10 Different Types of Customers You Deal with in Food Service

Difficult customers exist in every business, and those who have worked in retail, restaurants, or delivery will know these types of people. They may even have a face pop up in their mind for each description. While retail and food service are fairly easy jobs, the customers make it especially difficult, and these people lead us to anger and resentment for these businesses. Every business has the motto "the customer is always right", but this isn't always the case which leads to upset and relatively funny or angering situations. Here are the different customers almost every business sees from best to worst.

The Regulars: Starting off on a positive note, the first customer is someone you see once a week or more. In the food service business, they are the easiest customers to deal with, for they tend to get the same thing every time they visit making them quick and easy customers. These guests are usually a bit nicer too, for they see you often enough to get to know you as a person instead of as a server or cashier. In some cases, they are customers you can even rant to about work and laugh with about other customers. Not every regular is this friendly, but there is more of a chance they will be nicer to deal with.

The Grandma (or Grandpa): This is my favorite type of customer. These usually are old women, sometimes men, that truly appreciate everything you do. If from the area, they can become regulars, but they get their own category. These customers will ask you how you are, tell you to stay safe, ask about college or school if it applies, and they genuinely care about you. They are also more likely to tip you. I work in a pizza chain, and we get these customers a lot. During this pandemic, we have begun to do contactless curbside pickup for those scared to come inside, which many restaurants do now. The grandparent customers will crack their windows and thank us from the bottom of their hearts, sometime slipping a couple of dollars through the window for us. I also have one grandmother customer who calls once a week, and she specifically asks for me. Every week, because she's a regular, she orders the same thing, and every week she asks for an update on how I am doing. Her husband comes in to pick up the order, and every week he too will make sure I am okay and tell me to stay safe. These customers have become my favorites, and I would protect them at all costs.

The Best Friend: These customers, although called the best friend, are not your actual best friend. However, they act like it, and they are fun to have in the store. They always come in happy and talkative, and they usually start by giving compliments. They might compliment your nails, your clothes (if no uniform), your makeup, or just your beauty in general. They usually are intimidatingly gorgeous or handsome themselves. They tend to stay in the store longer than most because they just start talking and don't stop. This in no way is a bad thing, for they are usually giving you advice, telling a funny story, or in my experience, sharing recipes or weird food combos. These customers usually are a little bit younger, between 18 to mid 30s, and they are fun to have around.

The Commander: This customer is neither good nor bad. They usually come in with no emotion, and they know exactly what they came in for. This can make these customers extremely simple to handle. In my experience, I barely have a chance to ask how they are doing or say a word before they tell me exactly what they want or if they are there for an order. The customer is quick and efficient, and there is no time wasted. There isn't too much to say about them because the customer is usually gone or taken care of before you have a chance to react to them. I feel neutral towards them, but they do make me feel small and almost scared when I talk to them. However, there are no bad intentions on their end. They just want their food or product.

The Interrogator: These customers are annoying, and I usually have to stop myself from rolling my eyes with them there. While I have no anger towards these customers, some of them are ruder than others. They tend to ask too many questions, and the worst thing they do is question the prices. As an employee of a chain restaurant, I have absolutely no control over prices or what coupons are offered. However, these particular customers seem to think that I just give a random price while ringing them up. The worst ones will order over the phone, listen to the price, and then wait to argue it when they come to get their order. With enough persistence, they do eventually give up and just accept the price or other answers given, but they make it as difficult as possible first.

The Scammer: These people are similar to the interrogators in my opinion. The interrogators want special treatment, but they have limits to how far they will push it. The scammer is looking for free food or coupons, and they achieve this by complaining. There are several examples of how a customer can scam you. The most common one is the complainer. These customers will come in and pick their order up, and you will show them their food which looks fine at the time. They will leave as happy customers only to call back an hour later and say their food was burnt, and they will either want a remake (free food), a refund (free food), or they want a credit (discount) given to their account for their next order (free food). These customers will hang up and leave you alone if you ask them to bring the food back. I usually tell them that I will remake the food or refund it if they bring the original back to show me it was actually burnt or wrong. They usually agree and hang up, but they never show back up with the original food. The second type of scammer isn't a customer at all. In my experience, these customers are not actually customers at all. They will call and claim they had a delivery or pick up in which we forgot an item of food on their order. Its never a whole order, but its usually something small like bread sticks or a dessert. Luckily, because I work in a chain which takes orders over the phone, our POS system stores phone numbers, and by looking up a phone number, we can see if there were any orders placed under that name. Once the "customer" realizes we can see they never ordered, they usually hang up immediately never to be heard from again. The third type of scammer is the more annoying and hard to prove. These people usually get deliveries, so we can't verify anything. They will call back within a few minutes of their delivery claiming something was forgotten. Yesterday, a woman called claiming her driver forgot her drinks. This particular driver is bad about forgetting drinks and extras, so I believed it at first despite knowing that I was the one who packed the drinks and reminded him 4 or 5 times to grab him. I even took the drinks to his car when he went to leave. When he got back, he swore up and down he took them to her, and I believed him since he is normally pretty quick to own up to a mistake. I decided to wait until she called again, which she never did because she knew it was a lie. These customers make things difficult, and most of them will argue with you until you're exhausted in hopes that you will give in.

