the Bigfoot artifacts, the disappointing Australians, and other funny customer complaints

by Alison Green on July 15, 2024

Last week, we talked about strange customer complaints. Here are 25 funny stories you shared.

1. The Bigfoot artifacts

I worked in a small history museum and got a complaint that we didn’t have any Bigfoot artifacts, like bones or fossils … from Bigfoot.

2. The bewitchment

I used to work in sales for a pretty well-known IT company. Sold a substantial amount of equipment to a customer. Made sure it had all the bells, whistles, and appropriate discounts applied and really thought I’d done a decent job.

Two days later, my manager received an email from said customer and here’s what he wrote: “Lorna’s Irish accent and lilt made it hard to concentrate on the task at hand. I believe she bewitched me into buying more stuff than was needed and I strongly suggest having a word with her about work ethics and such.”

3. The bank

Someone I once knew took a call from a customer at their customer services job for a bank. The customer had purchased a bed and it was too high for her to get into. Rather than take this up with the company (or perhaps she did but didn’t get anywhere), she called the bank and complained that they should have checked she was happy with the purchase before they let the payment go through. In a separate issue, another customer was unhappy that they couldn’t get money (as in actual banknotes) to be dispensed from their computer given that they had an online savings account. Another customer called the bank asking why his energy bill was so high and when it was suggested he contact the power supplier, he said he wanted the bank to do this.

4. The disappointing Australians

I work in travel and we’ve had people demand refunds for bad weather, among other things. My favorite though was a rambling multi-page email complaining about how the people in Australia were too woke for this Texas traveler. He thought they were all rugged individualists and that he had been entirely misled about the entire continent and it wasn’t the fault of the company exactly, the whole world is going to hell, but someone should warn Americans to know they aren’t all Crocodile Dundee. For example, his wife wasn’t allowed to go diving just because she had a heart condition!

5. The shredding tote

I used to work for a company that performed document shredding for our customers. We’d drop off giant locked totes with a slot on top where customers would drop in their to-be-shredded files, and we’d pick them up on a schedule and securely dispose of the contents.

I got a phone call from an irritated-sounding woman demanding that we come to her medical office and unlock the “storage tote” so she could get some records out of it. She got progressively more annoyed when I was confused what she was talking about, and said some insulting things to me when I asked her to describe this “storage tote” to me. (We did sell storage boxes, too, but the same type of cardboard box you’d get at an office supply store.)
I finally asked “Do you mean the *shredding* tote?”

There were a few seconds of silence, the line disconnected, and about five minutes later someone else from the same office called back to arrange for a driver to bring a key to the site so they could sort through all the files that this person had “stored” in the shredding tote.

6. The dangerous knives

I work at a distribution center. We received a complaint from a customer who ordered an extremely expensive, very high-end knife set. They insisted on returning the set because the knives are “beyond sharp and actually dangerous.” It still comes up in conversation around the office regularly.

7. The pizza

I used to work for a certain British supermarket whose predominant colours are green. There was a story floating around of the complaint sent to Customer Service: “Worst pizza ever, no toppings, not even tomato paste, never mind cheese and pepperoni. Absolutely disgraceful.”

It was followed up shortly afterwards with a much more subdued, “…I opened it upside down.”

8. The margarita

The margarita came with tequila and she didn’t realize she was supposed to ask for a virgin one if she didn’t want alcohol (she was in her 40s-50s so I didn’t card).

9. The closed balcony

I volunteered at the welcome desk at a large church. So. Many. Complaints. My favorite was the family that got angry the balcony was closed in summer when regular attendance was down, which also meant fewer volunteer ushers were available. This family was regularly late and liked to slip in the back of the balcony. They were furious they had to sit on the main floor of the sanctuary because “they always ended up next to other parishioners who were gassy, which ruined church for them.”

10. The car dealership

Comment to an auto dealership’s service department: “If (the employee) is not the owner’s relative, lover, or blackmailer, you should review your hiring practices.”

11. The colors

A colleague got a course eval in which the student “did her colors” for her, like “you wear a lot of black but it’s not your best color—it makes you washed out. You look much better in deep blues and emerald green … have you considered trying purple or berry?” It didn’t make it any less inappropriate to the context, but the student’s assessment was actually pretty accurate. We got a laugh out of it!

12. The honest kid

In the late 1990s, I worked at a month-long summer program for smart kids. We did a variety of evening events, sometimes fun, sometimes educational. One of these was a large game designed to simulate world issues, in which some kids were assigned to big countries vs. small, poor vs. rich, etc, and then they played out various issues on a giant map in a large multipurpose room. It was incredibly boring, honestly.

At the end of the event we passed out the vendor’s evaluation, and the final question was “Who else do you think might be interested in booking this event?” – at the time, a fairly standard business/referral -seeking question that I saw on lots of evals. We collected them back and of course read them before we gave them back to the event’s emcee and found the following legendary response: One kid wrote, “I think that Satan would like it for hell.”

13. The misunderstanding

Years ago, I took a call from someone with a complaint about their retirement plan that I will never forget:

“I want to stop participating! All I’m doing is saving money! I can do that myself!”

It’s always made me yearn for a word, probably polysyllabic and Germanic in origin, that means “to both grasp and completely miss the point simultaneously.”

14. The eyeliner

I worked for a beauty brand and had a customer mail us a letter with an eyeliner taped to the paper, with a note written in serial-killer style handwriting (in the eyeliner!) with an arrow to the taped-on eyeliner that read “this is the worst product I’ve ever used.”

15. The self-deprecation

Not mine, but one of my colleagues’. We’re in the magazine world, and she handles letters to the editor. She wrote back to one letter writer to let him know that we were rejecting his submission. His reply: “Thanks. Good decision.”

16. The censorship

At my first job at a university press, I fielded a call from someone who wanted to know how to go about submitting a manuscript for book publication. I explained our process in deciding whether projects were a fit for us, including sending out manuscripts to independent academic reviewers. “And then what happens?” she asked. Well, we say yes or no. Her shocked response: “But isn’t that censorship?”

17. The lunch

Comment section of a conference evaluation: “For the LOVE OF GOD – GO BACK TO LASAGNA and MIIXED SALAD for lunch. Kale, dried up green beans, plain pasta – completely disgusting, I was sooooooo disappointed with this pathetic lunch I may not ever come back to the conference. Who are these sick people who chose this for a meal that the attendees would enjoy??”

For the record, there were multiple types of sauce available for the pasta.

18. The impression

I was once reported to my management for “doing an impression of a Nazi, goose-stepping and putting up the Nazi salute.”

Friends, I was walking off five-foot paces to estimate distance, and then gave a passing summer camper an “up high” high five.

19. The tour company

A tour company I used to work for received this complaint: “I made a poor choice. Haystack Rock looks just like the photo.” Not sure what she thought it would look like. Photos typically represent what you will see in real life.

20. The rage

In my previous job, a disgruntled customer emailed us to complain about our product, and their complaint was “it creates a rage.” No one on my team knew what to do with that feedback so we forwarded it on to management. I’m not sure whatever happened there but now whenever I’m mad at an object I think to myself “it creates a rage.”

21. The flax

One time when I was working on an online video game in early development, my job involved going through player feedback, most of which was not actually particularly helpful. One person went on an extended rant about how all they wanted to do in the game was make things out of cloth and how personally offended they were that they might be expected to go on adventures or fight monsters instead. It included the phrase “FLAX IS MY LIFE!” We did not take the monsters out of the game for them but the comment did got printed out and put on the wall.

22. The mammoths

Someone who used to work for Waco Mammoth National Monument (which I highly recommend, by the way, if you get a chance to go) told me they had a visitor very angry that she had driven all the way to Waco with her kids only to discover they didn’t even have any live mammoths there. Not even any decent photographs. She was PISSED.

23. The font

A client on using their template for Word/Powerpoint deliverables: “I can’t even LOOK at something if it’s not in Calibri.”

24. The steak

Back in the day, I was a waitress. We had a cheap steak and chips on the menu for £5 – it wasn’t amazing but really good for the price. The customer asked for it well done so it was even more uninspiring than normal. When I served it up she turned round and said ‘that doesn’t look like a steak it looks like a piece of meat’. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her what she thought steak was so I just took it back to the kitchen to a very baffled chef…

25. The grease spot

This complaint was legitimate, but I love the story! I used to have connections at a paper mill where they manufactured a well known brand of toilet paper. A customer called in to complain that there were grease spots on a roll. They had her send in the roll in question, and analyzed the grease (to see what equipment might need repair). They were surprised to find that it was an animal grease, which shouldn’t be part of the manufacturing process. Further investigation revealed … there was a room in the mill that was consistently steamy and very hot, and workers had a tradition of bringing in their Thanksgiving turkeys to cook in this magnificent environment over the course of their shift. This was shut down, as you might imagine, but I love the ingenuity.

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  1. Dust Bunny*

    1) I’m facepalming on behalf of the vast majority of Texas who know that Australia =/= Crocodile Dundee.

    2) If none of you adopts “Disappointing Australian” as your username, why are we even here?

    1. ferrina*

      I’m American, but when I travel people assume I’m Canadian. I never correct them.

      I’ve met enough American tourists that I’m okay not being considered one.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          People guess we’re German. Including three different innkeeper types in the southwest. Granted we do speak excellent English, as do many Germans….

        2. MsMaryMary*

          I’m American, I had Spanish people ask me for directions when I was in Spain!

          One elderly lady patted my arm when I told her I couldn’t help her. Very “there there, it’s not your fault you’re American.”

          1. allathian*

            I went to Spain as an intern to a mid-size city, and at the end of my internship I visited Madrid for a couple days. I didn’t look Spanish, and while I was fluent in the language at the time I certainly had an accent, but even so both tourists and locals (not Madrid residents by their accents) kept asking me for directions. It was weird, but I did have a tourist map (in the late 90s), so I hope I helped at least a couple of them to find their way.

            1. JAR5001*

              It was a standing joke that my dad always got asked for directions wherever he was, even when he plainly wasn’t local. This happens to me a lot too, so I suppose something about us just looks approachable!

              1. Action Kate*

                I am asked for directions so often that my mom jokes I have an “I for Information” sign floating over my head which only I cannot see.

                I (an American) was asked for directions in Florence, Italy. My thought was, “Buddy, not only am I not from this city, and not from this country, I’m not even from this CONTINENT!”

                The kicker? The guy asked for directions to the church we had just left five minutes earlier… so I WAS in fact able to give him directions.

              2. Just Another Cog in the Machine*

                If your dad really tall? My husband and brother are both 6’6″, and they get stopped for directions all the time. My husband got stopped several times while he was in NYC, where he had never been, but he said that was okay because the city layout made so much sense he always knew the answer.

                It’s either because they, themselves, are easy to see, or because the person asking for directions assume they’re tall enough that they can see wherever it is they’re looking to go. Or both.

                1. In the provinces*

                  I’m quite short and am always asked for directions. Tended to assume that because of my modest size I don’t seem threatening.

                2. No One of Consequence*

                  I am also 6’6″ and it’s a running joke about how many times I will be asked for directions when I’m on vacation. My working theory is your second one about being able to see where they’re going. I also walk pretty fast, so I guess I just look like I know what I’m doing.

              3. iglwif*

                This happens to me all the time! I’ve been asked for directions in cities literally on the same day I arrived there for the first time.

                I have two intersecting theories about this: first, that being a short, potato-shaped woman makes me seem unthreatening; and, second, that the fake purposeful stride I long ago developed so as not to look lost* or vulnerable really does make me look like I know where I’m going.

                * I am notorious for getting lost, which is rarely a problem nowadays thanks to the magical map in my phone but used to get me in semi-serious trouble back in the day.

            2. Kit Kendrick*

              I spent a while in Paris as a student and memorized the Metro map before leaving my hostel. I come from a large metro area in America so already knew that wandering around looking lost can attract trouble and also the perils of not figuring your route out until you’re already on your way. As a young woman with headphones on, walking confidently and barely glancing at the signs, I must have looked like exactly the right person to ask for directions. I had a few people be taken aback at my very thick accent and then be taken aback a second time when I was able to accurately guide them anyway.

      2. Medium Sized Manager*

        It’s funny how that turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy though. If only annoying tourists self-identify as American tourists, the bad rap never changes.

      3. Czhorat*

        The last time I was outside of America I was *in* Canada, so that wouldn’t have worked.

        Maybe I should have said Australia?

        1. Illogical*

          Not necessarily. I was visiting Vancouver, at a bar, lightly chatting with the bartender. At some point an American couple came in and sat nearby. They were asking the bartender some questions about the upcoming Canadian election, which she clarified with me. (I did know the answers, fwiw.) She seemed surprised when I told her I was from the US, but I guess my east coast/lower midwest accent isn’t that different from, like, Toronto.

          1. Czhorat*

            Fair point, but if you heard my accent there’d be no doubt that I’m from lawnguyland, New York.

        2. ferrina*

          I’ve been mistaken as Canadian by Canadians.
          I’ve also been mistaken as Norwegian by Norwegians. They started speaking Norwegian to me, and I had to clarify that I wasn’t Norwegian and couldn’t speak the language. I was very proud though.

          1. Margaret Cavendish*

            While living in downtown Toronto, I once had someone ask me for directions (I assume) in Korean, which I definitely do not speak. When I tried to tell her I didn’t understand what she was saying, she repeated herself, v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y…. in Korean.

            I appreciated the effort, but unfortunately it didn’t help me understand her!

            1. Jay (no, the other one)*

              I work in healthcare and I once had a family member say they didn’t need an interpreter. Turns it was the patient’s US-born daughter-in-law. When I asked a question, she repeated it VERY SLOWLY AND LOUDLY. In English.

          2. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

            When I was in Germany as a college student, my accent was good enough that they knew I wasn’t German, but they said that they wouldn’t have guessed American.

            1. Just Another Cog in the Machine*

              My high school German teacher taught both German (which was her better language) and French. She said that, when she was in either of those countries, the Germans knew she wasn’t German, but thought she was European and the French knew she was American.

          3. JustaTech*

            I’ve been mistaken for a German by Germans, but in their defense, who the heck else is going to be in a boring business traveler’s hotel in a not-exciting town in the industrial north?
            Also, a mumbled “good morning” in the elevator sounds a lot like a mumbled “guten morgen” when no one has had coffee yet.

        3. Pamela S*

          I’m a Disappointing Australian. I was once asked in London, by a Londoner, what part of London I live in. I said I didn’t, I live in Australia. “Then why have you got our accent?!” he demanded.

          1. Disappointing Aussie*

            I spent some time in Germany at school on an exchange. I am from South Australia, which adds context to the story. The English teacher at the school asked me to read a text out loud, smiling at the class in anticipation of their reactions to the way I speak English. I had barely begun before she stopped me with a disgusted, “Why don’t you sound Australian?!” I attempted to put on a rural Queensland accent (Crocodile Dundee to those not from Australia), but she cut me off and didn’t let me speak again.

