People who work in food service or customer service: What’s the dumbest thing a customer ever insisted was “the law” or “illegal”?

I used to work in CS for a cell phone provider. The most memorable call I had from that experience was a woman who spent over an hour yelling at me because her daughter had ordered a $1200 phone upgrade without permission. She was absolutely sure that it was illegal for us to charge her for that, because her daughter was not authorized to use her card, and because her daughter was under 18.

She didn't want to return the phone, because she didn't want her daughter to hate her. She just didn't want us to charge her for it.

No, I don't have to accept a digital photo of your license as ID. No, your birth certificate is not proof of identity; it doesn't have your picture.

But the absolute worst one: Not only is this a beat-up photocopy of a foreign ID card with no photo; it also clearly states that you are 19 and even if I accepted this document as valid identification, which I can't, I still could not legally serve you alcohol.

Was working retail in an area that had a local bag ordinance that required businesses to charge customers for bags. A man came up to the register and when I asked him if he wanted a bag for a few cents extra, he looked at me like I was crazy and was like, "You charge for bags?" I explained that it was required by the government and he just kinda scoffed. I thought that was it, but as he opened his wallet to pay, he flashed what turned out to be a police badge at me from another city some ways away, gave me a look, and said something along the lines of "I think I know what the law is." I just finished up the transaction and got him going asap, blown away at the insecurity displayed. It was such a bizarre powermove over what was only a few cents extra for something completely optional.

Had a guy tell me he was going to sue me, personally not the store, and financially ruin me because I told him to put on a mask in like April 2020. He didnt do either. I'm sure anyone who worked with the public during that time has some story lol.

At one point I worked for an electronics repair shop fixing mostly phones, laptops, and game consoles. We actually had a great manager and we all just enjoyed fixing things, so we really weren't out to rip people off like they usually came in thinking. Our store policy was even if we didn't fix it, we didn't charge you, and we stood by it.

One day a lady drops off her laptop with a cracked screen. Part of the screen was still working, but the majority was non functional and would surely worsen over time. We diagnose the laptop and give the customer a quote and she agrees to the repair. I let her know that once we start the repair, the previous screen will be destroyed during the removal process since it has no more integrity from being broken, she's fine with that. We get the part in a few days later and I start the repair. At this point the woman's husband calls - literally while I have the cracked screen half out of the laptop - and says stop the repair and return it how it was. We were like, we're happy to give the laptop back, but unfortunately we've already started the repair and while removing the old screen it broke more so it would end up being returned in a worse condition.

This fucking guy screamed at me over the phone about how what we were doing was illegal, how we never got proper authorization blah blah. We offered to even do the repair at cost, but no that wasn't good enough. When the husband and wife finally came into the store to pick up the laptop, he left screeching about how he was going to sue us. Unsurprisingly we never heard from him again.

Worked in bars as a supervisor for 3 years, almost everytime I decided to cut a patron off (usually for being too drunk, or for being an arsehole) I would be met with "you can't do that, it's illegal, you HAVE to serve me"

No, I don't. Service is at my discretion, and it wouldn often be unethical for me to continue to provide you with more alcohol, endangering yours and others around you further.

Lots of people buy Emotional Support Animal vests online and think that means they can bring them into restaurants. Nope, FDA is very clear about it: trained service animals only. ESAs actually have almost no special privileges over regular pets. Basically the only exceptions they get are against pet policies/fees on leases.

Yay! I have one. We had a customer grab a product from a spot on the shelf next to where it was normally stocked. The spots have labels indicating the price of the item. This person argued that because the product was in the wrong spot they should only have to pay the price of the item that should have been there. The prices also include the name of the product. The reason the the product was taking up space in the next spot was because we had sold out due to the item being deeply discounted because we were discontinuing it. When we explained that they began accusing us of false advertising and threatened to call the better business bureau. They admitted that they knew it was the wrong product but insisted that because it wasn't shelved in the right spot that was some kind of loophole. I gave a firm no and then they asked to speak to a manager. I fucked off it was taken care of.

I once had a b2b customer (store owner) tell me that having different pricing for wholesale and retail customers was racist.

I'm pretty sure meant discriminatory but even that doesn't make much sense.

