Some People Were Dragged Into The Digital Age Kicking And Screaming

I worked in a camera store many lifetimes ago when digital cameras had only just started coming out. To go along with the then-new tech, we started doing in-store printing from digital media, but only certain media like CDs or USB or Floppy. I had this one customer come in with one of the latest Kodak Digital cameras wanting to print the images from it. He took the memory card out, a very flimsy smart card, and told me to print from it.

Me: “We can’t print from a smart card, so I’ll need to transfer it to a CD before printing, which will cost nothing.”

Either he didn’t understand what I was telling him or he didn’t hear me, so I repeated it. He then went into a full meltdown.

Customer: “I spent so much on a camera that I can’t even print from! It’s a hunk of crap!”

And on and on. Even my manager was telling him that we COULD print but he needed to give us a moment to get things set up to do it. Nope! The customer wasn’t having it and continued his rant. Then, he threw his camera in our bin.

Customer: “I’m going to go buy a better one!”

My manager and I, along with a customer or two that were there, just looked at each other, bewildered. We retrieved the camera from our bin, downloaded the images, and found a picture of the man’s driving license. We then packaged up the camera and posted it out to him with a CD copy, with a pay-postage-on-receipt label — like h*** were we paying out to send him his property, which was also damaged after the bin toss.

We never saw that customer again.