“Most Were Also Flabbergasted When I Told Them No”: People Share The Dumbest Customer Questions

I used to work at the UPS store in high school. Our last pickup was at 7:00 and we closed at 8:00 pm. Since we had private information and people’s personal mailboxes in the store, security was a big deal.

It was 8:30. Our tills were counted down, the alarm was set, our copiers, fax machine, and computers were shut down, our lights were off, and we had closed and locked a ginormous red gate that separated the entrance from the rest of the store.

Some woman ran up to the door, and like some demon in a horror movie, she hurled herself against the glass and screeched like a banshee.

Keep in mind, we are very obviously closed with a sign saying we are closed, no lights on, and a giant red gate drawn down over the store.

She began pounding on the glass and frantically yelling at us. My coworker worried something was wrong, like maybe she was being chased and needed help.

He carefully opened the door just a crack to ask what was wrong. She immediately tried to wedge her hands and head in the crack and asked “Are ya’ll open?” We informed her that we obviously weren’t.

Her logic was “well you opened the door so now you have to help me”.

She began wailing and crying that she had to mail a package. We explained that even if we were open, our last pick up was an hour and a half ago and we couldn’t even mail it until tomorrow.

She protested and protested and we eventually got the door shut and locked. So we just stood there awkwardly in the dark, hoping she would leave. She kept pounding on the glass and saying “I know you’re open!!!!”

As we debated what to do and if we should call the cops, this lady pulled out her cell phone and called the cops herself!

The cops arrived, we explained the situation, and the woman accused us of lying, despite the sign on the door saying we closed an hour ago at this point.

Then, in front of the officer and on security camera, the woman launched herself at my coworker and hit him in the face. She immediately jumped back and began fake crying that he had assaulted her.

We were dumbfounded. She ended up getting arrested and my coworker pressed charges.


So the stupidest question I got was “Are you open?”.

I used to work at Enterprise Rent-A-Car (We'll pick you up!). I went to pick up a customer (worth noting she was renting a car for a weekend getaway), called her when I got to her apt, and she came downstairs and had this conversation:

Lady: Ok, I'll follow you back to the office

Me (confused): I'm here to pick you up and drive you back to the office.

Lady: What am I supposed to do with my car?

Me: Were you planning on leaving your car at our lot over the weekend?

Lady: No

Me (more confused): Why are you going to follow me in your car? I can drive you back to the office, finish the paperwork, and you can take the rental car from there.

Lady (not grasping the concept): Well how are you going to get back?

Me: I'll drive us both, in this rental car, back to the office, where we can do the paperwork and you can take the rental car from there. That way, your personal car is still at your apt. And when you return the car on Monday, you can drive the rental car back to us, we'll close out the paperwork, and we'll give you a ride home. Sound like a plan?

Lady: That doesn't make sense. You're making this way too difficult. I'll just follow you in my car.

Me (thinking the customer is always right!): Ok!

We get back to the office, I finish the paperwork (still astonished she qualified to rent a car), and hand her the keys to the car.

Lady: Ok, how do I get my car back to my apt?

Me: ...

Lady: Can you drive my car back to my apt?

Me: I'm not authorized to drive your car. You're welcome to leave it here on the lot over the weekend if you want.

Lady: Ok, can you drive the rental car and follow me back to my house so I can drop off my car?

Me: This is what I was trying to do when I picked you up! There was no need to take 2 cars.

Lady: I'd like to speak to your manager.

This will be buried but hopefully it makes someone laugh. Worked at an animal hospital and a woman made an appointment for her dog for lumps on his stomach.

She comes in, sees the doctor, only to be told that the strange lumps were the dogs NIPPLES.

She dead a*s said, "But he's a boy!"

Apparently she has either never seen a man without a shirt or forgot that males also have nipples.

A woman came to the check out and handed me a bag of mozzarella. She asked me what the ingredients were and if there were any chemicals in it. I turned the bag around and started to read the ingredients out to her. She grabbed the bag out of my hand, angrily said "I could have done that myself " and stormed off.

I worked at a convenience store while in college. This married couple comes in and they go get drinks. The lady asks me if the bottle water is fat free. I smile and just, yes and that brand is also calorie free. She smiled and said thanks. Her husband gets out his wallet, shakes his head, and pays.

