'If I have to talk to you again, you have to sit in time-out for 10 minutes': 10+ Employees who got fired after getting petty with their most entitled customers

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 6, 2024 3:00 PM EST

Think back to your first job and try to remember how you dealt with customers. Were you the polite type who tried to solve every situation without an argument, or were you the type to bring in your manager so you wouldn't flip out on that customer? Either type is fine, because let's face it, some customers are just the worst people. They have zero respect for the hard workers in retail positions, fast food jobs, or call center reps. All these customers can think about is themselves and their own needs. At the end of the day, that mentality is so detrimental to themselves and everyone around them. These customers will stand there and yell themselves hoarse demanding better treatment. What they don't realize is no one wants to help someone like that, and if they'd just acted nicely in the first place, they'd be done with their transaction by now!

These people did get to tell off their worst customers, and for many people, it was a cathartic experience. A few folks chimed in with stories where they got sassy with a customer and managed to keep their job anyway, which are even more victorious to read. You can check out all of the replies down below. 

After that, read about this marathon runner who berated her friend for joining the race last-minute, and insisted that "posting about it on Facebook would overshadow her post." 

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    via Blake Wisz on Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    People who lost their jobs by going off on a customer, what is your story?
    via u/Mjjjokes
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    [deleted] Disneyland. I worked in the ticket booths. If you're an annual pass holder, and you're on the monthly contract, Disney takes automatic payments from your credit card. If your card expires or otherwise has to be changed, and you don't call to put a new card on file, the auto-payments stop and your pass freezes. No big deal; Disney doesn't hit you
    via u/[deleted]
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    with fees or penalties. You simply call or come to the booth, and we handle it right then and there -- zippety- doo-dah, and in you go. One day, I get a middle- aged couple whose passes froze. The man was upset, and ready to talk about it. A common question from guests is "Don't you send out late notices?" No, Disney doesn't because they're not practical, and
    via u/[deleted]
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    again, there are no penalties anyway. Just come see us and we'll straighten you out. The man says to me in a disgusted tone, "You don't send notices when a pass freezes? How does that work?" I said, "Well, you receive your credit card statement, you see that a recurring charge is not present on it, and you can expect the service related to the
    via u/[deleted]
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    recurring charge to be interrupted, and that it must be related to your card having been replaced recently." The wife smiled, the man's face reddened, and he leaned in and barked, "Get your supervisor. I want to talk to somebody smart." To my shame, I said, "Of course. Would you like someone smart enough to stay aware of their credit
    via u/[deleted]
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    card use, or merely smart enough to read contracts. they sign?" My booth lead happened to come over as soon as she heard "supervisor," so she was standing behind me. when I said the emotional thing. It isn't how I wanted to
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    go out (I was five days away from leaving for a new job), but I looked at it as a vicariously cathartic mic drop goodbye to my fellow cast members. For them, it was a thrill.
    via u/[deleted]
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    La_Lanterne_R... Back around 1969, I saw a service advisor at a VW dealership get fired for telling an irate customer "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have bought a Volkswagen."
    via u/La_Lanterne_Rouge
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    GREAT WALL_... Oh man I been dying to tell this story for awhile now...although it doesn't pertain to someone getting fired, it does have some justice. A friend and I go to a store, let's make it up and call it. All-Mart. We're in line at the registers when this middle- aged lady in front of us is trying to use some expired
    via u/GREAT_WALL_OF_D***
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    coupons. The cashier is telling her the coupons can't be used. Mind you these coupons would save her $4...a fact that I realized after this entire ordeal. Lady wasn't having it and just starts insulting and yelling the cashier as if its their fault the coupons expired. And not smuggish insults like "no wonder you work here" but some deep cutting stuff like "you should
    via u/GREAT_WALL_OF_D***
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    kill yourself if you can't override and accept them"...like. This b was out for blood for $4 dollars. That's when my friend, who's a former Marine, steps in and reams back into her. The exchange went something like... Him: "Whoa whoa...how dare you disrespect this young cashier like that. The
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    is wrong with you to say things like that to her? You're a messed up person" B "Mind your business. : and don't raise your voice at me" Him: "Oh so now you know that raising your voice is disrespectful. Where was that consideration when you did it to her?"