            That day I guess I was a truly Disappointing Australian.

            1. Part time lab tech*

              For non-Aussies: South Australians have a less broad accent as there were no convicts and they speak a little slower. More British, Scots and German, less Irish and Cockney/working class originally.

          2. Snoodence Pruter*

            I once disappointed an Australian in the same way. I got chatting to her in Wales and she was excited to meet a fellow countryperson until I broke it to her I was actually from SE England.

      4. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        One of my (American) friends actually sewed a Canadian maple leaf applique thing on her backpack so people wouldn’t assume she was American.

      5. Nicole Maria*

        I’m from the Netherlands originally, but live in the US now and I’ve met enough tourists to know that xenophobic stereotypes of American tourists are pretty inaccurate. I love letting people know I’m American, hopefully it will help them question their assumptions.

      6. Bee*

        I studied abroad in Paris in the fall of 2008, and most people guessed I was English or Canadian, the former I assume because I was clearly not French but didn’t have an identifiable accent when I spoke it, and the latter I assume because of 8 years of a suspiciously high rate of “Canadian” tourists in France. Fortunately it was actually a very funny time to be an American in Paris – every time I corrected someone, they’d respond in delight, “Americain?? OBAMA!!!”

        1. Once too Often*

          Ha! I went to high school in the French system in Montreal for a year. When I went to Paris for a semester in college, I got a lot of attention for my accent & appearance.

          “You look like an American kid and sound like an 18th century French peasant!” In fairness, I was in Montreal in a highly separatist period, so the accent I learned was much thicker than it might have been.

          1. kicking-k*

            I had a similar experience! I did my year abroad in France after two years of French at Oxford, which at that time was heavy on the literature and not so much on reading contemporary texts or speaking classes (this was in the process of changing). Several people told me I had a charmingly old-fashioned turn of phrase, which was no doubt because I’d been immersed in Molière, Voltaire and Flaubert for months. When I returned at the end of the year, my language tutor promptly told me I had picked up a Picardy accent.

            1. Pamela S*

              “…I had picked up a Picardy accent”, as in the place, not the starship captain?

            2. Margaret Cavendish*

              I once spent a summer in Lausanne, which has a peculiar French accent compared to a standard Swiss accent – which is peculiar compared to a standard “French-French” accent.

              The people I was spending most of my time with were from Quebec City, whose accent is also peculiar compared to standard “French-French,” but in a different way. So we all ended up with a sort of Vaudois-Quebecois accent, which is peculiar compared to any other French spoken in the world!

              1. Reluctant Mezzo*

                My brother learned French in high school from someone who spoke Parisian, but then had to deal with someone from Quebec in college. So not the same language!

          2. Tangerina Warbleworth*

            I learned very Parisian correct French in college. Husband learned West African French while in the Peace Corps there. We went to Montreal for our honeymoon. It. was. HILARIOUS.

      7. The Rural Juror*

        I’ve had the same thing happen where locals thought I was Canadian and I just let the it slide. And I’m from Texas! I guess my accent was on vacation, too :)

        1. lin*

          Fun fact: Quebecois, to me, sounds like French spoken with a Texan accent. So it might be legit!

      8. Nina*

        I’m from New Zealand, and if that happened to you here I would assume people were just being polite. Like, USAmericans aren’t usually offended by being asked if they’re Canadian, but Canadians can be offended by the opposite question, so it’s safer to ask anyone with that kind of accent if they’re Canadian. (Also, Australians are okay with being asked if they’re New Zealanders, but the reverse is not true).

        2. The Canadian*

          I’m a Canadian living abroad in a mostly English-speaking country and I frequently get asked what part of America I’m from. Then when I say I’m Canadian they say, “oh, sorry, I know you Canadians hate that”.

          Grrrr! Then why did you ask it that way?

          1. Csethiro Ceredin*

            My British dad introduced himself to my Canadian mum (in London) and immediately asked what part of the states she was from. Somehow he did get a date!

            1. The Canadian*

              Ha! He must have been charming enough to get away with it.

              I have once or twice answered “the maple leaf state”. So far it has flown over the asker’s head, but maybe I’ll try that again the next time I’m asked.

              1. Lenora Rose*

                If nothing else, we’d rule the movie industry considering how much location shooting is done in both places.

        4. OiOiOi*

          As an Australian, I am never OK with being asked if I am either a New Zealander or English. That is just insulting! HA!

      9. Filosofickle*

        I was in the boonies in Taiwan at a roadside store. The owner didn’t speak much English but wanted to engage me and he was curious why I was there — we went through a series of questions, including was I in the country to teach English (no, just a tourist) and was I Canadian (no) and he sort of gasped in astonishment — “Not AMERICAN?”. Yep!

        I can’t know his thinking for sure, but based on the conversation my interpretation was that the idea of an American tourist who was genial and curious enough to be so far off the beaten path just did not compute. We saw very, very few tourists in Taiwan and the locals bent over backwards to ensure we had a lovely experience.

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Bizarrely, I once had a taxi driver in a city about half an hour from where I live ask if I was German.

          The conversation went something like this:
          Taxi Driver: Where are you from?
          Me: Nearby town.
          Taxi Driver: And?
          Me: Um, nowhere.
          Taxi Driver: You don’t have nearby town’s accent. Are you part-German or something?

          I will add I am not a minority or anything that could make this a microaggression. It seemed to be solely based on my accent. And yeah, I’ve occasionally been asked if I was English, because I picked up a fair few English turns of phrase from Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton books, but German was a new one on me. And the leap seemed bizarre: you don’t have a local accent, therefore you must be German. There are no other options.

      11. Six Feldspar*

        I met a couple of fellow Australians on a multi day safari tour and they were telling us about an Australian woman on a previous tour they’d done, who was such an awful person they decided to pretend they were Danish for that trip…

      12. Bookgarden*

        I visited Pisa with a tour group in the late 00’s. The infrastructure was too old to house pay toilets, so instead an elderly woman at the public restrooms there held the only roll of toilet paper and waited next to the line. When my immediate group made it to her in line, we had to pay 25 euros for a few ply, but just before we did she asked the four of us if we were American.

        The two in front of us and my friend next to me truthfully answered Canadian. I didn’t get the chance to answer that I was indeed American before she said, “Good good, not American,” and stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry and made a thumbs down.

        I didn’t want to give up my only chance of toilet paper, so I laughed along with them, “Americans! Boooo!,” mocking my nation of birth to an Italian elder for three ply. My friend just laughed at me and said she didn’t blame me at least.

          2. Bookgarden*

            You’re both right of course! I need to work on euro cents and sense.

            If it were 25 Euros I would have scoured my pockets for a napkin or the like instead!

      13. Business Pigeon*

        When I’m in Europe, I’ve rarely (never?) seen Americans being the annoying tourists. It’s usually other Europeans. I’m on the lookout. I think the stereotype may be more because people only NOTICE Americans are Americans when they are being loud and annoying.

        Also more Europeans seem interested in where I’m from and so forth than seem to hate me or think I’m irritating or whatever. I get lots of excited people asking me where I’m from, and then they are disappointed when they’ve never heard of it. I had a whole tour boat full of German tourists in Amsterdam asking me about where I was from, and where I’d be in Europe so far, and what I thought of it.

        1. linger*

          OTOH if you make the New Zealander the lead singer and songwriter you get Crowded House. Who referred to themselves as a “South Pacific combo” to avoid the whole vexed issue of competing national labels (and the history of Australia on the one hand claiming NZ successes, while on the other literally sending Australian failures to NZ [e.g. the “501” deportees]).
          “Nation of origin” is tricky when there’s fairly high migration in both directions: do you just count country of birth? or consider country of (long) residence “shaping” individuals through friends and family/ education/ training/ workplace?

          1. Freya*

            I’m an Australian-born Australian with a kiwi passport (it’s cheaper and I have dual citizenship). Last time I was at an event where they did photos of various groups by origin, the three kiwis got me in on their photo because I’m near enough to count… And one of the kiwis in that photo has an Australian passport :-P

    5. Disappointed Australien*

      That’s not disappointing, *this* is disappointing… gestures vaguely at the Little Sandy Desert*.

      (* caution: is only little compared to the Great Sandy Desert**)

      (** caution: “great” refers to size, is large but mediocre)

    7. A Disappointing Australian in London*

      I’m especially amused by this as I married a Texan.

      We both have made a lot of sport out of disparaging each other’s hometowns (Houston and Melbourne). It’s a big part of why London is the only city we think we can live together in. Maybe Paris. Maybe Vancouver.

  2. Snarkus Aurelius*

    #4> yet another case of a person watching a movie and not understanding it. Crocodile Dundee was a “rugged individualist” *in addition to* being a compassionate, tolerant, safe person. That’s *why* he stuck out like a sore thumb in 1980s NYC. There’s literally an entire scene in the movie with a croc about being safe!

    1. Antilles*

      I would love to know where in Australia he went to. I’m pretty sure whatever “rugged individualist” parts of Australia he was envisioning in his head weren’t actually on his travel itinerary. Instead, he probably showed up to like, Sydney or Melbourne and was shocked shocked that a major world city is a major world city.

      1. kupo*

        I mean, even in the small towns I visited (actually small, like one roundabout sized farm towns) people weren’t ruggedly individual, they were safety cautious and collaborative. And they were nice and taught me to do the drongo folk dance, which reminded me a lot of the square dancing we did in elementary school in America.

        1. Ariaflame*

          Haven’t heard of that bush dance. Drongo is named after a horse that never won a race. Didn’t come last, just never won.

        2. linger*

          In the beginning was the bird…
          1. There is a black crested songbird native to Australia called a “drongo”. (Related species are found across southern Africa and Asia; the name derives from Malagasy.)
          2. The dance is (directly or indirectly) named after the songbird. Although…
          3. One racehorse in the 1920s was named “Drongo” after the bird. (At this distance, the reason for the name is not clear, but possibly it was a black horse.) The racehorse was famously unsuccessful, often finishing last or near last.
          4. By the 1930s, Australians (and New Zealanders) adopted “drongo” to mean a stupid or incompetent person. This is said to refer to the racehorse, although given the common “birdbrain” metaphor, and given that Australians also use “galah” (from the name of a common local species of cockatoo regarded as a pest) in a similar meaning, it is perhaps just as likely to have come directly from the bird name. One argument in favour of taking the horse name as source is that drongos (the birds, anyway) do not occur in New Zealand.

          1. Mavis Mae*

            I’m Australian and, disappointingly (or not) have never heard of the drongo dance. Nor does anyone except Alf from Home and Away refer to anyone as a galah, we use “dag” affectionately and “d*ckhead” less affectionately.
            The Nutbush and the Sharpie dance are/were things though – watch the video clip of The Slab (Hunners! ie Hunters & Collectors) to see a demo of the latter.

    2. Czhorat*

      The Crocodile Dundee movies were an example of the sequel missing the point of the original. Dundee wasn’t really a rugged individualist; he was a likeable rogue and scoundrel. He didn’t really mean ill, but his whole schtick was just a facade; the example I remember is that he shaved with a double-edged safety razor like a normal person, then pretended to be shaving with a big knife when he was being watched.

      Then in the sequel he’s a master outdoorsman who can take on an entire drug cartel with his his wits and his *real* wilderness knowledge that he was mostly faking just one movie ago.

      1. Carol the happy*

        That was a double joke; whoinhell dry shaves his face with ANYTHING? And yet there he was, dry shaving with a disposable. So he went from being true badass to being pretentious badass, trying to impress the lady….

        1. Impending Heat Dome*

          Meanwhile the woman wore a thong bodysuit to go hiking through the outback. Also a perfectly reasonable choice, NOT.

    3. Beveled Edge*

      Except that bit about grabbing people to check if their gender presentation matched *ahem* other parts.

      1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

        “You call that a knife? Now THAT’S a knife!”

        The above is the only thing I remember about that movie! Very funny scene. X-D

    1. Ultimate Facepalm*

      That was fantastic. I would like to bewitch people with my voice. Too bad I am not Irish.

      3. Fluffy Fish*

        a billion years ago i worked for a company that collected debt from local companies – think things like video rental late fees.

        we had one woman call and complain about me for leaving a sexy message for her boyfriend. when pressed on how a phone call saying to please call us about a personal business matter she insisted it was my voice that was the problem and I was clearly trying to be sexy. friends if anything my voice is on the childish sounding side and I have a very slight lisp (I’ve been asked if my parents were available to come to the phone).

      5. Turquoisecow*

        I once took a class in college because I wanted to listen to the professor – who had a beautiful Irish accent – talk to me. It was a good class either way. I don’t know if that counts as bewitching though.

        1. On Fire*

          I was listening to a class lecture and my cat promptly curled up in front of the screen to listen to the (American) professor’s voice.

    2. Awkwardness*

      But the customer was joking, right?
      I find out hard to understand if it was lighthearted fun about their big purchase or an actual complaint.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          That was the original commenter’s theory, that the customer had spent more than intended on those bells and whistles.

          The commenter noted that her boss was also Irish with a thick accent and couldn’t stop laughing about it, so I’m guessing there were no negative consequences from her bewitching lilt.

    3. Varthema*

      No joke though, we’ve lived in Ireland for a while and the Irish sales pitch is deadly!! I think it’s because the American-style sales pitch goes over like a lead balloon here – it’s just way too aggressive. I also tend to find it way too aggressive so I’m used to just generally disengaging with salespeople ASAP.

      So here instead the sales people tend to be pretty laid back, wander up to you but don’t offer help, just start chatting mildly, not overtly trying to sell anything (if anything they’re sure to tell you all about what they think ISN’T worth the money), and then before you know it you bought the damn Bosch air fryer from Sandra because sure doesn’t Sandra’s daughter use it ALL the time and her kids who are just a wee bit older than yours just love some air fried veg after school and waaaaiiiit a minute hang on.

      So as charming as Lorna’s accent might be, there is definitely something there about the Irish stealthy sales technique!!

  4. Heffalump*

    #10. Even if the employee in question is not the owner’s relative, lover, or blackmailer, they should still review their hiring practices.

    2. Princess Sparklepony*

      It’s the blackmailer option that I loved. And there is only one way of getting rid of blackmailer but it’s not by hiring them. Unless you can arrange an industrial accident.

  5. NotPharoah*

    Regarding number 21, there’s actually a video game where you can grow flax and make cloth. It’s called A Tale in the Desert. It’s a cooperative game set in ancient Egypt. I have to wonder if they played that and wanted something similar.

    1. Anon Again... Naturally*

      I actually played A Tale in the Desert about 20 years ago or so… it was a fascinating experiment.

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      Minecraft has the option to build stuff and the option to run around playing Hunger Games. I imagine there is a certain level of niche demand for a pure creative mode.

