My seven-year-old and I have an outing over the weekend to our local farmer’s market, after which he’s SUPER-wired. To help him burn off some of that excess energy, we walk over to our local comic store, which has a pretty big kids’ section. I don’t really know how I expect this to go, since he’s only familiar with a couple of characters and I don’t know what will catch his eye. (He’s also a very advanced reader for his age.)

He ends up bouncing all over the place, looking at all kinds of random stuff and asking if we could get it, and being a good sport when I have to say no, either because of weight, price, or content. This particular exchange, however, stands out as extra funny.

Son: “Can we get this?”

He shows me an omnibus collection of “The Boys” — a hyper-violent hard-R-rated comic.

Me: “No, that’s for grown-ups.”

Son: “Oh. Does it have bad words in it, like ‘stupid’ and ‘shut up’?”

Me: *Pauses* “Yes. Yes, it does.”

He put down the book and moved on. In the end, he ended up picking a Lego Batman book.

Our store deals in trading card games. A couple of teenage boys come in and hand a Pokémon card to me.

Teenage Boy #1: “We want to sell this Crystal Charizard Holo Skyridge card!”

Me: “Uh… no.”

Teenage Boy #2: “Huh, how come?”

Me: “That is a card that’s worth thousands. Yours is a fake that you printed out and cut out at home.”

Teenage Boy #2: *To the other boy* “See?! I told you this wouldn’t work!”

Teenage Boy #1: “Can you tell us how you knew?”

Me: “Why? So you can try again?”

Teenage Boy #1: “Uh…”

Me: “What the h***, why not? First, like I said, this is obviously printed at home, and badly. The resolution is terrible, did you get this from a thumbnail?”

Teenage Boy #1: “Well… I—”

Me: “Also, this is supposed to be a holographic card, but your home printer can’t print the shine. It’s just a weird grey.”

Teenage Boy #1: “Okay, but—”

Me: “Also, I can see the watermark from the website you got the image from.”

Teenage Boy #1: “Yeah, the site was asking for money to print without the watermark. Wait. If we paid to get the better-quality image, would it work?”

Obviously, it wouldn’t, but I am having fun.

Me: “Sure, try it out. Good luck!”

I sent the teenagers off to go waste some money on a scam that would never work.

Our shop has gotten new card readers for taking debit and credit card payments. Now we have more options for taking payments from customers. Because I am young and female, some customers believe technology is too complicated for my little girl brain to handle.

A customer comes in and tries to pay with his credit card by tapping it on the reader, which has been a popular feature. It declines.

Me: “Sorry, it didn’t go through. Some cards won’t work with that feature. Let me reset it and you can try again.”

The customer huffs while I reset the reader.

Me: “Okay, go ahead and insert it now.”

The customer does so, and it declines again.

Me: “Huh, okay, maybe it’s a weird bank card? Let me try and swipe it.”

The customer rolls his eyes dramatically and makes a big deal about handing over the card, all while a line of customers is beginning to form behind him. I swipe the card, and it’s declined again.

Me: “Sorry, it is still coming up as declined. Do you have another card we can try? Or cash, maybe?”

Customer: “Every time I come here, the card doesn’t work. Just type it in manually. Can you handle that?”

Me: “Sure, let me reset it and try again.”

I reset the machine and type it into the PIN pad in front of the customer so he can see I am entering the correct numbers. Sure enough, it comes up declined again.

Me: “Sir, it’s still declined. Do you have another form of payment?”

Customer: “No! Just… just… um… run it… um…”

Me: “Sir, there is no other way I can run this card through our system. We have tapped, inserted, swiped, and manually keyed it in. If you know another way to get a payment off this card, I am all ears.”

The customer stops, sighs, and reaches down the front of his pants, pulling out a wad of bills, and begins trying to separate them. I hold up my hands to stop him.

Me: “Sir, this store does not accept any bills that come out of your underwear or cleavage. I’m not touching those.”

The customer throws his hands up in the air, pulls out another credit card, and taps it. Ding, approved. I hand him his receipt and watch him slink away, the entire line glaring at him as he leaves.

Me: “Who can I help next?”

Our comic shop sells a lot of collectable figures. Some are very large and heavy, and to keep them from being knocked over by accident or stolen, we keep them on high shelves where they can clearly be seen before being taken down and purchased.

I am a short teenage girl, so my taller coworkers use the step stool we have to reach them. In comes a customer that I have never seen before.