    via u/GREAT_WALL_OF_D***
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    Her: "Stop talking to me or I'll get my husband here to handle you." Him: "What husband? You don't even have a wedding. ring on. That's probably the problem there...you're so bitter and lonely you take it out on other people. You're messed up" They exchange more comments and it ended with
    via u/GREAT_WALL_OF_D***
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    her storming out of the store without her items and on the verge of tears. I guess we attracted too much attention because we were asked to leave by the manager but not before the cashier quietly thanked us.
    via u/GREAT_WALL_OF_D***
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    lamWood13 I used to cut hair. I was cutting a lady's hair when the child of lady waiting started running around the shop. I told the child several times to go sit with her mother and asked her mother to please keep her child seated next to her. Well, in the middle of cutting around my client's ear, the child ran into my work area, ran into me and almost
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    caused me to cut my client. I looked at the child and firmly said "you need to go sit down with your mother now." Well her mom didn't like that and came running back to me and yelled "Don't tell my child what to do, I'm her parent." I responded with "Then act like it." She glared at me, grabbed her child and stormed out. Everyone in the shop was relieved the child
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    had left. A few days later the owner came and tried to fire me for it, but luckily there were enough other stylists. and clients that came to my defense about the danger of the situation and I only got a write up.
    via u/lamWood13
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    Nishiwara I was lucky I didn't lose my job for this one. I worked at a furniture store as a sales associate. One day a husband and wife come in wanting to furnish their sons apartment that's going to college. They find all of the furniture pieces they want and I go to check stock on multiple items. Everything is in except the table top on the dining room set they
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    wanted. I go back and tell the couple. The husband throws an absolute hissy fit saying that he can't believe that we don't keep our products stocked (keep in mind that we are a huge furniture store). I calmly explain to him that we can't possibly keep all of our product in stock at all times. and since the dining room table he wanted was a very popular set (due to the fact it was $199.99) it tended to
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    go out of stock rather quickly. So, we would have to wait for that vendor to send us the table top which was about two weeks. I even tried to show them another table top that was in stock that was very similar to the one they picked out and he would not have it. He started telling me that I was incompetent and how dare | insult him (insult him how? I have no idea). He starts increasing his volume and
    via u/Nishiwara
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    now he is full out screaming at me about 10 inches away from my face. My manager walks from around the corner and looks at me questioningly (like the "do you got this face") I nodded at him that I had it, but he continued to stand within earshot. I then looked back to the customer and said in a nonchalant tone- "I'm not going to help you, in fact no one here is going to help
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    you. Now please get out of my store". The customer looks at me bewildered and in full set rage and demands to speak with my manager. Since my manager is standing right around the corner- he had heard everything. He goes over to the customer and says, well you heard the lady". I miss working there. II
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    [deleted] I used to work at pizza place in a small town when I was a teenager. One night I took a phone order from some idiot woman. It went like this: Me: Thank you for calling "pizza place", may I take your order? IW: Yes, I'd like a large pizza. Half pepperoni, half sausage, and half black
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    olives. Me: Ok, did you want the toppings combined or separated? IW: No, I want half pepperoni, half sausage, and half black olives. Me: Ok so you want 1/3 pepperoni, 1/3 sausage, and 1/3 black olives? IW: No! I want HALF PEPPERONI, HALF
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    SAUSAGE, and HALF BLACK OLIVES! Me: I understand the toppings that you want, but I'm not understanding how you want us to put the toppings on your pizza. Do you want them separated by thirds? Combined together? Or do you mean put half the amount that we usually put on?
    via u/[deleted]
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    IW: What's so hard to understand?! | WANT...HALF...PEPPERONI... HALF...SAUSAGE...AND HALF...BLACK OLIVES!!!!! Me: Lady, there's only 2 halves to a pizza! IW: I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER!!!
    via u/[deleted]
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    I got fired on the spot. It was easier for the manager to just hire another person than it was to lose a customer in a small town. Oh, and the lady wanted the toppings divided into thirds. She told the manager the same thing and he just went with her math. The b also got it for free.