      1. Another disappointing Australian*

        So much so in the Ultima single player adventure games that their comprtitors ran ads about how, in their games, you won’t be baking bread.

      2. bamcheeks*

        Oh gosh, I don’t think it’s niche at all. Hundreds of small girls and boys are playing it the same way they play with Lego, just to build and explore (and accidentally get mobbed by bunnies, as happened to my daughter this week.) We don’t have any collaborative features set up, so it is basically just sandbox.

      3. commensally*

        This is true, but Minecraft actually has really, really limited options for what you can do with cloth (you can shear sheep and turn the wool into banners, beds, or plain-colored carpets, and that’s it.) You can’t even turn wool into string or ropes. I saw this and was like, “Oooh, is there a game that’s like Minecraft but actually has a good fiber crafting mechanic??” because it is my life, too. (Although in Minecraft, you can turn the monsters off in the main options menu.)

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Has anyone created Un-Minecraft?

          My nephew is obsessed with both Minecraft and YouTube videos of Minecraft, where people have set up these super-efficient factory farms that automatically hatch and slaughter chickens for you, creating giant stacks of cooked chicken.

          I think it would be kind of fun to play as an eco-warrior, destroying all the factory farms, freeing the animals, making friends with the scariest mobs, maybe going into the mines and filling them back in to prevent collapse, replanting the forests…

      1. Bilateralrope*

        Probably not. I haven’t played it for years, but the last I did it was an ‘everyone crafts’ game. With the high end equipment being untradeable. Very little room to make a profit, so a crafting focused player would need some way to fund it.

        Now Eve Online is a game where crafting is specialised enough that a player could stick to it after a sufficient time investment. But internet spaceships don’t give many options to make clothing

      2. Bilateralrope*

        Can you make a reliable profit from crafting in GW2 ?

        If not, this complaining customer would still need to go out killing things to stock up on crafting materials. So the complaint would still be there.

        2. Bananapants Circus with Dysfunctional Monkeys*

          Final Fantasy 14 crafting – it’s an entire game in itself and can be VERY profitable

          1. Kloe*

            I just yesterday gathered some flax from not-South America to make some clothes for my character to wear.

          2. Grumpy Veteran Crafter*

            *shakes cane in exaggeration*

            Back in my day, we spent hours weaving thread in order to then weave cloth as we levelled, all manually. We liked it, and we LEARNED from it! There’s a reason blacksmiths used to order their apprentices to make a thousand nails…

            We filled our buff bars on the party list just with crafting buffs. We turned any craft into an expert craft with Whistle While You Work. Skill was respected, not drowned in bots with endless time and players with no economic sense.

            Crafting USED to be an entire game in itself.

            (The tone is exaggerated, but the core of the complaint is very real. If SE had started their crafting changes with good QoL like Trial Synthesis and the Calculations window, instead of gutting the depth of the system, they wouldn’t have “had” to gut the depth of the system. FF14 crafting still has part of it’s spirit – it’s not a complete loss the way EW/DT SMN is – but it’s a shadow of what it once was.)

            (Oh also, I’m here complaining, rather than playing DT, because SE botched the graphics update and made it a vision damage risk for me to start MSQ.)

    6. illuminate*

      My sibling and parents loved A Tale in the Desert about… fifteen years ago now? I think they may still have the shirts…

    7. starsaphire*

      Pharaoh, as well. City building game from the… 90s? Anyway, you had to appease the gods for the Nile river inundation so you could grow barley to make beer, and you harvested flax to make linen, and reeds to make papyrus. For hours. :)

  6. Ultimate Facepalm*

    I love the shredding tote one. Just dump it in there like it’s a big ‘ol laundry basket haha.
    Also the Bigfoot and Wooly Mammoth ones are…interesting.

    1. Generic Name*

      I know! I’m facepalming at the thought process of someone who sees a big box and a slot and a lock and things “I’m gonna store my important papers in here” with no thought as to how absurd it is to store things randomly thrown in a box rather than organized in a file.

      1. Myrin*

        And also just without, like, finding out where this box came from or what its purpose is (maybe it was brought in as storage for an specific person or department?). Just “oh, big box, must chuck files into”.

        1. Kuddel Daddeldu*

          Welp, people do it with the garbage bin on their computer (and/or the Deleted Items folder in their email software) all the time, so…

      2. Antilles*

        The really funny part is that in my experience, document shredding companies usually have their bins very clearly marked with the company name on it. So not only did she just toss the stuff into a random box, she probably also failed to notice that said tote had “Iron Mountain Document Destruction” (or whatever) written on the side.

        1. Tio*

          I have seen two versions at jobs – one is basically your standard curbside trashcan with a giant padlock on the front and a slit in the top. The other looked like a tall cabinet with a slot in the front almost like a mailbox. It was very obvious if you looked for even .5 seconds you would not be able to get anything out of either again, and that’s without, as said, the giant “shredding company” logos on the front.

          1. Freya*

            Yeah, our office has a locked wheelie bin provided by the document destruction company. When it gets full we ring up and they drop off an empty one when picking up the full one.

        2. Meganly*

          To be fair, some of the Iron Mountain shredding bins really do look like a cabinet! (Source, used to work there lol) Why someone would think it’s a great idea to just dump documents loosey-goosey into a random cabinet is another story!

          1. soontoberetired*

            this makes me sad when we did a project with Iron Mountain I never got to go to Iron Mountain.

            1. Lab Boss*

              If it makes you feel better, you could always go to Iron Mountain, Michigan. It’s a map dot over between Norway and Spread Eagle, lovely little place.

              1. KaciHall*

                I’m trying to remember the name of the bar my friends in college loved there. The Forestry and Natural Resources college went there every summer for a practicum. I went to to visit (and drink) one memorial day weekend.

                It was GORGEOUS.

              2. soontoberetired*

                been through there. :)

                I thought the company was from Iron Mountain MI at first, I am such a Midwestern person.

              3. Kate Monday*

                When I worked a garden center, a guy came in complaining that his annuals died over the winter. (Annuals are the ones that die every winter.)

                1. La Triviata*

                  I one knew a couple, he was a very urban person, she was suburban. She was detailing the plants she’d bought for their new home; she detailed perennials and annuals. At which point he, in total shock, said something about buying plants that are going to DIE.

                2. MigraineMonth*

                  My mom grew up in southern California and moved to New Hampshire after grad school. That there was a difference between annuals and perennials was something she only learned as an adult.

            2. The Formatting Queen*

              I worked for Iron Mountain corporate for 4 years and I never got to go to the actual Mountain. It’s a pretty secure facility.

              1. The Prettiest Curse*

                Until I read this comment thread, I thought it was a fake name chosen for marketing purposes!

                1. Florence Reece*

                  Up until your comment, I just assumed lots of places have an Iron Mountain as an actual mountain, because my city has one which is a very popular hiking trail.

                  For others who don’t know: apparently Iron Mountain was previously an iron mine, converted first into a mushroom farm and then into an underground storage facility. (One of many they have across the US.) I had no idea how old and expansive the company is, tbh, this is pretty fascinating!

                2. Meganly*

                  Yeah, it’s a really cool location! It is very safe from seismic activity and other natural disasters! Moisture can be a bit of an issue in the main halls, if I remember, but they have probably worked that out since I last heard about it over 10 years ago. They meet Level IV for the Department of Justice Security Rating, the second highest!

              2. Meganly*

                Yeah, I worked in the digital branch and only ever got to watch the public YouTube tour lol

          2. LW5*

            I’m the person who submitted the shredding story, and the tote she was calling about was one of those giant plastic curbside trash bins, and the name of the company + “Secure Document Destruction” all over it. I have no idea how anyone could think they were supposed to “store” documents in it.

            Occasionally we got calls to go open them up for good reasons, like something accidentally got put in there that was NOT to be shredded, and we had one lady whose engagement ring fell off as she was putting files in. But this lady (and her rudeness!) just blew my mind.

            1. Sharks*

              Good grief. I’m familiar with those (tote threw me off since a tote is a bag where I come from) but shredding bins are always clearly marked.

            2. starsaphire*

              A lot of folks just skim over things, or focus on one or two words instead of reading and comprehending the whole thing.

              I’ve had that problem with a co-worker before. Trying to explain that the vanilla was not, in fact, missing – you had to read past the first three words on the bottle to get to “Vanilla Extract,” which was was apparently too much for her. Repeatedly.

              So LW5’s customer may have just seen “Secure” and “Document” and made her own decision about what that thing was.

            4. iglwif*

              I was going to say, don’t shredding bins/totes usually SAY WHAT THEY ARE quite loudly? And the companies they belong to are often called things like “Shred-It”.

              My spouse once had to call the shredding company his employer uses because someone accidentally put a pile of documents through the slot along with their phone. But at least that was definitely an accident!!

            5. Princess Sparklepony*

              I’m wondering how long she had been using it as “storage.” And how many files had been lost to shredding.

      3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        But the number of people who store their files in their computer’s recycling bin, or expect their deleted emails to be around forever.

        1. Damn it, Hardison!*

          This came up in the last company in which I implemented email retention. Someone complained that it was going to be a huge hassle for them because they “filed” all their emails in deleted items. I was so surprised I blurted out, “why?” They didn’t have a compelling reason so I told them I would not exempt them from the policy.

          2. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

            And then there are companies that systematically delete emails when they are 7 years old – EVEN WHEN YOU ARCHIVED THEM!!!
            The only to save them are if you create a PDF and save them yourself.

            1. Freya*

              We have a plug in that asks you if you want to file a copy of the email you’re sending on the server and asks where in the filing structure on that server you want it stored. That way, there’s a backup copy, and people who have access to a particular clients’ records can access relevant emails without having to have access to the email account.

              1. La Triviata*

                I once heard of someone, working after hours, have the CEO come to him and ask how to use one of the machines. Turned out it was the shredder. Once he’d been shown how, the CEO told the worker to make him three copies.

                oops

          3. Angela Zeigler*

            I’ve heard the best way to retrain someone on this is: Take some papers off their desk and toss them in the trash bin. When they get angry and ask why you did that, just ask, “Why do you store emails in the trash?”

      4. kicking-k*

        I’m an archivist. I so often get boxes of random stuff to catalogue that I fear a lot of people do think like this.

        I have a shredding box story of my own though! In my first proper archives job, for a bank, the shredding box sat directly under a secure keybox (it wasn’t a huge office and space was at a premium). At least twice, someone dropped or knocked a key into the securely locked box, and had to summon the security guard (who held the key) to open it and retrieve it. I’m glad we didn’t actually have to get the shredding company to come out.

      5. HSE Compliance*

        I have met many a person that has managed to put never-throw-away level of important files into a very clearly labeled shred bin.

        I also now know how to pick the lock on a lot of those, so I guess there’s that.

      6. Julia*

        At one of my IT jobs there were multiple people who stored files in the trash can. If you were low on disk space putting files there would give the illusion of freeing up space. The core problem was still there though. After having multiple people be furious that I deleted their stored files I learned to always ask before emptying the trash.

    2. AngryOctopus*

      I do wonder how that employee thought she was filing things, since you are shoving it into a very obviously locked tote that looks like a garbage tote. Usually with the name and logo of the shredding company right on it. I truly hope they were not using “Shred King”, because if she missed how their toters usually look–hooboy.
      But anyway, I don’t know how she thought she’d get them back out regardless. I’m assuming she asked fellow employees for “the key to the cabinet” and nobody knew what she was talking about, but they didn’t have time to look into it?

      1. Yoyoyo*

        I did not submit this one but in fact have had the experience of unlocking and sifting through a shredding bin to try to find some important papers that someone had “filed” in there. Maybe they thought medical records came and emptied them every so often to scan into charts? Baffling.

        1. Le Sigh*

          It’s the filing fairy, of course. Cousin to the sock fairy, who my brother seemed to sincerely believe gathered up his socks from every room in the house.

          1. ferrina*

            The Sock Fairy is real.
            We also call them “ferrets”. And they do gather the socks, but then hide them all.

            1. Meri*

              Unless, of course, the can’t hide it because there is a rope tied to the sock as you try to lure the ferret out of hiding to play a game of tug-of-war, also known as Ferret Fishing…

              Or so I’ve heard.

          2. GoryDetails*

            Ah, the Sock Fairy – or, on the Discworld, the Eater of Socks, which sounds closer to my own experiences.

            1. Pamela S*

              As opposed to the Suck Fairy, who visits tv shows and movies you once loved but now realise weren’t really very good at all (see Highlander season 1).

      2. Boof*

        We do have a “scan” bin that we can just sort of toss documents in and they get scanned and attached to the appropriate medical records; maybe they thought it was that??

    3. HailRobonia*

      I sometimes call the shredding bin “the bin of shame” because once I binge ate a whole box of cookies and didn’t want evidence of my gluttony in my own trashcan. Then I admitted this to a coworker and she said she throws her candy wrappers in there.

    4. Laura*

      At my old job (clinical research) we generated a big packet on every patient sample which then had to be scanned daily. Someone in the lab started using an old box to hold the packets to bring to the scanner upstairs and then one day the housekeeping staff grabbed it thinking it was random paper to be recycled. Not only would all the info have been lost (a big deal when you are studying a rare disease population and dealing with patients enrolled in a clinical trial) but it contained private health information covered by HIPAA and if it had gone out in the regular recycling it would have been considered a data breach. Thankfully we realized it right away and managed to get it back before it left the building and we came up with a new way of handling our paperwork after that.

      1. Goldenrod*

        This actually did happen in a department where I worked. A professor had put her clinical research in an old cardboard box on the floor, and the custodian recycled the whole thing. It was devastating.

        1. Unkempt Flatware*

          In days of yore, on an old DOS-based computer, my brother permanently deleted my father’s 50 page master’s thesis due the next week.

          1. Ariaflame*

            I had so many backup copies of my thesis on those floppy discs because I was afraid of accidentally doing that.

            1. allathian*

              Yes. I was so happy that I saved my thesis constantly and made backups to floppies whenever I took a break. I only lost about an hour’s worth of work when my hard drive died the week before my thesis was due.

              Thankfully my parents were willing to lend me the money I needed to buy a new computer, I repaid the loan when I started working again after I’d handed in my thesis.

    5. Turquoisecow*

      I remember reading something here about coworker who stored documents in the recycling bin for some unknown reason; this is just the next level of that, I guess.

      1. JustaTech*

        I briefly worked with a guy who stored his important lab notes on the lids of the cell dishes, piled in a heap on the floor next to the biohazard bin.
        He was *furious* when they got thrown away. *Obviously* those were his important notes and not hazardous trash he hadn’t managed to throw in the waste bin!

  8. Emeemay*

    Exactly how hot did that room get that you could safely roast a Thanksgiving turkey??? That’s wild, and possibly my favorite just because it came from a genuine concern/complaint

    1. A Simple Narwhal*

      Hmm, I wonder if they could cook it similar to sous vide, where it’s low heat over a long period of time? It would probably take a LONG time to cook a whole turkey at a low temperature, but it would technically be possible to do it safely!