Me: “Welcome to [Comic Shop]. Is there anything I can help you find?”

The man just walks past me, looking around like he isn’t sure why he came into the store or where he is.

Me: “All right. If you need anything, just let me know.”

He wanders around for about ten minutes, touching a few posters and figures we have like he’s never seen anything like them before in his life. I am starting to get a little nervous and hang by one of my bigger male coworkers.

Finally, the man wanders back toward us and asks to purchase one of the figures that we keep out of reach of customers. I walk to where the figure is, as sometimes I can reach them on the step stool we have, but this one is way out of my reach.

Me: “Oh, I can’t get that one. Let me get [Coworker]; he can get that for you.”

Customer: “But I want you to get it. That’s why I asked you.”

Me: “Sir, I can’t reach that. Even with the step stool, I am too short. See?”

I stand on the stool and reach out as high as I can. My fingers fall several inches short of reaching it.

Me: “So, I’ll go get my coworker, and he’ll get that down for you.”

I turn to leave, and I feel hands gripping my hips before I am lifted a few inches off the ground and turned back towards the shelf. The customer had grabbed me and turned me back around like a child!

Customer: “You’re not trying hard enough! Get up there and get it!”

I start screaming, alerting my coworker, who comes running. His nickname at work is Lurch, because of how tall he is. The customer sees him lumbering over and drops me, screaming about “lazy, short people” before trying to run out of the store. Unfortunately, the doors open in, so he slams into them at full speed and ends up sprawled out in front of them, unconscious.

Me: “Did… What… Oh, my God, is he dead?”

My coworker walks over and checks for a pulse and breathing.

Coworker: “No. Unconscious. Calling the police.”

He walked back to the counter and called for an ambulance and police. I ended up having pictures of my sides taken where he bruised me from gripping me, and the copy of the security camera footage was handed over as he was taken out on a stretcher. The paramedics knew him as a frequent drug user, which explained a lot.

I bought Lurch a dozen of his favorite muffins for coming to my rescue!

The comic book store I work at does trade-ins for cash and makes a lot of money reselling vintage and hard-to-find comics. If it is a trade-in under $500, we are allowed to do it without the owner’s permission. A middle-aged man comes into the store with a long box full of comics, announcing he wants to make a trade-in.

Customer: “I have a lot of older Marvel and DC issues in here, gonna make a killing off of this. Probably be able to pay off my car with what is in here!”

Me: “That would be great, wouldn’t it? All right, if you want to leave this here, I can appraise everything and get you an offer in a few hours.”

The customer agrees and leaves. I let my coworker take over and start looking at what he brought in. His “older” comics are all X-Men, Spider-Man, and Superman issues… from the 1990s. These are virtually worthless. There are over 200 issues, and after pricing them all between a dime and a dollar each, his total comes up to maybe $50. When he comes back in, I have the printout of the value of the comics waiting for him.

Customer: “Well, little lady, how much am I going to be walking out with today?”

Me: “Well… not a lot, unfortunately. Here’s the breakdown of the current value of your comics.”

I hand him the list. His face gets red, and for a moment, I think he is going to either have a heart attack or come over the counter at me.

Customer: “These are mint condition. Mint! You priced these wrong!”

Me: “Sir, that is the value of the comics in mint condition. They’re not worth a lot. Most late 1980s to early 2000s comics are massively devalued.”

Customer: “But these are complete sets!”

Me: “Again, that doesn’t make them worth any more. The issues themselves just aren’t worth anything. I can show you if you want?”

He silently nods, and I turn my monitor around and pull up a few titles so he can see they truly are only worth a dime.

Customer: “Refresh it. That has to be old information.”

Me: “I can do that, but I don’t expect it to change.”

I refresh the page and nothing changes — still the same price.

Me: “Sir, I’m sorry. That is the price we can offer you for the whole box. I can pay you out in cash or a store gift certificate if you want.”

Customer: “I need at least two hundred more. Fifty won’t cut it.”

Me: “Sir, I can’t do that. Unless you have more comics to trade in that aren’t from the nineties?”

Customer: “Little lady, you don’t understand how good customer service works. It’s 250 or nothing.”

Me: “Then nothing it is. I can’t give you five times what these are worth and expect to keep my job. Have a good day.”

I passed the long box back to him, while he sputtered and tried to find a way to recover from his failed attempt at haggling. Giving up, he took his worthless comics and left.