Unsatisfiable Customer - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Customer Disservice: Because we're not satisfied until you're not satisfied."

— despair.com

Particularly notorious in restaurants, but really can pop up in any kind of sales establishment. This is the customer who expects that the customer is always right to the point that it reaches the extreme of "everyone on staff must be wrong."

There are at least four different types of Unsatisfiable Customer. These are as follows:

More picky than nasty. In a restaurant, this type of customer will make long, overly complicated orders that go to the point of ludicrousness, and will constantly send the food back if it's not to precise specifications.
The bossy type. This type may not make overly complicated orders, but if any tiny little thing is wrong (in their view), that person will lash out at the poor waiter or clerk who has the unenviable job of being their server.
This type of customer combines the picky and the bossy types. Heaven help the person who has to deal with this customer. This is the one who will give the ridiculously complicated orders and then, once something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, berates and abuses the hapless server trying to reason with him.
The fraudulent type. This is someone who'll order a meal, eat half of it, put a bit of hair on it and demand a refund. And then chew out the waitstaff if they don't get it.

Usually, this character pops up in comedy. Note that to qualify for this trope, the complaints must be completely undeserved in the eyes of the audience. Truth in Television, and there are entire sites devoted to this. Because of that, any real life examples should not be put here.

Not to be confused with the Fire Breathing Diner, who could have quite good reason to complain after he gets a drink of water. The Unsatisfiable Customer is usually not Nice to the Waiter.

Examples

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Comic Strips

A classic cartoon posted in countless places of business depicts an employee at the Complaints Desk confronting a sour-faced older female customer:
"All right, Ma'am, suppose I refund your money, send you another one without charge, close the store, and have the manager shot — would that be satisfactory?"
The cast of Retail deals with these on a regular basis.

Fan Works

Ultimate Spider Woman: Mary Jane Watson didn't start out in the best of moods, given that she was called into work on her day off. And then there was the fact that she was stressing about everything from her grades to her money problems to her career to her mother's therapy. And then there was the fact that she ended up being late for work, getting yelled at by her boss in the process, because she had to stop a bank robbery as Spider-Woman. And then there was the fact that two of the other waitresses had to go home sick, forcing Mary Jane to cover for them, to the point where she didn't get a break all night. When one particularly obnoxious customer kept demanding for one particular brand of coffee even after Mary Jane repeatedly tried to tell her they were all out, it's not hard to see why she finally exploded and yelled at the customer. Unfortunately, her boss didn't see it that way, and took the $200 gift certificate he gave the customer out of Mary Jane's salary.

Films — Live-Action

In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Brad works at two fast food restaurants. At the first one, he is fired after being forced into an argument by an overly demanding customer.
In the movie Waiting, the staff does some nasty things to the food of a woman who endlessly complains about small flaws.
Sally is like this in When Harry Met Sally.
The remake of Fun With Dick and Jane has Jane (who, in this incarnation, works in a travel agency) repeatedly dealing with customers like this, one before she quits her job on the phone on a plane literally shrieking about how he has a kosher meal in front of him. even telling the flight attendant talking to him on the other end to grow up in response to her telling him to grow up. Apparently, he expected her to take care of it. Is that part of the job?
At the beginning of Victor/Victoria, Victoria attempts the fraudulent variation while dining with Carroll, slipping a cockroach into her salad. The restaurant owner tells her that two other customers have attempted the same ruse and it's not going to work, but then the cockroach climbs up the leg of another diner, and during the resulting melee they're able to escape.

Literature

Any time in an Emma Lathen novel when John Putnam Thatcher goes to a restaurant with recurring minor character Tom Robichaux, you'll see this. Robichaux, a gourmet, is always criticizing the food.
The Screwtape Letters has Wormwood's target's mother as a type one. She's a specific sort of glutton - she insists on very small portions and has a fit if she thinks there's too much on the plate. Screwtape notes that her son hates her for this, even though he never says anything.
"Ace" Quiggle in Robert A. Heinlein's Have Space Suit — Will Travel. He repeatedly harasses the main character, who works as a soda jerk at a pharmacy.
In The Witches, one client is apparently this, complaining that her steak is too dry. So the waiter takes back to the kitchen has the entire staff spit in it, and returns it. Later he reports that she likes it just fine now.

