If you’ve ever worked in customer service before, you know that you’re gonna have to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And this story definitely belongs in the latter two categories.

Check out what happened when a computer store worker did their best to help out a customer, but the customer had to act like a jerk and screw the whole thing up.

Take a look!

Being rude to customer service costs £300.

“Back in 2003 I was working as a minimum wage counter monkey in a computer parts store.

We built a few full computers, but mostly sold individual components for people who knew what they were doing.

Now certain components – CPUs and hard drives – are “unrestockable”, which means unless they’re sold faulty, you can’t return them for a refund (technically, the restocking fee is 100% of the cost).

To put it in other terms…

Basically they’re the underwear of the PC hardware world; nobody wants something that could have been physically but not visibly damaged.

So Rude Customer (RC) comes into the store, to my counter. He shows me his receipt from last week, including a Shuttle SN45G (board) and an Athlon XP 3200+ (CPU).

I immediately know what he’s going to say; you see, the board was designed to take the CPU, but it came out first, and once the CPU was released, Shuttle sent a one-page PDF explaining that when you first powered it up with that CPU, you had to hold down INS or it wouldn’t boot.

This is a 20 second job that the least tech-savvy person could easily do.

RC tells me that his computer won’t boot, because the CPU is broken, so he needed a new CPU. If I recall it cost about £300.

They tried to tell him…

I had a stack of those printed PDFs to hand (I’d already given out several that week) and started to explain that the CPU was fine, but he just needed to …

“No,” he interrupted, “the CPU is broken. I need a new one.”

Me: “This is a known problem, and it’s really easy to fix. All you need …”

RC: “I. Need. A. New. CPU.”

Me: “I have a sheet explaining all of …”

Now RC puts on the most insulting, deliberately idiot-sounding voice –

RC: “It ith bwoken. I need a noo won.”

I look down, close my eyes, take a deep breath, and put on my best customer service smile and voice.

He asked for it!

Me: “Okay, here’s your invoice. That’ll be £300, how would you like to pay?”

RC walks out of the store two minutes later, holding his shiny new CPU, his wallet £300 lighter. In all my jobs, I’ve gone out of my way to try to help people, but this time I chuckle, knowing that because RC was rude and refused to listen:

(1) he has wasted £300 on something he doesn’t need;

(2) he won’t be able to return it or get a refund;

(3) he still won’t be able to boot his computer.

Moral of the story – if an expert in your problem is trying to help you, listen and don’t be rude.

Not so hard, is it?”

Reddit users spoke up.

This person didn’t hold back.

Another individual weighed in.

But maybe there’s a little smoke thrown the employee’s way too…

This is what happens when you TALK more than you LISTEN.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.