40+ Passive-Aggressive Moments Customer Service Got Back At Rude Customers

Harry Gordon Selfridge. That’s the man you can blame for that disdainful slogan “The customer is always right.” If only he didn’t come up with that, the world might have been a slightly better place because, well, the truth is, the customer is NOT always right. As novel as his intentions were, poor Harry probably didn’t realize that his supposedly feel-good statement would become a grating battle cry of entitled Karens and baby Karens everywhere. Then again, he didn’t experience the rudeness and entitlement that most people in the customer service industry face every single day.  Staff these days are expected to grit their teeth and remain oh so helpful once confronted with that “always right” attitude (thanks for that, Harry).  Whatever they do to stand up for themselves may land them in trouble. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t. As some customer service employees have proven, they simply have to be sneakier, more cunning, and sometimes a lot more savage about it. Have fun with these passive-aggressive acts of revenge that we’re absolutely living for. 

You Get What You Give

If you can accept the money you earned graciously and without being snotty, then you can definitely spare some of that when paying other people. There is really no need and no use in doing so otherwise unless, of course, you’re looking for karma and a slap on the face like this. 

We can’t really imagine what’s going on in the heads of those people who think they can get away with disrespecting someone who is literally trying to help them like that. How high do you actually have to think of yourself just to be able to do that?

Just Pure Evil

When it comes to food delivery, there is a lot of things that can happen between point A and point B. If you’re a decent human being to your delivery guy, any delays are probably just traffic-related. If you’re not nice though, you might have to expect a little surprise. 

All that chronic rudeness must have had them snapping in the most deliciously evil way. Unfortunately, we just have to imagine the face of that poor unfortunate customer whom we both feel sorry for and not sorry for. The best part is they can’t really blame it on the driver. After all, the ride can get a little bit bumpy. 

Simple But Effective

It’s absolutely strange but isn’t it just a little bit annoying when your perfectly cut cheese slices stick to each other? Instead of just using one hand, now you have to use both, and you might even rip that perfect square or rectangle. It’s not a huge deal, but it is definitely frustrating.

When it comes to the Karens of the world, though, let them have all the smushed cheese that they deserve. Just let them knit their brows in annoyance and watch as they huff and puff over something so small as cheese. 

Genius!

Sometimes, it’s pretty funny to hear that telltale “I don’t do decaf” statement of a Karen followed by that repeated insistence that “it’s not decaf ok? Make sure it’s not decaf” as if the barista didn’t hear her the first time. It seems so straight out of a movie, but it happens, and when it does, we just wonder, can she even taste the difference?

With this revenge, though, it doesn’t matter if she tastes it or not. What matters is that pretty soon after, she’ll be feeling it, and we’re pretty sure she’s is not going to be one happy Karen. Good luck to the people around her!

Oh, the burn!

America’s tip system is bad enough, but then you have these people who don’t even have the decency to tip properly just because their server didn’t give them that additional ranch the second after they requested it. Who wouldn’t be upset with that especially if you’ve done your job correctly?

For people who don’t tip or won’t tip appropriately, there is one solution for that. Don’t eat out. Go get your own ingredients, cook your own food, clean your own table, serve yourself, and also keep your attitude to yourself. 

Little Chunks of Monstrosity

Smoothies don’t have the very word “smooth” in the name without good reason. They’re supposed to be creamy, smooth, and they should go straight into our straws and up into our mouths once we sip on them with no problem. As it seems, rude people don’t deserve that kind of goodness. 

While those clumps aren’t necessarily a hazard, they are annoying, especially if the bits get stuck in the middle of the straw. You get caught up in the moment of confusion where you don’t know if you have to keep sucking or change tactics and start blowing to get it out the other end. And also, you now have to chew instead of just drinking it carelessly. 

Just Making Sure It’s Right

In some cases, we can forgive the customer for their behavior. They can even earn a little bit of our sympathy if we really tried. However, if it’s clear that they are just being a plain old big meanie, it’s a different thing altogether. 

This customer was just asking for it. And we can only imagine how satisfying it was to lose count again and watch as they grow more frustrated and impatient. The best part is that they couldn’t exactly complain since they set themselves up for it. 

Perfectly Sinister

Imagine this. One boring morning, you’re scrolling through your phone, and when you turn to lock it, you notice a speck or two of dust on your screen. You try to wipe it away only to discover that it is not just on top of your screen protector. It is under it. The horror, right? Hopefully, we don’t do anything to deserve this. 

