Dealing with customers is a pain because sometimes there’s just nothing in your power to help them and when you do, they still are dissatisfied. But this coin has two sides and sometimes it’s customer support that gives the customer a hard time.
An interaction between Joe Stephen and the restaurant Get Stuffed went viral because when he asked where his order was, the customer support worker made a sarcastic remark in response, which didn’t sit well with Joe, and the conversation kind of escalated, which led to the restaurant actually sharing the man’s personal information online.
More info: Facebook
A man went viral for posting screenshots of a conversation he had with a rude customer support employee and getting his personal information published by them
Image credits: PIX11 News
One of the main characters of this story is Get Stuffed, which is a pretzel shop in Union, New Jersey that offers different types of handmade pizza, Detroit pie, pretzels and has a menu of desserts as well. They introduce themselves as “one of the most popular independently owned restaurants in the country on UberEats.”
The other protagonist is Joe Stephen, a customer living in Montclair, New Jersey who wanted to have some chicken for dinner after work but it wasn’t just a simple order and he involved the police in it as well.
Image credits: getstuffedjersey
Joe ordered from Get Stuffed through Uber Eats and after 45 minutes of waiting without any news, he thought to ask if everything was alright
Image credits: Joe Stephen
While talking with PIX 11, the man said that he went on the Uber Eats app to search for something tasty and Get Stuffed popped up. It said that he would have to wait for 25-45 minutes so he went ahead and ordered it.
When 45 minutes passed and he still hadn't received the order, Joe contacted customer support to find out if there was something wrong. The wording must have been perceived as rude because when the worker got back to Joe, she informed him that the order was late because it was rush hour but if he would like, they could send a helicopter to deliver the food.
Image credits: Joe Stephen
Not only that, but he was also called a douche bag for asking about his order because it was clear that because of the heavy rain, rush hour traffic was forming, so he should have been more patient.
Joe didn’t like how he was talked to and didn’t understand where this was coming from as he didn’t see his message to be impolite. But now he felt the need to explain himself and to illuminate the customer support employee about how her work is supposed to be done.
The employee responded with a sarcastic remark and called the customer a douche bag for being too impatient during extreme weather conditions
Image credits: Joe Stephen
Image credits: Joe Stephen
The Get Stuffed employee continued to insult the customer, calling him a Karen because only they would complain about food not arriving in time during a flood.
Turns out, Joe didn’t even know that there was a flood as he was deep in his work all day and didn’t see the news. What is more, he was more than 10 miles away from the restaurant location, which meant the rain was not that heavy where he lived and he didn’t even get a weather alert to his phone.
Joe thought he should explain himself and also explain to the employee this is not how business should be done
Image credits: Joe Stephen
Image credits: Joe Stephen
Neither the Get Stuffed employee nor Joe was backing down from this conversation. Joe wrote a long message about the unacceptable treatment he was getting as a customer and the customer support worker was convinced they were doing everything right, as reflected by their positive reviews.
That gave Joe the idea to give them a negative one even though he is not a person who writes reviews. The employee didn’t feel threatened at all and was actually looking forward to reading it because the company then could get more media attention if they posted it.
The woman also informed Joe that if he does write a bad review, the company isn’t scared of being unprofessional and will make his address and phone number public in a post about him as a customer who was unsatisfied that his driver wouldn’t speed through flood water during rush hour.
The conversation escalated as Joe threatened to leave a bad review and the employee said that they would make his address and phone number public
Image credits: Joe Stephen
Image credits: Joe Stephen
At first, the restaurant wrote a post on Instagram that is now deleted saying “We’ve dealt with a few IDAs today. We love customers. We love to serve you. We want you to enjoy your experience. But please don’t order a delivery from Union to Montclair at 5pm during a heavy rain event and then berate our staff at 5:40pm demanding to know why it’s taking so long. We know you’re hungry. We want to satisfy you. But still… Don’t be an IDA. Thank you <3.”
Joe saw it and posted the screenshots on his Facebook and this is when Get Stuffed wanted to get their revenge and started leaving his personal information in comments of numerous posts. This is quite illegal so he went to the police about the matter and found an attorney to find out his legal opinion.
But even with the intervention of the police, the restaurant assumingly received a lot of backlash as they deleted all related posts and their Facebook now only has one post up with a photo of a pizza from March 14.
Both of them did what they promised but it seems that Get Stuffed had to delete its posts and Joe filed a police report about it
Image credits: Joe Stephen
Image credits: Joe Stephen
We can only guess that the screenshots going viral had a negative impact on Get Stuffed reviews. If you look at Google reviews now, the restaurant has a 4.5 star rating, but there is evidence that this was not the case just recently.
A review posted a week ago says, “Not sure what happened in the past or why such a low rating. I literally purchased pizzas….. pigs in a blanket pretzel bites and Fluffernutter bomb!”
The owner responded to this review: “Thank you for your review and we're delighted that you enjoyed your experience with Get Stuffed. The ratings were only low for a few days until Google was able to figure out what was going on and then implemented security measures to stop it from continuing. The current rating is reflective of actual, first hand customer experiences.”
People online were quite surprised that this went so far and were on Joe's side
NJ Advance Media contacted Get Stuffed owner Sandy Wallace who said that the company didn’t publish any information about the customer that wasn’t available to the public already.
According to NJ Advance Media, the restaurant also wanted to laugh off the scandal by creating a new pizza which was called Helicopter Pie, but it is not being sold currently.
The customer thought the company’s behavior was very unprofessional and unprovoked, but the company thinks that the customer was being inconsiderate and rude. How do you see the situation? Do you agree that companies should be professional no matter what? Do you consider Joe’s initial message to be impolite? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!