Now THAT is how to handle a customer !

You may have heard this on Radio 1 last night. I simply had to hunt it down and post it here. Words really can’t do this justice. This is the recording of a 911 call – 911 being the emergency number in the USA. Now, most people are aware that they onlt call this number if something terrible happens, like a fire, a mugging, a break-in or an accident of some kind.

This lady, though, isn’t “most people”. She’s decided to call 911 because the burger restaurant won’t make her burger exactly to order. It seems that she’s gone through the Drive-Thru bit and then threatened staff with “calling the police” because they refuse to do her burger to her exact specifications.

I think we can all learn a little from this. The primary lesson has to be, “Don’t be an utterly stupid idiot”, but we should also applaud the burger restaurant for telling her to go away. More shops and restaurants should do this, especially when the customer has a completely unreasonable complaint.

If you can’t see the above video, use this link.

Actually, this reminds me of something that happened when I used to work for Safeway (which is now Morrisons) a few years ago. A lady came in with a dented tin of Sainsburys Beans. Now, for those of you who aren’t exactly up to speed with supermarket chains, Safeway is (was) a supermarket and Sainsburys is a competing supermarket. So you’ll never really see a Sainsburys “own brand” product in Safeway or vice versa.

The lady stated that she wanted her money back as the tin was dented. I told her that she didn’t buy it at the store because it was clearly labelled “Sainsburys”. She disagreed, stating that she’d always shopped at Safeway. I told her no, there’s no way she could’ve bought those beans in our store. She disagreed again. After about 10 minutes we got no-where – she told me that she’d definitely, absolutely ALWAYS shopped at Safeway and she could even tell me the aisle number she’d purchased it from…

“Aisle 12, about half-way down yes? Am I right or am I right?”

She wasn’t…

“No madam”, said I, “they’re in aisle 2 at the end.”

There was a moment of silence… then she said…

“Well, you’ve moved them haven’t you? Eh? EH? EH?!!”

“No.”, said I, wondering how much longer I’d have to listen to this, “Aisle 12 is the freezer section and has been since we opened”.

It continued like this for quite some time. In the end the lady threatened to throw the can at random members of staff and we had to get Brian (the half-asleep security guard) to throw her out. Yes, I could’ve just swapped it for an un-dented tin of Safeway beans, but I wasn’t going to because she was being a totally unreasonable nut case. :)