutyEngineer, Andrea Piacquadio

I was a server during college at an upper scale restaurant. I rarely had problems with customers and am overall genuinely friendly. I had a table for 4 with only 3 patrons there, an older couple with their adult daughter. I served them beverages and was told we were to wait for patron #4 the son.

about 40 minutes and 2 refills go by. I say “I bet you guys are starving by now, would you like me to bring you our lettuce wraps they are small enough to not ruin your appetite, Or are we still waiting for **my buddy**?”

father said “we are going to wait, and he isn’t you buddy. frankly you dont know him, hes a hard working man and will be respected”

“You’re right sir, forgive me.”

“He actually has a real job.”

“I understand sir, it wont happen again.”

when i come back for refill number 3 the son was arriving. the son happened to be an old high school friend, before taking a seat he gave me a hug right in front of his dad.

I looked at the father and said, “small world huh, I can’t believe your **my old buddy [name]’s** family im suprized we’ve never met before with [name] and I spending so much time together in high school ”

It’s too bad our restaurant didn’t serve crow.

#16

Image source: LadyVerene, Jakub Pabis

Guy comes in and is being a complete a*****e. Not wanting to show ID to buy beer even though he looked 20 at the oldest, constantly yelling and swearing. He also had parked in the handicap spot despite not having handicap tags or plates on his car.

One of my regular customers, who is a sheriff’s deputy, was also in the store. Saw how the guy was acting. Saw where he was parked. Went out, got his ticket book, and wrote the guy a ticket. Guy realized he wasn’t getting his beer, went outside…to find he was getting ticketed. I could not stop laughing.

#17

Image source: hedgehoglady, Cátia Matos

I worked at a restaurant that was very popular for brunch and Mother’s Day was probably our busiest day of the year. I had a customer call the evening before and asked for a table for six and he was incredibly rude when I informed him that this would simply be an impossibility. He kept getting more and more worked up, asking me to speak to my manager. At first I didn’t want to pass the phone over (my manager wasn’t the nicest guy and we were in the middle of a busy dinner shift) but my manager came up behind me and demanded to know why I had been on the phone for so long. I was like “f**k it, this customer isn’t going to listen to me anyways” and gave the phone to Mac. Mac asked how he could help, listened for about 15 seconds before telling this dude something like, “so you’re tying up my hostess in the middle of dinner even though she’s already told you nicely that we can’t fit you and your goddamn family in the night before our busiest day of the year? F**k your buddy!” And hung up the phone.

#18

Image source: RedditWhileWorking23, Robi Pastores

Working the window at Mcdonalds late night. Guy orders whatever and pulls up to the window. I’m cooking and handling the window, so I wasn’t there when the customer pulled up. When I walked up to the window, I didn’t see the f****r with trash in his lap. I open the window to take his card/cash and he throws a bag of trash at me. I take a step back, bothered that I just got trash thrown at me, and I watch his car speed off. I’m pissed, but there’s nothing I can do. A couple seconds later I hear a small bang of metal on metal. I walk to the lobby and look out the windows. The douchebag slammed into a police cruiser who was about to loop around and use the drive thru himself. Of course I also went to tell the officer what just happened inside.

#19

I had a woman come into my bank one day years ago in Mid-August and try to cash a check. Said check looked like it had been written by a four-year-old. We went through the protocol as mandated by our organization, calling the issuer and verifying all data. While we were going through this procedure the woman goes off on a tantrum. She’s ripping the little pens with chains from the little desks, throwing deposit slips around, demanding she speak to the president of the bank and verbally abusing all the employees. Likewise, she looks to have done enough speed to stay up for a week straight.
We are finally able to get ahold of the issuer of the check, lo and behold, it’s a good check. We cash it. Thank her for her patience. As she’s storming out cursing, two officers walk in and identify her as the owner of a car in the parking lot. Said car had a small child, no more that two, locked inside the entire time. 20 minutes, in August. Some good people called the cops, broke out the window and rescued the kid and had that b***h arrested. I hope to god that that little kid has found a new home or that its’ mom has cleaned up her act.

Source: TrivialDispute

#20

Image source: gocubs44, Albert Vincent Wu

I work at an auto parts store. This one guy stole some $60 headlights and literally sprinted out the door. We went to look outside to try and get his license plate, just in time to see him speed off, hit a curb, and blow out his tire. Called the cops and the dumbass got arrested and had to have his car towed.