The worst part of this whole thing is not even the dust itself. It is that feeling of knowing it exists, and it is the first thing your eyes immediately look for when you look at your phone. It’s the persistent unease that you can never shake off once you know it’s there. It’s what doesn’t let you sleep at night. 

The Final Straw

This is going to sound like such a cringe-first-world problem, and we apologize, but seriously, cracked straws are one of the worst utensil problems ever. The straw works well enough to let you have a few droplets of your drink, but no matter how hard you suck, that’s the only thing you’re getting. We don’t really mind them if they go to rude people, though. 

The only downside to this is that they can easily remove the cap and drink directly from the cup. Still, the thought of them having a hard time for a few sips and increasing their chances of spilling the drink on themselves oddly provides enough consolation for a while at least. 

Subtly Not So Subtle

For some people, a simple explanation of this and that will have them reflecting and realizing that there is something wrong with what they’ve done. For others, you need to simplify it more like explaining the difference between night and day. One is bright, one is dark, just like that. 

This kind of revenge style is definitely one of the best because it basically allows you to rub it in their face that they’re rude and mean without really rubbing it in their face and risking insulting them. You are merely giving out the service they deserve. 

Kill Them With Kindness

It’s hard to believe movies where protagonists defeat their foes with the goodness of their hearts and their acts of ultimate kindness, but apparently, this works in real life. As it seems, rude and entitled people are sort of allergic to niceness. 

Just imagine the Karen marching up to the manager, face like thunder, screaming her trademark “I have a complaint” line and suddenly growing a little more uncomfortable before blurting out, “Your employee is too nice.” It’s just ridiculous and downright hilarious!

Beep Beep Meanie!

Accidentally tripping a shop’s sensors is one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to you at the mall. The guilt just involuntarily kicks in even if you haven’t touched anything, and you immediately feel everybody judging you. If one of the staff purposefully let you trip it, you must have done something to really irk them off.

Unfortunately, there is a big downside to this trick. With such an embarrassing situation like that, the staff can expect a fuming customer to return, giving them an even harder time. And although the satisfaction was great, putting up with that additional screaming, meanness, and entitlement might not be worth the trouble. 

The Fries In The Upside Down

Fries are usually one of the most precious parts of a Mcdonald’s meal. Most people would take care of bringing them out of the bag in fear of spilling even one fry. That’s why it’s important to be nice to your server because even though they can’t directly send your fries to the floor, they can be quite creative and scarily cunning. 

All it takes is one wrong move, and your fries will be sent sprawling all over the floor. It’s either that, or you end up spilling your fries all over the bag and over the other stuff, so you’ll be forced to retrieve each fry from every place they landed in. Either way, that revenge deserves an A.

Not Saucy At All

Everyone knows that more than half of all things that make a barbeque meal good are in the sauce. It’s that special thing that elevates your meat from plain grilled meat to bbq heaven. That’s why it’s important not to lose bbq sauce privileges!

That customer would be really lucky if the meat they got was nice, tender, and juicy. That might still be able to make up for the lack of sauce. If not, well, they’d have to endure dining on what would basically be flat, flaky, and dry cardboard meat which would just be perfect for their attitude.

Wrong Room

Much like dealing with people in the food industry, it is also dangerous to mess with someone from the hotel and hospitality industry. These people know which rooms are the noisiest, the dirtiest, and the least comfortable, and they can throw you in there without a second’s hesitation. 

On the other hand, they can also be some of the nicest people who would go out of their way to make sure you get a good room and that you are well provided for if you treat them with respect and kindness. 

Call Me Maybe!

We know there are a lot of hardworking people who are just doing their job behind those insurance calls but honestly, we’d really prefer it if we were the ones that called them and not the other way around. Those incessant calls are just maddening! Imagine getting punished with that. 

Just having their phone ringing with unknown numbers at different times of the day and having it disrupt their daily activities is really revenge enough. Unfortunately, they might also turn their rudeness to those insurance people which might not be so nice. 

Not The Whipped Cream!

Call us childish, but there are many people like us who love that whipped cream on top of hot chocolate, especially during the holiday seasons. It sort of makes us feel like a child again, and it momentarily helps us forget about the glooms of adulthood. Being deprived of it is just plain hurtful. 

That whipped cream is probably the one thing that would help some people feel merry. But then, there are some people out there who don’t deserve such a thing. All they know is how to make others miserable, so no fluffy whipped cream goodness for them, all right.

Did You Say More Ice?

