Semper Bye Bye, Part 2

(I’ve recently come back from a week off recovering from surgery. This takes place when a semi-regular customer, who has always been a bit of a pain, sees me back.)

Customer: “You! Where the h*** have you been?! Off on vacation, I assume, off enjoying yourself not giving two s***s about your customers!”

Me: “Actually, I was recovering from surgery.”

Customer: “Right, you expect me to believe you had surgery done? You were probably on vacation! Don’t you know you people don’t get a vacation? You are put on this earth to cater to people like me!”

Me: “Yeah, no.”

Customer: “Excuse me?!”

Me: “I’m not put here to cater to you. In fact, I’m refusing you service.”

Customer: “You can’t do that, you stupid b****! Do your f***ing job before I beat some sense into you!”

(By this point, a coworker and the owner have overheard the commotion and come over.)

Coworker: *to me* “Go ahead and clock out.”

Customer: *startled* “What?”

Coworker: “You wanted to have a go at her, right? Well, I’m letting her go clock out. I should warn you, though, she’s a black belt and she served two tours in Iraq. Good luck to you, sir.”

Customer: *to the owner* “I want her fired!”

Owner: “I want to watch her kick your a** all over our parking lot. We can’t always get what we want.”

Customer: “You can’t speak to me this way! Don’t you know who I am?”

Owner: “Can’t say that I care who you are.”

Customer: “I’m very important!”

Coworker: “No you aren’t. People who say that are never important. Are you also kind of a big deal?”

Customer: “I DEMAND something be done about this! What are you going to do?!”

Owner: “Well, first I’m going to kick you out, then I’m going to let her go kick you around our parking lot, THEN I plan to give both my employees here raises for having to deal with people like you.”

Customer: “You can’t do that!”

Owner: “Sure I can. Oh, and I’d get moving if I were you. I’m sending her to clock out right now.”

Customer: “Right, like you can do anything to me.”

Me: “Honey, I was trained by the US Marines. Do you really want to take that chance?”

(The customer finally believes me and suddenly looks terrified. He starts backing away with his hands out.)

Customer: “Hey, we were just fooling… no harm done, right?”

Me: “Wrong, I’ll give you a ten second head start…”

(The customer runs out of the store in a blind panic. We never saw him again after that. My coworker and I did in fact get a raise!)