Unfiltered Story #268447

(There is a truly awful customer in the store, who has been yelling, insulting staff, and generally causing a scene for about half an hour at this point. We’ve decided to ignore her, and hope she’ll leave without us having to call the police.

There are only a few other people left in the store: a young couple who have been here since the nastiness started and are understandably shaken, and a regular who is a perfectly nice woman but known to be a bit… oblivious. The young couple ask me to help them with something upstairs – when we come back down, the rude woman is still trying to pick a fight.)

Young Customer: Is she still here?

Me: We’re just ignoring her, she wants us to argue with her and we’re done. So, how are you paying for-

Regular: Are you talking about me behind my back?!

Me: What? No, uh… that woman who has been shouting at us, not you.

Regular: Because I know you’re closing soon but I still have time to be here!

Me: (confused and really hoping this isn’t happening again) No, it’s-

Young Man: You haven’t heard that lady? She’s been screaming at them for ages and she’s still here.

Regular: Oh. Why is she upset?

Me: We won’t take a deposit for her.

Regular: Why not?

(At this point, I have been cursed out, called a liar and a cheat, had someone sneer and pointedly refuse to look at me whenever I spoke, and generally been abused for the crime of not reserving a sofa. I am done.)

Me: Because we don’t take deposits. People would pay half and never come back, leaving us with stock we can’t sell without risking massive problems when they finally remember they ‘own’ it. We don’t have space. We don’t have a systen set up to track it, so we would lose things. We do not take deposits.

Regular: Oh. (Pause) Did you explain that to her?

Me: She doesn’t care. She just wants to be right and for us to be wrong.

Regular: Shall I explain that to her?

(I gave her a blank look, unable to think of any reply, and the young woman suggested she not get involved, and pulled the conversation back to the purchase that had now been stalled for almost an hour by these crazy people. At least we could close right after that, and the first awful woman left when she saw we weren’t playing along anymore.)