Clearly, a fair number of the horrible customers are senile, and some seem like they might have some kind of aphasia or something. Some of those are still funny, but others just leave you wondering if the customers were getting the help they needed... of a non-customer-service kind.
... Or the help we need them to get, as the case may be. Some of these people come off as just plain dangerous. One gets the impression that, years from now, some of these workers will be watching the news one day and thinking, "Hey, wait, isn't he that guy who... oh my god..."
Some of the stories appear to give a little view into quite messed up home lives... which distracts from the potential funny of an anecdote.
Almost any story regarding the stupidity or selfishness of a parent can become Fridge Horror when you think about it because it makes you wonder just how they are raising those kids... or if they're raising them at all.
Due to the sheer volume and vitriol behind his woman-hating rants, it seems like he spent a large part of his childhood not only suffering abuse to himself, but also watching his father abuse his mother. Most people don't scream things like "You’ll crack and resign from your job and find yourself a man that will teach you what is it to be a good woman! You’ll find a guy who will beat you into a submissive b***, like any good woman should be!"Doesn'texcusehis behavior by a long shot (and certainly doesn't make it right), but it goes a long way to explain it.
This guy seems to have come to the conclusion that America's goal in The Vietnam War was, rather than keep the communist-friendly North from conquering the America-friendly South, to eliminate the Vietnamese people entirely. On top of that, he seems to think Americans in general are still looking for "survivors" and killing them on sight, even when they're in another country (this story takes place in London). What makes it fridge horror is that he is completely fine with the idea of one of the most powerful militaries in the world deciding other races no longer deserve to exist. He even threatens an actual Vietnamese person with "calling the Americans" to come shoot him when said Vietnamese person dares to suggest that maybe he has no clue what he's talking about.
He might have heard of the “Mere Gook Rule” and taken it as gospel.note Short version: It’s an alleged rule that U.S. military can kill and abuse Vietnamese people regardless of whether they are connected to the communist North Vietnamese Army, with the reasoning that a good Viet person is a dead one, since they can't tell NVA soldiers and civilians apart anyway. The official existence of the rule is very much an open (and controversial) question, but the mindset certainly exist(ed).
While the ending of this story puts the complainer in something of an Ironic Hell (in a verylong wait line for cancelling their service), you have to wonder what this company's doing wrong in order to get such a long line. The people trying to get the service cancelled can't all be making mistakes like the customer in the story.
As someone who's worked in the call center, it may be that they just have so few people in the cancellation department that the wait time is so long. And depending on how large the company is (say, like Comcast, or Sprint), a waiting time of 187 may not be seen as bad. Especially since not everyone transferred to the cancellation department actually cancels. From what I've experienced, the cancellation department sometimes have authorizations a normal call center person doesn't have.
In that particular story, the submitter specifies that the company's HQ screwed up an advertised offer and the cancellation department has to make the adjustments for the many, many affected clients. The submitter originally thought the call in question was just more of the same… nope.
A horrific Female Misogynistin this story automatically demands that A MAN work on her vehicle when pulling into an oil-change establishment. Since no man was available, the customer reluctantly lets the female employee work on her SUV, where it's immediately obvious that the customer is clearly less than trustworthy (forging the mileage since the last oil change), and proceeds to ignore everything that the mechanic is telling her, while planning to go on a 10-hour road trip, in 36 degree Celsius heat (approximately 97 degrees Fahrenheit), and among the issues? Oil that has been neglected for so long that it's turned to sludge and no coolant fluid. Despite the mechanic offering to clean the sludge out FOR FREE, and fill the coolant at discount, the customer abjectly refuses both services, repeatedly telling the mechanic to rush. Despite the fact that the mechanic listed all the issues and specifically informed the customer, repeatedly, and in writing "Warranty Void," the customer took off down the highway... Two hours later, the engine explodes from overheating, sending the oil and sludge all over the highway. It's a miracle nobody died! Then she goes and forges her invoice to try to make the mechanic look at fault so she can sue the company for her own idiocy!