I don’t think my customers were dumb but I was regularly accused of breaking the law in a previous job. This was back in 09-10, I worked for a mortgage company in the insurance escrow department processing homeowner insurance claims. The way my job worked: If a homeowner has significant property damage (fire, flood, fallen tree) and the home is under a mortgage, the insurance company will make the check payable to the homeowner and the mortgage company. If it has both names it cannot be cashed unless the mortgage company endorses the check. I was the person responsible for determining if we would sign the back of that check so the customer could cash it.

Mortgages have a clause that allows this, because it’s in the best interest of the mortgage company to make sure the property is returned to the way it was before the claim. If the claim was over a certain amount (I think it was $5k) we required a whole process of holding the money in an escrow account and doling it out in increments using property inspections to verify the work was being completed.

It was honestly a whole annoying process to have to go through, especially if you are already dealing with a traumatic situation that requires the claim in the first place. I got yelled at a lot.

Oftentimes it would start with the customer calling in to figure out why the check was made payable to the mortgage company also. The mortgage company I worked for was part of a large bank, so if the homeowner called the 800 number they were often frustrated by the time they finally found their way to me. Then as I explained that they couldn’t just have the money, we needed them to select a licensed contractor and get our approval, then we would provide 1/3, then we would do an inspection at 50% and release the next 1/3, then a final inspection at 100% and release the remainder. I would get yelled at and told it was illegal. But I would just point them to page 18 section 5 of the mortgage. I could access people’s mortgage docs and I was often asked to send the relevant pages.

Eventually people would accept their fate because they had no choice. I tried to be very sympathetic because it did suck for them. And I had customers tell me a lot of sad stories about fires and floods and tornadoes. It was a super interesting job though. I loved looking at the home inspection reports.

There are, in fact, no products in that empty drawer. I promise I'm not hiding them from you, ma'am.

Does working as a security guard and having the company that contracted your company trying to get you to basically be their own personal police force count? I worked for a security company hired by Longs and the loss prevention manager of the Longs kept trying to get us to do things that, in California anyway, are illegal as a security guard. Such as digging through someone's personal belongings. We can ask to look inside, but not touch, and we really can't force them to comply. We could not arrest people. We couldn't have weapons (not even allowed to carry a pocket knife while on duty with our guard cards). Little Napoleonic complex motherfucker didn't care. He would insist that it was legal and we would just tell him to talk to our boss because he isn't our supervisor, manager or even part of our company.

We do not have to keep a register open just because there is a customer in the store. We've been making closing announcements for almost an hour and the store closed 20 minutes ago. You had more then enough time to buy whatever you wanted. Come back tomorrow.

"Actually, in the terms of service you signed with DirecTV, your NFL Sunday Ticket was set to auto renew after the first free year.

Also.

We've billed you for it for two months, and is now past the point where we can remove it. You have 5 additional payments.

This is in fact also not illegal apparently. Since it's in the terms of service.

If you'd like to sue DirecTV please have your lawyer contact our TEAM of lawyers and we'll be happy to address it."

Worked that soul sucking job for five long years while going to college. Sucked.

I worked at a book store, and the card readers processed everything as credit. Which is generally fine, since most folks' debit cards can be run either way.

I had an old dude come up and pay with his debit card. When it didn't ask for a pin, he started screaming at me about how I'd just illegally charged his credit card. I politely explained that it didn't work that way and he just kept yelling. So I rudely explained that it didn't work that way.

Dude, you think you inserted your debit card and that magically, our system somehow found out your credit card information and charged that instead?

some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law

wat

Not exactly to the title but I was alone with a coworker and explaining my precancerous cells I was being checked up on and a customer walked up as I was explaining.

He said, "that sounds like bullshit and I would know because I have a PHD."

he was an idiot.

Working in a financial call centre, a certain type of person considered us to have stolen their money if they sent us funds for an investment and refused to send anti-money laundering documents with it, because we also couldn't return the money without them. Sorry, buddy.

They told me I had to honor an expired coupon for 5 cents off their gas.

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I work for an ISP and I've been told on several occasions by customers that it is illegal for us to see a customer's connected devices on the router that we supply and manage... Bro if you want to manage your own network, buy your own router and stop bothering me.