I’m a cashier at a car dealership. I’ve seen a few cashiers come and go, but this is by far the worst cashier we’ve ever had. 

We recently hired the daughter of one of the technicians to work weekends. She was eighteen, which is the minimum age requirement, but it was not her first job. She started a month or two before she graduated high school, and she thought this would be a great job to have while she was in college. She spent a month training with the head cashier, and everything went well. That is until she got shifts by herself. 

[New Cashier] started to make mistakes, which is expected, but she didn’t seem to learn from them. The biggest issue was that she was not logging her transactions correctly or closing tickets correctly. If the head cashier tried to correct her, she still made the exact same mistakes. I even tried to show her the correct way to do things because we thought maybe hearing it in a different way would click in her brain. Nope.

Sundays are by far the worst day to work, simply because there is absolutely nothing to do. Parts and service are closed Sundays, but the sales department is open, so a cashier is needed. There might be one hour of work scattered throughout the eight-hour shift. The cashiers usually rotate who works on Sunday, but [New Cashier] absolutely refused to work on Sundays simply because she didn’t want to. This girl worked three days a week. The head cashier was furious because she works the most Sundays out of everybody, but the manager refused to make the new cashier work on Sundays.

The store closes at 9:00, but service and parts close at 7:00. Never once during training did [New Cashier] leave before 9:00. On one of her first shifts alone, she left around 7:30 because “No one was here.” When we looked at her stuff from the night before, nothing was closed out correctly. After that, we told her to start closing everything out at 8:00 so that at 9:00, she could leave. However, she refused to start her closing routine until right at 9:00. While it only takes me or the head cashier about twenty minutes to do the entire closing routine, it took her two hours. The sales managers were all mad because they couldn’t leave until she left and none of them live nearby, but no matter how many times we told her to start her closing routine earlier, she wouldn’t listen.

A lot of people will order parts and pay for them over the phone. When that happens, the cashier will put the customer’s receipt and their copy of the invoice in the small window that connects the two departments, and a parts worker will grab the invoice when the customer picks it up. One night, around 6:00, someone paid for a part over the phone. However, the customer did not come before the department closed at 7:00. [New Cashier] saw the invoice still in the window, grabbed it, and shredded it. When asked why, she said she assumed parts didn’t need it. The parts manager had to go up to accounting and make copies of the ticket and receipt they had so he had something to give to the customer.

The title clerk gives the cashiers tags a few times a week. If the customer is local, they will come to pick the tags up. However, if the customer lives far away, we will mail them to the customer. All tags come in a plastic sleeve, and the registration is in the sleeve with them. The title clerk gave [New Cashier] some tags for out-of-state customers one day as she was leaving. [New Cashier] had given out plenty of tags by this point, but this was the first time she was mailing tags to customers. She texted the head cashier, who told her to call the customers and verify the mailing addresses before making the shipping labels. I came in the next morning and found that all of the out-of-state tags had been mailed, but the registrations and plastic sleeves were in the trash can. Thankfully, the cleaning ladies hadn’t emptied the trash out yet, but I had to call the customers and explain that their registrations would be mailed out separately. We asked [New Cashier] why she hadn’t mailed the registrations, to which she said, “I didn’t think they were important.” Not once when giving out tags to people who picked them up did she not give them the registrations.

The cashiers are in charge of getting all of the scanning done. I can usually get it done or mostly done before the afternoon cashier comes in, but the rare time I can’t get it all done, the afternoon cashier is expected to finish it. [New Cashier] struggles with the scanning, and she doesn’t understand why she has to know it when I can just finish it the next day if I can’t get it all done. I even made step-by-step instructions for her, and step one is “open the program.” One day, I was busier than normal, and I barely had time to get everything unstapled and ready to scan. I had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon, and my boss said I could leave thirty minutes early. I told [New Cashier] that she’d have to get everything scanned in that evening. Absolutely nothing was scanned. She didn’t even try, so I had to finish that before I could start on the scanning for that day.

The last straw happened after [New Cashier] had been with us for three or four months, and my manager was debating putting her back into training for the rest of the summer. A customer had a service ticket that was about $4,500. The customer paid with a debit card, but the bank would only let the customer pay about $2,700 with that card and she would have to pay the remaining $1,800 another way. The credit card machine prompted [New Cashier] to accept the partial payment, and on the receipt it printed out, “Collected $2,700.00 Still owe $1,800.00”. [New Cashier] let the customer go. The customer agreed to pay the remaining balance, but it took her almost three weeks to do so.

[New Cashier] quit so she wouldn’t be fired.

I am taking a customer through some of our options. He is interested in our all-terrain four-wheel-drive models.

Customer: “So, can this car survive a bear attack?”

Me: “Well… I’m not an expert on bear behavior, but I would safely say that if you’re already in the vehicle and a bear decides to attack it, you should be fine as long as you drive away.”