    3. KitKat*

      I found an AllRecipes page suggesting you can sous vide a whole turkey at 150F for 24 hours. So if the room was about the temperature of a sauna, this could plausibly work!

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        My god, the idea of trying to heat a bin large enough to fit a turkey with a sous vide stick.

        2. LarvalDoctor*

          We did it one year. If I recall correctly, you break it down into parts first and I think we roasted the drumsticks.

        3. Gumby*

          For various reasons (mainly starting with “it was an internet start up in the early 2000s”) I know that it is possible to cook a whole chicken to a temperature at which it is safe to eat in a foil-lined terra cotta roasting pan using an incandescent light bulb as the heat source. It was not the tastiest version (I believe the Ronco rotisserie snagged that accolade) but it was edible. It was just ready several hours later than the other contenders.

      2. Zelda*

        There was the Mythbusters/Good Eats collaboration where Adam, Jamie, and Alton cooked a Thanksgiving dinner in various parts of a car engine…

        1. PhyllisB*

          When we first married, my husband worked as a water well driller. (Yes, even the 70’s some people still used wells.) They would bring things like canned soup or canned beef stew to heat on the manifold.

          1. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

            People still do today! I have some friends who are building a house in Idaho and the water well drillers are so busy they won’t get a well until at least a year after their house is finished.

            1. Fit Farmer*

              Yes, it is true, there is not a network of water pipes under rural areas of the country! Municipal water service is confined to urban areas & towns; outside of those areas houses are served by wells even in 2024.

          2. Well, well, well*

            My house has a well and I am not too far out in the country. It came with a well and then the county ran a water pipe through my front yard. When my well had a problem, I called them to see how much it would cost to hook up. Well, it would be $3425 to tap the pipe and attach the meter and then I would have to pay to connect my existing pipes to the meter. Fortunately, it turned out to be a switch which cost $400 so I just had that done. I did remark that the water system did not make it easy to give them money every month.

    4. Festively Dressed Earl*

      My inner workplace safety geek is wondering the same thing. It’s followed closely by my inner cook wondering why anyone would bother cooking a turkey that way – is flavor just not a thing anymore?

      1. Phony Genius*

        “The turkey has the flavor of a magnificent brine with just a few hints of Charmin.”

        1. Legally Brunette*

          Good gracious, paper processing generally smells offensively-sulphuric from great distances – I can’t imagine those turkeys were remotely edible ::gag::

    5. Elle*

      I was slightly horrified at that one… I actually slow roast a turkey every year for the stupid American turkey holiday and, as long as you start it off with a quick blast of heat*, you should be killing any bacteria you would otherwise need to be worried about when cooking at that low a temp…. But their method seems, uh, risky in myriad ways.

      *I hit mine with 45-60 mins of 400 f, then drop it down to 170 for as many hours as needed to get to the right temp.

    6. Czhorat*

      On one hand, low and slow is the best way to cook many things (I smoke my Thanksgiving turkey, and it’s probably at about 200-250F).

      So 200-250F can be an optimal temperature to cook a turkey, given enough time. It can also be an optimal temperature for death via heatstroke.

    7. Insert Clever Name Here*

      I desperately want to know how they eventually tracked it down to this room and discovered what was happening.

      1. Carol the happy*

        My colleague, a pharmacist with incredible clarity of thought, asked if their paper products also had little light green oblongs from the IMMODIUM needed as a side dish with the turkey cooked in a non-food manner/ method/ room?

      2. Lady Lessa*

        Even though I am not an analytical chemist, I suspect that they had a good enough lab to pick up on the differences between a pure hydrocarbon or silicon grease and one that had proteins and animal based triglyceride fats.

        1. Coverage Associate*

          Oh, yeah, the organic chemistry there is interesting. A high school chemistry lab would probably have the tools to distinguish a petroleum product from an unrefined animal product, but the mills my grandfather used to visit for safety checks probably didn’t have too many kinds of refined petroleum products, let alone a lab that could tell the residue of one from the other!

      3. MigraineMonth*

        Especially if the turkey cooking only happens once a year. Did someone fess up when confronted with the greasy roll?

    8. goddessoftransitory*

      Right? Either people should NOT be in that room period or that turkey isn’t safe for consumption.

    9. Peanut Hamper*

      Paper mills get VERY hot. You’re essentially boiling wood fiber. They are also very humid as a result. They are absolutely miserable places to work. I can easily see a room in there over some equipment that gets that hot.

  9. QueenFrstine06*

    I literally laughed out loud sitting here at my computer at “I think Satan would like it for hell.”

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      I was actually relieved by the ending to that one. When I read the start, I thought it was going to be some parent calling in to complain that their kid was assigned a country they were prejudiced against or insisting their kid be assigned a wealthy country or something like that.

    4. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

      That and the one about “you should review your hiring practices” are gems that are going immediately into my vocabulary.

      1. Charlotte*

        Clearly “it creates a rage” is the brightest gem, though — that’s gonna stick with me

          1. JustaTech*

            Like, is it “a rage” as in a suddenly popular thing – I’m thinking “Stanley cups are all the rage right now”, or is it “a rage” as in “it created a burning, fiery rage in the depths of my soul”?

            They’re two very different things!

  10. Trout 'Waver*

    As someone who has done their fair share of root cause investigations for quality complaints, the turkey grease one takes the cake. That’s hilarious.

    1. Annie*

      haha, yes, that’s not a root cause that you’d ever expect. We have heat treat ovens and I can’t imagine that we have a failure and it comes back that someone was cooking turkey in the oven during the heat treat process!

    2. Frank Doyle*

      Nerd Camp represent! In fact, I would spend several hours of Mandatory Fun participating in Bored Games, and watched friends play a single game of Axis and Allies (it’s like Risk, but way more complicated) over the course of days/weeks. It was definitely very boring for me to watch, but they seemed to enjoy it and were definitely doing it on purpose!

  12. WOOLFAN*

    #21 – This is super freaking niche, but as someone who is a fiber arts hobbyist, I have a literal person in mind who I think might have been your complainer. Based on both their personality and username, I would put actual money on this. OMG.

    Anyway, if you happen to be part of the same online fiber arts community weaving group as I am, you know. You know you know.

    2. Spiders Everywhere*

      This was in the early 2000s but if they’ve been at this a while it could be possible!

      1. Carol the happy*

        I have a friend who’s a Master Gardener. One of the invasive weeds they keep fighting is called Dyer’s Woad. She attended a workshop where they used plants and onions to tie-dye tshirts, and they made blue with it. (She feels some responsibility for the weed because her ancestors brought some of the seeds into the area over 100 years ago.)

  13. Minimal Pear*

    That flax person understands me on a level that no one else can. We will have a summer wedding.

    2. Lana Kane*

      I’ll attend in the linen shift I’ll model after whatever video game lets me just make cloth.

      1. Grumpy Veteran Crafter*

        My mind jumped to RuneScape – the early 2000s timeline fits its early years when the game was finding its footing, there are monsters that quests would like you to fight, and you CAN focus on just making cloth!

  14. I edit everything*

    #20–I would like to know what sort of product that was. I’m guessing a copier, but could also be anything packaged in one of those impossible-to-open plastic packages.

    1. Csethiro Ceredin*

      I saw a joke online saying that they weren’t sure what machine the band Rage Against the Machine was referring to, but it was probably a printer.

      (I have also seen Rage Against the Machine getting complaints about being too woke, like Australians as it turns out. These people also don’t know what machine they’re referring to.)

      1. Ultimate Facepalm*

        Probably. Was getting a very contentious divorce a while back and the printer decided to be uncoopertive. I had held it together until that moment but allll my frustration became laser focused on that printer. 10 minutes and literally hundreds of pieces of printer later, my tantrum was over. And so was the printer.

      2. SweetestCin*

        I’m fairly certain that anyone complaining about RAtM being woke has never paid a lick of attention to the lyrics…

        1. Csethiro Ceredin*

          Like all those people playing Born in America thinking it’s an uncritical YAY USA!

          1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            I’m still fuming at the people waving US flags at an Amnesty benefit when Springsteen played Born in the USA back in 1985. I actually went to complain at an Amnesty stand, telling them there was no room for US patriotism at an Amnesty benefit, and they explained that it was not a patriotic song, it was critical of the US. I asked why people were waving flags then, they said they couldn’t help what the audience did.

        2. DC Kat*

          Seriously, there was a whole thing when then-congressman and VP candidate Paul Ryan said in a magazine profile that RAtM was his favorite band and Tom Morello called him the embodiment of the machine they’d been raging against for the last 20 years.

          1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            That is delicious! Not my style of music, but definitely my style of repartee!

        3. MsMaryMary*

          There are lots of joke along the lines of “My dude, did you think they were raging against the refrigerator? Or a toaster?”

      3. K*

        I specifically follow the Dead Kennedys on FB for the delightful moments when they post, say, “nazi punks fuck off” and a chorus of bots (at least I hope they are bots) gripes “you guys were so much better before you got political.”

    2. Anonymel*

      I suspect she was expecting a juicy looking steak from a commercial for a steakhouse, but ordering it well done, meant she got a grayish brown, dry lump of meat and not a *STEAK*.

        1. Dhaskoi*

          If you order a cheap steak well done I think that is on you, honestly.

          (There is a steak place near me that says right on their menu ‘we will cook the steak any way you ask, but we take no responsibility for anything over medium)

      2. Fíriel*

        Yeah agreed – I suspect this was just a way of saying the steak was overcooked and unpleasant enough that it doesn’t deserve to be called steak

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, possibly “it was just generic ‘meat’. You couldn’t even tell what kind of meat it was, let alone that it was steak.”

    3. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

      There was a time when I had never eaten a biscuit, so when my first grade teacher assigned us a list of food items to classify into food groups, I freaked out a little when I got to “biscuit” and had no idea what a biscuit even looked like. Then I reasoned, “I’ve heard of dog biscuits, dogs only eat meat, clearly biscuits are meat!”

      I was also six.

      When I got the homework back with this marked wrong, I remember thinking it was unfair that I was being penalized not for not having mastered the lesson on food groups, which I knew perfectly well, but for the fact that my family didn’t eat a certain food, so I’d never been exposed to it.

      As an adult, I’m now torn between “cute story” and “still not fair, though.” ;)

      2. Insert Clever Name Here*

        I remember doing a worksheet where we had to label different pictures of the same tree with the appropriate season — bare branches (winter); a few green leaves (spring); completely full of green leaves (summer); a few orangey leaves (autumn). I got it wrong because I put the tree with a few green leaves as “summer” and the tree full of green leaves as “spring.”

        Then as an adult I moved to the East Coast. I came home to the Texas Gulf Coast one March for a visit and driving through my childhood neighborhood I realized: the trees in my East Coast neighborhood had few green leaves, but my childhood neighborhood’s trees were COMPLETELY FULL OF GREEN LEAVES. I felt so vindicated 20 years after the fact that my worksheet was correct given the location in which I grew up!

        1. Theon, Theon, it rhymes with neon*

          American biscuit! I had had plenty of British biscuits aka cookies.

  16. Goldenrod*

    I love #3 so much:

    “In a separate issue, another customer was unhappy that they couldn’t get money (as in actual banknotes) to be dispensed from their computer given that they had an online savings account.”

    I mean, I sort of get it! I feel like The Jetsons misled us on what the future would be like. I want money to be dispensed from my computer too!

    1. Goldenrod*

      Oh, and I also want to see Bigfoot bones at the natural history museum. Thank you in advance!

        1. allathian*

          Scientists are actually trying to revive the mammoth using DNA from frozen animals found in Siberia and Canada and modern elephants.

          So maybe in a decade or two…

          2. Matthew*

            I went right from this post to Kottke, which links to an article about this very thing in New Scientist magazine!

    2. Ultimate Facepalm*

      I knew of a person who got her credit card stuck in the disk drive (so obviously a long time ago) because she thought that was how online purchases worked.
      When my parents first got a computer, mom thought the CD-rom drive was a cup holder.
      We were confused why we kept finding the mouse on the floor under the desk until stepdad explained that he was surfing the web with his big toe. He thought the mouse was a foot pedal.

      1. Zephy*

        In fairness, I think there was a foot-operated pointing device at one time – I want to say it was called a rat (because it was bigger than the mouse).

        1. Another disappointing Australian*

          and of course transcribing machines used a foot pedal as well. right side for advance, left side for go back.

          Remember them so well.

      2. CorruptedbyCoffee*

        I think this happens more often than you’d think. A little while ago I pulled a library card out of a cd room drive. Someone clearly thought they needed to insert the card to use the computer.

        Did you know it gets pretty hot in there, and the card will melt, fusing pretty damn completely into the metal? I got it out an hour later with a screwdriver and a pair of needle nose pliers.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        To quote Hobbes when Calvin is demanding jet packs and domed cities: “The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.”

      2. Zeus*

        I used to want a jet pack; now with the price and availability of parking in my city, I’d quite like the car that folds up into a briefcase, please and thank you.

    4. Office Chinchilla*

      I was at the bank recently and the teller was trying to get me to download the mobile app because “it can do everything we do here!” I then pointed out I was there to get quarters and she sadly admitted they had not mastered that particular technology yet.

      1. MAC*

        The mobile app (at least at my bank) also doesn’t help when you’re making your final mortgage payment and your mortgage company requires a certified wire transfer even though you’ve been making online payments every month for 2 decades and said company will in face REJECT a payment that “looks like it’s trying to get the balance to 0” so you have to traipse in in person while the teller hauls a nearly obsolete little machine out to put the payment through for you. For which you have to pay an additional fee of $35. Ask me how I know.

      2. MMR*

        I get that they’re probably told to push the app, but it’s so weird to me someone in a customer service position would basically tell customers “I’m useless and my job shouldn’t exist!”

  17. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    Paper plants can be notoriously sulfurous. I don’t think I’d want my turkey cooking in those conditions.

    2. Dek*

      Ferreal. There was one in the town I went to college in. When the wind blew wrong, whole place smelled like Nair.

  18. Blue Spoon*

    I’m in love with the implication that OP#2 was some sort of fey individual who was using their charms to… sell computer equipment

    1. Bee*

      And that the company that employs her would be shocked & appalled to learn that they were making money off her charms instead of thrilled, lol

    2. bamcheeks*

      Same vibe as one of those Twitter/Tumblr micro fiction screenshots that goes around:

      Eldritch being: Beware, every item in this shop … comes at a cost.

      Customer: uh, yeah, I’m familiar with how shops work.

      Eldritch being: the cost … may be more than you expect.

      Customer: yeah yeah, taxes, I know.

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        This makes me think of one of the books in the Wayward Children series, Lost in the Moment and Found.

