I had a customer return a vacuum cleaner once, my supervisor did the return, thankfully. The box went back on the floor unchecked. The next customer who wanted to buy it checked it out before it was checked. They were back within hours.

Customer: “So, I don’t know what you need to do to your processes to avoid this happening again, but… well, look for yourself.

The whole f****** thing had been replaced with a catering-sized tin of beetroot.

There was much yelling at the supervisor by managers, and after that, all expensive returns had to be checked by two staff. Whenever any newbies would question the policy:

New Hire: “The box is sealed! Why do I have to check it?”

Me: “Do you really want to be visited by the beetroot fairy?!”

The beetroot fairy became our go-to explanation.

I’m assigning tasks to a new hire, still in High School.

Me: “I’ll need you to collect stray carts after your break.”

New Hire: “…I’m not trained for that.”

Me: “Trained… for gathering carts from the parking lot?”

New Hire: “Yeah…”

Me: “You know how you get a cart when you go grocery shopping?”

New Hire: “Yeah…”

Me: “What do you do after the shopping?”

New Hire: “Go home.”

Me: “What do you do with the cart, [New Hire]?”

New Hire: “My mom deals with it.”

Me: *Sigh.* “You take the cart and place it in the cart corral at the main entrance to the store.”

New Hire: “Why?”

Me: “Because too many people just leave it to their moms to deal with, I assume.”

An older lady and her adult daughter walk up to me at the customer service counter. The daughter takes an item out of her bag, and the mother snatches it from her and starts to wave it at my face.

Older Customer: “Your item killed my husband, and you need to refund it so we can afford the funeral!”

Younger Customer: “Mom! Stop! I told you I have the receipt for this one! You don’t need to do that.”

Older Customer: *Stops waving the item around in a demented fashion.* “Oh.”

The daughter takes the item from her mother and slowly slides it over to me, with the receipt. The mother walks away to inspect something.

Me: “This receipt looks good. I’ll process that return for you.”

Younger Customer: “Sorry about my mother. I think my dad’s died twenty times this year already. She’s always causing a scene to get a refund.”

Me: “Maybe she… uh… shouldn’t do that?”

Younger Customer: “Good luck telling an old Irish immigrant woman not to do anything. Anyway, thanks for the refund!”

They both left, totally unfazed by the mother’s eagerness to go from silence to “you killed my husband” to score a refund. And the item being returned? A trashy romance hardcover. I almost wish the daughter DIDN’T have her receipt so that the mother would have been forced to explain how the book had killed her husband…

Customer: “I saw that you make customised water bowls?”

Me: “Yes, we can engrave your pet’s name on it.”

Customer: “Okay, I want one, but first I need to explain. My kitten likes to dig out any potted plant inside the house and then get inside the pot. He likes to curl up and hide inside any plant pot, and then just watch the house from inside it.”

Me: *Wondering where this is going.* “Okay?”

Customer: “And he’s also a little f****** dictator. He meows from his pot and expects us to bring things to him and do his bidding.”

Me: “Right.”

Customer: “So what I’m trying to say is that the cat’s name is Pol Pot and that’s what I’d like engraved on His Majesty’s water bowl.”

I worked returns at a hardware store (the blue one, not the orange one) during my last year of college. Store policy that said we would accept returns of dead plants within a year of purchase. We only required you to bring in the dead plant (no joke) and proof of purchase (receipt, credit card, etc.).

A couple came in with nothing but their receipt.

Me: “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you your money back without the dead plants.”

Customer: “That’s ridiculous!”

Me: “I know how it sounds, but it’s company policy. We need to uh… prove that the plant is actually dead and exists.”

Customer: “Well, how do we get the dead plants here?”

Me: “Put them in trash bags and bring them in.”

Customer: “Yes, but how would I do that?”

Me: “Dig them out of the ground.”

Customer: “How am I supposed to do that?”

Me: “Shovels are on aisle nine.”

She could not grasp how one could possibly pull plants out of the ground. Her husband was just as clueless.