Please Activate Your Brain While You’re At It

(I’m cashiering at a large department store. I have a customer who is really pushing my buttons by requesting different things in different bags and just being a pain in the butt. By the time she’s ready to pay, I just want her out of there.)

Me: “Ma’am, your card was declined. You can try it again though, if you like.”

Customer: “Wow, that’s weird. This card is brand new.”

(She swipes it again, signs, and it is once again declined.)

Me: “I’m sorry, it still won’t go through. Do you have another card?”

(The customer spends ten minutes looking through her wallet and finally emerges with another card and swipes it through. She keeps looking at her first card while the second card is processing.)

Customer: “Do you think it didn’t work cause I didn’t activate it?”

Me: “Yeah, probably.”

Customer: “Why do they make you do that anyway?!”