Some customers immediately assume workers made a mistake instead of stopping to consider that maybe they got something wrong themselves.

This dry cleaner employee deals with rude people pretty regularly, especially customers who seem to think service workers deserve less respect than they do. But one day, a woman came into the family owned business dropping off clothes for her boss and instantly got irritated when the employee couldn’t find the account in the system.

She insisted her boss had been a customer there for years and acted like the employee had no idea what he was doing.

There was just one problem.

She had the wrong dry cleaner.

Read on to see exactly what happened.

I don’t think you’re a customer here..?

I work at a dry cleaner which is owned by my family.

I have a lot of nice customers, but there are a few that, because they’re wealthy, like to treat me as if I’m garbage. Or since I don’t have as much money, they think I’m not worthy to be talked to respectfully.

To begin the story, a woman walks in dropping off her boss’s clothes. She was on the phone and pretty disrespectful to begin with:

To start, she needed the customer’s last name.

Me: “Hi what’s your last name?” (I.E: So I know who’s clothes I have)

Her: The last name is “M”

Me: “I’m sorry. I can’t find it, is your boss a new customer?”

Her, almost yelling: “No, he’s been going here for years”

Not finding the name, she double-checked.

Me: “Are you sure?”

Her, still yelling: “YEAH, I’m sure!”

Me, trying to avoid making her madder: “My mistake, I’ll just take them.”

She storms out.

Then, the woman finally came back.

A week or two later, she comes back and her demeanor completely changes. She said her boss’s dry cleaner was someplace else, and she dropped the clothes off at the incorrect place (my dry cleaners).

She never apologized about her behavior which doesn’t surprise me.

This happened a couple of months ago, but even today, someone rudely accused me of “losing their clothes” when in reality it was under their husband’s name. As soon as I mentioned this fact, their tone suddenly changed and obviously no apology.

It’s tiring to be a party to this rudeness. In certain situations, such as the woman I dealt with today, I can somewhat understand why someone would be upset, but it’s a bit tiring to be spoken to as if I’m an enemy. I’m merely trying to help people.

Wow! Even a small apology would be better than nothing.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a third-generation business owner who is thinking he might know the people in his community a bit too well.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about rude customers.

That would not be good!

This is so true!

He should listen to this reader.

This person appreciates nice customers.

Customers really need to stop acting like this toward workers.

The employee asked a simple question while trying to help and still got treated like garbage over a mistake the customer made herself.

And the fact that she couldn’t even apologize after realizing she went to the wrong dry cleaner says a lot.

People who act like this have never worked customer service a day in their lives, and it shows.