    4. MsM*

      It’s like that Tumblr post about the fae who opened a coffee shop because they realized it would be an easy way to collect human names.

      1. Blue Spoon*

        I’ve joked before about the number of people who will just give you their name if you ask for it in a customer service position and how if I was a fey, I’d own half the city by now.

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      Also, someone needs to adopt Flax Is My Life as their new username ASAP, since we now have a Disappointing Australian below (or Down Under.)

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Actually, that should have been above! (Up Above doesn’t have the same ring, though.)

        1. Lucien Nova, Disappointing Australian*

          That’s what makes me so disappointing! I am in fact not Down Under!

          (Nor am I Australian by nationality, but I have spent many years cultivating the accent due to the period of time in which I dated a lovely Aussie. Said accent, erm, stuck around afterward.)

      3. Bananapants Circus with Dysfunctional Monkeys*

        Don’t look at me, I already stole mine from a post like this!

  20. Once Upon a Lifetime*

    I love these! I once had a woman complain to me while I was working as a server in a restaurant that there were no straight men around for her to have sex with. She asked me to point her to an area of the city where the homosexuals did not gather because she needed to get laid.

    1. goddess21*

      like dick is notoriously abundant and low-value, that person is not actually trying

  21. Disappointing Australian*

    I wonder if the Texan went through our red centre. It’s where Mad Max was filmed, incredible ruggered, and most of us are queer, social activists, either Indigenous or Immigrants who skipped the white way of life and straight into the Aboriginal ways of life. He will not cope well with our local Aboriginal sistagirls who are so non-westernised they don’t even speak English, but are still trans girls in the Aboriginal ways.

      1. arachophilia*

        SAME!! I need to go to there. I just spent a week with my brother and his family in the very rural mountains of NC, and though I was pleased to see that the rainbow flags outnumbered the Trump signs, it did not feel like a safe area to visit for a visible queer woman to visit (outside my brother’s house, which is very safe). I want to go to a rural place that welcomes the queer, the social activists, and the non-white ways of life!

    2. Moira's Rose's Garden*

      I’m sorry, but this comment indicates you are not, in fact, a disappointing Australian. May you forever be spared visitors of the complaining Texan sort.

      1. Not like a regular teacher*

        Yeah sorry, Disappointing Australian. Gonna need you to change that to Surprisingly Delightful Australian.

    3. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon*

      Love that the centre is literally red and metaphorically a rainbow.

  22. Goldenrod*

    “It’s always made me yearn for a word, probably polysyllabic and Germanic in origin, that means “to both grasp and completely miss the point simultaneously.””

    We definitely do need this word.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      I nominate kleinderschniebelfragnetz. I made it up, but who’s going to know?

      1. EarlTheSachem*

        With some light massaging, Google Translate gave me ‘dresses snow question network’.

        1. Juicebox Hero*

          So I tried to make up a word in a language I don’t speak and it basically means “dick”. I’ve discovered my superpower. My potty mouth transcends mere language!

    3. Tangerina Warbleworth*

      *slides glasses down nose*
      *blinks portentously*
      *clears throat*

      “Ideefassenmissverfahlen.”

      Danke so much.

    4. Don P.*

      I actually think “why do I need YOU in order for ME to save for my retirement” is a fair question and deserves an answer.

      1. Disappointing Aussie Office Gumby*

        Dunno about the rest of the world, but in Australia, our Superannaution accounts have tax benefits that other savings/investment accounts do not get.

  23. Paige Danger*

    #22 (the mammoths) reminded me of this:

    One summer, my friend worked as a historic interpreter at the national military park where Stonewall Jackson’s arm is buried. Apparently, they’ve had multiple past visitors upset that the arm is not on display.

    Said friend has gone on to work at several other historic sites and always has stories. The public is wild.

    1. AnneCordelia*

      As for mammoths: I went to Mammoth Cave recently and felt sorry for the poor tour guide having to explain (very politely, but obviously for the millionth time) that the cave has no mammoths in it, alive or dead. It was named back when the word “mammoth” just implied “large” (and before mammoth fossils were really a thing).

    2. ferrina*

      PSA for anyone traveling to Craters of the Moon Monument and Preserve- it’s not actually on the moon, it’s in Idaho.

      3. linger*

        There’s a Craters of the Moon park near Taupo in New Zealand, too.
        (Geothermal vents, not lunar rocks.)

    3. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

      The public is indeed wild! One of the costumed interpreters from Mount Vernon did a hilarious (and pointedly sarcastic) YouTube series called “Ask a Slave.” Much of it based on questions she was actually asked while in character.

      3. Higher Ed Cube Farmer*

        When I was younger and not yet farming in a Higher Ed cube, I did some work for state parks as a living history interpreter, one of those folks who explains the historical site to the public, sometimes while in the clothing and character of a person from a historical time. Most of my historical sites were European-colonized sites in the US, so time period about 1500-1800.

        Real questions/ comments from the public that I have personally heard:

        “Why do you have ___, surely they didn’t have the technology to make that.” Where the items people thought were obviously modern included: buttons. lace. shoes. bread. soap. undergarments.

        “Is that real__?” Where the items people thought might be fake included: fire. knife. shovel. beans (also other food items, but for some reason they asked about the beans a LOT. I guess the real, actual beans didn’t look realistic or something? people are not familiar with uncooked beans?). live crop plant growing in the ground. cannon or musket being fired in a demonstration. candle. goat. chicken. child.

        “You can’t fool me! You’re not really historical character].”

        “Can’t you stop [bad historical event that took place later]?” or
        “You should probably get out of here, before [bad historical event].” or
        “I think it’s terrible what happened to you people / what you did to those other people.”

        “Let me tell you all about the future, we have [air conditioning / automobiles / germ theory /cellphones etc.].”

        “Why are you talking modern English?”
        (Many of the interpreters would answer that in the language that their historical persona would have used, if the interpreter was fluent enough, before explaining in English “because I’m actually a modern person whose job is to teach mostly English-speaking modern people about the historical time and cultures related to this site, and it’s much harder to do that if I use a language you can’t understand.”

    4. Ama*

      I have been told by someone who lived in the Arctic Circle that they’ve had tourists show up to see the “midnight sun” who are disappointed that it’s just the “normal” sun shining at midnight, and not, I guess, some kind of new sun only visible in the Arctic Circle?

      1. Csethiro Ceredin*

        I’ve had people express shock that “you have shorts in Canada??” and ask whether I wear fur. I live in Vancouver. It’s hardly the arctic around here.

        One time, though, I was downtown when a cruise ship had just docked and there were floods of tourists milling around, but it also happened to be FanExpo weekend (like Comicon) so there were also many people dressed as Sauron and Manga characters and so on wandering the streets. The total bewilderment of the tourists was very charming, but I always wonder how many of them now think Canadians routinely wear costumes.

      2. Just Another Cog*

        My husband worked as a park ranger for years and often would get silly complaints from people. Once, that moose were blocking the road and could they come take care of that? Another time, someone called the ranger station to complain that the birds were chirping way too early in the morning and did he have any suggestions for that. It was a running joke among the staff for the rest of the season.

    5. LunaLena*

      There’s a fun book that’s a collection of negative reviews people have left for national parks. It’s called Subpar Parks, and it contains such reviews as “Save yourself some money; boil water at home” for Yellowstone.

      1. Margaret Cavendish*

        I was coming here to recommend Subpar Parks as well! It began as (and still is) an Instagram account, with beautiful illustrations to go with these amazing reviews.

    6. Carole from Accounts*

      My friend and I took a scenic road trip through the national parks of the southwest USA. It was mostly fun, but one stop made her unexpectedly so mad. As we exited the Petrified Forest, she angrily turned to me in the car and said “I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DIDNT WARN ME THAT NONE OF THOSE TREES WERE STILL STANDING. WHAT A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME”

      2. Leenie*

        It’s funny that petrified tree warnings were somehow in your portfolio of responsibilities.

    8. hedgehog in a ball*

      I used to work at a different mammoth site (SD) and a colleague had a similar story. A little girl was afraid the mammoths would attack her, so Co-worker told her not to worry and that she promised the mammoths would not attack. The mother got all mad and said, “You can’t promise her something you don’t know is true.”

    9. Pomegranate*

      Public is wild!

      Once I worked a tourist attraction in Canada where my job was to give out audio guides, little handheld devices that you’d punch the room number and it will tell you about it. The standard question was “What language would you like the audio guide to be in?”. We could set it to English, French, German, Mandarin, Japanese, etc. The best answer came from an American tourist who demanded an audio guide in American. Upon learning that we don’t have American, they said “fine i’ll get it in Canadian”. I had to politely inquire if English would do!

    10. Tiny Clay Insects*

      Those disappointed tourists ought to go the Galileo museum in Florence. His middle finger is on display!

    11. La Triviata*

      I was one in Lafayette Square in DC. There was a family there, looking at the statue of ANDREW Jackson (Old Hickory, Hero of the Battle of New Orleans, later President of the U.S.) and the mother kept insisting that it was Stonewall Jackson.

  24. Lys*

    The ‘doing the colors’ one is a funny story, though as a female professor myself I am frustrated by how often comments on my appearance make it into my evaluations from students. Male professors don’t get that a fraction so often. And I guess it’s nice how often they like things like my face or clothes or whatever, but… I shouldn’t have to be cute to be considered a good teacher.

    1. Another Academic Librarian*

      I got a student review once “those baggy clothes she wears aren’t doing her any favors.” FYI You will tear my Eileen Fisher out of my dead cold hands.

      1. Star Trek Nutcase*

        As staff I collated student reviews. One older male professor was told: ” You’re bald, everyone knows it. Parting the 4 pieces of hair above your ear and pulling them to the other side isn’t fooling anyone. Just get it cut.” I loved him like a 2d dad, but totally agreed. First day of the next semester, he had his hair cut and the little bits left closely buzzed (and looked 15 yrs younger).

        There was also one young professor who could’ve been Robert Redford’s brother) who frequently got “fantastic” butt comments (he had also won the staff’s best prof. butt award). Two other professors were extremely handsome, and always got their share of hot comments on evaluations.

    2. MsM*

      I’m just going to imagine it came from Elle Woods or Cher or someone else who would totally offer the male professors unsolicited fashion advice, too.

    3. ADD hoc*

      I knew a male professor who got a student evaluation that told him to “stop wearing pleated trousers.” He did.

      1. Wolf*

        We had one prof who wore brown corduroy. For two years, we always saw him in the same old brown corduroy suit. Then suddenly: a new jacket. It was so surprising that one of the students went “Oh, new suit! You going on a date?” – Turns out that yes, the prof was going on a date that afternoon, and he was excited like a teenager.

    4. iglwif*

      This is true, and also, if middle school students got to do teacher evals, I’d have written the following on my grade 7 math teacher’s:

      Please, please stop wearing dark-coloured bikini briefs under your pastel trousers.

      (Except in French.)

      1. iglwif*

        The math teacher in question was a dude. I’m not sure what to call his underpants so I have gone with “bikini briefs” but is that a thing they make for dudes?

        1. Lucien Nova, Disappointing Australian*

          It is indeed a thing they make for dudes!

          As far as I’m aware they’re the type of underpants one slang-ishly calls a “banana hammock”.

  26. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    #3 reminds me of a former coworker who bought a used air conditioner from an independent vendor on Amazon. When it arrived it didn’t work, and the vendor said O gosh it worked for me, no refunds. Coworker went on an absolute spree against the bank for not giving him the money back.

  27. frenchblue*

    #17 reminds me of a complaint I once received about event catering. It started at 2pm, so we didn’t serve a full lunch. We had nice, hearty sandwiches and a grazing table, in addition to a coffee and tea bar. Most attendees went out of their way to compliment the spread and thank me for the nice afternoon snack. One woman, though, WENT TO MY BOSS to say that she was “embarrassed for me” that it wasn’t a full meal, and that the offerings were “so tacky, and so classless.” As you may know, grazing tables are *not* cheap, so just for kicks, my lovely boss asked what exactly would be “classier.” Her response? “Broasted chicken. Everyone loves it.”

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      The universal rule of conference food is: no matter how much you spend on food, how nice it is or how much people say they like it on the day of the event, at least one person will complain about some aspect of it at great length on their evaluation form.

      1. ferrina*

        This is the truth.

        I don’t work in events, but I’ve compiled enough feedback on things that I’ve learned when complaints mean you’ve done a good job. At a certain point, people aren’t actually finding fault, they’re just cranky so they’re complaining about whatever they can. Similar to when someone is editing and they are nitpicking on whether you should say red or scarlet. They’re only doing that because everything else is so good they couldn’t find anything else to complain about.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Room temperature is a difficult one– is it a genuine “this room was so hot/cold I couldn’t concentrate”, or a “everything else was fine, but I feel like I have to add some sort of constructive criticism and it was just a little bit stuffy/chill”.

        2. Alexandrine*

          I once had someone complain anonymously on a feedback form that the sandwiches we served at the conference had spreads and condiments on them.

          This person wanted a plain, dry sandwich, and I guess they couldn’t understand why that wouldn’t be the default? Like if they’d asked me ahead of time, I’d have arranged for their special, terrible sandwich.

      2. Panicked*

        We do an event twice a year. We had always done breakfast tacos, but we started to get feedback that no one wanted those anymore. So we put out a poll, everyone (95% of the team!) chose bagels. So we switched to bagels. The amount of vitriol and complaints I had thrown at me was *incredible.* People complained the whole time that they cannot believe we didn’t have breakfast tacos.

        The next meeting, we switched back to tacos. Everyone that complained we didn’t have breakfast tacos last time complained that we didn’t have bagels this time. You literally can’t win!

        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          People: we always want what we don’t have. Like, universally, as a species.

      3. MsMaryMary*

        It was a meeting using a hotel’s meeting space, not a full conference, but I think the highest praise I ever got from a notoriously difficult to please client was about the snacks in the meeting. I just checked the “yes, please provide snacks, coffee, and water” box when booking the room. It was a nice spread of fruit, veggies, cheese, I think maybe yogurt, and little pastries. But I had nothing to do with what kind of snacks we got.

        On the other hand, that client hated the restaurant I booked for dinner (that one of their own team recommended).

      5. Local Garbage Committee*

        Conference food planning is truly the most cursed activity. When I helped out with conference planning for my professional org we invited anyone who complained to us about the lunch to join the planning committee, which weirdly none of them did.

        1. The Prettiest Curse*

          Good strategy! And it’s entirely unsurprising to me that none of them said yes.

  28. Aelswitha*

    I’m dying. I read the Irish Lorna bit and howled.

    A couple of weeks back I went through a Tim Horton’s drive-thru. The guy had an Irish accent and when I, a 63-year-old woman, rolled up to the window what came out of my mouth at the 19? 20? year old employee was, “Irish, the hottest of the accents!” He said, “Uhh … ” and handed me my coffee, and I fled and now can never go there again.