Live-Action TV

True Blood have these quite often, with so many of the characters working in a bar. However, the first two scenes of the first episode of the first season are both spectacular examples of other kinds. First a grocery store intermezzo with a Jerk Jock and a redneck Vampire, then over to one of the main characters who quits her job at a hardware store because of one overly annoying customer.
Inverted in a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch which had unsatisfiable waitstaff, convinced that their service was inexcusably terrible while the customers tried to reassure them it wasn't a big deal. The issue? A slightly dirty fork. The result? Most of the staff end up dead.
The Bookshop Sketch from At Last The 1948 Show (and later reprised by Monty Python) features a customer who asks for several books with titles similar to ones by Charles Dickens, refuses to buy Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds unless the gannet is removed, and eventually reveals after he finds a book that he has no money and can't read.
Lizzie McGuire once got a job as a busboy, which she quit after dealing with several of these at once, including a man who complained that his spoon wasn't clean, even though he was eating a bagel and didn't actually need a spoon. And the resident Alpha Bitch pouring half her milkshake on the floor in front of her, saying, "Oops, clumsy me. Guess you better start cleaning that up!"
Tended to turn up a lot in classic UK Sitcoms.This appeared in 'Allo 'Allo!, Are You Being Served?, Open All Hours, Dad's Army, and many others.
Fawlty Towers has more than a few, though it could be argued that this is the type of customer Basil deserves. A few are so awful they actually manage to get the viewer on Basil's side.
Married... with Children: The fat women Al Bundy regularly deals with usually fit this. A common complaint from them is their foot not fitting in a size six shoe. Al, of course, fights back with an endless stream of insults.
Many people complaining to the Parks Department on Parks and Recreation, often about random and/or nonsensical issues:
Woman: I made this in one of your pottery classes. It's terrible! (angrily smashes ceramic object on floor)
Little Britain has a recurring sketch where Mr Mann enters a shop (it's always the same set, but what the shop sells varies in every sketch) and begins asking for more and more ridiculously specific items from the shopkeeper, with varying degrees of success.
In most of the "Two A-Holes" skits on Saturday Night Live, the title characters play the role of unsatisfiable customers to a single Straight Man character, such as a salesman or a travel agent. Typically, the skit starts off with the Straight Man attempting to be polite and tolerate the A-Holes' inane behavior and bizarre demands, but ends with the Straight Man finally losing his/her temper and telling the A-Holes to go to hell.
The French comedy show Palace has a recurring sketch starring a pernickity customer at a Grand Hotel always calling for the director ("Appelez-moi le directeur !") for the littlest things, which has since spawned lots of imitation — notably, a series of advertisement for an assurance company, originally using the same comedians. The director would always get the last word, often with a completely absurd explanation to whatever dysfonction in the Palace the client noted. For example, when confronted with a cockroach inside the hotel room, he argues that it's the reincarnated form of his poor, dead mother. The sketch invariably ends with the client facing the camera and saying, "Je l'aurais un jour... je l'aurais !" ("I'll get him one day... I'll get him!")

Puppet Shows

Sesame Street has a recurring series of Muppet sketches featuring Grover as a waiter in a restaurant, attempting to serve a fussy customer (portrayed by the ubiquitous "Fat Blue" Muppet, and unofficially known as Mr. Johnson, or Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele). The early skits played the trope straight, but as time went on the conflict began to center more around Grover's confusion or incompetence as opposed to the customer's unreasonableness.

Video Games

The Mass Effect series has the memetic "Refund Guy" who wouldn't be as much of a hassle if he actually kept his receipts.

Web Comics

Something*Positive: While working at a Burger Fool, Mike comes across one of these, who is moronic and racist to boot. So he sticks his dick in the guy's soda.

Web Original

Acts of Gord depicts a lot of such situations. The actual site is at www.actsofgord.com
Not Always Right is all about this trope. The actual site is at notalwaysright.com/
Hyperbole and a Half: NO!!!!! LESS MILK THAN THAT!!!

Western Animation

The Simpsons: Homer gets on a bag boy's nerves before a Halfway Plot Switch sends the family on an African Safari.
Homer: Wait — I changed my mind. Stack it in the order I'll eat it driving home.
Bag Boy 1: Sir, please! I already bagged it by color, and in order of each item's discovery by man.
Homer: Customer's always right; that's what everybody likes about us. Now, mush!
[...]
Homer: (poking Bag Boy 1 with a french loaf) Hurry up! I can't stand here jabbing you all day.
Bag Boy 1: That's it. On behalf of Sack Stuffers Local 199, I'm calling a strike!
In the more "picky," rather than "bossy" vein, a few SpongeBob SquarePants episodes have plots centered around this. Notably with Bubblebass and Bubble Buddy.
- Bubblebass is so bad, he actually wound up sending SpongeBob into a Heroic BSOD. Bubblebass is more Type Four since he in fact hidden the pickles under his tongue the whole time (along with someone's car keys), either to gain a refund (and thus a free Krabby Patty) or just to Mind Screw SpongeBob For the Lulz.
- The guy from "Pizza Delivery" comes to mind. Whether he is Type Three or Four is never delved upon (he asks for a pizza delivery from a restaurant that doesn't deliver OR make pizzas and then berates SpongeBob to point of tears for forgetting a soda he didn't even order), though is likely meant to be an extreme parody of all the above. Fortunately, Squidward convinced the customer to take the pizza "on the house".
SpongeBob: Did he take it?
Squidward: Yep, ate the whole thing in one bite.
Family Guy: Peter tried to teach Chris how to be a Type Four by planting a dead guy in the soup bowl. Unfortunately, Chris' prop hadn't actually died yet...
In the episode "Suited for Success" in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Rarity's attempts to design new dresses for her friends turns them all into Unsatisfiable Customers with vague, tacky, or impractical suggestions which nearly drive her to distraction. After seeing the reception their own designs get, they gratefully accept her original offerings, while for her part Rarity learns that she can't please everypony.
The Powerpuff Girls: In Not So Awesome Blossom, our carrot-topped little champion feels that she can't do anything right, runs away from home and eventually gets a job at a place called Hot Dog On A Skewer. The customers obviously see Blossom as inept in that job as she, being the only employee seen, cannot do three things at once (the capper having her throw a mustard bottle to the ground in disgust and having it squirt in her face).