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    Intrusivelnveigli... Was a stockroom assistant at a well known fashion chain in the UK & US. Didn't go off on a customer but I well wish I did now. Happened to be behind tills changing hangers boxes when a customer explodes at the trainee cashier demanding to know where her order was. She's screaming her head off at
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    how it's "unacceptable I paid extra" and how she "made a specific detour" to collect her package. She had ordered a jacket in another branch and had paid for next day delivery to the store I worked in. Customers aren't supposed to come collect their orders until they get an email saying their order is ready to collect.
    via u/IntrusiveInveigling
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    The poor cashier started last week and is basically cowering for dear life. I take over and ask to see her email which she explains she "doesn't need" because she "paid extra" so her package "must be here". After 10 minutes of me trying to explain why her package isn't ready to collect and her trying to challenge Krakatoa, she storms off shouting that
    via u/IntrusiveInveigling
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    she'll be "having words" with the guy who owns our company. I hand back to the cashier and carry on with my day* The next day I'm prepping our delivery and I get called for a meeting with the store manager. I'm told I'm being. let go for gross misconduct specifically "being unhelpful and challenging" to customers.
    via u/IntrusiveInveigling
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    Turns out the customer was a "journalist" for the DailyMail and she called our head of company who she did indeed know personally and got me fired specifically. TL;DR: Tried to reason with a DailyMail journalist. Got fired for her stupidity. Yay for logic.
    via u/IntrusiveInveigling
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    *EDIT: Her jacket did indeed come an hour after she left the store. She came back with her email. Sweet victory...
    via u/IntrusiveInveigling
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    TwentySixLetters A woman came into a charity shop and complained about every single item loudly to the ten or so customers in there. Along the lines of "this is all sh. Who pays for this?" Like we're some boutique with clothes from the back of a van. She clearly didn't understand how rarely new clothes (still tagged etc) are donated.
    via u/TwentySixLetters
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    Then she got in my face. about it. I was so angry with her for chasing away the people that came in that I lost my cool. There was nobody left except her since she'd ranted them into leaving. I told her to get out and I 'didn't give a sh ' about the clothes or her opinions. She screams her way out of the shop broadcasting it to everyone on the street.
    via u/TwentySixLetters
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    She came back once the manager was off their break and complained again, so I lost my job fairly soon after. I can't blame them, I'd have done the same.
    via u/TwentySixLetters
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    Spiralyst Had a customer that, for at least a year, came into our store and was a master tactician in getting free goods by making up complaints against our staff. He would do all sorts of maneuvers like wanting products he knew we didn't carry to making up complaints about our staff to even complaining that he had been charged
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    incorrectly. If this guy was in the store, good luck of you were another customer. He would up all the oxygen in the place and demand service from multiple people at the same time. He got reduced prices and free merchandise and tons of coupons for his efforts. My boss would never challenge this guy or protect
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    his own staff from being exposed to losing their job to a customer who would happily see a member of our crew fired so he could get $5 off his next purchase. My boss wasn't entirely at fault since this was a giant corporation and he was merely towing the fabled "the customer is ALWAYS right" mantra. I was already planning on leaving for a better
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    opportunity and was going to give notice of resignation. one week when this customer started giving me an incredibly difficult time. about an issue I had nothing. to do with and couldn't help him with. It was extremely busy and he was holding everyone up with his bulls. I made a quick value judgment, realized I was already out the door and the
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    only thing I was still there to do was to honor my appropriate resignation notice. I had no designs of ever working for this horrible company or any company like it ever again. I found myself in a unique situation and wasn't going to let the opportunity pass. This guy had made life difficult for all of us for a long time. Payback time. I cut this guy off mid-
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    sentence and just went off on him in front of a number of customers and part of our staff. I told him he was nothing more than a cheapskate grifter and told him I would no longer recognize him as a living, breathing, member of our species. Then I told him to go himself. The look on his face was so beautiful. The entire store
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    fell into silence and I just stared him down. He asked to speak to my manager and I doubled down by talking over his head, inviting the customer behind him to elbow up to the counter. I apologized to the new customer about the bad behavior of the guy who, at this point, had steam coming out of his ears. Eventually when he realized he was getting nowhere
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    waiting on me, he stormed off to find a manager. I finished my shift. I came back in the following day, was intercepted by a corporate manager I had rarely seen, taken upstairs and was getting lectured. I interrupted the scolding, revealed my intentions to leave this place, and quit right there.
