I have done this exactly once in my lifetime, two years ago. Maybe in another few decades, I’ll do it again, if I live long enough.
And yes, even if your name is Karen but you had a good reason to ask to speak to the manager, you can also reply
Yes. I went to a Burger King and ordered a burger. I sat there waiting for 15 minutes while the tray sat on the counter with my receipt with order number, fries, a cup, but no burger. Finally, I asked the blonde lady taking orders where is the burger so I can go to my seat.
Her response: “you ate it.” I was confused. I told her no burger was filled for the order and the tray had been there the whole time.
“No, you ate it.” Now, I wasn’t fat or even chubby, so it wasn’t some kind of fat phobic thing. I am a different skin color than her, though. I was confused what her problem with me was, but she kept insisting I ate the burger and wanted a free one. I was dressed business casual, with a white shirt and dark pants, so I doubt it was my clothing that made her think I wanted free food. I even showed her some cash and told her that if I wanted another burger I can buy one.
I finally asked to speak to the manager. He listened to my complaint. Made me fresh food and told her to shut up and get out of the way, pointing to the door while she protested out loud the whole time, throwing a fit.
I seriously don’t know what was wrong with her or why she was so insistent that I wanted free food. It was weird.
Probably just racism.
Wow, that is just downright bizarre. I wonder if she even kept her job afterwards?
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Yeah the one time I asked to speak to the manager the first person I spoke to at their call centre (who was really trying her best to be helpful) did exactly that. It was her manager that was obstructive and dismissive, and that when I asked to speak to their manager in turn - who was even worse
The only one I remember for sure is nice. My kid was about 8yo and decided they wanted to go shopping for our Christmas gifts by themselves. So we went to Target and my husband and I gave them some cash and instructions about not spending it all to allow for taxes. We parked ourselves at the front of the store so we saw them checking out and we could see there was some kind of issue, but it got resolved. After we got home, our kid explained that they did indeed spend every bit of the money we gave them, forgetting about taxes, but the cashier “found” a coupon so they didn’t have to put anything back.
Later that evening, I called the Target and asked to speak a manager. I explained what happened and I said I was sorry that I didn’t know the name of the cashier but I described them and their checkout lane, and wanted to send them my praise and thanks. It would’ve been so easy to just make a kid put something back or get their parents, but this lady was very kind and patient, and it really made my kid’s day. (My kid was very proud of themselves for buying their parents’ gifts all by themselves for the first time.) The manager was so relieved and said she was very grateful to get this kind of call because at that time of year they don’t always hear a lot of positive feedback.
Isn’t this a double edged sword? Depending on the manager or company, an employee can get fired for skirting the rules to accommodate that case, even it it was out of kindness. The customer ends up ratting out the employee for going against the company rules/policy. I guess you were lucky enough the manager was kind.
I did think of that, so when I told the manager the story, I just said the cashier helped my kid sort everything out to make it work within their budget. I didn’t mention any discounts or coupons.
It’s possible that they took care of the difference on their own. The manager only cares the till comes out as it should.
I rented a car and by the time I got to my destination about 45 minutes away, I realized it was infested with ants. Ants all over the place. I called Budget to complain, they put me on hold. I was on hold for the 1h15m drive back (due to rush hour traffic) to their building. She answered the phone right as I walked into the building. I couldn’t help myself and I just started shouting.
“You put me on hold for nearly 90 minutes. It took less time drive all the way back here from 2 cities over than for you to answer the God damn phone. There are fucking ANTS IN MY CAR! Look at my fucking clothes! ANTS. Get me your supervisor right fucking now”
Everyone in the line in front of me were either shocked or laughing as I cut right past them. She turned as pale as can be before a big white dude in a tie ran out of his see-through office to check on us.
“Sir I need you to calm down, what’s the issue?”
“I’m covered in ants! From one of your cars! They’re on my fucking face!”
Anyway I got a massive vehicle upgrade and 10 free rentals valid for 5 years. This was ten years ago. I had never rented a car and I just couldn’t believe both the comedy of it all and how much I was raging about it.
Drove back another 90 minutes in rush hour traffic to pick up my partner and our baggage and hit the road. I made her drive.
One time an order got messed up but the cashier couldn’t fix it so the manager came and fixed it. The other two times it was because an employee was great and I wanted to let their boss know.
One time it didn’t work out so well was when I was trying to cancel my T-mobile home Internet: Their support is a dumpster fire and I had to threaten a chargeback before they actually cancelled my service. Except they lied about it and didn’t cancel my service, they told me I had to go into the store and the store told me they couldn’t do anything for me. Fucking garbage.
I’m sure everyone has had at least a couple of cases. For me it was when a bank employee performed a cash advance, which I have never, ever consented to in my life, and then claimed I had given her permission to do it. Read: she fucked up and blamed it on me. I requested the contact info of her supervisor, who had the audacity to suggest that it wasn’t a large sum of money and I should essentially suck it up. That branch manager got an earful and a half and a phone call from the competition bureau (which was great, because it usually takes multiple complaints for them to take action).
