Her Demand Goes Up In Smoke

We have a regular customer who is an absolute pain when it comes to buying cigarettes. She wants to know what’s sold the most and wants to look at each individual packet for some unknown reason. She will also try to return cigarettes and has been told multiple times that we cannot do that. She comes in one day when I have a different coworker working with me than normal and said coworker starts processing the return.

Me: “[Coworker], we can’t return cigarettes.”

Coworker: “Oh, okay.” *To the customer* “Sorry, I’ve been told we can’t return these.”

Customer: “You can do it for me. The girl who sold them to me said I could return them.”

Me: “Sorry, we can’t return cigarettes under any circumstances. You have been told this before.”

Customer: “Oh, but it’s not a return; it’s an exchange.”

Me: “Nope, still can’t do it.”

Customer: *Yelling* “I’ve been told to exchange these for health reasons.”

Me: “Sorry, we can’t return cigarettes for any reason, as you’ve been told before.”

Customer: “You mean you are going to make me keep these un-smokable cigarettes?”

Me: “Sorry, we can’t return cigarettes for any reason.”

Customer: “Well, I’m not leaving until I get my cigarettes.”

The customer continued yelling the same things over and over and I also kept repeating myself. [Coworker] and I kept serving other customers as this went on because it was the dinner time rush. Most customers just ignored her or backed us up.

Eventually, the customer went outside as her friend was getting impatient, so I sent a different coworker out the back with my phone to let the store owner know the situation. The store owner came down and trespassed the customer as I was not the only supervisor to have had issues with them.