Plumbing The Depths Of Entitlement

The other day, the supermarket I work at had a pipe break and needed the water shut off through the whole store while it was getting fixed. We had no working bathrooms for my entire closing shift because of this. We got a warning ahead of time that the water would be shut off around 9:30, and the store closes at 10:00. This meant that we had to close our deli department early before the water shut off. This wasn’t much of a problem since, on a regular day, we get maybe three customers past 8:00 pm.

Around 9:00, this dude walked up.

Customer: “You’re closed?!”

Me: “Yes. Unfortunately, there was a plumbing issue so we’ve had to close early. However, we can still slice meat and cheese right now, and we have boxes of fried chicken.”

Customer: *Starting to walk away* “Isn’t there an 800 number I can call?”

Me: “For what?”

Customer: *Huffy* “To tell corporate how you guys are deciding to close early and didn’t tell anyone. This is ridiculous!”

Me: *Flabbergasted* “Um, well, if you’d like, you could talk to the manager in charge tonight.”

Customer: “No, I’ll just find the number online.”

He walked smugly away, after clearly putting me in my place with his comments.

I mean, I’m genuinely curious about what he believed to be the best course of action here. Are we expected to call everyone within a thirty-mile radius, letting them know that our already empty deli would be closing an hour earlier than usual? Or did he trust that our psychic link with him would alert us of his craving for a sub? I guess I’ll never know.