(I have this conversation on an almost daily basis:)

Customer: “Do you have [thing that was produced in very small quantity and became unexpectedly popular, and is therefore sold out everywhere]?”

Me: “No, we sold out almost immediately, and our distributor didn’t have any left by the time we reordered. We’re waiting on it to be reprinted.”

Customer: “Well, can’t you order it?”

Me: “We have. As soon as we drop below our minimum inventory threshold, we order a restock, but since even the manufacturer doesn’t have any we can’t get them.”

Customer: “But why don’t you just order more?”

Me: *inside my mind* “Because we knew infuriating people like you would want them, and we want to be able to tell you, ‘No,’ honestly.” *out loud* “I can take your name and number and wait-list you for when the reprint finally happens, but that will probably be a few months from now.” *our industry is chronically undercapitalized and multi-month stock outages are common* “If you’re in a hurry you can buy it from a price-gouger on Amazon or eBay.”

Customer: “No, that’s okay. I’ll just come back.”

(Repeat entire conversation next weekend because “months” means “days” in customer-land.)

I work in a retail-flooring store that also has a warehouse attached. Earlier this afternoon, we had a large propane leak in our warehouse and we’re in the process of evacuating the building.

A lady walked into our store as we were evacuating the employees out. She looked around and asked us what was going on, so we explained. She then ignored what she had just heard about the gas leak and started asking questions about the flooring that she was looking for.

After trying to guide her to the front door while answering her questions, she started to get very upset. She couldn’t comprehend why we wouldn’t let her back into our showroom to view all of our available products. We once again explained the situation and how dangerous it was for anyone to be in the building, but she wasn’t having it. She wanted to look at every hardwood sample that we had in the building because she had driven 15 minutes across the city and her time was very precious.

Apparently, she really needed that hardwood today if it was worth putting her life at risk. My manager stepped in to prevent her from pushing us out of the way to go look at the flooring. Needless to say, she did not purchase any flooring from us today.

(I work at a company as a photographer. Recently, my boss suggested getting the watermark always used on our images changed, so I got a new watermark from our graphic designer and starting using it. Several weeks later, I am chatting with my boss.)

Boss: *while scrolling through images* “That watermark looks so much nicer than the old one!”

Me: “I agree!”

Boss: “Good job suggesting that.”

Me: “Um… That was actually your idea.”

Boss: “Oh?”

Me: *laughing* “So, good job!”

Boss: “Thanks! I just wanted to be complimented.”

Me: “Slightly backhanded, but hey, it worked!”

(I work at a hotel where we take third-party online reservations. Every now and again, reservations will come in that have requests attached, but we can’t always view the whole request, because of miscommunications between the third-party system and the hotel’s system.)

Guest: “We did put in a request for a baby crib, if you have one, but we figured the message didn’t go through.”

(I check, and start laughing.)

Me: *between laughs* “It did… It just got cut off, so it says, ‘Could you please provide us with a baby.’”

(The guest chuckles.)

Guest: “We already have two; we don’t need any more.”

Me: “I will go get you that crib.”

Guest: “Hopefully without a baby in it!”

(I am working by myself on a Sunday morning and a customer comes in. Our store policy prohibits us from asking yes or no questions to customers, so we have to give open-ended questions to get the customer talking to us.)

Me: “Hello, sir.”

Customer: “Hello.”

Me: “How are you doing today?”

Customer: “No, thank you.”

Me: “Um… That doesn’t answer my question.”

Customer: “Did you not hear me? I SAID NO!”