I work at a clothing store in Nebraska. As I finish ringing up a customer’s items, she hands me her ID.

Me: “Oh, thank you! That saved me the step. Gotta make sure you are using your own cards, right?” *Forced retail laugh*

Customer: “No!”

Me: “Umm… what?”

Customer: “This is an ID for Oregon.”

Me: “Yes, I can see that.”

Customer: “Then why are you charging me sales tax?!”

Me: “Because sales tax in Nebraska is seven percent-ish.”

Customer: “But I live in Oregon! I don’t pay sales taxes!”

Me: “That’s… That’s not how that works.”

Customer: “You are too stupid to understand taxes and how they are paid!”

This interaction went on… for fifteen more minutes.

The manager stepped in and had to explain that laws and taxes differ by state. The lady didn’t like that and kept screaming the entire way out the door.

Related:
Taxing Taxing, Part 19
Taxing Taxing, Part 18
Taxing Taxing, Part 17
Taxing Taxing, Part 16
Taxing Taxing, Part 15

Twenty years ago, I was a manager in a women’s clothing boutique. We had a nasty regular who used to come in with her daughter and spend money but treated staff like dirt. They’d try on clothes, leaving the fitting room carpeted with their cast-offs, walking on them, and even tearing them with carelessness. They’d use the phrases “little people” or “the working class” to describe staff.

One day, they came into the store carrying bags of merchandise to return — with no receipt. The stuff was ours — tags still on — but from previous seasons. The woman wanted cash back.

Me: “I can give you cash back, but without a receipt, I can only give you the prices the items come up with on the computer.”

Every single item she had was selling at less than $5; she had thousands of dollars of clothes and she was getting like $75.

She fed me this sob story.

Woman: “My husband is a prominent lawyer, and he’s divorcing me. I signed a prenup, so I’m not going to have any money! Can you help me out?”

I handed her her cash and a job application.

Me: “Welcome to the working class.”

Her expression was wonderfully outraged and horrified at the same time, but she just turned and left.

My young daughter and I were in Paris, France during an unusually hot weekend which, unfortunately, coincided with Paris fashion week. We had taken an open-top bus tour, and we had waited in the sun in line for a boat tour but missed the cut-off for that boat. We didn’t feel like waiting for the next one, so we decided to walk back to the hotel.

It was very hot, so we stopped for a drink, but my credit card was declined (although it worked for the whole rest of the trip). We kept heading toward the hotel, and then heat stroke took over. Really disoriented, I stumbled into, of all places, a totally fancy-schmancy fashion house, complete with a black-suited doorman. During fashion week. It was the kind where the workers are beautiful seven-foot-tall women, and you have to be invited to shop there.

There were twenty gorgeous Amazons working and maybe three customers. And then I, a short, overweight tourist stumbled in, sweaty and suffering from heat stroke. Well, let the stereotypes abound.

Think The Devil Wears Prada all you want, but these ladies could not have been more awesome. They provided me with a cool drink and a fan and let me sit in the coolest part of their shop while I tried to get my wits about me. They brought some apple juice for my daughter and kept checking on me to make sure I was okay. They were gracious, sweet, kind, and completely non-judgmental. When I felt better, they offered to call a cab, and they also provided me with clear directions back to the hotel. They were utterly fantastic.

God bless them for taking care of a complete stranger who couldn’t have afforded to shop there even if I could fit into their clothes. Truly lovely ladies. If you ever read this, thank you so very much.

I work at a small clothing boutique. When I say small, I mean small; it’s maybe 1,200 square feet with 900 of that being the sales floor. I never have to move out from behind the front counter to be able to see everything in the store.

I am the only employee in at the moment, and it’s just the owner and me running the whole business. It also happens to be the week when the owner is on vacation for the week, and I am the only one working.

I am in the middle of inventorying, tagging, and sorting a rather large shipment of new product that I will be putting out in a new display later this week. My front counter (our only workspace for such situations) is covered in my project when a family of five comes in.

Me: “Hi, how are y’all? Do you need help finding anything?”

