Unfiltered Story #177071

I work at a high-end pet store that specializes in high-quality foods. Most of my work is converting customers from low-quality food to high-quality food, and probably 65% of our customers are regulars. Within my first two months of working there, a man I hadn’t seen in the store before walks in with a chihuahua and I go to greet him.

Me: Hi, welcome to (store), how may I help you today?

(The customer walks right past me and ignores my greeting, so I walk up to him with a free treat that we give to dogs who come into the store)

Me: Hi, how are you today? Would it be alright if I gave your doggie a treat?

Customer: Oh no thanks, my dog gets all he needs from his food.

Me: Great! May I ask what you’re feeding him?

Customer: He gets the good stuff, Twizzlers and leftover chicken bones! Do you sell tennis balls here?

Me: (trying to hide the shock I’m feeling from learning that his dog is surviving on sugar and something he could choke on) oh…um, the tennis balls are right over there.

(As the man rifles through our tennis balls, he begins telling me random stories about how he pretends his dog is a seeing eye dog so he can take the dog on the bus with him, and various other weird ramblings. He finally decides on a tennis ball and walks up to the register. I let my coworker take over because I was uncomfortable and didn’t want to listen to any more stories)

Coworker: okay, just the tennis ball will be $1.07.

(The customer then pulls a $5 bill out of his pocket and proceeds to try to get his dog to hold it in its mouth)

Customer: Go on, boy! Take the money! Give him the money! Go on!

My coworker proceeded to wait at least a minute while the customer tried to get his dog to hand him the money. I had to walk into the back of the store at this point because it was too hard to keep myself from laughing. I have no idea how long my coworker let him do this before politely requesting the money, but when he came to me later he told me to never leave him alone with a customer that crazy again!