      1. Buster*

        Can’t think of an Irish accent that has that sort of rolled Rs. You’d probably want Scottish. Which is a pretty sexy accent.

        1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          oh but the Irish *lilt* their Rs, that’s what gets you! R as in “Lorrna”. There’s more to it than a plain old English R that just means you draw the O out differently than in Mona Lisa.

          1. George*

            Classic Dave Allen (Irish comic) joke: he was complimenting a Scottish waitress on the marvelous way she rolled her Rs. “That’s because of me high heels”, she replied.

  29. Anonymel*

    I would love to know the knives in #6! I cannot find a decent set that STAYS sharp. Having said that, I probably don’t take all the care of them I should, either….

    1. Elle*

      I’m right there with you- I need SHARP sharp. Japanese steel will keep an edge a bit longer than a western style knife, but will still require upkeep.

      I have been really digging Knife Aid- knife sharpening through the mail. I send in my knives and scissors when I go on vacation. LOVE coming home to sharp knives.

      1. No Tribble At All*

        Replying to say thank you for telling me about this. And that dull knives are dangerous knives!!

      2. Anonymel*

        I need to look into this! I asked neighbors about professional knife sharpeners in the area and they were like ‘uh maybe Lowe’s can do it?” This could be a game changer! Thank you!

    2. Frank Doyle*

      Knives don’t stay sharp no matter their quality. You have to hone them often, and have them sharpened every once in a while.

      If you can’t find a place locally that sharpens knives, Joann Fabric will sometimes sharpen knives (and scissors), you drop them off and then pick them up later.

      1. Missa Brevis*

        It takes a little bit of patience, but you can also get a whetstone at most hardware stores and learn to sharpen your own knives from youtube videos. That’s what I did! A couple of times a year I put on a movie or podcast, lay out all my kitchen knives, and sharpen them one by one and it’s honestly really calming.

        Also, seconding the recommendation to get an inexpensive honing steel and hone the edge on your knives real quick basically every time you use them, it’s fast and easy and they keep an edge much better that way.

        1. ADD hoc*

          You don’t even need a whetstone. You can use the unglazed ceramic on the bottom of a coffee cup. (YouTube it.) The trickiest part is getting the angle right (about 20-30 degrees).

      2. goddessoftransitory*

        I like picturing a tiny blacksmith’s forge behind the Joann’s where the locals drop off their weaponry!

    3. Prefer pets*

      I have some truly lovely high end knives that are sharper than your average razor. However, along with that comes the need to be very careful how I am using them & on what surface, hand washing, special drawer where they won’t rub but also won’t slice anyone accidentally, home honing at every use along with professional sharpening… so mostly they stay in their drawer.

      My solution has been to buy a bunch of decent but fairly cheap knives (mostly Victoronix, particularly their Santuko which is my favorite knife ever) that I can use & abuse without guilt & are tough enough to handle it and a good Trizor electric knife sharpener that matches my preferred knife edge angle. With that combo, my knives are ALWAYS super sharp…even my friend’s SO who is a chef and was visiting was shocked how sharp all my knives are.

  30. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    #25 cracked me up. I used to work in computer chip manufacturing. It is a process done entirely in a clean room because particles are death to computer chips. Years ago a different site was having horrendous quality problems, particles off the charts. They finally traced it to one of the furnaces used in the process.

    Turns out someone on the night shift thought they could roast their dinner in the furnaces. The entire oven chamber had to be stripped and relined at a very high cost. Overall that roast dinner cost the company several million dollars in scrap product.

  31. NyaChan*

    The grease spot is awesome. Exactly the kind of complaint that I think one would instinctively think the customer must be mistaken about in some way but when investigated, yup, they’re right!

    1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      Yeah, I was surprised. Surely it’s more likely the customer stored his TP in the kitchen with the wrapper half off!

  32. jane's nemesis*

    Because I just caught up on some past Captain Awkward columns, I have to wonder if the late churchgoers who complained of having to sit next to “gassy” parishioners perhaps lived near Capt Awkward and her brother in their youth??

    2. Apparently I'm 12*

      The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not break wind in the LORD’s house, nor in any other house neither.

  33. Essentially Cheesy*

    I am so sad that I missed that original post!

    My employer makes cheese spreads, in cups and cheese balls/logs. The complaints that we receive can be very interesting. We get a fair share of complaints about “me/my family member ate a whole cup of cheese and now we are sick. your product is bad!” I hope everyone knows what happens …. after you eat too much cheese. Last week we also got a complaint to the effect of “my son ate half of a container of cheese and he told me it tastes bad”. Um what.

    1. Lab Boss*

      Eating an excessive amount of a processed cheese product will generally have one of two effects, after all. And much like heads & tails or yin & yang, these effects are somehow both opposites and deeply bound together.

      1. Essentially Cheesy*

        We name our products with regular cold pack cheese, not processed cheese but yeah.

    2. goddessoftransitory*

      Oh, yes, the “three tumblers full of cordial” complaint; I can’t recall a time past the age of 6 where devouring an entire [pie, bag of cookies, sugar free gummy bear bag] wasn’t a regettable choie!

      1. Fledge Mulholland*

        The Haribo sugar free gummy bear reviews make me laugh so hard I get a stomachache

      2. Love me, love my cat*

        Google “sugar free gummy bear reviews.” Hysterical. In fact, I’d recommend pulling up a pair of Depends first.

    3. Peanut Hamper*

      In all fairness, if it was a teenage boy, they are basically human garbage disposals and will only notice that something is off after eating a fair amount of it. Most of it bypasses the taste buds anyway, so it’s only when enough residual amount is on the taste buds that they notice.

    4. Wolf*

      A few years ago, there was someone who ate a pound of licorice a day for months, and then tried to sue Haribo for making her have a high blood pressure.
      I’m 10% appalled by the idea to sue, and 90% impressed by her ability to eat that much licorice.

  34. Scrappy Queen*

    I worked at a Call Center during Covid. I once talked to a customer who destroyed her debit card when she put it in the microwave to “sanitize” it. You just can’t make this stuff up

  36. children's librarian*

    #22
    I had a parent complain that there child was upset that we had no books with photographs of real dinosaurs.
    No NOT pictures of DINOSAUR BONES !
    Pictures of real dinosaurs.

    1. pally*

      Time to warm up the time machine.
      Maybe the parent would volunteer to get those pics of real dinosaurs?

    3. 1-800-BrownCow*

      Take some screen shots from Jurassic Park and put them in a book. Problem solved, you are welcome.

  37. Juicebox Hero*

    I work in municipal government and I’ve had several people tell me that they’ll never vote for me again, in some cases threatening to tell everyone they know never to vote for me ever again either.

    I’m not elected.

    I couldn’t accomodate their requests because it would have involved breaking state law, and no way I’m risking my comfortable retirement for them. Only 14 years to go…

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      “I can comfortably assert that you will indeed never vote for me. Now, back to the issue of your 14,000 dollar water bill…”

  38. Dadjokesareforeveryone*

    I am extremely upset that I was laughing so hard while on my lunch break I almost choked. I’m going to call my ISP to complain that they shouldn’t allow humorous content to be posted around my lunchtime.

    1. beware the shoebill*

      One of the best calls I’ve ever gotten was a lady who asked her legitimate insurance question and then when I inquired “anything else I can help you with today?” asked if I knew how to update her automatic billing in her netflix account.

      To her credit, she was very sheepish about it and we had a good laugh. I was able to help her troubleshoot though!

  39. Bibliothecarial*

    The church one reminds me of something I saw on Stuff Christians Like many years ago. (RIP, dear website.) It was a check from the offering basket, presumably a tithe offering, made out to the church. It was crossed out all over and in big letters the person had written “Drums too loud.”

    1. many bells down*

      I work for a church and we’ve got a member who complained that the “Blessing of the Animals service is the kind of nonsense that makes people not take Unitarians seriously.” Which is hilarious because we stole it from the Catholics, we didn’t come up with the idea!

        1. Warrior Princess Xena*

          Eastern Orthodox not only bless the animals, we have some specific blessings for specific animals. There are also separate blessings for bees and beehives :)

        2. Generic Username*

          In one of the episodes of “The Vicar of Dibley”, the plot conflict came from the decision to have their animals with them in the church for the Blessing of the Animals service rather than Rev. Geraldine blessing pets and farm animals outside the church. Everything worked out in the end and (spoilers) the choir director led the congregation in singing “They Call it Puppy Love”…

          2. marmalade*

            I was so happy my local pbs affiliate re ran that series (at 10pm on Saturday) last summer. And even happier our tv has a replay feature so I could watch it over my lunch break on Monday. Partner did not find it as entertaining as I did, but luckily he got into As Time Goes By, which plays at a reasonable 6:30pm.

          1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

            Hey, we have jokes! and everything! About our earnestness!

      1. La Triviata*

        One Sunday morning I was going by an Episcopalian church and noticed a number of people – not dressed for church as Episcopalians usually are – standing outside. I wondered what they were protesting … until I noticed that they all had dogs and other animals with them, at which point my coffee-deprived brain went “aha”.

  40. sara*

    These are all so amazing… I don’t have any memorable customer complaints, but I do have a comment/question from when I worked as a zoo keeper. We had an exhibit that we had some toucanets (small cousins of toucans, they’re emerald green with black beaks). Near the exhibit, there was also advertising for an upcoming display of marmosets (tiny primates). While standing facing the birds (they were super visible), and next to a photo of a marmoset with a “Coming Soon” banner, I was asked “These birds, are they monkeys or are they birds?”

    I just stared, like couldn’t even formulate a response of any kind.

    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I was on a hike yesterday and the guide said he once got a question from a family asking how old a deer needs to get before it turns into a moose. That’s right, that family thought deer are just immature moose. The guide said he told them “about seven years.” Lol.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Once my family and I went on a guided river rafting tour, and the guide told us that he took lots of people out who would spot cows in various fields and ask what kind of animal they were. He started telling them “Wide faced elk.”

  41. Phony Genius*

    “I think Satan would like it for Hell.”
    “It creates a rage.”
    “Flax is my life.”

    So many great one-line product reviews that can be put in ads – but not necessarily for the products that the customers were commenting on.

  42. Lab Boss*

    #6: At my camp job we fielded SO many questions from parents about whether we provided “dull knives, so the children will be safe.” It’s really hard to get someone to believe that a good sharp knife that you could slice your finger on, is much safer than a dull one you have to force through your cut and ends up taking a whole chunk out of you when it slips.

    #19: I can’t parse if that was positive feedback (because the rock was not underwhelming in person compared to idealized photos) or negative (because it wasn’t any more awe-inspiring than if they’d just looked at a photo).

    #25: So you’re saying someone beat us to our concept of turning the autoclaves into pressure-cookers…

    1. M2RB*

      My brother and I have given up on arguing with our mother about dull vs sharp knives. She has “allowed” us one sharp knife to use when either of us visit. I would much rather have a clean straight slice that can be easily stitched than lose a chunk of my finger and have bruising around it from the force. UGH.

      1. kicking-k*

        I have some sympathy with your mother. I am seriously phobic of sharp blades, and can neither use them nor watch someone else do it. There’s just no way. I own two small serrated vegetable knives which I’m sure proper cooks would disdain, and never cut myself because I cut things VERY slowly and carefully.

    2. Guide*

      #19 was from me and it was a complaint because she left a 1 star rating with her review. People are nuts!

    3. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      19: I’m opting for the rock being underwhelming because the tourist had already seen it in photos, there wasn’t anything more to it than that. That was basically my experience of New York: I had seen so many pictures of New York and films set in New York, that there were literally no surprises. We arrived by coach and seemingly walked into a mafia film, except it wasn’t de Niro drawling on his phone. It also took the shine off of all the films I’d seen set in New York… like the directors hadn’t invented anything, they’d just filmed what was right there.
      I prefer not to plan my holidays at all, I’d rather be surprised when I get there.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I think the best part about that one is that they came back to rat themselves out.

      1. ferrina*

        I suspect that one was fiction, but I don’t care, I love it and the commentor told the story beautifully.

        1. Sharpie*

          It was mine, and told me by a colleague when I worked at one of the big UK supermarkets. I may have remembered some of the details wrong… But it’s genuine.

          Look up ‘Asda pizza complaint’ on YouTube for the actual complaint, they phoned customer services about it!

    2. Sharpie*

      That was mine, I can’t believe she picked it. Not could I believe they didn’t realise it was upside down before they got the package open.

      1. kicking-k*

        I’ve always assumed it happened after a convivial evening.

        Back in his student days, my husband succeeded in getting a refund (albeit in store credit) for a supermarket ham and pineapple pizza which he and a friend had actually eaten. It was seriously under-topped (like two pieces of ham and one of pineapple) and they had had to add a bunch of stuff to it. But I did think that was the ultimate in cheek. I was dating him then and tried to dissuade him from complaining to the supermarket. This wasn’t Asda but Somerfields.

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      So, I have to confess that I once did something similar to this, but with a furniture delivery company. They delivered an armchair – all I needed to do assembly-wise was add the legs. But I couldn’t find the legs, so I assumed they’d missed out a box. 10 minutes after emailing them a complaint, I realised that the legs were in a compartment underneath the bottom of the chair. (The compartment wasn’t visible at first and the company who manufactured the chair didn’t mention where to find the legs in the assembly instructions.) So I had to email them again and say “oops, sorry, just found them!”

  44. Ed 'Massive Aggression' Teach*

    Oh, I missed this! My story: I’m from Wales, which for those who don’t know is a bilingual country. The other relevant detail for this story is that the M4 is a motorway which links Wales to England.

    When I worked on the tills in a large big-box store, I once had a customer throw an absolute heaving tanty because… he could not see English on all our in-store signage.

    Reader, all signs were in English on one side and Welsh on the other. So to read the English, all he had to do was… look at the signs from the other side. (Or ask a staff member. It was early on a weekend, the place was dead and there were lots of us around. Admittedly, this may have been too great a mental exercise for someone who couldn’t work out that ‘beic modur’ = ‘motor bike’.)

    He ranted at me implacably for a good ten+ minutes, all while I valiantly fought the urge to say, “If you want English signs, f*ck off up the M4 – they’ve got plenty of them!”. Realising I was fighting a losing battle against my own potty mouth, I eventually called the manager to deal with the whinging twit.

    Manager duly turned up. Manager duly got a refresh of the rant I’d already enjoyed, plus a bit. Manager duly lost to the same instincts as mine, and did indeed tell the guy to f*ck off up the M4…

    1. The Editor-in-Chief*

      Despite being a language nerd with a soft spot for Welsh and about two weeks’ worth of learning it years ago, I’m not sure I’d have parsed ‘beic modur’… but I’d also have looked at the other sides of the signs.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        Given that “beic” is Irish for “shout,” I definitely wouldn’t associate it with bike. Especially as the Irish word is pronounced “bake.” Just realised the Welsh one may not share the same pronunciation.

