I am unloading a truck at [Pet Store] when a woman hits the buzzer at the front door. I walk up to the front to open the door — a two-minute trek — and she keeps hitting the buzzer while making eye contact.

Me: “Hi there. Here for grooming?”

Customer: “Obviously.” *Gestures to her dog* “You know, these doors are supposed to be unlocked after 7:00 am. I’m now late because of you.”

I did unlock the door at 7:00 am, but I can only guess someone else locked it again since we don’t open for anything but grooming until the store opens for other sales at 9:00 am.

Me: “I apologize for the confusion. I will find out who locked it and—”

Customer: “Who even are you? I know the store manager, and I will have you fired.”

She mentions the old manager by name.

Me: “I’m the new store manager, ma’am. [Old Manager] has moved to a new store.”

Customer: “Why are you still talking?”

I silently gesture toward grooming and smile. The customer stalks off, and I go back to the stock room to continue. A moment later, the door bangs open and the customer is walking toward me, her phone pointed at me.

Customer: “I will be sending this to corporate. I want them to know why you thought it was appropriate to have the door locked.”

I put on my best customer service smile and voice.

Me: “Hello, ma’am. This area is employee-only, so I’m going to have to ask you to head back out those doors and we can speak out there.”

Customer: “No, you can answer me right here and right now. Why were the doors locked?”

Me: “This area is employee-only, so I’m going to have to ask you to head back out those doors and we can speak out there.”

Customer: “I am not leaving until—”

I repeat myself with a fixed smile and a happy customer service tone.

Customer: “What are you doing? I—”

I repeat myself with a fixed smile and a happy customer service tone.

Customer: “You’re f****** r*****ed. You know that? I have half a mind to pull my dog from grooming and never return.”

She left and I returned to my stocking duties once again. I never heard from corporate.

I work in a famous chain fast food restaurant, and today, I am in the dish pit. A car rolls up to the speaker.

I say my little greeting, and then I wait… and wait. No “Just a minute.” Nothing.

Finally, I go back to doing dishes. Then, I hear:

Customer: “Hello? Hello? I’d like to order sometime today!”

Now, granted, I gave them a good forty-five seconds to answer when I greeted them. However, I just put on my smile.

Me: “Yes, how can I help you today?”

First of all, she keeps confusing us with two other food chains and requesting items from their menus. Second of all, she keeps changing her order. For example, we have an egg muffin and a sausage muffin with egg. She asks for an egg muffin and wants to add sausage to it.

Being the nice little food worker I am, I ring up the sausage muffin with egg to save her some money, because it’s the same ingredients.

She flips her lid.

Customer: “I said I wanted an egg muffin, not a sausage muffin! I just want to add sausage to it!”

No amount of explaining would convince her that this would be more cost-effective. Finally, I just did what she asked, not caring if she spent more money than she needed to. The total came to around twenty-five dollars, a big order for our breakfast time.

She pulled up with about seven people in her car. They took several long minutes trying to find change in their pockets because they all wanted to chip in. But some didn’t want to break bills. Can Person A swap this tenner for a five? Person B has exact change, but Person C has their order’s value in coins and wants to lighten their purse. A line behind her piled up behind her and she had ruined our drive-thru time, but they kept waffling back and forth about one thing or another.

She FINALLY paid, so I told her to pull up to the next window and to have a nice day. What did she do? She passed the second window and drove off, after paying for her food!

Now, I had a line out into the street because of this woman and had to scramble to get people through in time, hopefully without getting screamed at because half of them were late to get to work.

I finally got the line down when, about an hour later, the woman came up to the counter. She was demanding her food because we hadn’t given it to her! I have no idea how seven people didn’t notice this OR bring it up. And of course, by this time, it had been thrown out. We made all that food she ordered for nothing. We even kept it aside for her in case she came back, but after fifteen minutes, we had no choice but to toss it.

My coworkers told her this, and I swear I could hear her all the way in the back over the spray nozzle! She kept saying that she knew the president of our chain and that she was going to get us shut down. We offered to remake the food for her, but she wasn’t having that. She didn’t want a refund. She didn’t want her food remade. She wanted to rant about how she “could be s***ting it out by now if you had given it to me”!