You don’t just say “less ice” and immediately get less ice. Sometimes, you have to hope to the heavens and keep an eye out for the person making up your drink to ensure you get a few cubes less. There are some people, though, that deserve all those extra cubes. 

If you can’t be a decent human being for those few minutes, then yes, you probably do deserve an ice-filled tasteless drink that is as cold and bland as you are. Remember, it’s not just what you pay for these days. It’s also about how you treat other people. 

The Poor Candy Bars

It’s another small but yet strangely thing for us humans, but we don’t really realize how much we value our whole and unblemished snacks until we open the packaging and find them cracked, snapped, or worse, crushed, don’t we?

Just imagine all those candy bars – crumbled Reese’s, snapped Snickers, horizontally cut Kit Kats, unevenly cut Hershey’s. They’re already making us cringe. They’re still edible, of course, but part of that first bite experience is just taken away from us forever. 

Uneven Coffee To Ruin Your Coffee

In most places, you’d either get just plain black coffee, and they’d leave it to you to mix up the sugar, cream, and all that, or you’d already get those flavored mixed types such as what Starbucks has. For this place, though, it’s left to the server to put the sugar in and mix it, which actually presents an opportunity for some very light forms of revenge. 

This trick would work especially well if, after the first sip, the rude customer would ask for more sugar, and when they finally mix it and take a sip, they’d just be slammed with too much sweetness. At that point, there’s no going back. They can’t make it any less sweet, and you’ve won by checkmate. 

Just No

To be able to be productive and efficient workers and to be able to serve customers right and well, customer service people also need to take care of their mental health and spiritual health. And sometimes, that means drawing a firm line between them and rude customers. 

Sure, they’d probably lose a client here or there, but rude or difficult customers are never profitable. When it comes to these people, nothing will ever make them happy, and they’d keep asking for their stuff to be redone, thus costing more time and far more energy than they deserve with their attitude. 

Ouchie!

One thing a lot of entitled people never seem to learn is that it’s very dangerous to mess with your servers. Just look away for a moment, and something can go very, very wrong with your food or your table like this. 

Oversalted or bland food is so much easier to deal with than food that is too spicy. With the former two, you can last for a while without water since it goes away, but when it comes to spice, you might be left begging for your life. 

Get The Angles Right!

When it comes to photos, you’ll always hear someone say, “Make me thinner,” “Get rid of my blemishes,” “Give me some curves,” or even the vaguest statement of all, “Can you fix everything?” And when it comes to events like weddings, there is so much pressure on the photographer to get everything right. Not all photographers would or do go the extra mile, though. 

Photographers usually forbid their clients from seeing the bad pictures. They get the processed and touched-up versions worthy of being shown to all the other people who weren’t there. So, for a photographer to risk his career like this, the client must have done something really inexcusable. 

A Competition With Phones

Phones. They’re just freaking everywhere. It’s actually becoming a lot less common to enjoy a coffee, travel, or even shop with someone without them pulling out their phone every few minutes. And people often forget that there are right places and right ways to use their phone while interacting with another human being. 

However, we admit that some calls just can’t be put down and that talking loudly over that conversation might be mean and disrespectful. But then again, it doesn’t take much to take a quick second to say “Hold on for a minute” to the person you’re talking to and acknowledge your cashier and get your stuff. 

Missed It!

Parents have this obsession with capturing the moment of their baby’s first steps, and we totally get it. After all, it’s not every day the tiny human being you created starts walking, right? There’s just nothing special with the second set of steps. We can only imagine how frustrating it is to miss them. 

For parents who are really into those things, that must be devastating. Then again, if you think about it, a lot of children do take their first steps at the nursery and not at home. This teacher might have just been telling the truth. Their kindness in keeping it a secret was just broken by the parent’s meanness.   

Repeat, Wash, Repeat

If you work in the customer service industry, you’d really have to find ways to vent out frustrations towards rude customers. If you don’t, you’re risking your sanity. Even something as simple as annoying your customer and wasting their time might help some people cope better. 

Even though the truth is that you’re wasting both your time, the knowledge that you’re in control of the annoyance and that they’re suffering the same thing you’re going through might be enough to quell the rage in some people. 

Food Fusion!

Pancake syrup is honestly a godsend. To whoever invented it, you have our never-ending thanks. Without it, we would never have known half the delights that pancakes bring into our lives. We’re not sure how we feel about it going on other things aside from pancakes, though. 

