I am helping an elderly woman pick out a desktop PC.

Customer: “What kind of processor does it have?”

Me: *Seriously aging this story* “It has an Intel Core 2 Duo.”

Customer: “I’ve never heard of that. I’m used to computers with Microsoft Word as the processor.”

Me: “Microsoft Word is a word processor and is not the same thing as the processor that runs a computer.”

Customer: *Pauses* “I’d like to speak to another associate who knows more about computers.“

I worked in high-end electronics retail when 3D was all the craze. A kid came in and put the demo glasses on. Then, he held his hand out in front of him.

Kid: “Oh, my God, everything is in 3D now!”

I am pregnant, almost full-term with our daughter. A week prior, my husband and I have the tour of the hospital and all the information given to us about the upcoming birth, including the warnings that we need to get vaccinated against pertussis (whooping cough), as it’s starting to rear its ugly head in the area during this time (over a decade ago).

We sign the agreement to get the shot as well as to have our daughter get it, once born. We go back home, and all is well until a week later.

My husband and his assistant manager are catching up on paperwork when a customer comes in looking awful with a nasty cough.

She walks around and touches EVERYTHING she can get her hands on before she spots my husband.

Crazy Pertussis Customer: “Hey! I need help here. I need a cable, and d*** quick. I am sick and need to get home!”

Husband: “Sure thing. What kind of cable do you need?”

Crazy Pertussis Customer: “I don’t know, just a cable! Hurry up and find it! I gotta get home. The doctor just diagnosed me with pertussis!”

My husband pauses and backs up further away from her.

Husband: “I have to ask you to not get any closer to me. I am very sorry, but my wife is pregnant and due any day, and I don’t want to get this and get her and our daughter sick. I will gladly help you, but I cannot get any closer. Now, over here—”

Crazy Pertussis Customer: “HOW DARE YOU?! Discriminating against me because I have a cough? I don’t give a d*** about your brat and [slur for a woman] wife! If they get sick, who cares? I WANT MY D*** CABLE!”

Husband: “Get. Out. I said I would still help you and only asked that you didn’t get close. Your business here is not as important to me as the health and safety of my family. Leave now!”

Crazy Pertussis Customer: “WHO IS YOUR BOSS? I AM GETTING YOU FIRED!”

He pointed out the card with his district manager’s name on it, and the customer took one and stormed out. [Husband] and his assistant manager spent the rest of the day practically soaking the store and its products in Lysol.

He ended up getting a call from his district manager, who was seemingly about to bust a gut laughing. [District Manager] told him to ignore the complaint, as he was going to treat it as the trash it was. He assured my hubby that the customer was nuts and a fool to shop for a cable while basically suffocating.

Thankfully, none of my family ended up being infected, and my healthy baby girl was born a day or two later.

It is the early 2000s. A customer comes in:

Customer: “I’m from the police department and need to get a camera. I need it to take pictures of evidence at the police department.”

Me: “How high does the picture quality need to be, and how much are you looking to spend?”

Customer: *Giving me a little attitude.* “Of course it needs to be good quality because it’s taking pictures of evidence!”

She pulls out a floppy disk.

Customer: “It needs to put pictures onto one of these.”

Me: “Well, a digital camera can be connected to a computer so that—”

Customer: “No! Floppy disks are how we transfer and store pictures at the department, so I want something that will take pictures directly to the floppy.”

Me: “Uh… you would still need to plug the camera into the computer and then transfer it to the floppy.”

Customer: “Why would I need to do that if I had a camera that would take pictures directly to floppy disk?”

After much explaining she left without buying a camera.

We’re so used to seeing TV shows about the police using super-advanced tech that we don’t often see them go this far in the other direction! That being said, check out these 12 Hilarious Stories About People Who Believed What They Saw On Crime Shows!

I work on the receiving team of an electronics retailer. We are also who people see to collect larger items, mainly televisions. It’s not uncommon for people to underestimate how much space their TV needs and try to collect it in a vehicle much too small. It’s recommended to transport them upright to prevent potential damage to the screen in transit; some people choose to ignore this, and others choose to come back with an appropriate vehicle another time or arrange delivery.

At the end of the day, it’s their choice; they’ve paid for the item so they can do what they want with it. I’ve seen people do plenty of stupid things to avoid having to come back or pay a delivery fee, but one guy takes the cake.

As soon as my colleague and I see his vehicle, it’s doubtful the TV will fit.

Us: “Sir, shall we do some measurements of the box to check if it will fit in your car?”

Customer: “No need. It’ll definitely fit.”

His first plan is to set the television on the floor in the rear, just behind the driver and passenger seats. We get the TV to his car and then see that he has his two toddler children in their car seats in the back seat, which is not a good start as I assume there would be some safety issue at play. However, we’re fairly confident the TV won’t fit there anyway, so we decide to humour him and prove it to hopefully end the silliness.

He has to move the driver and passenger seats a long way forward to even get the TV in place and then, sure enough, it’s too long and the back doors won’t close.

Sadly, it doesn’t end there.

Customer: “I’ll just have to lay it down to get it in.”

My customer service facade drops a little as I can’t comprehend where he thinks it will go. It might get in if he didn’t have the kids in the back seat and could fold the seat down and lay it through the boot into the back seat, but that’s not an option, and it’s not his plan.

His idea is so ridiculous that it didn’t even occur to me as a possibility: he’s going to lay the TV down across the back seat, on top of the kids in their car seats!

After a moment of shock, we regain our composure and point out to him:

Us: “Sir, if it doesn’t fit lengthways across the floor, it’s still not going to fit lengthways across.”

With a more reasonable person I might have tried the tactic of how much danger he was putting his kids in, but a more reasonable person wouldn’t have had this idea in the first place.

It takes some convincing, but we’re eventually able to get him to realise that it will not fit. He briefly contemplates the idea of laying it down inside the car the other way, with one end on top of the kids in the backseat and the other end resting in the front seat headrests, but he rules this idea out as it would be hitting him in the head.

I think it’s finally over, but not quite.

He decides now that things might be easier if the kids weren’t in the car and he could fold the back seat down. But instead of deciding to take them home and come back with an empty vehicle, he comments:

Customer: “If only my wife had come with me, I could leave the kids with her, take the TV home, and come back for them.”

After this comment, he looks hopefully at us, as though he’s expecting us to offer to watch his kids for him. We do not offer, of course, and remain silent, although I really want to point out that it wouldn’t make a difference to him if he took the kids home first and came back for the TV or took the TV home first and came back for the kids; it’s the same number of trips.

After we fail to offer to babysit, he sadly has one more brilliant idea.

Customer: “I’ll take the car seats out, fold the backseat down to fit the TV in, and then drive home with the kids in their car seats, which will be sitting on the passenger side in the front.”

Us: “That will be very unsafe for the kids and, honestly, is a terrible idea.”

He’s unsure and seems to want to try it, but after we continue to tell him not to, he finally has one genuinely good idea:

Customer: “I’ll call my wife to see what she thinks.”

Fortunately, she very quickly shut down his terrible idea before he even finished telling it to her and told him to bring the kids home and go back for the TV later. I was very happy when he decided to take her advice and left with his kids safely secured in their seats. If people had to pass a test before being allowed to become parents, he would have had no chance.