Dealing with dumb customers can get tricky especially when they’re also angry and unwilling to follow directions!

This manager had to deal with the most annoying customer at his workplace, and the situation just kept getting worse. Thankfully, he knew exactly how to deal with this customer!

Check out the full story.

Tech savvy, you are not. hmmmmm

1 & ½ years ago, I used to be a manager at a very large Telecommunications provider here in Australia.

As the manager I would deal with the usual managerial stuff, the training of staff, booking in customers, dealing with walk-ins and you guessed it dealing with the entitled yellers having adult tantrums.

This guy has his work morals sorted…

I would pride myself on being a very professional guy in these situations. Firm, fair and would not submit to the “customer is always right” drama.

I would defend my staff when warranted. I would also do my best to find reasonable outcomes for the customers.

In comes “Mr. Stubborn Idiot Farmer” (Mr. SIF for here on out), known affectionately in store by other names……… ahem… haha.

Mr. SIF came in to store one morning and sat down with one of my staff (sales consultant “SC”).

He knew the problem wasn’t with his employee…

SC was very sweet, great at her job and a lovely person to be around. She didn’t deal with the angry customers as well as the other SC’s so I would lend her a hand as much as I could to deal with those situations.

Mr. SIF was after a new sim card for his phone as his current one stopped working. We did sim replacements daily and it was a very simple process of assigning his mobile plan to a different sim card.

He clearly didn’t read the instructions.

He was already in a bit of a mood so instead of doing the whole sales question thing, I had SC quickly pop one out for him and send him on his way with some written instruction of how to install the sim for his particular phone (Samsung Note 5) as the sim would not fully activate for a few hours.

Here’s where it got fun….

The next day, guess who’s back in with a phone that’s “STILL NOT WORKING, YOU IDIOTS”.

He kept going shouting other obscenities like “WHERES THE DUMB PERSON THAT GAVE ME THE NEW SIM”.

He made a big mistake!

SC was on that day again with me and looked at me mortified.

I told her to jump out to the back room (office in the store where we kept the phone stock etc) and that I would deal with him.

In situations like this I would give the customer a free coffee voucher and send them out of the store to give me time to do a once over on the device.

What I found made me laugh and made me angry and the same time “WHAT A STUPID MAN!” I yelled in the back room.

For a bit of context here, sims come in 3 sizes; full, micro and nano. His phone took a micro size sim. It seems he completely ignored our written instructions and tried to wedge a nano size sim in the SD card slot and inversely the SD card in the Micro sim slot.

That sounds bad!

This resulted in the sim reader contact points being shredded and the nano sim to be fully stuck in the SD slot. The SD was ruined as well… Bye bye photos and other things….

I felt a bit sorry for him as I guess it wasn’t his strong suit but that attitude and the way he talked to SC, left me very unwilling to go to huge lengths to help.

After a while he came back into store grumbling about “TERRIBLE coffee” then exclaimed “so where is my phone, you better have fixed it this time”.

I explained bluntly his mistake, referring to our notes we handwrote for him.

The customer was furious!

I also let him know unfortunately that the phone would not be eligible for a warranty claim as it was user inflicted physical damage….

He did not like that.

After the yelling he insisted that it be sent away for repair and that we would charge him nothing for “MESSING ME AROUND”.

As the manager its at my discretion if I send something like this away but its overall it’s a loose company policy that if a valued customer what’s a resolution, then we can send it off with a report and a Special account rep gets in touch with the customer and give them their options.

They had their policies for dealing with such damages.

In cases like this with physical damage, if its deemed to be caused by the user then we won’t replace or fix it for free, it would be at the customers expense.

As I deal with at least 1 of these types of issues a week I assured him that he would be charged for the postage back and the repair if he sends it off.

He would not have any of it….

Fine ok, I am happy to Maliciously Comply with your request sir… after a little consoling of SC she got back out onto the floor and had a cracker of a day.

This is where the final nail goes in!

The process takes a few weeks, but sure enough 2 weeks later we get a red-faced Mr. SIF marching back into store, clutching a phone bill. He had been charged $350 for the repairs he requested and the postage.

At that point I just brushed all his complaints off and gave him a number to call for complaints and said I did make him aware of this and showed him my statement on his account before submitting the repair report.

He grumbled and walked off… never to be seen again for the rest of the time I was there.

SC and I are still friends and thankfully she got out of retail like I did… never again.

YIKES! That customer should’ve read the instructions!

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user is fully satisfied with this story.

This user shares their experience with a customer when they worked at Apple.

This user shares how their company deals with damaged goods.

This user liked this story and we know why!

This user loves seeing grown ups act foolish in such situations at work!

All he had to do was read the instructions!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.