      2. Ed 'Massive Aggression' Teach*

        Pronounce it in a roughly English way, and you get Bike Modor/Motor…

    2. Sharpie*

      ‘f*ck off up the M4…’

      Brb dying of laughter.

      I know precisely two words of Welsh: Bore da – and I’m not sure I spelled either of them correctly. It’s a gorgeous country, though – and if you like history, I can recommend the YouTube channel Cambrian Chronicles for some more or less obscure history of bits of Wales.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I was in a reader’s theater production of Under Milk Wood years ago, and the director wanted us to try Welsh accents; oh boy. The very kind and tactful Welsh lady who heard us would gamely try to pretend her ears weren’t bleeding and tell us what an interesting attempt that was.

        Do not attempt a Welsh accent unless you are born and raised in Wales.

        1. Ed 'Massive Aggression' Teach*

          Oh honey, *no*. You took absolutely the right lesson from that. Almost NOBODY gets the accent (any of our accents) right! I can think of only one example of even a PROFESSIONAL actor nailing the accent.

          (Jessica Gunning, aka Martha from Baby Reindeer, in what’s otherwise my favourite movie: Pride. I genuinely thought she was actually Welsh.)

          1. greenfordanger*

            Her Scottish accent was also really good. I assumed she was Scottish and so did Lorraine Kelly. Can there be higher praise. Lorraine, not me!

        2. pandop*

          I can pronounce a fair number of words in a passable South Walian accent, having been to university there.

      2. Peter*

        The one thing I know about Wales is that whilst Scotland has wild Haggis roaming the hills, Wales has the Araf.
        They are endangered and are very vulnerable to being hit by cars, so in a lot of places warning signs are painted on the ground saying SLOW ARAF
        /s

        1. Lucien Nova, Disappointing Australian*

          Oh my goodness I love this. Genuinely. Thank you, I am delighted to know the haggis has a Welsh cousin in the araf.

      1. La Triviata*

        Years ago, a co-worker asked me for help. She’d received a piece of mail – A4 size paper rather than the standard U.S. letter size and not in English. I looked at the other side … it was a notice from a company in South Africa – A4 paper, one side in English, the other in Afrikaans.

  45. Supermarket employee*

    #7 I also worked at Green UK Supermarket Customer Service and I also remember the upside down pizza. I thought it was a troll, but I could be wrong. The one that sprang to mind for me was the person who complained that a photo of a butternut squash on our website looked too phallic, although I think they were also trolling. Honorable mention to the person who sent a very normal email complaining about a product she hadn’t enjoyed, but accidentally attached a photo of her dogs in Christmas jumpers instead of a photo of the product.

    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I am absolutely amazed that the picture at our Costco food court of a sausage (which is resting at a Certain Angle, with two condiment cups of onions and whatever sitting politely at either side of the end) has been up for at least eight years, because it could not be more suggestive if they TRIED.

    2. Sharpie*

      Thank you for the corroboration!

      The actual recording is on YouTube, if anyone cares to listen – look up ‘Asda pizza complaint’

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I hope they sent two gift certificates: one for the complaint, and a bonus for the pups!

  46. Elle*

    A reading these reminded me of the Adam Sandler SNL sketch where he’s setting expectations about what his company can do when booking your tour to Italy. It’s hilarious.

      2. Steve for Work Purposes*

        Oh my god, I just watched that skit – it’s hilarious. Clearly written by someone who’s worked in customer service!

  47. Cacofonix*

    #22, well if there are no live mammoths at Waco Mammoth National Monument, what’s the point? I was at an outdoor market in Alaska standing beside a woman at a booth where the artisan makes small things with Mammoth tusk ivory. “Aren’t they endangered?” the woman exlaims “This must be illegal.” The indigenous vendor sighed and politely explained that they “didn’t kill any mammoths to make these; they find them as mammoths are extinct already.” It was rote, like they have to answer that question all day long.

  48. Irish Teacher.*

    Oh, my sister once claimed to have heard some old lady on a train complaining about something – I think a bag of crisps (chips to the Americans) and how she was going to send them with a complaint to the taoiseach (prime minister).

    1. Ali + Nino*

      Yep I’m sure they’ll get right on it. One time my dad sent me a letter and it was erroneously returned to him with some nonsensical stamp saying “Unable to deliver.” He was so upset that he kept the original letter and envelope and presented it to me the next time I visited and told me to bring it to the local post office to complain/demand an explanation…I get it, it was stupid and should not have happened, but man I have stuff to do!

  50. Chestnut Mare*

    I teach horseback riding lessons and I’ve lost count of the people who come for their first lesson, having never before been astride a horse, and be disappointed that they won’t be jumping the meter + fences in the arena that day.

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      The only time I was ever on a horse, a Shetland pony, I hung on like a limpet and was sure I was going to fall off and land on my head while it was just walking slowly. I’m simultaneously aghast at and envious of the people thinking they can go from zero to gold medal in dressage in one lesson.

    3. Higher Ed Cube Farmer*

      Actual comment from the public, from my living history days mentioned elsethread:

      “How hard can it be, you just sit there and the horse does all the work.”

      LOLOL no.

  51. Cnoocy*

    For #1, there is a Cryptozoological Museum in Portland Maine that has a fair share of Bigfoot artifacts and information on other cryptids.

    1. GoryDetails*

      Yes! Though… it does not (to my knowledge) contain actual Bigfeet. (Bigfoots?) Or scientifically-verifiable parts of same. Still quite entertaing!

  52. JJ*

    I love all of these. Alison, can you ask the opposite question too? The worst answers to a customer’s complaint? Because I could kick that one off. I once asked a worker at a cafeteria I went to every day for lunch why they didn’t sell grapefruit juice any more. She replied that it was always selling out and then she’d have to go to the back to get more to restock the fridge, so it was easier to just not offer it. Makes perfect sense…

    1. Whomever*

      Ok, since we are mentioning Australia I want to mention an answer that was…not terrible, but nevertheless hilarious. Australia has this tradition of kitschy road-side attractions, usually dating to the 1950s, of things called “The Big X” which is a giant X for various values of X. We happened to be at the Big Pineapple which is on a Pineapple plantation and shows the natural progression of pineapple into the can (remember, 1950s). We asked the concession why they didn’t have pineapple sundaes and she said “oh we did, but the artificial pineapple flavored ice cream tasted terrible next to actual pineapple”. 1-It was at that point perfectly possible to get real pineapple ice cream. 2-there are actually other ice cream flavors in the world. Vanilla for instance.

    2. Roja*

      Oh my gosh! I got exactly that same response with shoes once! My feet can now usually fit into a 6 but at the time it really was 5s only. Just brutal finding shoes in stores for that size. So I went into a major department store one day and asked if they had a pair I liked in a 5, and the saleswoman told me they always sold them right away so they had stopped ordering them. I was like, you did what??? Isn’t that the point of running a business, to sell things that people want to buy!?

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      When I was subbing, I was entitled to jobseekers benefit during the summer holidays and sometimes for part of weeks if I worked less than a certain number of days. I had to fill in these forms and get them stamped by an employer, but I was sometimes working between a number of schools and no principal would know how many days I worked that week in total, so I went in to the social welfare office to ask what I should do. They said to get it stamped by the principal of whichever school I worked in at the end of the week, which was fair enough.

      But then I asked “and what if there’s a week when I don’t get any subbing work” and got this reply: “Oh! We’re getting training on that next month and…hopefully, it won’t happen before that!”

    4. rebelwithmouseyhair*

      Yes! I remember asking for cider, clearly listed on the menu, and being told “sorry love we don’t do cider any more, there’s no demand for it nowadays”, then overhearing the same bartender complaining to her colleague that she was “sick of explaining that there’s no demand for cider nowadays”.

    5. Sara K*

      My mum (a vegetarian) once asked an assistant in a supermarket which aisle the artichokes hearts were in. He sent her to the meat aisle.

    6. Wolf*

      Reminds me of a local story. Someone kept lots of exotic birds, and fed them lots of raisins. So they bought a few kg of raisins in the same corner store every few weeks. One day, the store manager told them “You’re buying so many raisins, you must be reselling them” – and limited sales to 3 bags per customer.

      But the previous months’ sales were still in the store’s restocking software. So, with their main raisin buyer prohibited from buying them, the store drowned in raisins for months until they could get the software to stop ordering them.

  53. Someone Else's Boss*

    Although I’m fairly certain #23 is not literally about me, I very recently told a staff member I was sorry I had to reformat a document they sent me because I “have trouble reading fonts other than Calibri.” Which is not true in a literal sense, but this person had used Impact, which was a bit much for me to read in a 10 page document.

    1. Siege*

      I went into publishing in 2006, when a lot of authors were told to submit your work in Courier because it’s easy to estimate word count. They probably still are but now I don’t have to read author submissions so I don’t care.

      I hate Courier more than I hate Papyrus. But I love ctrl-A -> Calibri.

        1. Peanut Hamper*

          Because it’s a monospaced font. Each letter takes up the same space on a line as any other, whether it’s a narrow letter like “i” or a wide one like “w”.

          1. allathian*

            It makes it easier to estimate character count, but not necessarily word count.

            Do publishers still accept scripts on paper anyway? Maybe some established authors like James Ellroy can get away with it, but…

            Any word processing or desktop publishing software will give you a word count if you know where to look.

            I hate Courier, but my accounting professor at college used it on all his materials because the monospaced font made columns of numbers line up nicely without decimal tabs.

          2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

            … which was useful information back in the days of typewriters, but now, Word tells you how many words there are in your document. I’m always amazed at how few of my clients know this (I bill per word, but they have no idea how much it’s going to cost them before I send in the estimate).
            Nowadays simple fonts are recommended, like Verdana, without any embellishments like the pretty little “hooks” at the top and “stands” at the bottom of letters in the font here for example.

        2. iglwif*

          Because if you’re looking at a stack of pages and trying to estimate word count from that, a monospaced font makes it easier.

          I’m not sure anyone was still doing that in 2006 but it was certainly still a thing people did in the 1990s, when I started working in publishing.

    2. Whomever*

      I adopted a child, and the official document I got from the adoption agency, saying I had legal right to have possession of this kid (this is before it’s finalized so technically the agency is the guardian) was in…Comic Sans.

      2. HBJ*

        Oof. I’m currently in the young elementary education sphere, and SO MUCH STUFF in curriculum, fliers, whatever is in comic sans. I hate it so much. I’m sure they must be doing it because education and supposedly better for people with dyslexia, but it’s so hard me to take these companies seriously as a provider of curriculum or services and whatnot. My first inclination is to just right them off because it looks so bad/juvenile/ancient.

        1. HBJ*

          And yes, I understand juvenile and ancient are opposites, but somehow it manages to look both at the same time.

  54. Safely Retired*

    EVERY ONE OF THESE would be appropriate on the site https://notalwaysright.com. I find it a fine site for wasting time. (I’m retired, of course.) When I run out of the recent posts I just hit the die (as in dice) symbol for something random – it has been active for MANY year. That site goes WAY beyond just customer complaints, including endless bad bosses and useless employees. As you would expect, retail provides and endless supply of stories.

    1. Sharpie*

      I actually discovered AAM from comments over at NAR. There is a pretty good overlap in readership between the two sites, for reasons I have yet to ascertain.

      1. Frank Doyle*

        I’ll betcha a part of it is that they both update a lot during the day, so there’s always new content to read instead of, you know, working.

  55. Hell in a Handbasket*

    In my youth I worked at an amusement park and sometimes was assigned to the “old-time photo” booth. We would take a polaroid of the people, show it to them for approval, then develop it into a larger sepia photo. There were no controls of any kind on the camera and those of us working there had no photography skills — we just pushed a button. This one woman complained repeatedly about photo after photo, telling us that her glass eye was too noticeable. We just kept shrugging and pressing the button again. I think we eventually convinced her to do a profile shot.

  56. Rach*

    Not really a complaint but I work for a youth theatre training organization and this made me LOL.

    I had a woman interested in classes for her daughter. She asks me -“You train the students to sing live correct?”

    I respond that yes, we do. Like all youth theatre organizations.

    She continues: “That’s good because when I went to local (award winning) professional theatre company they just prerecorded all their vocals and the actors didn’t do any live singing. I want my daughter to have live singing training”

    I paused and said, “M’am that theatre hires actors who are trained to sing professionally. They never used prerecorded vocals…”

    She was so flabbergasted that they sang live.

    1. iglwif*

      HA!!

      The volunteer handling social media for my choir last season recorded us singing a particular piece at rehearsal, then posted the audio on instagram with no video but info about the upcoming concert.

      It was repeatedly taken down because instagram insisted she had used a copyrighted professional recording of the piece for the audio.

    2. Don P.*

      When I saw the stage musical of School of Rock, the pre-show announcements (turn off your phone, etc.) ended with: “And in answer to everyone’s question — are the kids playing their own instruments? — the answer is, emphatically, YES.”

  57. Madtown Maven*

    #13–It’s not German in origin, yet how about this: asynchronous omniscience?

    2. linger*

      In the same general area (grasping yet missing a point) is the Japanese conceptual artform of chindogu, which is sometimes translated as “unuseless invention” — an object constructed to meet some purported need, seeming just practical enough that you might for a moment consider using it, yet too impractical (when you look at it more closely) to actually use on any regular basis. You may have seen examples online such as the cockroach-swatting slippers (with a telescopic handle trip hazard) or the necktie holdall (too heavy to put round your neck when fully loaded).
      A few such items (the finger-mounted toothbrush, the press for recycling soap) were released commercially and so had their status revoked.
      So I propose the converted verb (“they chindogued themselves”) as conveying the intended meaning.

    3. Indisch blau*

      If you want that in German it would asynchrone Allwissenheit. Or: zeitversetzte Allwissenheit.

    4. Roxaboxim*

      How about two words: “merkbefreite Erkenntnis”? Erkenntnis means insight and merkbefreit is a polemic neologism meaning something like ‘not required to notice anything’ (it’s hard to explain).

  58. MichelleMaBelle*

    Re: #1, my kid complained about the lack of science at the Bigfoot Museum in Santa Cruz. :D

    1. Panicked*

      That whole situation and resulting memes was one of the best things to come out of 2021.

  61. Whomever*

    Heh. I wonder what the Texans would think if they find out Australia’s current foreign minister (Penny Wong) is a Malaysian born ethnically Chinese Lesbian who is married to her wife. (I assume they noticed that 30% of Australia was born in a foreign country). Also Australia is actually one of the most urbanized countries in the world.

    1. Frank Doyle*

      Australia is actually one of the most urbanized countries in the world.

      What does this mean, exactly? That a large portion of the population lives in a city?

      1. Daria grace*

        Correct. The vast majority of the Australian population lives in cities, almost all of which are close to the coast. Not many people live in rural inland areas of Australia

      2. M*

        86.6%ish live in an urban or suburban area. From memory, towns over a certain size count, villages don’t.