A manager had to sprint the length of the store to shut her down. He read her the riot act, including blatantly telling her to her face that it was her own stupid fault for driving past the second window and not following directions. As she stood flabbergasted by the shiny spine before her, he told her to either pick a refund or pick new food. No more nonsense from her; he was ending her shenanigans as of now!

She finally left with her money, and we have a description of her for the cashiers to refuse her service.

A teenage girl comes up to me at the customer service desk.

Customer: “Do you have any phones in the lost and found?”

Me: “Possibly. What kind of phone have you lost?”

Customer: “Oh, just list to me the ones that you do have, and I’ll let you know if I want it or not.”

Me: “…”

I’m a cashier at my local privately-owned grocery store. I’m out front running the cart sanitization station, where we clean carts before they’re given to shoppers.

Being in a small town, you get to know most of your regular shoppers, both the good and the bad. But there is this one guy who comes in every other Sunday. This guy has many defining features about him, specifically the hard hat, construction vest, and noise-cancelling headphones, and he has this pink dog chew toy strapped to the front of his vest. I’ve seen his unfavourable behaviour both inside the store in the aisles and checkout, and outside the store at the cart sanitization area.

On this particular Sunday, he pulls up to the store on his bicycle (recognized instantly because of the pink pool noodle tied in a knot on the back). He hops off and struts toward the doors. I wipe a cart and stick it in front of the door. He has no mask on (a usual occurrence), but today he also DOES NOT HAVE PANTS ON.

I (or anyone else on sanitization) usually don’t stop him for his lack of mask and immediately call a manager on our mobile store phone, because we know it will do absolutely nothing if we try and intervene ourselves. But today, I have to stop him before I even call the manager.

Me: “Sir, hey! Hey, sir! Stop!”

I wave my arm in front of him.

Guy: “WHAT?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?!”

I gesture for him to take off his headphones, but he doesn’t.

Guy: “WHAT DO YOU WANT?! I’M TRYING TO SHOP! I DONT WEAR MASKS!”

Me: *Almost yelling* “I know, sir, but I can’t let you in if you’re not wearing pants!”

The guy then swats his hand at me, almost hitting my face shield, grabs his cart, and goes into the store. I grab the phone and dial the extension for any manager’s phone. When the manager on shift picks up, he barely has a chance to say, “Hello?” before I interrupt him.

Me: “Hey, [Manager], that guy with the headphones— Yeah, that one— No, it’s not just the mask; he doesn’t have pants on today.”

Manager: “What? Is he just naked?”

Me: “No, no, he has boxer briefs on — Superman ones, actually — but very clearly not pants or even shorts.”

The phone hung up on me, and not five minutes later, a cop car pulled up to the entrance. The cop and his partner nodded their heads at me and walked into the store. Another few minutes passed, and I was able to witness the guy being escorted out the doors and to his bike. I think he was given a ticket, but I’m not too sure.

Apparently, my manager had confronted the guy and asked if he had anything to put on as we would not serve him if he wasn’t appropriately clothed. He refused to dress up (even though he had a pair of cargo shorts with his bike) so my manager repeated to him a couple of times that he had to dress up or leave the store, and he continued to refuse.

At that point, my manager had called the non-emergency number for our town’s police and consulted with them about what he should do if anything, and the police themselves chose to come and deal with the issue personally.

I am prepping pastry and bread in our bakery at 6:00 am. I come in every morning at 5:45 am to do this, and obviously, I turn on the lights so I can see what I am doing.

I see a customer at the door but ignore them because I am still prepping, the bakery is obviously closed, and I have a lot to prep. They’ll figure it out.

They do not figure it out.

Instead, I come back to the front to see them wrenching the door open with a stick and wandering in like it’s nothing!

Customer: “Can I have a coffee and a croissant?”

Their gall immediately makes sense when I hear their American accent.

Me: “We don’t open until 7:00 am.”

Customer: “Well, since I’m in the store already?”

I’ve never been so pleased by the fact that the pastries were still in the oven and the coffee maker was on its cleaning program.

Related:
Not So Closed Minded, Part 30
Not So Closed Minded, Part 29
Not So Closed Minded, Part 28
Not So Closed Minded, Part 27
Not So Closed Minded, Part 26