This story is particularly cringe-worthy. An Older Than They Look teenager is in line at a restaurant, and the woman behind this 14-year-old immediately starts acting like she's the child's legal guardian, contradicting everything the child says, ordering a meal the child clearly can not afford, waiting until the cashier's away to even attempt to consider the child's age and well being, then accusing the child of expecting her to pay, and only when the woman walks away "to get more money" does the submitter actually get to place the original order, pay what (s)he wanted, and hopefully leave. One has to wonder what happened afterwards.
In this story, it seems like one of the nurses took advantage of a woman who had just suffered a stroke to steal money from her purse, banking on the short-term memory loss that usually occurs so they could get away with it. It's never discovered who stole the money and it's possible that the person has done it before and continues to do so.
One commenter of this storySummary A woman drops her dogs over the fence of an animal shelter, thinking it a boarding kennel, and pitches a fit when they've both been adopted over a month later. pointed out several clues that pointed towards the woman intending to use the dogs to start a puppy mill: She only referred to them by breed instead of name, she said they'd been made useless via spaying/neutering, and, after learning the latter fact, she made no effort to have the dogs retrieved, instead treating the situation as if the shelter had broken a possession of hers. Thank goodness she left the dogs there long enough for them to be adopted into (hopefully) more pleasant homes.
Similarly, some commenters hereSummary A father is trying to bully his son into eating veggie-stir fry instead of the pizza he wanted and everyone else got in a misguided attempt to get him to eat healthier. pointed out that the father's methods are a good way to ensure that the child grows up to have some sort of eating disorder. Fortunately, the mother shuts the father down, and the final comments implied that that outcome was ultimately averted, but things could have ended a lot worse, and probably did for other kids with similar parents.
While this teacher is likely just an overeager well-intentioned moron who doesn't understand Shrinking Violets and whose Unwanted Assistance would have condemned his would-be protege to bullying, some commenters have noted that he could just as easily have been Hot for Student and backed off when he realized she'd told her mother about what he claimed to have planned; sexual predators tend to target socially isolated kids because they're likely to be more vulnerable, and him taking such an interest in her social life was a major red flag to quite a few of these commenters.
In this one, a teacher comes into her school with a badly bruised face (from a fall down her stairs), and some of her students apparently believed she has been victim of domestic abuse. Their reaction is nice ("do you have a boyfriend the guys and I need to talk to?"), but the mere fact they assume "I fell down my stairs" means the teacher may have been beaten by her spouse strongly suggests some of those students either knew victims of domestic abuse or were victims themselves. It could also be because Cut Himself Shaving is a trope, but still, the possibility is there.
The commenters for this post were very concerned that the police officer sided with the nosy neighbor until he found out the submitter was a prison guard, then suddenly defended the submitter's right to work nights and not go to church. If they'd been a night-shift stocker at a grocery store instead, would the officer have still defended them, or are some night jobs more equal than others?
At the same time, other commenters asked what exactly had the nosy neighbor reported that forced the police to respond. If she had simply said that the neighbor was always leaving home at night and never attended church, any desk sergeant or emergency operator could have pointed out to her that he simply worked nights and weekends in spite of her insane ideas about the law. But if she had presented herself as having proof of him selling drugs out of his home, the police department now has a criminal complaint that they have to act on. These commenters have their own stories of neighbors who frequently call the police on them or other neighbors with false accusations that the police wind up dismissing once they've had a chance to talk to the person they were called to investigate.
This story is a clear-cut case of The Ending Changes Everything; the woman's erratic behavior ends up being the consequence of a brain tumor, and some commenters pitch in about how easily any abnormality in the brain can cause such radical differences in personality, behavior, and temperament. This begs the question as to how many NARi customers could have such problems — as of this writing, there are 23,590 stories on NARi alone. If even 1% of those irrational customers have a physical problem with them resulting in that behavior, that's still 236 untreated injuries or other issues.