While the sweetness may slightly go with something with chicken, we’re not sure how it would taste with something purely savory like a burger. Just the thought of all that mayo, mustard, pickles, ketchup, and other stuff with that syrup doesn’t even make us want to imagine what it would taste like. 

Just Watch It Eat Away

We can never understand people who literally throw money at other people. If it’s a soap opera, sure, it’s for dramatic effect. But in real life, what in the world would that achieve? No one gains any kind of respect from that. 

Handing over money to the cashier properly takes no effort at all. It’s just lift, place, and down. Lift, place, and down. It’s that simple. Toddlers don’t even need any kind of instruction to do it correctly. Apparently, there are some people who still need a full course on how to do it. Serves them right for the conveyor belt to eat their cash in that situation. 

The Waiting Game

Making someone wait longer than they have to is probably one of the evilest acts of revenge out there. You don’t only get to waste their time, but you also get to watch as they slowly meltdown into complete frustration. It’s on a whole other level when there’s food involved, though. 

With this kind of revenge, you’re putting someone on the very brink of anger and frustration. You’re basically making them watch as people come and go feasting, dining, and being merry as they stew in their own gloom. We hope it never happens to us!

Penny Dread

Change isn’t so bad. With change, you can give exact amounts of money to the customer. What’s inconvenient about it is all the counting, the searching, and of course, the weight. A lot of people hate carrying all that jingling and jangling change in their pockets. If you’re rude, though, you might just deserve that annoying extra weight no matter how little it is. 

Sometimes, the tiniest inconvenience does the trick. If someone were really rude to us, we’d also probably spend all the effort and time this person did. Just imagining that person jingling their way down the street and dealing with all that inconvenient loose change can already lift our spirits the tiniest bit. 

Yikes To Flat Bread!

Bread lovers know that fluffy bread is the golden standard of bread. Even if the bread tastes like any other bread, that fluffiness tricks our brains into thinking that the fluffier one is better, so you can only imagine how it will react to flat or deformed, lifeless-looking bread. 

It’s somewhat hilarious how this is so annoying and yet so nonconfrontational. Unfortunately, this can blow up in their face, especially when the customer asks for a replacement. When that happens, they only get an irate customer and a somewhat damaged loaf. 

Fart Attack

Sometimes, it just really stuns us cold how stubborn and selfish some people could be. Science has already said that there is a virus going around killing people, and science has also confirmed that one way to help stop its spread is to wear a mask. And yet, there are some who think they know better than the very people who have been studying things like that for most of their lives.

If only there were a way we could directly plug that fart spray into that person’s nose, that would have been much better. Not wearing a mask is one thing, but then being unnecessarily rude and mean to the person who is just trying to look out for everybody? That person deserves more than a stinking fart. 

Gotta Make Sure

There is a big difference between intentionally rude actions and those that just seem rude but are completely innocent. It just takes a good look at someone’s face to determine which one it is most of the time. If there’s even the slightest hint of a smirk there or the slightest trace of entitlement and mocking, then something like this is completely earned. 

People who aren’t out to make someone’s job more miserable would usually be apologetic. Even if they don’t say it out loud, their faces would immediately show it because they know and understand. Other people, though, are just clueless.

They Who Shall Not Be Named

We don’t know why but it’s such a triumph to have your name spelled correctly on your coffee cup, especially when it’s one of the more unique names. There’s just that little “yay!” moment that inevitably bubbles up, so we kind of get why it could frustrate some people to have their names misspelled. 

If you’re not going to be nice about simply saying your name though, what reason would your barista have to put in any effort to get it right? Nothing. Imagine, though, if someone just straight up wrote Karen or Bob while calling out their real names just to really spite the customer. That would be pretty hilarious. 

Convenient, Is It Not?

For people with small bladders, sitting in the middle of the cabin, sandwiched in between two or three people, is probably one of the biggest inconveniences of riding an airplane. If you’re rude to the booking agent or gate crew, though, you might just get rid of that problem. 

What this person did to whoever that poor unfortunate soul was wasn’t just a quick little revenge. It was a 10-hour torture session. Just imagine if someone made a number two!, That’s enough to waft through the air for most of the flight.

It’s Tantrums in Public Time

It’s normal for siblings to fight, especially when they’re still kids. It’s just a fact of having to share everything with another tiny human being. Parents never like it, though, especially when it’s in public. Sometimes, you just have to feed the flames of that sibling rivalry. 