      3. Dhaskoi*

        About 40% of our population lives in just our two biggest cities. Add in the next few and it rises to 70% pretty quickly. Australians are suburbanites.

        1. Freya*

          Yep, Canberra+Queanbeyan ranks as the eighth most populous urban area in Australia, with under 2% of the population of Australia as a whole and 10% of the population of either Sydney or Melbourne.

  62. DrB*

    I’ve heard of labs autoclaving turkeys. Rumor has it they come out wonderfully moist, but I feel like it would just taste like LB, even if just in my head. That said, LB smells delicious, so…

      1. Higher Ed Cube Farmer*

        Luria-Bertani medium, a standardized medium (usually sold as a dehydrated powder to be reconsitituted into broth/jelly in the lab) for growing bacteria. It contains casein (~whey protein protein) and yeast extract (also used a flavoring in commercially-prepared savory foods), NaCl salt, and agar (seaweed derived coagulating agent used to make non-animal-based gelatin).

        It’s basically lab grade instant soup mix, and smells like it.
        Lab Brine is not far off the mark. :-)

    1. Guide*

      No, they’re not all from the same person. I wrote #19 but not the others. In the travel industry we deal with many stupid complaints and stupid people.

  64. TVGirl*

    I used to work for a children’s tv channel back when Jamie Lynn Spears got pregnant as a teenager. There was a flood of complaints from concerned parents. My favourite was this email: “I can’t believe that you would expose my children to such filth. What are you teaching them? Disgusting!” – sent from the email address sexymama6969

  65. Spicy Tuna*

    Satan would like it for hell!!! OMG, I am dying!

    Years ago, I did collections for an automotive financing company. We had repossessed this guy’s car but it hadn’t gone to auction yet to be sold. He could get it back by paying everything he owed plus the cost of the repo and any storage to date. We would only accept a Western Union cash transfer. He did not provide the funds and angrily called my supervisor to complain that I made him go get cash, and there was strip club on the way to the Western Union so what else was he supposed to do with all that cash but go to the strip club?! My supervisor thought that was a reasonable excuse and gave him more time to come up with the money to get his car back.

    I also had another job where I was training my replacement. We had an important meeting with the C-suite and afterwards, she complained to me that the president of the company was ugly. I didn’t even know what to say to that. She brought it up multiple times and was completely offended that he wasn’t up to her personal standards of attractiveness. I heard she was let go before her probationary period elapsed.

    1. goddessoftransitory*

      That guy clearly had a history of, let us say, short term payoff financial choices…

  68. Ace in the Hole*

    I used to drive a delivery/pickup vehicle. I got two really memorable complaints.

    The first was a woman who called my employer to complain about my driving speed. He asked how fast I was going. Turned out she was angry that I was driving 50 mph…. in a 50mph zone. Because “everyone does at least 60 there!” Boss told her he would not reprimand me for following the law.

    The second was a customer who complained that I missed a scheduled pickup and hadn’t called to reschedule. My boss was furious. The second I got back from my route she pulled me aside and demanded an explanation. I explained that I had missed the pickup because the only bridge to access their town was three feet underwater and I drive a truck, not a boat. I hadn’t called to explain because, as the customer was located *within sight of the bridge,* I assumed they were aware of the situation.

  70. Moose*

    Regarding #25

    So there were multiple turkeys cooking for many hours in a room where product was being made and no one noticed it until a customer complained? I hope this is a cute little bit of company lore/apocrypha and not something that actually happened because it doesn’t speak well of anyone involved. Like, how gross. And depending on the temperature of the room, either the turkeys were left in there for DAYS or they were severely undercooked.

    1. Overthinking it*

      You just don’t know, I guess, just how hot certain parts of a papermill get until you work in one!

  71. Leia Oregano*

    I coordinate and run large-scale events on a university campus. I get the gamut of eval comments afterwards — including lots of positive comments/feedback, lots of constructive/critical feedback that we do take into consideration, as well as complaints and recommendations that are literally impossible to implement, for a variety of reasons — but my favorite, which I still bring up three years later, is the one that just said: “Your campus needs Dippin’ Dots.” This was a eval response for an admitted students’ event, during which students (ideally) decide whether or not to attend the university. I guess I should be glad that nothing else stood out other than the apparent lack of Dippin’ Dots??

    1. Adardame*

      I’ve filled out a fair number of required surveys where I didn’t really have anything to say, and I just made something up to put in the blank.

  72. The Rural Juror*

    I use to work for a service that installed countertops. If we had a material in our warehouse (like marble or granite) that a customer liked, they could purchase from us. They also had an option to purchase slabs of material elsewhere and we would cut them to size and do the installation in their home.
    I had someone call who had already bought 2 slabs of granite at another shop, but they’d decided to get someone to else to do installation. No big deal, happened all the time. We even sold material to other shops when we had something their customers wanted (competition in our town was pretty friendly).
    This person emailed me a sketch of their kitchen and asked me for a quote. But then I had to call them back and explain that they didn’t purchase enough material. Then they got REAL MAD and argued with me as if I had just told them the dumbest thing they’d ever heard.
    You see, even if your kitchen only needs 45 square feet of countertops, you may still have to buy more like 60 square feet of slab material because of the length/width of the slabs. You can’t stench the slabs to make them longer (because it’s a literal rock/natural stone), and it looks horrible to have a lot of seams in the counter to piece it together. Some seams are expected but ideally you keep them to a minimum. The slabs they bought couldn’t cover their whole kitchen because the length was just a little too short, even with 2 slabs available.
    They didn’t believe me at all when I told them we couldn’t make it work without purchasing more material. I think we were on the phone for about 30 minutes before I gave up. I just didn’t have it in me to keep trying to persuade them or explain how I was correct. I had made several attempts to explain as simply as I could to no avail. It felt like arguing with a toddler about why you couldn’t make the sun come back out at nighttime.
    So I just said, “I don’t think we’re the right service for you.” When I told my boss, the owner, what happened, he laughed and said we were better off not doing that particular project.
    After that we had a running joke that we should invent a “slab stretcher.”

    1. Hroethvitnir*

      God, that makes me think of the time we had a client… asking about whether their cat could board with us if their vaccinations had lapsed, maybe? All I remember is running out of ways to rephrase “no, these are your options, there are no other options.”

      People just looking at you expectantly when you’ve rephrased something 5 different ways, made as many suggestions as you can, said no as bluntly as possible… you’re left just wondering how they survive.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        That reminds me of the student who kept asking me over and over again if he could do something – can’t remember what it was now – and I kept saying no. Then he said, “no Miss, I need you to listen to me.” I told him that I had heard him perfectly well (I didn’t add “I heard you about five times”) and he asked, “so can I?” and was genuinely shocked when the answer was once again, “no.”

  73. Rhea*

    I have two related stories!

    Number one: in college I answered the phones for the food science department. I recieved a call from a local news outlet. They were running a story about a woman who tried to poison herself by extracting the cyanide from apple seeds. They asked if I could tell them how many apple seeds you would need to eat to kill yourself. I told them I didn’t have that information and even if I did I wouldn’t tell them. They seemed surprised, like it hadn’t even occurred to them that reporting that number could be dangerous!

    Second, I worked in a zoo for many years. On a tour, a zoo keeper answered a question about the mating habits of flamingos and mentioned that there was a female/female pair in our zoo that year. A woman in the group was offended and complained to the gift shop staff that the keeper should be reprimanded for “forcing her unnatural lifestyle on the flamingos!”

  75. Summer*

    These stories jogged one loose for me. I once took a call from a woman who was convinced she was our customer. I couldn’t find her in our system and she huffed that of course she was in there, she’d been a customer for 50 years! I asked again if she was sure she was a customer of X Insurance in Y, MA. No, she lives in Maine. I tell her we don’t write business in Maine and she called the wrong number. She then demanded I transfer her to the appropriate agency. I told her it doesn’t work that way and she would need to call them herself (nicely though) because I have no idea who she is trying to reach. She hung up on me.

  76. Soup Flavour*

    I had to share this one from when I was a waitress. The place had a (if I say so myself) very nice creamy tomato soup. A customer ordered it, took a few spoonfuls, then marched up to the counter with the bowl, forcefully putting it down and walking away muttering “I’m not paying for that. It doesn’t taste like Soup”

    Despite my (polite!) requests for clarification, I never did find out exactly what flavour he was expecting.

    1. Medium Sized Manager*

      I once had a person lambast me because I included chili in their soup options, and Chili Is Not Soup!

  78. Cabbagepants*

    #25 I occasionally do failure analysis and I would find this such a satisfying mystery to crack!

  80. Just me*

    On number 3, the bank, I worked in a bank call center for 5 years. The customers that call us are the stupidest level of human beings in existence. And rude as hell. I hated that job.

  81. Adardame*

    I worked for a rental car company and was in the parking lot scanning cars. A woman who had just returned a car came up to me to complain. There was a cricket in her car, and it had been making cricket noises while she was driving. I commented that our town was experiencing an overabundance of crickets, and they were just everywhere. She explained to me that cricket noises in a car are a Safety Hazard, she could have Died on the highway because of the noise, and she wanted a full refund for her rental. I pointed her in the direction of the customer service desk.

    1. Overthinking it*

      Ah, the things we used to cook in the paper mill! Hot, smelly,steam, noisy! But the food (not the vending machine food from the canteen, but tge food we brought in ourselves) was . . inspired!

  82. Nox*

    Back when I worked in a froyo shop, I had a customer start yelling at me about her acai bowl. Was she upset because I hadn’t included a topping she’d asked for? No. She was mad because it didn’t look like the image on the advertisement banner we had in front of the door.

  84. Melissa*

    Years ago I worked in a public library. The library had a selection of tax forms available for people to pick up. This was back before people did income taxes on computer and used paper forms. That year April 15th was right after Easter. The library was closed Good Friday, Saturday and Easter. On Monday a woman called and was livid because she was going to be late with her taxes and it was all because we had been closed for a three day weekend and she could not get forms. We had the forms available since January.

  85. EvilQueenRegina*

    My uncle swears my cousin complained when he took him to see Crocodile Dundee at the cinema because there were no crocodiles in it. (Cousin disputes this on the grounds that he was 5 when that came out, it’s rated 15 in the UK, and he thinks it’s more likely that that never happened than that his parents let our uncle take him to see a 15 film at age 5.)

  86. NotRealAnonForThis*

    Random ridiculous customer complaints from back in the day:

    1. I spent far too long arguing with someone who should’ve known better (manager of the store right next door) that I COULD not refund her Amex because we didn’t accept Amex as a form of payment. I could not look up her purchase (no receipt) based on her Amex number because we didn’t accept Amex as a form of payment. No, seriously, there’s no way I could refund her Amex because we don’t accept it.

    2. How DARE we not carry Pyrex???? (We were owned by a subsidiary of their competitor) Literally followed me back into the “Employees Only” door to scream about this. We carried another brand of glass measuring cups and bowls, but they weren’t Pyrex and how dare we?

    3. We shouldn’t use a “laser scanner” at our cash register because we might blind someone. Of course, the person who’d say this would absolutely raise a fuss if we had to key in a UPC code or SKU because it was too slow.

    4. A complaint from across the mall that we were staring at their associates. Um, the huge mall doors line up. Keeping an eye on the door for shrink and all as it had been a rough month with three incidents of theft that we were AWARE of? Yeah, we were staring at their associates (eyeroll).

    5. That the music was offensive. No, I don’t disagree, it was offensive for a mall environment. It was also being blasted from the store next door that was closing down and their management and staff had exactly ZERO effs to give about anything as they were losing their income/half of them quit making more work/were dealing with ridiculous corporate nonsense. Sure, I can go ask them to turn down the (uncensored) version of “F### the Police” or “Me So Horny”, but understand its NOT coming from our store so my ability to “go turn that trash down” is VERY limited. And believe me, I’m more irritated that you are with your clutched pearls as I have to listen to it, and complaints, all day long.

    6. That the Halloween display was Satanic. The display in question was basically cutesy bland Halloween imagery that was fit for a Kindergarten classroom – puffy kittens and smiling witches on dish towels, painted smiling ghosts and jack-o-lanterns on ceramic treat bowls, that type of thing.

    You know, I was only in that job for about 8 months….and this is NOWHERE near the list of ridiculous. And this was over 25 years ago.

  87. Frosty*

    For the shredding tote story:

    I work in a large government office & we have multiple shredding bins throughout the facility. During the pandemic, the pickups to empty the bins wasn’t timely and they were packed to the brim. So much so, that people could just fish out papers – a real privacy concern!

    I guess we had the keys to the locks in our office, and one day a high-up supervisor walked into my area carrying reams of paper and saying “I opened the shredding bin and went through the papers and found a bunch that Mr. So-and-So brought from home! He shouldn’t be bringing personal papers to shred!”

    I was so shocked and he was immediately hauled into the office of an even higher supervisor’s office to remind him that the purpose of shredding is to dispose of confidential & sensitive papers and under no circumstances should he be riffling through all of them to figure out who they belonged to.

    I think they got the bins emptied pronto after that but I always have the image of this boss looking at everyone’s private documents in my head when I put things in it.

  88. greenfordanger*

    Further to disappointing Australians, I was working in a hotel bar during a territorial election (Yukon) and some American tourists asked me about who I thought would win. I replied that it would be tight but between the conservative party and the left of centre party and I thought it would be the left of centre party. The tourists asked me what I meant by left of centre and I told them that Canad’s main left of centre party was a social democratic party comparable to Labour in the UK. THey asked me when the election was and when I told them the day after tomorrow they said that that was too bad; they had wanted to go to Dawson City, a major tourist town full of Gold Rush buildings but now they would have to leave before the socialists took over and their RV was seized and nationalized. I didn’t tell them that
    the same party had been government for the last four years and that they were a pretty middle of the road concern. I just said goodbye and good luck.

  89. Heffalump*

    Supposedly someone at a centuries-old historic site once said, “It’s nice, but why did they build it so far from the airport?”

  90. Kloe*

    I wonder whether the It creates a rage person didn’t just mean it caused them to break out in a rash.

  91. Orora*

    Lorna is obviously a leprechaun with magical powers to separate mortals from their gold.

  92. Czech Mate*

    Re #24 – reminds me of one time when I worked at a school, an overwrought student told my coworker, “You don’t even treat us like we’re HUMAN! You just treat us like STUDENTS!”

  93. Frango mint*

    I worked for a government agency that paid out disability benefits as well as other payments.

    When the cost of living adjustment was made, a form letter was sent out to the beneficiaries, in very bland language. It had an unfortunate effect on one man who was receiving payment due to a mental disorder. He sent a scathing response about the government trying to torture him with these letters. The wording in his reply was very bitter and sarcastic.

    His closing remark: “You might consider taking a nice shit in a cold barn”.

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