#21

Image source: kitjen, Vojtech Okenka

I worked for an online banking help desk and this 18yr old lad phoned up saying he had seen a transaction for £7 to allpay.net and because he didn’t recognise it, he decided the bank were robbing him of £7 and that I was in on it and I was a “thieving little prick.” Then he gets his dad on the phone who stuck up for his s**t of a son, saying I was a pathetic scumbag for stealing £7 off an 18yr old boy, even though it was a debit card transaction and I simply worked in the department which helped people use online banking.

But anyway, I phoned our debit card services to see if they could give any more information, and boy could they. I then had the pleasure of relaying back to this little s**t’s equally shitty father the following:

“Hi sir, thanks for holding. I’ve checked with our debit card services team and I now understand why your son would not have recognised the payee ‘allpay.net’. That’s a deliberately vague term used for discretion when the customer has subscribed to online pornography. That’s what it was for. Your son has been paying for online pornography. Would you like to pop him back on the phone so I can tell him it’s a payment for his pornography, or will you pass on the information?”

The father just muttered that the issue did not require any further investigation, thanked me for looking into it and hung up.

#22

I was a cashier at a grocery store. This guy with a full cart bitched and bullied employees until he was allowed to use my express checkout because he didn’t want to wait in the regular lines, and my line only had two people in it. As soon as my floor manager allowed him and he had his cart unloaded, a tiny old lady with a walker who could barely stand got in line behind him. Everyone gave him dirty looks. He realized he f****d up and tried to make a joke about it. Dead silence. I hope his saved time was worth being an a*****e.

Source: anon

#23

Image source: gsg4n1, Luis Villasmil

It couldn’t have been more obvious that a guy was trying to return stolen merchandise. He “lost” the receipt, didn’t know when it was purchased, paid with cash so we couldn’t just easily look up the transaction on a credit card…

He said he would call his friend to ask if they knew when it was purchased, and then he took out his iPhone and without pressing a button started to talk on it. I was like…I can clearly see the home screen with no call happening.

When he “got off the phone” I got a little bold and in my best retail manager voice said something to the effect of, “oh that’s cool! Is that a new update where you can talk to someone without actually calling them?”

He left after that.

#24

Not exactly retail, but food service. At a college football game, my coworker was chewed out by an alumni because the hot chocolate wasn’t “chocolaty” enough. All she and I could really do were sit there and apologize because there was nothing we could really do, until the bartender chimed in. This bartender is a former High School teacher, currently a substitute school teacher for all grades K-12, and the look she shot this man could have immediately shut up the cockiest of teenagers. Anyway, she put on her scolding face, and warned him “If you continue yelling at these girls over something they can’t control, I’m going to have to ask you and all your friends to leave. I will not tolerate anyone abusing my coworkers.” The guy immediately clammed up and hurriedly walked away with his tail tucked between his legs.

Source: Head-Case

#25

Image source: EmberDione, Hatice Esma DEMİREL

It wasn’t the customer, it was the manager. She was AWFUL. She was rude, intentionally picked out favorites and gave them presents in front of everyone (even when they didn’t like her and tried to avoid it), messed up schedules on purpose for people she didn’t like, etc etc. Worst manager ever.

So there was a huge storm coming in, and people were really worried about it. Like the news telling people to stay home, other businesses closing, etc. So it was up to her to either keep our store open or close it. Of course, she kept it open. Because schools closed only half our scheduled employees showed up, the rest called in – and she called her favorites and told them they didn’t have to come in. Well as the like 5 of us who showed up were standing there, watching out the front windows (there were ZERO customers) she starts yelling at us, threatening to write us all up etc, and we are like – no one is here, all the work is done, we are watching the wind BEND TREES OVER and worried about if we are safe/will be able to get home.

Right about this time we hear a SUPER LOUD crashing noise. CAHCHUNK – CAHCHUNK – CAHCHUNK – CAHCHUNK – WHAM! As the industrial air conditioner on top of the building got BLOWN OFF. Like it rolled along the roof, then went flying into the parking lot. – Right onto her car. It was so perfect it was surreal. Dead center, smashed her car flat. Like if she had been in it, she would have died. And it only happened because she parked right up by the building, where we had SPECIFICALLY been told not to park. All our cars were out in the farthest corner of the lot. We later found out it her car wasn’t paid off, it was some stupidly expensive BMW or something, and her insurance didn’t cover the damage because it was an “act of god”.