(It was late into my eight-hour shift at a huge retail drugstore chain, and I was getting tired of dumb questions.)
Customer: “Do you take credit cards here?”
Me: “No, ma’am. We only take live chickens and large rocks.”
(The customer actually had a sense of humor and started laughing, while my manager was laughing too hard to yell at me.)
Customer: *staring at the credit card machine* “I don’t know what to do. What does it want me to do?”
Me: “What does the screen say?”
Customer: “Press the green button.”
Me: “Then… well… maybe you should press that green button there.”
Customer: “Oh, okay.”
(The store’s power went out one day so we were using a pocket calculator to figure out totals and writing up paper receipts.)
Customer: “I’m not ready to pay yet, but can you tell me what I will owe?”
(I punch some numbers into the calculator, which returns 26.595.)
Me: “Your total will be $26.59.”
(When the customer comes back to pay, the power has just come back on and our computer system is up and running so I enter her purchase information.)
Me: “Okay, the total comes to $26.60.”
Customer: “You told me $26.59 before.”
Me: “Oh yeah, it’s because it was something like 26.595 and I just truncated the number instead of rounding it, but the computer rounds automatically.”
Customer: “I find it very interesting that it would round in favor of itself.”
Me: “Um, that’s just how rounding works. If it had been 26.594 it would have rounded down.”
Customer: “I just find it very interesting that the customer loses out on this.”
Me: “…”
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(One day a man broke into our staff-only area and stole mine and my colleague’s purses and phones. This exchange took place about two minutes after I disturbed the burglar and he ran past me. I was in a bad state of shock.)
Customer: “What’s happened?”
Me: “Someone has just broken into upstairs and stolen our purses and mobiles.”
Customer: “Well, you know why that is don’t you? It’s because your prices are so high!”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Customer: “Well if your prices weren’t so high then people wouldn’t need to do that.”
Me: “I’m sorry… you believe that because you think our stock is expensive that it gave someone the right to steal my personal possessions?”
(The customer then looked around her and noticed the rest of the queue staring at her in disbelief.)
Customer: “Well it’s not that I think… I mean… some might say… I…”
(She stuttered incoherently for a while and then paid for her items in silence.)
Next Customer: “What a complete fool! Are you alright, dear?”
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(Years ago I was working the closing shift at a local convenience store. It was late when a very elderly man came in and bought a six-pack of beer, cigarettes and condoms. After ringing up the sale…)
Me: “Have a good night, sir!”
Man: “Oh, I will. The missus is out of town!”
Me: *shocked and speechless*
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