Unfiltered Story #193993

(A MAJOR thunderstorm is moving through the area: torrential downpours and even some hail. Lightning has recently struck a transformer near our store, knocking out the power. Shortly after, our emergency generator kicks in to keep the lights running, but since the Internet is down our registers are offline and essentially useless. It is still storming when a customer starts banging on the closed doors.)

Customer: We have a heavy photocopier in our car we want to return. Can someone come help us bring it in?

Me: Unfortunately we’ve just lost power and all of our registers are down right now. We don’t know when they’ll come back on, so we can’t process a return right now.

Customer: But the lights are on, you must have power.

Me: We’re running off a generator to keep the lights on, but it doesn’t power the network our registers run on.

(At this point my manager comes up behind me.)

Customer: So I dragged this heavy box all the way here in the pouring rain and you won’t return it?

Manager: It’s not that I WON’T return it, it’s that I CAN’T. It’s out of my hands.

Customer: Well I am VERY unimpressed with your customer service. I can’t believe you made me drag it ALL the way here from (town about 30 minutes away). This is ridiculous!

(The customer continued to stand and argue with us for another half hour before we finally closed for good. They left with the photocopier, still telling us all about how “horrendous” our customer service was.)