    via u/Spiralyst
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    I got a lot of high fives from the other members of the staff on my way out the door.
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    [deleted] Didn't get fired for this one, and it was glorious. Used to work in this little thai place in town, and we had these teenagers who came in every Sunday, were r de and demanding, and tipped 0% One day they're exceptionally awful to a new waitress, reducing her to tears, and so my boss calls
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    me over. "Next time they come, you take them, and you earn that 0% tip." I do a bit of a double take... She can't possibly mean what I think she means. "You mean?" She nods and gives me this smile that is equal parts devious and smug. A week later they come in 5 minutes into my shift. She seats them in my section, smiles at me and tells me to do my worst. Here is a fairly detailed account of the
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    wonderful 45 minutes that followed. I wait a good 5 minutes before going to greet them and bring waters. They're ready to order. I don't have a pen. I'll be right back. I promise. I loudly tell my manager I'm going out for a smoke, and then go power smoke a cigarette (takes me about 90 seconds). They're my only table and I'm not handling food yet, so I don't wash my hands. I reek of
    via u/[deleted]
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    smoke. I take her order, pad thai no bean sprouts like always. As he opens his mouth to tell me he'll have the same I give him the "just a minute" finger and pull out my phone. I text my fiancé and ask if he wants to get dinner from my place or his tonight. I take his order. I somehow misunderstand and write down extra bean sprouts. Their food comes up while I'm telling my boss and the other waitress a
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    story about my cat. I finish telling the story before I get their food. I bring it out and walk away as they're starting to complain about the sprouts. About 5 minutes after they get the food I get a second table. One is a customer from a former job of mine and we spend a few minutes catching up when I go to greet them. The 0%'s try to signal me as I leave. the table, but I stare straight ahead. I come back for my
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    new table's order and see that their glasses are missing roughly four sips of water. This simply won't do! I hang their ticket and come back to fill their glasses. I look at 0%'s empty glasses, look the guy straight in the eye, smile, and walk away. He stops me as I'm walking over with apps for my new table and asks for boxes. I tell him I'll grab them right after I drop off this food. I
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    play a game of 2048 all the way up to 1024 before bringing them one small box. They ask for two bigger boxes and the check. I promise I'll be right back, and then ask my boss to keep an eye on the table I like while I go smoke again. (Obviously I don't usually take this many smoke breaks, especially not this early into a shift.) I come back and my boss tells me
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    they came to her for boxes and to pay and told her they're never coming back. She voids their check, gives me the $20 some dollars, and tells me I earned it. TLDR: Boss gave me $20 to give over the top bad service to awful regulars.
    via u/[deleted]
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    TLCplLogan I cleaned cars for a rental car company. One day, a customer comes in, already in a very bad mood (for whatever reason). He saw me standing at the counter, and apparently this offended him to the point that he began to yell at me. Long story short, I yelled back at him. Nothing came of it for over two months,
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    until I was fired without warning. The district manager who fired me said that even though everyone in the company who reviewed all the evidence pertaining to the incident and decided I was well within my rights as an employee to yell at the dude, they had to fire me because he was some big shot at a company that had a very lucrative contract with my employer and he
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    threatened to drop the contract unless they fired me.
