A Not Always Right customer is one that is 1. Trying to get something for nothing; 2. Abusing the employee for one reason or another (trying to get their own way, or for the fun of it); 3. Doesn’t realize they’re wrong.
Abomination Accusation Attack: The site has one episode with a woman going totally overboard with this trope as she visits the movies and decides that she owns the place and has the right to deny random strangers the seats they have bought, all in the name of Think of The Children - accusing two random young women of being potential child molesters and thus disqualified from being treated with basic human respect.
The occasional example where some people believe that as soon as their children turn 18 (and legally become adults), they're no longer their children and are on their own, and should expect no help whatsoever from their parents.
While not exactly abusive (though it could be considered borderline), any parent who uses their child in a scam attempt.
Accentuate the Negative: Reading the site, it could be easy to forget the 90% of customers who don't cause any kind of trouble exist at all.
The staff actually put a disclaimer on their zombie comic, acknowledging that a majority of customers are polite and kind.
Ambiguous Gender: In several stories, the gender of the customer/employee/whatever isn't stated until halfway through. Sometimes, it isn't stated at all.
Ambulance Chaser: Inverted here, with a man calling his lawyer before calling an ambulance.
In turn, Europeans sometimes fail to understand that North America is a really big place populated mostly by European immigrants who may be even more into imitation than the rest of humanity.
This woman seems to be in total ignorance of state locations, cardinal directions, and linguistics. Also counts as Hypocritical Humor.
Artistic License Logic: A fair chunk of the entries on the site are of customers who, when confronted with the fact that they might be wrong about something, choose to stubbornly hold on to their mistaken belief in the face of all evidence and logic otherwise. This leads them to some breathtakingly inaccurate conclusions.
Belief Makes You Stupid: TONS of people who would give even Pat Robertson a run for his money in the sheer insanity department, if not the asshole department. (Half of them go into Fridge Horror because they are showing signs of dementia and/or Alzheimer's.)
Then there are the more benign, but still insane, ones like this person, who is like the exact polar opposite of a young-earth creationist or something.
Those people have nothing on this lady, who, because of her beliefs, winds up falling for a Paper-Thin Disguise, half of which wasn't even part of the disguise.
Blatant Lies: Numerous accounts of customers trying very poorly to bullshit their way out of paying for something, as well as employees going along with crazy or stupid customers' misconceptions or conspiracy theories in order to get out of the conversation.
Bully Hunter: Many stories involve a third party (sometimes a fellow workmate, sometimes themselves a customer) who, upon encountering an unreasonable character trying to bully a server into getting what they want (or even just to be aJerkass), feel the need to intervene.
Cassandra Truth: All too often, the customers will not accept the word of the employee at face value, as they believe the employee is always trying to cheat them. All too often, the customers end up worse off because of their own paranoia.
And could you box up an order of mac’n’cheese please? Oh, and some really good smelling stuff? I figure they’ll have the munchies and I want to torture them.
The CSI Effect: An apparent source of problems for photo labs, whose clients will ask for all sorts of crazy stuff (such as turning back the image so they can see the photographer) just because they (claim) saw it in TV once. One mentions this exact show. invoked
While some US states do allow alcohol purchases at age 18, and others have in the past, Nevada—where this incident takes place—is not and has never been one of them.
Epic Fail: Some people go above and beyond mere eccentric or obnoxious behaviour to true failure:
The woman who tells her boyfriend he'll be sleeping on the couch, but they don't actually live together. That's just the start of a downward spiral; it leads to the boyfriend and the cashier getting engaged.
Ignore advice in the cellphone shop, try to get a large bill cancelled, get angry and end up with much larger bills.
Exiled to the Couch: This woman tries to exile her boyfriend to the couch after he takes the side of a shop assistant over her. It doesn't quite work out... not least because they don't actually live in the same house. Hard to believe, but it actually gets worse for her from that point.
Also, many employees become this. Instead of thinking nobody could possibly be that stupid, they make allowances for the fact that, yes, people really are.
