the Bigfoot artifacts, the disappointing Australians, and other funny customer complaints

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Last week, we talked about strange customer complaints. Here are 25 funny stories you shared.

1. The Bigfoot artifacts

I worked in a small history museum and got a complaint that we didn’t have any Bigfoot artifacts, like bones or fossils … from Bigfoot.

2. The bewitchment

I used to work in sales for a pretty well-known IT company. Sold a substantial amount of equipment to a customer. Made sure it had all the bells, whistles, and appropriate discounts applied and really thought I’d done a decent job.

Two days later, my manager received an email from said customer and here’s what he wrote: “Lorna’s Irish accent and lilt made it hard to concentrate on the task at hand. I believe she bewitched me into buying more stuff than was needed and I strongly suggest having a word with her about work ethics and such.”

3. The bank

Someone I once knew took a call from a customer at their customer services job for a bank. The customer had purchased a bed and it was too high for her to get into. Rather than take this up with the company (or perhaps she did but didn’t get anywhere), she called the bank and complained that they should have checked she was happy with the purchase before they let the payment go through. In a separate issue, another customer was unhappy that they couldn’t get money (as in actual banknotes) to be dispensed from their computer given that they had an online savings account. Another customer called the bank asking why his energy bill was so high and when it was suggested he contact the power supplier, he said he wanted the bank to do this.

4. The disappointing Australians

I work in travel and we’ve had people demand refunds for bad weather, among other things. My favorite though was a rambling multi-page email complaining about how the people in Australia were too woke for this Texas traveler. He thought they were all rugged individualists and that he had been entirely misled about the entire continent and it wasn’t the fault of the company exactly, the whole world is going to hell, but someone should warn Americans to know they aren’t all Crocodile Dundee. For example, his wife wasn’t allowed to go diving just because she had a heart condition!

5. The shredding tote

I used to work for a company that performed document shredding for our customers. We’d drop off giant locked totes with a slot on top where customers would drop in their to-be-shredded files, and we’d pick them up on a schedule and securely dispose of the contents.

I got a phone call from an irritated-sounding woman demanding that we come to her medical office and unlock the “storage tote” so she could get some records out of it. She got progressively more annoyed when I was confused what she was talking about, and said some insulting things to me when I asked her to describe this “storage tote” to me. (We did sell storage boxes, too, but the same type of cardboard box you’d get at an office supply store.)
I finally asked “Do you mean the *shredding* tote?”

There were a few seconds of silence, the line disconnected, and about five minutes later someone else from the same office called back to arrange for a driver to bring a key to the site so they could sort through all the files that this person had “stored” in the shredding tote.

6. The dangerous knives

I work at a distribution center. We received a complaint from a customer who ordered an extremely expensive, very high-end knife set. They insisted on returning the set because the knives are “beyond sharp and actually dangerous.” It still comes up in conversation around the office regularly.

7. The pizza

I used to work for a certain British supermarket whose predominant colours are green. There was a story floating around of the complaint sent to Customer Service: “Worst pizza ever, no toppings, not even tomato paste, never mind cheese and pepperoni. Absolutely disgraceful.”

It was followed up shortly afterwards with a much more subdued, “…I opened it upside down.”

8. The margarita

The margarita came with tequila and she didn’t realize she was supposed to ask for a virgin one if she didn’t want alcohol (she was in her 40s-50s so I didn’t card).

9. The closed balcony

I volunteered at the welcome desk at a large church. So. Many. Complaints. My favorite was the family that got angry the balcony was closed in summer when regular attendance was down, which also meant fewer volunteer ushers were available. This family was regularly late and liked to slip in the back of the balcony. They were furious they had to sit on the main floor of the sanctuary because “they always ended up next to other parishioners who were gassy, which ruined church for them.”

10. The car dealership

Comment to an auto dealership’s service department: “If (the employee) is not the owner’s relative, lover, or blackmailer, you should review your hiring practices.”

11. The colors

A colleague got a course eval in which the student “did her colors” for her, like “you wear a lot of black but it’s not your best color—it makes you washed out. You look much better in deep blues and emerald green … have you considered trying purple or berry?” It didn’t make it any less inappropriate to the context, but the student’s assessment was actually pretty accurate. We got a laugh out of it!

12. The honest kid

In the late 1990s, I worked at a month-long summer program for smart kids. We did a variety of evening events, sometimes fun, sometimes educational. One of these was a large game designed to simulate world issues, in which some kids were assigned to big countries vs. small, poor vs. rich, etc, and then they played out various issues on a giant map in a large multipurpose room. It was incredibly boring, honestly.

