It’s crazy how many customers think it’s okay to have me enter their entire Gmail login while I’m helping them activate a new phone. This mainly happens with older customers, who are often far too trusting of a lowly retail employee.

I’m activating one customer’s phone when we reach the Gmail sign-in screen.

Me: “Okay, you’ll need to enter your email address and password here.”

Customer: “You do it.”

He hands me a piece of paper with both written on it.

Me: “Sir, you really shouldn’t give your password to other people.”

Customer: “Why not? I need you to put it into the phone.”

Me: “I can show you where to enter it, but your password should remain private.”

Customer: “You’re already setting everything else up. Just type it in.”

Me: “I’m happy to help, but you don’t know me. Someone dishonest could use your Gmail account to access personal information, reset passwords for your other accounts, or even steal from you.”

Customer: “But you work here.”

Me: “That doesn’t automatically mean you should trust me with access to your email. A dishonest employee could copy your login details and use them later.”

Customer: “You wouldn’t do that.”

Me: “I wouldn’t, but the next employee you hand your password to might. People have made a lot of money stealing other people’s information.”

He looks me up and down.

Customer: “Well, you look thirty, and you’re still working retail. If you were smart or brave enough to get rich like that, you’d have done it by now.”

Me: “Well, you’re never too old to start!”

Maybe it was my devilish smile, or my insistence on saying each letter and number of the personal information out loud as I typed it, but the customer grabbed his phone back a few letters in and typed the information out himself, albeit very sloooooowly.

I work in a brick-and-mortar store for a phone company. A guy walks in and demands:

Customer: “How do I open your app?!”

Me: “Are you having problems logging in? I can help you reset your password.”

Customer: “No! How do I open it?!”

He waves his phone in my face, and our app icon is right on the front.

Me: “Is it not responding when you press it?”

Customer: *Very confused.* “Press on it? What are you talking about?!”

I reach over and push the app icon. It opens. The guy is completely baffled, like I just performed magic.

Me: “If you didn’t know how to open an app, how did you download it?

Customer: “Oh, my wife does all that stuff. I just carry it. She’s out of town. So… you just touch the app?”

Me: “Yes, sir, your phone is a touch screen. Like, pretty much all touch screen. How have you been using your phone without realizing that?”

Customer: “Oh, people just call me, and I pass my phone to my wife, and she hands it back, and I talk to people.”

Me: “You don’t use it for anything else?”

Customer: “She brings up funny little videos for me sometimes.”

Me: “Nothing else?”

Customer: “What else is there? It’s just a phone!”

And off he walks with his $1,200 smartphone…

I work in a phone shop. A customer comes in who had somehow managed to both change the language settings into Chinese AND turn on the accessibility settings (where you have to double-tap everything and scroll using three fingers) on a very old phone on outdated software.

Customer: “Why haven’t you been able to fix it yet? I thought you were experts?”

Me: “I can’t navigate the menus on your phone because it’s in Chinese.”

Customer: “But you should know!”

Me: “I don’t read Chinese.”

Customer: “Why not?!”

Me: “It’s not really required for my job here in England.”

Customer: “I thought you were all supposed to be experts! Fine! Get your manager! They’ll know!”

So, I called my manager Dave over, born and raised in Yorkshire, furthest travel from the UK being Magaluf, Mallorca, to come and read Chinese for her because he’s a manager.

I used to work in a phone shop.

Customer: “Hey, why is my phone not working properly?”

He shows me a plastic phone.

Me: “Uh… well, for one, it looks a bit scorched… and melty.”

Customer: “Yeah.”

Me: “Why does it look that way?”

Customer: “It came up with an error message saying it was too cold.”

I know some electronics do this if the temperature drops too low, but I can’t figure out how this was possible for this customer. Yes, it was winter but we’re not up in the frigid north.

Me: “So then what happened?”

Customer: “I needed to use it urgently, so I put it under the grill to heat it up.”

Me: “The grill. As in an oven grill?”

Customer: “Of course an oven grill! I’m not gonna put it in a toaster, am I?”

Me: “That would really be no more or less stupid.”

Customer: “Hey! That’s mean.”

Me: “I don’t really have many other ways to react to your first port of call to warm up your phone being… to cook it. Yes, that’s why your phone isn’t working, and no it is not covered under any warranty.”

I possibly could have been nicer, but Jesus Christ…

An older woman walks in with who I later learn are her three adult sons (all in their twenties). She marches in and heads straight to the help desk, ignoring any other customers already waiting, and starts shrieking.

Customer: “My iPhone is broken! It doesn’t have WhatsApp!”

Me: “I’ll be happy to help you, but please take a number and—”

Customer: “—I need WhatsApp to talk to my sons! Fix it, or you’ll be personally responsible for me not speaking to my sons!”

I look at my current customer, who is shrugging and laughing. I take a quick glance at this shrieking customer’s smartphone and see the WhatsApp app on her screen.

Me: “That app right there is WhatsApp. You already have it on your phone.”

Adult Kid #1: “See, mum? We told you already that was WhatsApp!”

Customer: *Ignoring her son.* “They’re kids! What do they know?!”

Me: “Well, I’m not, and I do know. And I do know that the green app right there is WhatsApp.”

Customer: “No, it’s not! My phone can’t load WhatsApp, so you have to fix it!”

Me: “Alright then, since you seem to have WhatsApp but you say you don’t, I don’t think it’s something we can fix in store. We’ll need to send it to our specialists in London to look at and then send it back once fixed.

Customer: “That’s going to take too long!”

The sons, spotting an opportunity here, all chime in.

Adult Kid #1: “Hey, take as long as you need.”

Adult Kid #2: “The longer you have it, the longer we’re free from her messages.”

Adult Kid #3: “Might want to double-check all your work.”

Adult Kid #1: “H***, triple check it! Better to be thorough.”

Adult Kid #2: “Maybe send it to Apple Worldwide HQ in California or whatever. Only the best service for mum’s phone!”

Customer: “I’m beginning to think you boys are being disingenuous!”

Adult Kid #1: “We’re kids, mum, we know nothing, including how to be disingenuous.”

Adult Kid #3: “What does disingenuous mean?”

Adult Kid #1: “See? We literally don’t know the meaning of the word!” *To me.* “So, how long can we expect our mum to be without a phone? A month? Two?”

Me: “I mean, um…”

Adult Kid #1: “Ooooor, mum, you could try that green weird-looking app and let us convince you it’s WhatsApp?”

Me: “If it helps, I can tell you that it is WhatsApp.”

Customer: “Hmmmmmmm.”

What was crazy is that instead of admitting her adult sons were right about something and she was wrong, she let her phone be sent to London to be “fixed”. Of course, there was nothing to fix, so they just held it for two days and sent it back.

Because the mum had no way of being contacted, [Adult Kid #1] volunteered to be the one we called to collect the phone when it was back in our store, which he did… ten days later.