This person manages to skip the entire argument part by figuring out that, by "drink", the customer means "dipping sauce", and vice versa.
Greed: The primary motivator of a lot of these customers, who will turn into liars, cheats and bullies for the chance of a (usually pretty minor) discount.
Hanlon's Razor: Most of the examples are pretty clear, but some are really difficult to decide whether the Jerkass customer is trying to cheat the cashier, is a real-life Troll doing it for sh*ts and giggles, or if the customer is just plain stupid.
This example lends credence to the "Customer is a troll" theory. He's complaining that the dirt the landscaping company dropped off is "too dirty". That's right, his dirt is too dirty.
Heteronormative Crusader: This guy inverts this trope and combines it with Conspiracy Theorist. Apparently, the terrorists are intent on destroying the United States because of the gay people there. So what does the guy think the US should do? Have everyone become gay so they stop giving birth to the terrorists, of course!
Very disturbingly inverted with this woman. “I want to make my son gay. I would love to have a gay child. I’m very open minded!” She intends to make her son gay by exposing him to pornography.
In general, there's a large amount of customers who outright refuse to listen to or acknowledge what the employee is telling them, usually to continue to demand a particular product or service that the employee is directly informing them isn't available... and then berate the employee for not listening to them when their demands are unmet. Such as this chap.
This person wanted an extremely rare steak, and then, when the meat was uncooked, proceeded to say, "I am not eating anywhere that sells food raw! Come on honey, let’s go to that sushi place next door!”
This guy walks into a adult store in L.A. He is shocked to see that the cashier is a woman, and immediately shouts that she should Stay in the Kitchen, and then calls her a heathen for having a wife, and then immediately forgets the entire incident and asks her if they stock Bibles. In an adult store. Like the title of that quote says, "Only In L.A."
When a customer overhears an employee tell someone else that a theater is being cleaned, she mishears "Cleansed," and begins to shout how she doesn't want to be in a theater that practices all that "New age spiritual witchcraft stuff." And then goes to see ''Season of the Witch.''
Inverted Trope: Most of the stories are about customers doing stupid things. Occasionally, however, it'll be the employees who goof up. Like this one, when a man with a limp comes in and asks for something "for support." The employee takes him toward the knee braces, when he asks how they help support the testicles. She politely points him toward the jock straps.
It Is Pronounced Tro PAY: In a rare case of the customer getting it right, the employee is corrected on the pronunciation of bruschetta. In Italian, the letters "sch" would be spoken like the "sk" in "skate", while the employee pronounced it like the German "sch". The customer still manages to come off as rude, though.
And he still got it wrong. The proper pronunciation (like every language, it varies by dialect and region) of "bruschetta" is broo-sket-ta. Not only is he an asshole, it's also a Critical Research Failure.
Justified Trope: Every so often, a customer with a seemingly outrageous (or at least unusual) request has a very good reason for it. This one, for example.
Know-Nothing Know-It-All: A lot of customers show up thinking they know best. All of these type of customers cannot be reasoned with. All of these type of customers are wrong.
Literal-Minded: That's not what the computer manual meant when it told you to plug in your mouse. For the sake of poor "Mickey", let's hope this was just a crank call.
In a milder example of this kind of trope, there's also a few examples of what we can call Mugging The Human Resources Manager, wherein an applicant for a job barges into the place and starts rudely throwing their weight around, only to discover that the staff member they've been treating poorly is actually someone they should have probably been a bit more polite towards if they want to stand a chance of getting the job. Such as this person. In an oblique version of this, Mugging the Target Audience.
Alternately, threatening that you're going to complain to the manager when that's who you're talking to.
This naval lieutenant decides to throw his weight around in a civilian restaurant and makes the mistake of antagonizing another diner... who happens to be a Rear Admiral stationed at the same base.
Never My Fault: It turns out that people will blame anyone and anything (and we mean anything) rather than a simple "Oops, sorry there, I seem to have misunderstood/made a mistake, etc."