Now this is the Karen-y part. Whenever a company that I’m a regular customer of does something morally wrong (as opposed to a mistake or a less than competent employee), I boycott them until, in my estimation, I’ve cost them 100x the sum of the initial disputed amount (I have substitute actions for cases that don’t have a clear dollar value). In this case I cancelled my credit products with them. My boycott is set to expire (i.e. reach the 100x mark) in February of 2024. The rationale behind this is that if 1% of consumers do it, it’ll no longer be worth it for them to continue the practice, and it gives you a satisfying end goal. You can’t boycott every company that wrongs you indefinitely - I only have a handful on my permanent blacklist - but I can make my peace with it if I know I’ve comfortably done my part.
So basically the bank employee just gave out some of your money in cash to someone that rocked up and asked for it, without checking with you? Sounds like a fireable offence to me
I wish I could use your boycott technique on one particular organisation but they are a government department :-(
that 100x boycott thing is such an amazing idea
Yup. I’m quite mild-mannered (or so I believe).
Bank signed up my grandmother for a service she couldn’t possibly use. Called customer care, they gave her useless response. Drove with her, customer care agent was busy chatting with a friend, and there was a long queue of people with complaints. Walked (at least I did, grandma was in crutches) to the branch manager’s office. I didn’t ask to see the manager, I asked where his/her office was. Walked in (without the courtesy of knocking), aired grandma’s frustrations (albeit mixed in with mine). Matter was resolved in less than 5 minutes. Didn’t care to know how the customer service agent was reprimanded.
It’s one of the few times I remember being out of character, apart from the avocado incident (irrelevant here).
Well, we need to know about the avocado incident. You can’t leave us all hanging like that.
That sounds like my old bank, the one I closed all my accounts and services with and moved to my current bank when they turned down my mortgage application. Never looked back
Was at a GameStop and forgot my ID. Asked the manager if they could bypass the check or not since I was 35 at the time. Manager rang me up fine. Employee simply didn’t have access.
Besides the bank where the manager simply was my personal friend?
Funny story. I bought a high quality suit and used their, uhm, questionable external tailor service. Not only their quite expensive „same day express services“ took them five days (adding another 150km ride to my todo list), the store and the tailor both missed a security tag (those big ones you cannot miss).
My bad, I didn’t check the suit when I got it from the tailor, so I actually missed the tag as well - but it would have been too late anyway as the suit store was already closed.
The next day I actually tried the suit (as the day after that I had a job interview), and voila, a security tag you cannot miss.
I ringed the suit shop and the employee clearly didn’t understand the issue, so I told her this might be above her paygrade and she could transfer me to her manager.
The manager was flabbergasted and actually came after closing time all the way to my house with a device to remove those tags and apologised. Quite extraordinary customer service from his side. I should request him the next time I was in the shop and so I did. He reimbursed me the tailor fee, gifted me a tie (actually still my favourite tie) and told me they changed the tailor for their service.
Define “good reason”?
I’ve asked for managers to compliment staff, I’ve asked to speak to managers when I knew there was some reason the individual wouldn’t be able to help, I’ve also escalated on tech support calls when we started going round in circles. (For an example… when my mobo wasn’t posting, and they kept telling me to reseat everything. First thing I tried. I told them that. Turns out it was a batch of recalled boards.)
I’ve also asked to speak to the manager at a wing joint, I was there for a company happy hour (uhhhg. Wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t have to pick up the tab. You know the rule to not outndrink the boss? Sucks for them when the boss doesn’t drink.)
There was a pretty big disruption where a patron at the bar was sexually harsssing passing waitresses- and probably assaulted them. So I asked ours to send the manager out immediately. We knew he knew. He watched it going down from the kitchen.
He basically told us to mind our own business and that if “his girls” had a problem with it they’d speak up.
So I called the DoLabor on him and reported the place as a hostile workplace environment.
Maybe excessive, maybe he was right and I should mind my own business. But as a boss sitting there with supervisors, I felt it was necessary to lead by example. Also. Don’t let patrons molest your waitstaff.
Well what is a good reason will vary from person to person, but every example you give absolutely qualifies!
I have social anxiety, so this is never happening. 😂
Yes. The booking was completely wrong. The agent was unwilling or unable to understand my objections to a 36 hour rental instead of the 12 hour rental I was seeking, and I was already an hour late because the first car broke down almost immediately.
Pretty reasonable to ask for the manager there -did they sort it out?
Eventually, over email, weeks later. At the time, I just needed to get on the road.
Someone else. A printer was bought some time in the past from a shop and its warranty was expiring soon, however it stopped working before that happened and it was sent for repairs 3 times in that time period. I was present at the third visit. The salesperson at the counter was a young fellow, probably new, who gave the regular spiel about sending it into service. The answer to that was “No. I already sent it two times and nothing was fixed. Call the manager.” Manager showed up with “Sorry sir, not our fault. It all depends on our affiliated service repair. Blah, blah, blah.” The reply to this bs was something like " 3 months ago I brought in the printer for repairs for the first time. You kept it for two weeks, said it worked fine and gave it back. It wasn’t. I brought it back again and you saw for yourself it didn’t work, so you took it again and kept it for a month. Now that the warranty is about to expire, you wanna keep it for two months and then give me back a piece of worthless trash? Do I look that dumb to you, son?"
Now i’m definitely misremembering the details, but it eventually climaxed with a threat of calling the relevant consumer protection agency, then the manager backing down and offering to replace the printer with a newer, different model for free.
That newer model worked for one more year after its renewed warranty expired and no one visited that shop ever again since. The end.