The Picky Eater: It is difficult to say these customers are bad. Of course they can be rude at times, but for the most part, the customer does recognize that they are being difficult. However, it doesn't make them any less irritating to deal with. This customer for me is someone who will have you remake something until it is perfect. Sometimes it is a mother who knows how picky her kid is, and if there is a single blemish on the food, she knows the child won't eat it. Sometimes it is a grown adult who refuses to eat certain things. One time I had a customer come in screaming at me because we got his order wrong. He ordered online, therefore it was his mistake, but he accidentally put mushrooms on his order without realizing meaning that is how we made it. He was upset because "who on earth eats mushrooms, he was not on that vegan shit". I could not help but laugh at him, and I later felt bad. After calming him down, we fixed his order and remade it, and he was happy again. I have also had a customer, who used to be a regular, that made us remake his pizza at least 4 times because he didn't want too much cheese on it. We remade the pizza until their was only a couple of shreds of cheese on the pizza which he describes as not good but acceptable. Picky eaters can sometimes be the worst kind of customer.

The Selfish: The selfish customers make me boil. These customers do not care for you, other people or customers, or for the safety of the other employees. They only care about getting what they want, and they will cuss you out if they don't get it. This is the customer that will yell at you for not being able to deliver on a snow day because the roads are too icy and dangerous for the driver. The customer expects them to risk their life while being paid the bare minimum while the customer will not pick up the order because the roads are too dangerous. These are the customers that will shove in front of other customers so that they will get helped first. These customers will get extremely rude with you for absolutely no reason or expect you to serve them or answer phones before you open or after close. They don't even give you a chance to speak or explain anything, and they normally start off angry.

The Aggressive: The aggressive customers are more rare thankfully. These customers usually are just having a really rough day, and they are always in person (not over the phone). These are customers that are literally ready to fight, and they will throw many a threat towards you. Some of them are so aggressive that it is almost laughable. For instance, a couple of weeks back a man threatened to throw my coworker threw the oven. We couldn't help but laugh, for my coworker is a pretty big man, and the oven, while big, has an opening that can fit a baking pan and that is it. This made the image of this angry man throwing my coworker through the oven hilarious. After we started laughing at the thought, the man stormed out never to be seen again because of embarrassment. A different night we had to call the cops on a customer. He forgot his pizza when he came to pick up earlier. The employee offered to remake it for him, so it was fresh. However, the man was already so riled up that he began to threaten violence against the cashier. It became so bad that another employee had to step between them and calm the guy down, but not before the guy attempted to swing at them. This lead to the cops being called. However, at the end of the day, the man did apologize, which leads me to believe it was just a bad day. These customers can be scary, but they make for an entertaining story.

The Karen (or Keith): Last but certainly not least, we discuss the most hated customers. While the Karens or Keiths are very much like the selfish customers, they earn their own category. While the selfish customers get upset over real issues, although it be something we can't control, Karens and Keiths become upset over anything and everything that slightly inconveniences them. These are the customers that get angry with you if their order takes even one minutes longer than what was said to them. These are customers that walk in with a group of 10 people and get upset when a group of 2 was seated first. These are the people that will exaggerate a situation to seem worse than it is. For instance, if we are backed up on deliveries, the time it takes for deliveries can get up to an hour wait time. A Karen or Keith will call 45 minutes after ordering, and they will claim they have been waiting for 2 hours even though we can see their order time. A Karen or Keith will yell at you if you didn't make it to the cash register to help them within 5 seconds even during the busiest times. A Karen or Keith will complain because they see an employee laughing in the back while working, for no one should be allowed to have a good time at work. A Karen or Keith will yell at you because I didn't rush another customer in order to help them. A Karen or Keith will complain because you didn't put enough ice cubes in their water. A Karen or Keith, true story, will complain that there is too much meat on their wings. These customers will find anything and everything to complain about just for the fun of it. There is not goal behind it like the scammers have. They just simply want to ruin your day, and they will say and do anything to make you upset. I have a very specific way of handling these customers, for it is obvious that they want a reaction out of you. When they begin to complain about nothing, I will simply give them a blank stare with no response. I basically pretend that I can't hear them, and without saying a word or breaking eye contact, I continue to take their order or give them their order without responding to what they are saying. They eventually give up and walk out. As tempting as it is to respond to a Karen or Keith, your best bet is to not say anything. Simply keep doing what you were already doing while ignoring them, and they will die down pretty quick. Obviously respond to real complaints, for just because someone is complaining, it doesn't mean they are a Karen. Sometimes it is a legitimate complaint. However, if it is simply a Karen or Keith, then ignore them as much as possible.