No, Except Yes: All the time. Frequently literal variations, such as a bacon cheeseburger with no bacon, but not a cheeseburger which becomes the same bacon cheeseburger upon adding, you guessed that, bacon.
And actually, she was right, in a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy sorta way. Making the purchase and then asking instead of the other way around, then being too unreasonable to do the paperwork to undo the purchase - meaning it stands, even though the customer stormed off and didn't get the service, means a significant amount of money was wasted. So in the end the kid was right, though it was less the fault of the card and more the fault of the stupidity.
That's Why We're In a Recession, part... 15? And there's probably more of them coming.
Paper-Thin Disguise: This lady falls not only falls for one, she points out something different that wasn't even changed.
Panicky Expectant Father: Inverted here, where the guy is not going to let the fact that his wife is visibly in labor and ready to drop stop him from arguing over a discount on a duffel bag. And the worse thing is the bag has nothing to do with the pregnancy; he needs it for a trip the next week.
Inverted in another story. The store tries to be a little politically correct, selling "holiday trees", but apparently the customer wants a Christmas tree, and so will go to a store that "isn't afraid of offending people!"
Several of the stories on here are about extremely stubborn customers who will pay the price posted and only the price posted, no matter what sales or discounts are in effect despite not being advertised. It's like they're hardwired to believe that no matter what the store workers do, they're trying to rip them off.
Running Gag: Several entry titles come up over and over and over again, such as "This Is Why We're In A Recession, Part x" and "Twilight Of Our Literature, Part Xx.
Sarcasm Failure: Describing the obviously-impossible task the customer has just requested in graphic detail might make it obvious that it can't be done. But it seems to just as often meet with a reply of "Yes, yes, can you do that?"
Serious Business: Sales, discounts, and refunds are serious motherfucking business. Attempts to dupe an employee into giving you one of these make up at least a third of the site.
Straight Gay: This guy seriously regrets coming out to a female friend who doesn't seem to understand this trope.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: A lot of customers will continue on some very dumb courses not out of stupidity, but because they don't want to admit they're mistaken/wrong.
Sure, Let's Go with That: A common 'let's just get them the hell out of here' tactic once a customer's stupidity has gone too far.
That Liar Lies: Too many times to count. Can't get your way at a store? Well then, they're obviously just lying in order to weasel out of doing any work, the lazy bastards!
Some customers take this to extreme levels. The conversations they have with various cashiers and salespeople seems to imply that they are unaware that other nations besides the United States exist.
There are enough examples that listing them all would take too long...so here's aninversion.
This guy, on the other hand, manages to make the distinction between Canada and the US. But not between Canada and the Netherlands.
This guy certainly thinks so. When a tourist complains that all the road signs are in Spanish instead of English, the customer service person replies, "We are in Spain, sir. Spanish is our official language.”
Who's on First?: This guy pretends to have invoked this trope to cover up his blunder. And one can only imagine what will happen when that name is called...
Wise Beyond Their Years: A lot of these customers seem to have somehow raised kids who have a lot more common sense than they do. Naturally, a lot of exchanges with the parents of these kids tend to involve the kid either mortified beyond belief or finally pushed too far by their Amazingly Embarrassing Parents.
Epic Fail: This man tries to hook up with a stranger, only to find that she's a lesbian. And his pick-up lines are terrible. And he's trying to cheat on his girlfriend. Who is nearby. And she later dumps him and dates the other girl.
That Came Out Wrong/Compliment Backfire: A number of comments made to one's partner that didn't sound half as positive or romantic the speaker imagined, such as this one: "But, I don’t want to have my glasses on when I look at you."
is a Web site dedicated to stories of the stupid, ignorant, egotistical, funny and just plain mad customers whom retail staff across the world (well, mostly in the Anglo-sphere — since it's an English-only site) encounter. It can be a good example of Tropes that appear in Real Life. That being said, it is best to take most of it with a grain of salt.In 2011, the webmasters also launched two sister sites: Not Always Romantic
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