    via u/TLCplLogan
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    SnarksNGrump... Many years ago, I worked clothing retail. I had a favorite customer he and his wife would come in and he'd put down a small fortune each month on his wife and teen daughter. He reminded me of my dad who I lost to a massive heart attack when I was 18. I was in my early 20's and my mom had just ded of cancer. This gentleman had stopped
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    coming in for about 2mos. I look up and see him come in with wife and daughter and the girl looks p ed. They come to my counter and the girl calls her mother a b and her father a "waste of space" since he lost his job when the mill he worked for closed. She kept berating them and something (the child in me) snapped out. I told her off. I said that she should appreciate her dad
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    who gave her everything until he couldn't. That she was 16 and I wasn't too much older than her when my dad was d That the sweet woman, she called a b I who went out of her way for her could be gone fast too. That she needed to not be a brat because she could look up one day and have neither parent.
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    That I would shave YEARS off my life, even if I ded the next day to have my parents hug me once more. I told her to grow the up and be kind to her parents. They left and my boss chewed me out. She said if they complained I was toast. I lived each day wondering if I'd get fired. 2 weeks later
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    her dad came in because he saw me through the window. He thanked me. She started studying, helping around the house and was looking for a part-time job. She grew up and started treating them with respect. She didn't call them names anymore and apologized for being a brat. I didn't lose my job but it was close.
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    MenionlsCool I didnt get fired for this, which was pretty great because I threatened a mother with a time-out in front of her kids. I worked at a pool as a lifeguard and our pool doesn't allow water- wings because they aren't "coastguard approved", but we gave out free life jackets for them to use. In comes mama b with her two kids, one of them was like
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    four and had the water wings. I told her she couldn't use but we had ones available for free, and she blew up on me. I guess her daughter really liked her water wings. I told her to talk to a manager because I'm not allowed to talk while watching the pool, but she kept yelling so I just
    via u/
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    repeated the line I'm instructed to use at kids who repeatedly misbehave. "I already told to please talk to the manager because I have to watch the pool so if i have talk to you again, you have to sit in time out for 10 minutes." She glared at me, and didn't even go to the manager.
    via u/
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    Joyrock Not me, somehow, but one of my coworkers. She was towards the end of a long day, and was the only register open. A customer came through, making lots. of special requests, and being particularly ride when
    via u/
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    she tried to ensure everything. Coworker had enough, closed her register, moved to the next one over, and asked for the next customer.
    via u/
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    p... I didn't say this, but I saw it happen. Working at Burger King many years ago. I was working the drive-thru register, which was close enough to the front registers that I could hear conversations. One of my co-workers was taking an order from a lady who kept asking how much her total
    via u/
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    was, and then cancelling food on it and changing her mind. I guess she was trying to keep under a certain dollar amount? Well at the Burger King I worked at, any cancelled food on an order needed a manager's password (thanks to one a hle who stole money by putting in someone's order, telling them the total, and then canceling out the order and
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    pocketing the money). So the manager had come by 3 or 4 times at that point. This was during dinnertime, mind you, so there was a line of customers out the door waiting to order. Finally, my co-worker pulled out a pad of paper and a calculator. He started writing this woman's order down and totaling it out by hand. The woman asked him why he was doing that, and he
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    told her "When you make up your mind about what you want, then I'll put it in the register." This p ed off the lady, so she grabbed the notebook and tried to hit my co- worker with it. He snatched it back from her and told her "Get the f out." My manager was only going to write him up for it (since the manager agreed that the
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    lady absolutely deserved it, but my manager had to follow company policy), but he already had two writeups on file so she had to fire him.
    via u/
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    trogdor259 I didn't get fired but got a written warning for this. I was working chat tech support for a web host. Customer chatted in complaining of slowness claiming our servers were having issues. I do all the standard steps and we determine that his ISP is having issues (standard tracert, etc). He doesn't believe me and becomes
    via u/
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    obstinate. So I end the chat by saying "you're wrong!" About 10 minutes later I get a new chat. I see the account name and the question. It was the same guy with the same question. Without letting him say anything I write "you're still wrong" and close the chat. If I wasn't one of the better techs I know I would have been fired.
    via u/

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