Unfortunately, this can become a losing trick if the kids don’t like the whole equality thing of getting the same toys. They’d probably rejoice in getting different toys, and until one of them gets a little greedy, they would probably pipe down for the rest of the meal. 

We’ll Get Back To You In A Minute

Every time the person on the other line says, “We’ll get back to you in a minute.” you just know that they’re lying and when you hear that customary beep, ads, or elevator music coming up, you have to release an equally customary sigh as you prepare to waste precious minutes of your day. Hopefully, though, you don’t get the intentional kind of hold like this one. 

Aside from the hold technique, though, there is also apparently the “Oops, sorry I disconnected you” technique. It’s bad enough having to deal with rude and mean customers in person, but when it’s over the phone, it’s a whole other hell you’d absolutely want to escape. 

Be Cold, Karen

Even if it is your job and even if you are getting your pay from the customers, it is so difficult to come up with the motivation to actually serve someone who exudes that “I’m paying you, so I own you” vibe so this kind of thing happens. 

They are still doing their job. They’re simply delaying it because a Karen decided that that is not the day they become decent human beings. We do hope, though that whoever that customer was really deserved it because freezing is not in the least bit nice. 

Mustard Madness

Everybody knows how awful it is to have any kind of liquid, sticky or not, spilling all over your stuff, especially when it’s food. Just one open mayo or mustard packet can destroy your entire dinner, and if not, your appetite, so you better be nice to your servers, or you might get a packet cutter like this one. 

The worst part about all this is that it’s mustard. Ketchup or syrup might still go over well with some food items but mustard? It’s not an all-around sauce. Once food that isn’t meant to have mustard touches mustard, it’s just ruined forever. Yuck. 

No Warm Gels For You

If you’ve ever had an ultrasound, you’d know how funny that gel thingy can feel on your body. One minute, you’re dry and then the next, there’s this gooey thing someone’s swishing around on your skin with some plastic. It can feel weird for some and even uncomfortable especially if the gel is a little cold. 

We can already imagine that little jolt and all those shivers climbing up and down our skin from the sudden contact of the cold gel with the skin. And while the gel isn’t really freezing and is not hurting anyone, it is a mild inconvenience that we’d love to avoid.

Giving the Cold Call Treatment

As much as we all just want to do our job to the best we can, there are just some conversations with certain people that are plain hopeless. And while it may not be the best solution, many people might be tempted to give the cold call treatment, the phone version of the cold shoulder.

Not everyone is meant to handle rude customers. Handling these kinds of people over the phone is an exceptional skill that only some people can master. And in addition to that, you’d need three lifetimes of patience. But then again, rude customers shouldn’t even be a thing. 

Just Doing Some Bag Cleaning

While you have some people that just squish your cheese cuts together or misspell your name, there are others whose anger can’t just be placated by little things. They like to make a splash of revenge, sometimes literally, with whatever they’ve got on hand like this one. 

This is just pure savage and also mean. Unlike water, soda, or even condiments, shampoo can ruin everything, especially when it’s groceries. You can’t exactly wash food and expect the soapy taste to go out, right? Plus, if it spilled early enough, the customer can get a replacement. 

Hide and Seek

We think we’re all familiar with the hide technique, right? If you’ve been looking for a product for so long and you see that there are only a few items left, you’d hide it in a more inconspicuous place so you could come back for it. Well, that’s somewhat the opposite of what this person did. 

This would only work, though, if Karen is indeed coming back for those products. Otherwise, this person would have just created more work for himself at the end of the day because they’d have to rearrange everything back into its proper place. But well, it’s the thought that counts. 

Gotta Bag It Up

It took us a while to figure this one out, but a lot of stores actually do charge for the bags, especially with the efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags. And while we’re pretty sure that whoever that customer is won’t really notice the extra charge, it is somewhat a consolation for the cashier. 

See, the thing with working in any kind of customer service job is that you get a full experience of the behind the scenes of those companies so you’d naturally know the little things that should be and shouldn’t be that the rest of us would have no clue about. And that is exactly the information some customer service people use for revenge. 

Straight From Hell

Call them petty, but we completely get why many customer service people would do a lot of these little inconvenient acts of revenge. You can’t just keep taking in all that rudeness and meanness. But then, there are some people that make us wonder what in the world was done to them for them to take such drastic measures. 

There’s nothing else to describe this but evil, and we can’t help but feel sorry for whoever this was done to. Leaving your card behind somewhere is bad enough, but experiencing the panic of losing it and the anxiety of waiting for the replacement, that’s next level rough.