Customer: “What about water? How good is it in water?”

Me: “This model is rated to 700 mm or 2.3 feet.”

Customer: “But what if there’s a tsunami?”

Me: “A tsunami?”

Customer: “What happens if there is a tsunami? Will I be able to drive through it?”

Me: “Sure… if the tsunami is under 2.3 feet.”

Customer: “And fire damage? What if there’s, like, an explosion nearby? How safe would I be?”

Me: “Sir… where are you going with this vehicle?”

Some strange customers leave you with more questions than answers. Check out more of the truly odd with our roundup: 12 Strange Stories About Weird, Odd, Bizarre, And Curious Customers!

I am dealing with a first-time buyer at our American car dealer. After spending two hours with her picking out a car, color, accessories, and all, she asks me a question while signing finance statements.

Customer: “So, when can we come to watch it being made?”

Me: “Watch what being made?”

Customer: “Our new car, of course! I have a friend who went to Germany to watch her Audi being made.”

This lady is at our dealer in NEW JERSEY asking for this! If she were in Michigan, MAAAYBE that would happen.

Me: “Ma’am, you are purchasing this actual vehicle that we’ve been dealing with for the past two hours.”

She refused to sign the paperwork, and I lost that sale.

I am pregnant with our second child, and we have decided to trade in our supermini car for something a bit more suitable after already struggling to get everything packed when going on vacation with just one child — which included buckling our large duffle bag into the passenger seat. We make an appointment at a local dealership, totally willing to order a new car from them after a test drive.

We arrive five minutes early with our two-year-old in tow, get his car seat out of our car, and walk into the dealership.

Office Lady: “The car isn’t ready for you to look at yet. Could you please wait outside, due to [global health crisis] restrictions?”

So, we wait. And wait. And wait. With a two-year-old in a car dealership parking lot. And wait.

Thirty minutes after our appointment time, my husband goes back inside and is told they just need five more minutes as the car is still in the back getting cleaned. 

Forty-five minutes after our appointment time, a sales agent walks outside, takes us to a car, and hands us the keys.

Sales Agent: “Please be back in thirty minutes.”

We install the car seat, take a fifteen-minute test drive, and walk into the office upon our return.

Me: “Hey, we just test-drove the [Van] and would like to place an order for a new one. The ones you have in stock right now according to your website do not meet our criteria, but we really like the car. [Sales Agent] said we could do that when we got back?”

Office Lady: “Sorry, [Sales Agent] has just left for lunch. She should be back in around an hour.”

Me: “Okay. Um, she said we should be back within thirty minutes when we left twenty minutes ago. Is she really not around anymore?”

Office Lady: “No, she just left. She told me you were test-driving the black [Van] and to expect you back any minute.”

Me: “All right. Is there anyone else who can help us out? We already had to wait for the car to be ready for forty-five minutes, and we have our toddler with us, so we really can’t wait another hour and then go through the whole ordering stuff.”

Office Lady: “No. We don’t do that. You have been assigned to [Sales Agent], so she is the only one who can help you.”

We didn’t buy a car that day and took our business elsewhere. I am not sure they understood why.

My wife and I have decided on a car to purchase for her. We make the deal with the salesman and are sent to the finance office to finish the transaction.

Employee: “You do want the title to have both of your names on it as ‘and/or’, correct?”

Me: “No. Just ‘or’.”

Employee: “I think you really should have it titled ‘and/or’.”

Me: “Just ‘or’.”

Employee: “Are you sure? Everyone has it ‘and/or’.”

Me: “Since I’m not everyone, just ‘or’.”

Employee: “Well, okay.”

We leave with the car. A week later, we get the title in the mail and there is a lienholder listed. And it is titled “and/or” in our names.

Back to the dealership we go, angry.

Employee: “What can I do for you today?”

Me: “You can correct the title to the car we bought last week. First, I told you to title our name with just ‘or’, not ‘and/or’.”

Employee: “I thought it was better the way I titled it.”

Me: “Not that I should have to explain, but in a passing conversation with my attorney friend, he said the ‘or’ takes priority over the ‘and’ and makes it unnecessary. And, because we paid your owner for the car, you should abide by our wishes. Secondly, you have a lienholder listed and there is not a lien on the car.”

Employee: “Well, you called your bank while you were in my office, so I assumed there was a lien with the bank the check was written on.”

Me: “Did you ask me? No. Did I tell you there was a lien? No.”

Employee: “Then, how did you buy the car without a lien?”

Me: “Although it is really none of your business, haven’t you ever had anyone buy a car and pay cash?”

I later found out that he called our bank to verify that there was no lien on the car.

I couldn’t wait to deal with him again when I traded my truck off the next year, but alas, the dealership went out of business before I got the chance.