I’m purchasing some wine at the grocery store. I always have my ID out when I’m purchasing alcohol in case it’s requested, which is more frequent when I’m wearing a mask. Sure enough, the cashier asks to see my ID.
As I take back my card:
Me: “Thank you for checking!”
The cashier stops mid-scan as if his brain has short-circuited.
Cashier: *Mouth agape* “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that response before!”
As far as I know, no store in Canada gives any kind of military discount, veteran or otherwise. We are not as military-oriented as the USA.
I work at a drug store as a cash supervisor. It is my job to cover my cashier’s breaks and make sure customers get as good a customer experience as possible. For those who don’t know, drug stores do not sell tobacco or alcohol products, so the only item we sell that requires an ID is lottery. We also have a senior’s day on Thursday where anyone sixty-five and older can get 20% off. We don’t need an ID or proof of age; they usually just know to ask for it since signs are up everywhere advertising the discount.
It is a Saturday, so no managers are in. I am covering my cashier’s break when a man comes up with a basket full of stuff. I make the usual greetings.
Me: “Do you have a rewards card? And would you like a bag?”
Customer: *Gruffly* “I’m visiting from the US; of course, I don’t have a rewards card with you.”
He doesn’t respond to wanting a bag, so I just start stacking his items at the end of the till.
When I finish scanning his items, I read off his total.
Me: “Are you paying with cash or card?”
He tosses an ID on the counter.
Me: “Oh, did you want lottery?”
Customer: “What? No. I want a discount.”
I think he means the senior’s discount.
Me: “Oh, I’m sorry, but we only have a senior discount on Thursdays.”
The customer looks at me like I’m stupid and shoves the ID closer.
Customer: “I’m a veteran, missy. That means I get a discount no matter what day it is.”
Me: “Um… I’m sorry, but we don’t do veterans discounts here in Canada.”
Customer: “Well, they do where I’m from, so you need to honor that.”
I stand there dumbfounded. How does that make any sense?
Me: “I’m sorry, but I have no way to put any kind of discount on your purchase, as it is not Thursday for senior’s day, and we have no promo going on right now.”
He gets obviously upset and red in the face.
Customer: “I want your supervisor. I want you fired. I want a new cashier.”
I blink at him. I can barely get the words out.
Me: “I am the supervisor. And there is no store manager in today.”
The man flips and starts yelling at me.
Customer: “You’re discriminating against me! You must hate the US. I hope we bomb your country next! Canada is such a stupid place with stupid people!”
I just stood there, not sure what to do. People were starting to stare, and I was so freaked out that all I could do is stand there with my mouth open going, “Uhhh…”
Finally, he said his piece and stomped out of the store with his ID and nothing else. I stood there in silence for a few minutes just trying to process what happened. My cashier came back, but I had nothing else to do, so I just stayed on till to help with customers.
A little elderly woman came up to my register to ask if I was all right and said that she had never liked those “hooligans south of the border”. She made me smile and actually helped me put some of the items away that the man had left on the till.
A customer came to the register with a crate of a few bottles of wine, and he handed me just one. This is pretty normal for people who are buying a lot of one thing so they don’t have to put everything on the counter. I put it in as eight bottles of that wine, which were about 6€ per bottle.
A few days later, when the wine department was doing inventory, they noticed a number of bottles of more expensive wine (about 30€ per bottle) were missing, but the register system didn’t show any being sold. They reviewed the security footage and found my customer in front of the shelf filling the crate with one bottle of the cheap wine and the rest with the expensive one, which looked identical. It was the same brand and vineyard but different years or something. Of course, he told me they were all the same cheaper wine, and I blindly trusted that because, A) people do this all the time, B) I didn’t know there were identical-looking wines with such a huge price differential, and C) he was a somewhat regular customer; I’d definitely seen him before, and the people who stole from us or scammed us usually only came once.
We’ve also had people trying to scam cashiers by asking them to exchange large bills and break them up into smaller ones and then constantly changing their minds on how they want the bills broken up to confuse the cashier into accidentally giving them more money than they were asking to exchange. It did work on a few people, and that actually led to a policy change; we’re not allowed to exchange anything above ten bucks now. Initially, it was actually no exchanges at all, but that led to a lot of customers getting upset at us when they’d try to get a coin for a cart or change for the copy machine and be told no.
This was when the chip cards first came out. A particular bank would only allow their cards to be used as debit and not credit. I had to tell this lady three times she had to choose debit and put in her PIN. After about thirty seconds she said:
Customer: “I only know what my PIN is at the bank. Is it the same here?”
I smiled and said yes, but I had to fight extremely hard to keep from laughing until she walked out the door.
I had an older man trying to get money back with his transaction.
Customer: “I don’t know my PIN! I never have to use my PIN when I use the ATM!”
He searched his card thoroughly for the PIN and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t part of the sets of numbers on the card. He left pissed off that I was not able to tell him his PIN.
