Asklemmy

I was working drive through at McDonald's in the early 2000's and this old guy pulls up to my window. I say (as an Australian in an Australian drive through) "G'day mate, what can I get you?"

Well this guy loses his shit, flies into a rant about how I'm not his mate and he doesn't even know me and how dare I presume to be his mate. I say "I'm sorry, it's just a turn of phrase, what can I get you?"

He continues to rant and demands to see my manager. So I say sure, close the window and mosey on over to my manager and explain my situation. He looks a little bewildered but says "no stress I'll deal with it, just wait round the corner."

He walks into my booth andi hear him say "G'day MATE, what can I get for you?" The guy loses his brains for a few more minutes at the audacity. To which my manager says "I understand, what can I get you?" The guy finally orders and we all moved on with our lives.

Another McDonald’s drive-thru story but probably the guy that wouldn’t pull forward for 30 fucking seconds for fresh fries.

I was a shift manager at the time and had my staff all hyped up during a busy lunch rush. We were kicking ass — no mistakes, drive-thru times were insanely low and everything was moving. I told some guy “could you please pull forward for just 30 seconds, I have the next five cars’ orders right here and we’re just waiting for fresh fries.”

The guy lost it, started screaming “I won’t fucking pull forward,” “this is bullshit,” all the typical douchebag stuff.

I closed the window and told my staff not to hand him anything. I ran outside with five bags, walked around his car and handed them all to the next cars. I told them “he didn’t want to pull forward” and made sure to point so the guy could see me ratting him out. They all took off fast and right as I walked inside the damn fries were ready so I bagged them up, opened that window and told him to have a “wonderful day.”I loved seeing his stupid face turn beet red with embarrassment.

My second worst Karen was the woman who complained that we were too fast and called corporate to complain.

I used to work at a auto shop and one time a lady came in wanting an estimate to replace the majority of the exhaust on her car. We didn't do exhaust work so the only way for me to price that out for her was to go based off the purchase of all the components from the parts shop which would have been way more expensive than a shop that actually does exhaust work. I told her as such and then she insisted that I price it out anyway which took forever because I had to find a diagram of her cars exhaust and cross reference all the parts with the parts shop website and then the entire time she's bitching at me about how long this is taking. I continued to explain that going to an exhaust shop would be cheaper and she continued to insist. When I handed her the estimate she glanced at it, laughed in my face, and stormed out. That shit happened almost 2 decades ago and it still pops into my head frequently.

Pour one out for all the unfortunate souls actually named Karen who aren't Karens

My ex wife. Imagine a Karen. Now imagine she's a solicitor who believes she is the law - no, not the police/a police officer, literally the law .. statute .. Acts.

That went as you might imagine it did.

In the mid-90's I was working as a cashier for a regional chain that would buy cheap shit from China and sell it to social security recipients (who back then were prone to hoarding because they were Great Depression children). After tax (sorry, entitlements, like social security and medicare which I'm suuuuure I'll get) at minimum wage it was slightly less than $2/hour in that state. So every day was all checking out social security recipients blowing their checks on $500 of 10 cent plastic gnomes filling their cart. We got in at one point "Candles from the Holy Land" (which might have been from a Taoist holy land, but...) marked 30 cents but rang up as $3 (this chain preyed on old people so upmarking v listed price was common but 10x was something you'd notice buying a cart full of them expecting to pay $500 and it's $5000) so I had to manually correct per candle whole carts of candles from the holy land on checkout. One time I did this and the elderly couple buying 100 candles from the holy land asked "why do you keep typing all this stuff on the cash register per candle" so I told them "well, this is priced at 30 cents but rings up as three bucks so I need to correct it, but I can't do a price change on multiples at once." They check out and then the customer after them is this elderly meth head lady with no teeth who gets ALLLL up in my shit "I'VESHOPPEDHERESINCE [pretty sure 10+ years before this chain or one store existed] AND THEY WOULD NEVER MISPRICE AN ITEM!!!!!" And she goes to the manager and gets me fired.