A mother is checking out with her young child, who is having a tantrum about not being able to buy candy. I shoot the mother a look of sympathy as I know it can be trying in moments like this.

Mother: *To her child* “I’m sorry, sweetie, I’d love to buy you some candy but…” *shoots me a quick look* “…but the mean old lady in the checkout doesn’t want you to have any!”

Me: “What?!”

Child: *Looking at me through watering eyes* “But whyyyyyyyy?!”

Mother: “Yeah, it’s such a shame that the mean old lady isn’t letting me; otherwise, I’d buy you so much candy!”

I don’t know if what I did was appropriate, but I didn’t think much about it until after.

Me: “Well, since the only barrier to getting candy is my permission, I grant you permission to get candy, little guy!”

Mother: “No, wait…”

The child stops crying and just stares at me, sniffing. We have a deal for four candy bars for $1.99, so I know I can swing that with my staff discount.

Me: “I’ll let you have four of these candy bars! Pick any four you want! And since your mommy is giving me the power to grant permission, you can have all four of them to eat right now, and you don’t have to have dinner tonight or eat any nasty vegetables!”

Mother: “Now, wait just a minute!”

Me: “Ma’am, I know it’s tough being a mother, but we could have just gone through this transaction in silence, and you would have had my respect. But you made me the bad guy instead of dealing with your child, so now I’m going to be the bad guy.”

Child: *Hugging four candy bars* “I’d like these ones!”

Me: “You got it, little man!”

The mother protests silently (not wanting her child to hear), but I run the candy through using my staff discount and I top up my checkout with my own cash: $1.69. The boy skips toward the exit with his candy bars.

Mother: “This is going to be so much worse because of you! I’m going to have to take those away from him.”

Me: “That’s what you get for bringing me into your parenting.”

Lucky for me, she didn’t complain!

Did the checkout clerk go too far? Let us know what you think in the comments! For some perspective, here are another 23 Stories Of Truly Terrible Parent Customers!

I used to work at a call center where we would get flooded with calls constantly. This is a story of how a busybody boss thought they understood everything since they were in charge.

We were given two fifteen-minute breaks and one forty-five-minute lunch break. The breaks were scheduled into our day so we could see when they would be, but this would change day by day.

My role was a bit different than the normal agents as I was specifically dealing with the higher-issue calls. These calls could take up to an hour to complete and the callers would need to stay on the line — unless they were fine with a call back later, but this was rarely the case.

Since I never knew when I would be getting these calls, my break times were a shot in the dark as to whether I’d be on a call or not. I would just take them as soon as the call was done if they ever intersected, which they did 99% of the time.

Enter my boss. During a performance review, I hit all the marks except for “Attendance”.

Me: “Why was I marked down for attendance? I know I’ve missed a few days, but I’ve always had a reasonable update for time frames, and I’ve never had any no-show days.”

Boss: “Attendance also applies to break and lunch times. Since you rarely take them at the requested time, you are being written up.”

I explained my role — which they had hired me for — and the challenges involved.

Boss: “I don’t care. You need to take your breaks when you’re told to.”

Me: “Fine. Can you send me that in an email so I can print it out, put it on my desk, and never forget again?”

My boss smiled from ear to ear, probably because they thought I was groveling at that point, and sure enough, they did, stating in the email, “You must take your breaks only when the schedule tells you to, no time else. There is no excuse.” I saved it, printed it out, sent a copy to my own email, and followed it to the letter.

The next call that happened that same day, of course, had the long call crossing over with a break issue.

Me: *To my customer* “Would it be okay for me to call you back?”

Customer: “No!”

Me: “Unfortunately, I cannot stay on the line as I am required to take my break.”

Customer: *Enraged* “What?! I demand to speak with your boss!”

I told my boss what was happening.

Boss: “You need to apologize to the customer and finish the call.”

I showed them the email they had just sent to me.

Me: “You told me to take my break at this time no matter what. I’m just doing what you told me to do. I’m taking my break. Would you like the customer transferred over? Or should I just hang up?”

They took the call over, and from that day on, I never had a missed attendance mark.

