“The client is always right.” Those of us who’ve worked in the service industry have probably understood that these words are far from being true. Not only do some visitors, customers, and even bosses exhaust and irk their workers, they also often make them doubt their own professional skills. That’s why it’s no surprise that there are so many stories on this topic that can be found on the internet and each of them is more interesting than the last.
We at The Elite Indian admire the power of these specialists who have to listen to weird complaints from clients or bosses on a regular basis.
1.
Once I got an order for a translation. After having studied the document, I named the price — $X USD for one page that consists of 1,800 characters, including spaces (those who don’t work in this sphere: there are other methods of measuring text volume, but traditionally it’s counted the way I described). The client agreed and the work started.
One day prior to the deadline, my customer (suddenly!) gets enlightened and starts to demand a decrease in the price of the order cost because, “Why should I pay for spaces, you didn’t translate them?!” All my attempts to prove that the unit of measurement we agreed upon is a generally accepted standard and that spaces are also a part of the text, just like letters and punctuation marks, failed. The customer was stubbornly insisting on his position and the negotiations came to the dead end.
My first reaction was to say goodbye to the customer, but I felt sorry for the time and energy I had already spent on everything. Moreover, my professional pride had been shaken up and my excited brain gave me a revenge plan. I offered a 10% discount for the translation without spaces and the happy customer quickly agreed.
Challenge accepted! The internet helped me find the solution and one hour later my customer got a “solid” text translation without a single space. In the accompanying letter, I advised him to put the spaces in whichever way he wants.
I am not aware of the customer’s initial reaction, but the next morning he called me and his voice, having lost all of his past confidence, said, slightly stuttering, “I agree…to pay for spaces.” © karafuzzi / Pikabu
2.
When I worked in the restaurant business, if a table pissed me off, I’d go tell the host or hostess to sit the next people with a baby or babies next to that table… I would also intentionally wait for people to shove a big bite in their mouth before walking up to their table to ask how everything was… © phuque_ewe / Reddit
3.
I create custom PowerPoint presentations. Once 3 students from an aviation college contacted me and asked to make presentations for their thesis. We discussed all the deadlines, the price, and their wishes. They left a deposit and I told them that I’d send them one presentation each day so that they could assess them. I even gave them a student discount. I ended up having some free time and managed to finish 2 presentations within one day. So I send them 3 presentations at once with a big non-erasable watermark that says “not paid.” The guys said, “Everything is fine. We will pay you at the end of the day.” And disappeared.
Since the work wasn’t difficult, I forgot about them and, moreover, I got distracted by other orders. One day, one of these students writes to me and says, “Give me back the deposit.” After wondering why I should do it, I got the following answer, “Our teacher refused to assess the thesis and said that we bought it, because of your ‘not paid’ sign.”
After I asked him what stopped them from paying me the full amount we agreed on and getting a clean presentation without any signs, he called me a jerk and put me on his blacklist. What these guys were thinking about, I still have no idea. © medalby / Pikabu
4.
I have a half-blooded customer — one part of his blood is a customer, the other half is a Zen teacher. More than once he freed my mind, breaking the shackles of formal logic, with the following koan:
Client: “Did you get the file”?
Me: “No.”
Client: “Then I’ll send it right away.” © guldan_orc / Twitter
5.
Monday morning. A phone call:
Client: “Are you offering deals? With presents?”
Me: “Yes.”
Our company started a promo on New Year’s Eve: Buy equipment for $5,000 and get tools or rigging for $1,000 as a bonus present. The tools are really cool and in-demand.
Client: “How can I get my presents?”
Me: “No problem. Just buy the equipment for $5,000 and you’ll get the gifts.”
Client: “I already bought it…”
I got surprised. So I ask the client whose name was the purchase made under. I found him in the database and see that he bought this equipment one year ago. Well, well… what a witty person he is. Eventually, I gave the client a chance to buy rigging and the necessary tools at a good discount.
But I wondered: the car that I bought 6 years ago — I didn’t get any free gifts for it. Should I go to the car dealership after work and demand gifts — they have deals for winter tires now. © MagiRulat / Pikabu
6.