The family ignores me and goes about shopping without interacting with me at all. I internally shrug my shoulders and continue to work on my project, figuring that they will ask me for help if they need it. I look up every now and then to see how the family is doing and if they are giving any non-verbal cues of needing help. After about fifteen minutes or so, I try asking again.

Me: “Y’all doing all right? Finding everything you’re after?”

Dad: “Yeah, we’re doing fine.” *Ignores me again*

The three kids are really well-behaved and mostly silently follow their mom and dad around the store as they shop. That is until one of them spots my jar of suckers next to the register. The owner always keeps some type of hard candy on hand to bribe kids into behaving and not running around screaming and taking everything off the walls. The kid who sees the candy runs over and asks their mom if they can have one, but the mom kind of brushes them aside.

After they have been in the store for about forty-five minutes, they come up to the counter and I start ringing up the items they want to buy.

Me: “You find everything all right?”

Dad: “Yeah.”

Kid: *In a really small voice* “Can we please get a sucker?”

Mom: “Fine.” *Turning to me* “We’ll buy a couple of suckers for them, too.”

Me: “Oh, those are free. We give them out to children on their best behavior. So long as y’all say it’s okay, they can have one.”

The mom glares at me the rest of the time I’m finishing the sale. She then rushes the kids out the door before I get a chance to open the jar and let the kids pick out a sucker. As the dad collects the shopping bags, I say:

Me: “I thought the kids wanted a sucker? You can pick one out for each of them if you want to.”

He just shakes his head and walks out.

The next day, I answer the store phone, and lo and behold, it’s that same mom asking to speak to the manager. I’m the only one working again and we technically don’t have a manager.

Me: “That would be me today. How can I help you?”

Mom: “I need to complain about the employee you had working yesterday. She was staring at us the whole time we were shopping like we were going to steal things! We are loyal customers, and I have never been treated so rudely before in my life. And to top it off, she wouldn’t let me buy some of your suckers for my kids!”

Me: “I’m sorry you had a bad experience…? Umm… for the record, we don’t sell candy. We keep a jar of suckers to bribe kids into not running around screaming and taking apart our displays. I’m sure your kids were more than welcome to a piece when you were on your way out?”

Mom: “Ugh, you’re no help! Let me talk to the older lady. She knows who I am and will fix this.”

Me: “Umm… The owner is out of town until next week. Do you want me to take a message?”

Mom: *Scoffs* “Never mind!” *Hangs up the phone* 

To this day, I don’t know what bee was up this lady’s butt. I had never seen her in that store before and never saw her again after. I never even heard if she reached out to the owner again. I don’t know why this lady thought I thought she was stealing; that thought never entered my mind. I now wonder if that had been a plan of hers.

My boss is on a work trip in Toronto and called me just to check in on how things are going here. He was having a riot with his day and was laughing up a storm. Apparently, he had forgotten to pack underwear and enough dress shirts for his trip — he’s a single forty-year-old guy, so he had no one to help him pack. He popped out to some store to get himself more clothes. When we are working, he’s always casually dressed, but when he’s at a meeting, he looks top-tier. Always. And the man is a silver-tongued devil.

He was at the store browsing some dress shirts when an older man came up to him in the store asking about hats that were on the wall beside the shirts. His automatic answer was:

Boss: “Well, let’s take a look at what they have.”

After spending five minutes browsing, the other guy found a hat and was questioning sizes.

Boss: “Well, let’s see what size this is.”

And he checked the inside of the hat. That yielded promising results, but my boss is always looking for fun.

Boss: “This hat is great, and it looks great on you, but you should get two. You should get another one in a different colour because [this colour] is for [this kind of social situation] but [that colour] is for [that kind of social situation]…”

Of course, he talked the man into buying two overpriced hats at this high-end dress store. He said the hats were a couple hundred dollars.

Then, fifteen minutes later, when my boss found his clothes and was ready to pay, he stood in line, right behind the guy he had just upsold.

Guy: “You don’t work here, do you?”

Boss: *Smiling* “No, I was just doing some shopping,”

The other guy turned beet red, paid for his hats, and bolted. The manager was on the till, chuckling.

Manager: “You upsold better than any of the staff who work here!”