Your Worst Experience With a Customer

EDIE ORENSTEIN (left)
Owner, Edie Hats

“I’ll often Flamenco dance on the floor while we’re working, and I once had a gentleman tell me to ‘shut up!’ in front of about 30 customers. I said it’s part of the experience here, and he said, ‘It’s the most horrible sound I’ve ever heard and you look stupid.’ He just didn’t get it. He just thought it was dumb and that we were making a lot of noise.”

JEAN TURCOTTE (middle)
Area GM, the Cannery Seafood Restaurant

“An older gentleman and his surprisingly youthful date sat in a window seat at the Cannery. When she left for the washroom, he ordered a perfectly good bottle of wine, and upon her return she screamed, ‘What the f**k is that s**t,’ and rudely ordered a very expensive wine. Later she smashed her glass over the man’s head, and we escorted her from the restaurant. If there was ever a date from hell, she must have been it!”

PATRICK MURPHY (right)
Controller, 
the Fairmont Waterfront

“At another hotel I was at in the ’70s, a 
fisherman won a weekend stay and brought his girlfriend. They must have had a fight; he locked her out of the room and she was just wearing her bra and panties. She walked down to the lobby, and the assistant manager gave her his jacket and walked her to the elevator. About 10 people coming out of the elevator saw her wearing the jacket with his name tag on it.”