I work in a convenience store. One morning, a guy came in right after I opened and gave me a hundred-dollar bill for a forty-dollar purchase. I don’t start with a lot of cash in my drawer, and his change would have taken half my fives and tens.

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t have enough cash to give you your change and keep my drawer full. Do you have any smaller bills?”

He had a cow.

Customer #1: “Absolutely not! I’m not going anywhere until you give me my sixty dollars!”

I didn’t have many tens and fives, but I did have a lot of ones. So, I gave him fifty ones and two fives. The look on his face when I handed him that big wad of bills was priceless. He tried to argue with me, and I simply told him that that was the best I could do.

On a different day, I had a woman come in.

Customer #2: “I need change for a twenty. I need a ten and two fives.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but my drawer is wiped.”

To get around that, she bought something for a dollar to force me to break it. I gave her the change in all ones. She just stared at me like she thought maybe I was joking, but I just shrugged back at her. She didn’t say a word as she left with a handful of ones.

I was having a decent day at the register, and things were going great. Then came this customer. She was in a bad mood, and I was trying to stay positive, but she kept telling me to hurry up when I was scanning because she was in a rush. She had a full cart of stuff.

Me: “I’m going as fast as I can. I’m sorry.”

Customer: “You shouldn’t be making $11 an hour! You’re too slow!”

She just kept berating me as I rang up her items.

Finally, the time came to pay. She swiped her card and it was declined. She tried again. Denied. Third time. Denied.

She called the bank and learned that her account had been run almost completely dry and only had about $24 left.

She stormed out quickly after, and I got some time away from the register to put her groceries away.

The store building at this petrol station is tiny. We only sell cigarettes, snacks, drinks, air fresheners, and that sort of thing.

There is no cash register at all; we have a desk calculator and a clipboard. That’s it. Instead, to balance the till, you do a complete inventory of the store at the beginning and end of every shift — so many of each type of chocolate bar, flavour of chips, type of soda, etc. — noting the numbers on an inventory sheet. It isn’t too onerous, as there are only something like a hundred different items in the store.

You subtract the number of each left at the end of the shift from the number at the start of the shift, multiply by the price, add all the items’ amounts up, and that’s what your till should contain. It works surprisingly well.

Working the overnight graveyard shift — 11:00 pm to 7:00 am — you see some real characters. One night as I was finishing my shift, a guy came in and saw what I was doing. He asked about it, and I explained. He then spoke cockily about how he could make life difficult for me by buying a bunch of different things and how I would have to recount everything.

So, he did, in fact, buy a dozen things, gloating about how much work he was causing me. After handing him his change, I quickly scratched out “17” and wrote “16” for the first item and went down the sheet changing the number for each of the things he bought.

I guess he forgot about subtraction. He stormed out, unhappy.

I work in a charity bookshop. We accept donations of books, sort them, and set them out for sale. We have many regular customers who buy a few books, read them, return them, and buy more; our books are very cheap. An elderly gentleman I don’t recognise comes in and browses for a few minutes, chooses three books, and approaches the desk.

Me: “Hi. Just these three?”

Customer: “Yes, hold on…”

He hands them to me and rummages in his bag. He pulls out three books that have our price stickers on. I know they are from a few weeks ago as we have a date code on them.

Customer: “I’ve got these to give back to you.”

Me: “Oh, thank you! Okay, your total is £2.25.”

Customer: “I gave you those books back.”

Me: “Yes, thank you. I’ll add them to the donations.”

Customer: “So, we’re okay, then?”

He picks up the three books he chose.

Me: “Um, yeah. Okay, £2.25, please.”

Customer: “No, I gave you three books.”

Me: “Yes, and we appreciate the donation. Did you want to buy these ones?”

Customer: “I gave you three; I’m taking three. Why do you want money?”

Me: “I’m sorry, we’re a bookshop. We raise money for our charity. We do appreciate all donations, but we don’t give books away; we sell them.”

Customer: “So, I can’t take these?”

Me: “You can if you pay £2.25.”

Customer: “I paid for the other three!”

Me: “Yes, but if we just swapped books for free, we’d be a library. Do you want to pay for these or not?”

Customer: “Not!”

And out he stomped.

An older French guy is checking out at my register. He puts some coins down.

Me: “Sir, I can’t accept this money.”

Customer: “Why not?”

Me: “Well, these are Francs. They’ve been replaced by the Euro… and this is the USA.” 

Customer: *Sighs* “No one is taking these anymore…”

Not since 1999, I believe!