I work as an IT consultant so I don’t have to deal with any of the crap people in traditional customer roles do, but there have been a couple of customers we’ve agreed to mutual part ways with. Mostly due to them having unrealistic expectations.

One client expected us to basically be their 24/7 help desk, but only paid for like 20-30 hours a month. He wanted someone in their office from 8-5. He was like they can work on other stuff, but I need them to be here in case someone needs them. We were not an MSP. We didn’t do help desk. The original contract was to help with a date center migration with flex hours to support after the move. We did project work with mainly senior consultants. This was a company with 1 IT guy and maybe 100 employees. As soon as the contract came up for renewal we were done.

guy was making threats, demanding to know the full name and address of anyone he talked to, etc. this was a call center job that tolerated verbal abuse of staff and expected us to take it with a smile. it was company policy to not punish customers for verbal abuse and we were not allowed to shut it down. this guy was apparently considered enough of a problem that he was banned from all stores owned by corporate, which I had never seen happen before or after.

Woman was clearly mentally ill, extremely belligerent, seeking tech support. At some point, store manager was saying something about trying to accommodate her and she said, “You don’t get points for trying.” Store manager turned around and said, “Call security.”

Phone support later called us to arrange help and I explained that she wasn’t welcome and would have to go to a different store. Fortunately, there are many where I live and she didn’t have to travel very far if she accepted that answer (dunno the outcome).

He made threats at gunpoint.

Hundreds of gigabytes of horse porn, right in a folder on his desktop called “horse”. The thumbnail of the folder made it incredibly clear what the folder was and what was in it, which was made extra clear by the max zoom his desktop icons were set to. (it was like, no joke, almost 1/10th the screen).

Fun fact: that was the day I learned my state doesn’t have mandatory reporting laws for animal abuse, only csam.

It was the rare occasion of someone being so stupid that they accidentally started their own cell phone scam.

This guy could not decide on what phone he wanted. He had two plans with all of his relatives on them. Whenever someone became eligible for a contract renewal, he would buy himself a phone and give his old one to one of those relatives. He also was very picky, and would try to return his phones for dumb reasons like “I haven’t turned my phone off since I got it, and now it’s running slow.”

He would hop between different stores and customer service to get warranty replacements for his older phones, and exchanges for new ones, and because he was passing phones between accounts, a phone that he had for a year, would look like it was just bought a few days ago, so he would be offered a brand new one, or the option to try another model. When he came into my store complaining, something didn’t seem right, so I spent an entire day researching where all his phones came from and where they went. I discovered that for years, he was costing us thousands of dollars burning through brand new phones and requesting credits for his inconvenience.

The last time we told him that we couldn’t help him, he said he’d never come back, we thanked him.

Last place I worked at that actually banned customers was at a pizza place in a college town that did a lot of late night deliveries back when restaurants delivered their own food.

Bounced checks, being rude to employees, not being there when the delivery driver arrived were the biggest ones. After hitting a critical mass on fraternities we started banning the whole fraternity if we ran into issues and they sorted that out fast by getting their members to behave better and other people would volunteer to buy the pizza if the person fell asleep or couldn’t be found. Pretty much everyone who screwed up was given another chance by paying off their balance and the bounced check fee or apologizing to staff.

There was also one guy who never tipped and kept calling and saying is pizza was wrong so the owner made his pizza one night and delivered it himself, then banned the guy when he called and lied about the delivery. He was banned for life along with the people who were racist/sexist. The owner was a jerk when it came to his ridiculous capitalist expectations, but he did defend his employees from external assholes.

He touched a waitress in a way she didn’t want to be touched.

Worked in a little delicatessen shop for a couple of years. The local drunkard got banned because they got cross with the owner of the neighboring tobacco shop (this was back when those were still common) and did a protest pee inside that shop.
Word spread fast among the shop owners in that area and the drunkard was banned from all of them.
Once, they wouldn’t leave when I asked so I went up to them and showed them out. On the doorstep they turned around, looked me in the eyes and pleaded that it was their birthday. Pretty sad. Probably a lie but pretty sad nonetheless.

One of my previous customers was a mentally ill and delusional elderly lady. She called me about a non-existent plumbing problem in her house, supposedly caused by her neighbor, who she claimed breaks in and messes with her stuff. According to her, everything wrong inside or outside her house was because of her neighbor’s sabotage. She even mentioned plans to kill him. Not exactly the kind of person you want to turn your back on, but also someone who would have been extremely easy to take advantage of. I basically talked her out of redoing the entire plumbing in her bathroom, and we finally settled on me re-aligning her kitchen cabinet doors that - yes, you guessed it - her neighbor had ‘messed with.’

It was quite sad, really. She asked me twice whether I thought her stories sounded crazy, so she was clearly somewhat aware of her condition. I just didn’t know how to deal with someone like that. I refuse to lie, but I also don’t want to tell her she’s losing it. I don’t mind senile people, but I didn’t feel safe around her.

He was creepin’ on other customers. When he was asked to tone it down, especially when it came to talking to minors, he got mad and started yelling and shoving chairs.