Customer: “I was here this morning and saw you had a two-for-one on my favorite dark chocolate bars! But now they’re all gone!”

We walk to where the bars should be, but unfortunately, there is a noticeable gap in the shelves where they should be.

Me: “It looks like they’ve all been sold, ma’am.”

Customer: “No! I was only here this morning! They can’t have all sold!”

Me: “When we have two-for-one deals, they can go pretty quickly, I’m afraid.”

As I am talking, I can see that another section of our candy aisle has been messed around a little, and a big box is peeking out from behind some display items. I normally wouldn’t have noticed, but the box is the exact same color as the dark chocolate the customer is after. I slide the display candy out of the way and am shocked to find our entire stock of the dark chocolate hiding there.

Me: “Oh, my goodness! Ma’am, you won’t believe it, but I have found the dark chocolate. I think another customer must have hidden them back here.”

Customer: *Dawning realization* “Oh, I think it was me that must have done that!”

Me: “You… hid all the dark chocolate?”

Customer: “Yes! I wanted to get as many as I could, but I needed to go home and get my better-quality bag! I remember now!”

Me: “Ma’am, please don’t do that. You’re denying the sale to other customers.”

She picks up the entire box of fifty or so candy bars.

Customer: “What’s the big deal? You’re still selling them all, aren’t you?”

Me: “911, what’s your emergency?”

Caller: “I’ve been robbed!”

Me: “Okay, ma’am. Can you please give me the details?”

Caller: “I went to the bank and their ATMs aren’t working! They’re withholding my money! My money!”

Me: “So, no one has taken any money away from you?”

Caller: “My money is in that bank, and they’re not giving it to me!”

Me: “Ma’am, that is not an emergency for 911. Please take it up with the bank.”

Caller: “It is an emergency! They don’t open until 8:30, and I need that cash now!”

Me: “Ma’am, the only reason you would call 911 about your bank is if it was being robbed. You are not being robbed, and if you call again, you could be charged with taking up an emergency line for a non-emergency.”

Caller: “So, you’re saying that you’ll only come out to the bank is if it’s being robbed? Fine, I’ll call you back!” *Click*

Thankfully, we didn’t get any reports of a bank being robbed that morning.

Long ago in the dim ages, when bear and bison swarmed the forest and the prairie, my brother worked at a guitar shop. They had a regular customer named Anatoli. Anatoli was the epitome of the Big Russian Bear: tall, broad, and just sort of physically thick all over, with an incredibly deep, thick Russian accent. He claimed to be former Russian Special Forces and had a few interesting stories to tell; regardless of whether the stories were true or not, the very real and visible scars that went along with them made him look even more imposing. He also loved to play the mandolin and was by all accounts one of the nicest regulars the store ever had; he was always polite, never impatient, and had a good relationship with all the employees.

They had another semi-regular who was a jerk — just an unrepentant a**hole. He loved to berate new employees, especially women, and store management was spineless and wouldn’t ban him because he spent middling money there.

Finally, one fateful day, Anatoli and the jerk were in the store at the same time. The jerk had arrowed in on a brand-new female employee and was in the process of yelling at her until she started to cry.

Anatoli noticed the commotion and walked over. He apparently was remarkably good at walking quietly despite his size, so the jerk didn’t notice him coming. He grabbed the jerk by the back of the neck, and casually asked the girl, in his trademark Russian rumble:

Anatoli: “Does this man bother you?”

She nodded. Anatoli looked down at the jerk and admonished him:

Anatoli: “This is nice girl. You leave her alone, yes?”

He then walked the jerk over to the main door, released his neck, and just stared at him until the jerk left the store.

My brother worked there for about another year after that incident and never saw the jerk again.

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I’m a lawyer. My client and her wife were still living together during the divorce process because neither one of them wanted to give up the house they owned. They had each taken a separate room in the house as their bedroom and did their best to avoid each other.

Unfortunately, one of the many reasons they were getting divorced was that [Client]’s wife had a petty streak a mile wide. [Client] and I applied for a restraining order due to these behaviors:

1. [Client]’s wife would deliberately use almost all of the toilet paper, leaving only a small smidgeon of paper left on the roll, and not replace it.
2. Every time [Client] bought a bag of chips, cookies, or any other snack that was crunchy, her wife would smash the bag without opening it until only dust remained inside. [Client] tried very hard to hide her snacks from her wife, but her wife was almost always able to find them.
3. [Client]’s wife would wait until [Client] was in the middle of some sort of complicated online video game thing and then reboot the router.
4. [Client]’s wife cranked up the heat and AC to frankly uncomfortable levels in the months that it was [Client]’s turn to pay the energy bills. The AC had been set to 40F (4.4C) on at least one occasion we were able to record, and that winter, she set the heat to 97F (36C).
5. When it was [Client]’s turn to empty the kitty litter box, [Client]’s wife would feed the cat in contradiction to the vet’s orders, causing the cat to have messy, unpleasant diarrhea. Her lapses and “forgetting” never occurred when it was her turn to empty the litter box.
6. During a rainstorm, while [Client] and her wife were at their respective places of work, [Client]’s wife drove home during her lunch break and opened all of the windows on [Client]’s half of the house to let the rain into [Client]’s room, especially onto her bed, which [Client] had video evidence of.
7. [Client]’s wife was caught on video licking all of [Client]’s toothbrushes.

And on and on.

All of it was incredibly petty s*** that wasn’t technically illegal since it was so minor and the dollar values involved were so small they were below the relevant thresholds — except for the rainwater thing. We were eventually able to hit her for that one separately.

Unfortunately, due to an earlier case where I got a disabled man his spousal support, the judge hated my guts. He berated me for bringing “this petty nonsense” before him and rejected our petition for a restraining order.

This incident is among those that made me decide to physically move myself cross-state to a different district.

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A customer approaches our customer service desk. I am typing something up on the computer, but I stop and turn to her and am about to speak when she suddenly lets out the most blood-curdling scream I have ever heard. It’s bellowing and loud, and she does it without changing the expression of her eyes, which is weird. She also never breaks eye contact with me.

After a few seconds of that, she clears her throat and then speaks perfectly normally.

Customer: “Now that I have your attention…” 

She had a simple request and then left without issue. I was too shocked (and scared) to question it.