When I was a teenager I had a customer try to fight me because we didn't do the taco Tuesday discount for him.

It was the weekend.

Customer: Aren't those apples $2.49 a pound? Why are you charging me more than that?

Me: *motions to screen* Yep. They're $2.49 a pound and you bought 2.3 pounds and so, the price is correct because that's how multiplication works.

No lie, I volunteer at Stonehenge and was asked when in the Bible it was created. That was more perplexing than the usual UFO questions.

I used to work in IKEA in the section which sold wardrobes. Big behemoths of things. Normally around 6 foot long and 60kg in boxes. Customers would regularly ask me would it fit in their car. After being polite the first few times asking them about the size of their car and guessing, I then just started asking them what colour their car was. The amount of people who'd answer unphased was amazing.

I once had a customer ask me if our wine was on sale because it was about to expire. Our good, aged red wine.

EDIT: the customer also insisted that she get a discount because the wine bottle did not have an exp. Date..

I had a customer take up 10 minutes of my time saying that I didn't know how to do my job because I couldn't find the "nutritional facts" placard on a carton of cigarettes.

Why, you who walk around with your head full of brains, may ask?

She needed, NEEDED, to know if these Timeless Times pieceoshit cigarettes contained corn syrup in them. Because, dontchaknow, the corn syrup in bad for her.

Many years ago managing a pet store, a customer came in with an empty bottle of oral skin and coat supplement. He wanted a refund because it made his dog's coat really greasy. So as I start working on his refund I ask a few questions, trying to find out why the product failed. I ask the standard questions, did you use too much, how often. Stuff like that.

As we are conversing it started to click that he didn't use this on his dogs food he used it like a shampoo and rubbed it on his coat. So I nicely explain that it is *oral* skin and coat supplement and it's intended to be put on the dog's food.

He was embarrassed and apologized and started to leave refusing the refund. I gave him a new bottle in exchange for the now empty one and told him to give it another shot.

The guy was really nice and understanding about it, but come on. The instructions tell you how much to put ON THE FOOD, and it's called *oral* skin and coat.

When I worked in a call center for home phone service, I had a guy call and angrily ask why we were still charging him for his phone service, since he had unplugged his phone from the wall a month ago.

Worked in retail.

Regularly had customers ask to take the clothes out of the store and come back and pay later.

Like... absolutely not? Most were also flabbergasted when I told them no.

I thought it was the dumbest thing but it turned out not to be.

I was working at a department store and this guy comes up to me and he shows me two of the exact same sweater. He's like, "Which one is burgundy?" They were both burgundy because they are the exact same sweater and I'm like... what is this dude smoking? Or I thought I was being punked or something. And he sees me hesitating and he's like, "Like... which one is more wine-red?" So finally I just point at one and he's like, "Oh, thank you so much. I'm colorblind and I can't really distinguish this range of color.".

Working at a famous Mouse-based theme park "Can you shut off the rain now", "is there pork in the pulled pork sandwich?"

Years ago, before the Internet was a thing, I worked in a small electronics shop. One day I got a phone call and it went like this:

Him: Yeah, hi. I was just wondering...how far is it to your shop?

Me: (Long pause, calculating how galactically stupid this question was, whether I was being pranked, and how a professional business person would handle this.)

Me: Oh, it's just a few miles away. Come on down.

Him: OK. See you soon.

Follow-up: No idea if he ever actually arrived. I got busy and people came and went all day. But it was still the dumbest question I've ever received.

Web developer here.

I had a client who was absolutely *livid* -- literally screaming at me -- when I told her she couldn't take the hyperlinked words from her webpage, transfer them over to her print ad, and still have them function like a link.

I used to work in a phone shop.
Had someone come in asking why their phone wasn't working properly. It was visibly scorched and melty. I asked why it looked that way. They said, it came up with an error message saying it had been too cold (not an error message I had heard of before, but I know phones can bring up errors for being too hot, so who knows) and so they had put it under the grill to heat it up.
The grill.
Their first point of call was to cook it.
I said, that's why their phone wasn't working, and no it was not covered under the guarantee.

Working at a state park in Maine:

When do deer turn into moose?