I used to work at a fast food restaurant as a student. There was a woman who’d come about once a week and order “2 cheeseburgers with no cheese.” “So you want 2 hamburgers, right?” was my answer every time, and she’d get pissed off about it, telling me I had no idea what I was talking about and that I’d better give her cheeseburgers with no cheese or she’d report me to management. I’d simply put 2 hamburgers in a cheeseburger wrapping, make her pay for 2 cheeseburgers (so it was more expensive), and put the remaining money in our charity box. © emp_omelettedufromag / Reddit
7.
My boss reduced my bonus 2 times, so I started to sell 2 times more goods. In his opinion, it was an ingenious optimization so I started to send my CVs to potential employers. By the way, the sales of this company have dropped way down. © Directorfilm / Pikabu
8.
If you don’t understand people, you shouldn’t work in a toy store.
Client: “Do you have balloons?”
Me: *pointing at balloons*
Client: “No, not those.”
Me: *pointing at soap bubbles*
Client: “Yeah, that’s what I need. Thanks.” © venomnomnomno / Twitter
9.
I had been working at one small company for 8 years, my salary depended on my volume of work, and I was getting and was about $600 per month. After a while my salary increased and became $800 and even $900 sometimes. So my director comes to me and says:
Director: “You’ve started to earn more, right?”
Me: “Yes, I optimized all the working processes and I can do a larger amount of work in the same amount of time.”
Director: “This means, this work can be done faster.”
Me: “Yes, correct.”
Director: “It means this work should cost less, because it requires less time.”
Me: “No, it shouldn’t. I optimized the process with the help of my own knowledge and skills, I do more work and therefore I get a bigger salary.”
Director: “You’re cheating me!”
I resigned. Later my ex co-workers told me that this director hired 3 students in my position and that they couldn’t cope with the amount of work I used to do. It seems experience means something. He was paying each of these students $350 per month. © Endlan / Pikabu
10.
I work at a restaurant. A customer at our last event brought us a live goose and, of course, we were supposed to kill it somehow. The goose was so cute, he looked into our eyes and nodded his head. So all the chefs, chef assistants, waiters, and managers stood up around him and didn’t know what to do. Eventually, I requested a frozen goose from a vendor and the live goose now lives at my place. His name is Peter and I am a vegetarian now. © Overheard
11.
Translation: “Sea”
12.
When people are rude to me, I have little ways of getting revenge. Stuff like if they order water with lemon, I put the lemon in first, then the ice, then the water, so they have to dig for the lemon. Or I won’t warn them that their plates are hot. Or if there are 2 people at the table, I’ll give them an odd number of garlic bread pieces, so they have to fight over the last piece. © eslike711 / Reddit
13.
I worked at a mall and we closed at 9. The doors were locked, but one customer kept banging on them and yelling. Then he waited until my coworker stepped outside to grab the foyer displays and ran inside. I told him we were closed, he replied in a rude manner, and started shopping. So I told my coworker to step outside. I went to the back, hit the lights, and armed the alarm. Then we locked the door and left. © SelfHelpGenius / Reddit
14.
My name is Jane, I work as a freelancer, and I have a customer who only hires men. He doesn’t care about their portfolio or skills — girls, in his eyes, can’t do anything. I work with him under the name Jack. He likes how Jack works. © deadjane666 / Twitter
15.
My granddad and his mother had a bakery. Every day she would place a tray of cookies on the counter for customers to sample. My grandfather and his sister both worked in the bakery. Almost every day a big Swedish lumberjack would come in to hit on my grandfather’s sister, and while so doing, would consume the entire tray of cookies. Apparently my great-grandmother wasn’t bothered by this, but it irked my grandfather no end. So one day he prepared a special tray of cookies especially for the amorous lumberjack. They were all made with a substance called jalap, a potent laxative often used in horses. As soon as he saw the big Swede coming, he swapped the cookie trays. As predicted, he ate the entire tray of cookies. According to my grandfather, the lumberjack was never seen again. © Jan Bergeron / Quora
Do you always obediently fulfill all the whimsies of your clients and bosses or have you ever stood up for yourself?
Preview photo credit rarebeast / Pikabu