This kid is likely heading toward incarceration in juvenile detention at an early age due to the way her mother is raising her to simply take (read: steal) things she needs. One can only hope and pray that someone can intervene before that happens.
In this story, the submitter ("a fairly petite woman" in a relationship with a large man) goes to college one day while sporting a black eye (she plays rugby) and is harassed by a classmate of hers, who insists the submitter should go to the local battered women’s shelter (where the classmate works as a volunteer). Several comments point out this behavior is actually counterproductive, as harassing a (suspected) victim of domestic abuse and treating them as liars would actually make them less likely to seek help.
In this story, the submitter scolds and spanks their son for having spoken to their neighbor by calling him "Shrek". Why did the son call the man Shrek? Because his parent told him their neighbor was Shrek (now single and turned into a human), to make the child stop being scared by the neighbor and his noisy behavior, while not thinking to explain he shouldn't call him such to his face. Several comments point out being scolded for basically believing what his parent said may cause the son to no longer trust his parents, and that's before entering into controversies about physical punishments and their potential effects on children. It even got a Content Warning for abuse added to it.
This story has a woman who covers the cubicle of a restaurant's bathroom under a lot of liquid feces, which has to be cleaned by one of the workers. Some comments point out that fecal matter is a biohazard, and that whatever germ gave the woman this violent diarrhea (provided it wasn't something like lactose intolerance) may very well be present in her feces, and that the worker who handled this shit risks being contaminated with various nasty things.
The comments in this story point out that both the hotel clerk and the police have no concept of privacy, the former giving a woman's violent, abusive, stalker ex-husband confirmation that she is staying at the hotel, and the latter saying the stalker was the one who'd made false accusations against the clerk. Since they won't let him in, all he has to do is wait until she goes out and he can harass or harm her again.
This story mentions the friend of the submitter accused her church's pastor of being a pedophile, and even denounced him to his wife and the parents of the young girl she's accusing him of sleeping with. The proof? She dreamed of them having sex and decided it was "a revelation from God". It's not specified if there was any repercussion for the pastor, but considering how harmful a False Rape Accusation can be to the victim of said slander, the pastor may be suffering from bad consequences if the wrong persons learn about the rumor.
In this story, a kid in a thrift store wants to hold the poster's (an employee) purse. Naturally, she's not willing to hand it over, so the kid storms off to his mom, who, enraged that someone actually refused her little darling's demand, not only repeats it, but then complains to a manager and then to corporate, trying to have the poster fired (not only are they unwilling to fire someone for refusing to hand over her personal property, but the corporate bigwig initially has trouble believing it's a genuine complaint and not a prank call). The mom furiously storms off, declaring she'll never shop there again, and to everyone's relief, actually keeps her promise. As several of the comments point out, though, what kind of person is the boy going to grow up to be, having been raised to believe that nobody is allowed to say "no" to him, ever?
In this story, the submitter and her daughter encounter a rude cashier in a grocery store, and then are confused when they encounter her again and she's much nicer, only to find out that she is the rude cashier's twin sister. How many times has the nice sister had to deal with angry customers who have been berated by her mean sister and think they're the same person?
The cat in this story was supposed to stay for observation for a couple days after his surgery, but sent him home early because he wasn't eating. Turns out this cat only ate dry food and the vet was trying to feed him wet food. The immediate issue is that the vet's office didn't ask what kind of food the cat normally eats. And there's no indication that OP's cat was the exception here. Considering how stubborn pets can be with regards to what they will and won't eat, how many pets under this vet's care needlessly went hungry? Doubly problematic since a pet being kept in a vet's office is almost certainly already in bad shape without adding starvation to the issue.
, it's less fun when you note that his behavior shows many telltale marks of a child abuse victim. Namely, that the only way he can approach a social problem is with threats of violence, but as soon as even a hint of such threat is directed towards his own person, he completely loses his mind and falls into panic.