This is a story from my time in a telecoms contact centre. I worked for a rather large Australian provider that everyone knows and actively hates, mostly because it’s fun to hate them. In this story, we were doing outbound calls to transition people onto the new NBN (National Broadband Network). (For those of you unfamiliar with Australia’s Internet, we were incredibly slow until we rolled out the NBN and upgraded to… slightly faster speeds.) Also worth mentioning is that, much like the company I worked for, the NBN was universally hated.

Like all call centres, we had a bunch of miserable hoops to jump through in order to bring our paycheck up to a level that could be considered humane. Our bosses refer to these hoops as KPIs. (Key Performance Indicators, for the blissfully ignorant.)

With the new campaign came a new set of KPIs. Conversion rate, active call time, after-call time, and customer satisfaction were the KPIs of the day.

These KPIs were normally all bulls***. You needed to meet some god-tier numbers in order to collect a half-decent paycheck. However, in this particular case, there was a loophole. Due to the controversial nature of the NBN, we were told to focus on quality over quantity. They wanted “an excellent customer experience”, and the new KPIs were a reflection of that. As such, the quantity of conversions was not a KPI, and when I questioned if we had time limits on calls I was told, “We don’t care what you do, but long calls mean a good experience, so keep them on the line and get them switched over.”

And so began the best work month I had at that soul trap. Before entering coms, I was a salesman in aged care — and a pretty good one at that. And you know that stereotype of old people talking for eternity and beyond? It’s a stereotype for a reason. Each morning, I would log in, volunteer for the aged clientele campaign (which was easy because they were normally the hardest people to convert, fearful of scams, technology, and such, so not many people wanted to do it), and then I would start to chat.

When speaking with the elderly, all it takes is a well-placed poke or two, and you can literally have them speak for hours. So, for the next month, I took two to four calls a day (down from twenty to thirty), had almost zero after-call time (the calls were so long that I didn’t need it), and had an 80% conversion rate and 90% customer satisfaction. (It turns out people tend to like you after you take the time to listen to them.) Each phone call — assuming I wasn’t told to f*** off upon introducing myself — would last two to three hours minimum, with my record being a seven-hour call to a lovely bloke named Stan who told some great war stories.

I ended up doubling my normal paycheck. And my managers, while not entirely happy with my nonsense, put up with it because, at the end of the day, those were the rules and KPIs we were given. I got my paycheck, the oldies got a good chat, and my employer got to pay through the nose. Happy endings for all.

I proceeded to hand in my resignation once the KPIs went back to normal. To this day, I regard that as one of the best decisions I ever made.

I am working my daily shift at work when my cousin comes over and hands me a coffee and donuts from the local bakery.

Me: “Aww, thank you!”

Cousin: “You’re welcome! I can’t stay long as I have to get back to the guys; I will see you later at the reunion!”

He leaves and a customer comes up to me.

Customer: “Does your manager know you’re getting free coffee and donuts?”

Me: “He’s my cousin, and he took the time to get me the coffee and donuts.”

The customer tries to grab one of my donuts.

Me: “If you lay a hand on these donuts, I will throw you out so fast you will get whiplash.”

Customer: “Excuse me?”

Me: “You’re excused. Bye now, and thank you for coming to the store. Have a good day!”

My coworker and manager heard me and told me they laughed when I said that!

At one point during college, I worked as a Saturday delivery driver for a mini-chain of local auto parts delivery stores. I got the job because my father worked there for many years, and we’d known the owner for quite some time. After a few weeks of working there, plus my usual part-time job and classes, my give-a-f***-o-meter had broken.

One delivery stands out as notable.

Me: “Here are your items. Please check and sign the invoice.”

Customer: “Thanks. These took a long time to get here.”

Me: “Really? When did you order them?”

Customer: “Like three to five days ago. [Dad] took my order.”

Me: *Trying not to grin* “Oh, that guy? Yeah, I’ve dealt with him.”

Customer: “Yeah, he can be a pain.”

Me: “Let’s do something about it.”

I took out my cell phone and called my dad.

Me: “Hey, [Dad], I’m delivering to [Customer], and he says you’re slow at getting the order filled and that he made it several days ago.”

Dad: “Oh, he’s pulling that again? He put it in late last night, I saw it this morning, and he got added to the deliveries list.”

Me: *Loudly* “Oh, okay, thanks for the clarification.” *To the customer* “My dad says you put that one in last night.”

Customer: “Oh… I… Yeah, I guess I did.”

He never pulled that again.