Groomed For Mental Illness

CONTENT WARNING: DEATH

(I work at a pet shop as a dog groomer. This exchange happens between me and an unpleasant customer one afternoon.)

Me: “How can I help you, ma’am?”

Customer: “I had my dog groomed here, and you charged $3 extra for her haircut. I want to know why.”

(I look her up.)

Me: “After looking at her info, I see she got a special coat treatment and was charged extra.”

Customer: “I know she got special treatment. What I want to know is why I was charged extra for it. I only wanted it on one part of her body.”

Me: “Well, ma’am, we charge for extras. It even says so on our board, and we just can’t treat just one spot, so the groomer charged you.”

(The customer started screaming about how incompetent we all were and how she wanted a full refund for upsetting her. She grabbed some scissors on the desk and threatened to slash her dog’s throat if we didn’t do as she said. I yelled at my coworkers to call 911 because she had flipped and was scaring everyone in the shop. She ran out the door and drove off before the cops showed up. About two weeks later, I was walking across the parking lot of the vet next door to our shop when I heard a car start up. It was the customer, driving towards me, sticking her head out of the car, and shrieking. She drove right at me, and I had to jump out of the way before I got hit! She was screaming about how I owed her $3! I called the cops and gave them her name. When they entered her home later, they found that she had gutted her home and booby-trapped the inside so that “they couldn’t get to her.” She had binoculars trained at all the windows, watching her neighborhood. And she killed her poor dog. She got locked up for a very long time.)