At the end of the event we passed out the vendor’s evaluation, and the final question was “Who else do you think might be interested in booking this event?” – at the time, a fairly standard business/referral -seeking question that I saw on lots of evals. We collected them back and of course read them before we gave them back to the event’s emcee and found the following legendary response: One kid wrote, “I think that Satan would like it for hell.”

13. The misunderstanding

Years ago, I took a call from someone with a complaint about their retirement plan that I will never forget:

“I want to stop participating! All I’m doing is saving money! I can do that myself!”

It’s always made me yearn for a word, probably polysyllabic and Germanic in origin, that means “to both grasp and completely miss the point simultaneously.”

14. The eyeliner

I worked for a beauty brand and had a customer mail us a letter with an eyeliner taped to the paper, with a note written in serial-killer style handwriting (in the eyeliner!) with an arrow to the taped-on eyeliner that read “this is the worst product I’ve ever used.”

15. The self-deprecation

Not mine, but one of my colleagues’. We’re in the magazine world, and she handles letters to the editor. She wrote back to one letter writer to let him know that we were rejecting his submission. His reply: “Thanks. Good decision.”

16. The censorship

At my first job at a university press, I fielded a call from someone who wanted to know how to go about submitting a manuscript for book publication. I explained our process in deciding whether projects were a fit for us, including sending out manuscripts to independent academic reviewers. “And then what happens?” she asked. Well, we say yes or no. Her shocked response: “But isn’t that censorship?”

17. The lunch

Comment section of a conference evaluation: “For the LOVE OF GOD – GO BACK TO LASAGNA and MIIXED SALAD for lunch. Kale, dried up green beans, plain pasta – completely disgusting, I was sooooooo disappointed with this pathetic lunch I may not ever come back to the conference. Who are these sick people who chose this for a meal that the attendees would enjoy??”

For the record, there were multiple types of sauce available for the pasta.

18. The impression

I was once reported to my management for “doing an impression of a Nazi, goose-stepping and putting up the Nazi salute.”

Friends, I was walking off five-foot paces to estimate distance, and then gave a passing summer camper an “up high” high five.

19. The tour company

A tour company I used to work for received this complaint: “I made a poor choice. Haystack Rock looks just like the photo.” Not sure what she thought it would look like. Photos typically represent what you will see in real life.

20. The rage

In my previous job, a disgruntled customer emailed us to complain about our product, and their complaint was “it creates a rage.” No one on my team knew what to do with that feedback so we forwarded it on to management. I’m not sure whatever happened there but now whenever I’m mad at an object I think to myself “it creates a rage.”

21. The flax

One time when I was working on an online video game in early development, my job involved going through player feedback, most of which was not actually particularly helpful. One person went on an extended rant about how all they wanted to do in the game was make things out of cloth and how personally offended they were that they might be expected to go on adventures or fight monsters instead. It included the phrase “FLAX IS MY LIFE!” We did not take the monsters out of the game for them but the comment did got printed out and put on the wall.

22. The mammoths

Someone who used to work for Waco Mammoth National Monument (which I highly recommend, by the way, if you get a chance to go) told me they had a visitor very angry that she had driven all the way to Waco with her kids only to discover they didn’t even have any live mammoths there. Not even any decent photographs. She was PISSED.

23. The font

A client on using their template for Word/Powerpoint deliverables: “I can’t even LOOK at something if it’s not in Calibri.”

24. The steak

Back in the day, I was a waitress. We had a cheap steak and chips on the menu for £5 – it wasn’t amazing but really good for the price. The customer asked for it well done so it was even more uninspiring than normal. When I served it up she turned round and said ‘that doesn’t look like a steak it looks like a piece of meat’. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her what she thought steak was so I just took it back to the kitchen to a very baffled chef…

25. The grease spot

This complaint was legitimate, but I love the story! I used to have connections at a paper mill where they manufactured a well known brand of toilet paper. A customer called in to complain that there were grease spots on a roll. They had her send in the roll in question, and analyzed the grease (to see what equipment might need repair). They were surprised to find that it was an animal grease, which shouldn’t be part of the manufacturing process. Further investigation revealed … there was a room in the mill that was consistently steamy and very hot, and workers had a tradition of bringing in their Thanksgiving turkeys to cook in this magnificent environment over the course of their shift. This was shut down, as you might imagine, but I love the ingenuity.