I remember this story from my youth that I think belongs on this site:

Customer: “How much do you charge to send faxes?”

Me: “That’s [price] for local and [higher price] for long distance.”

Customer: “Hmm, how much for scanning and emailing the document instead?”

Me: “That’s fifty cents.”

Customer: “And what’s the price for long-distance emailing?”

Me: “…For you, ma’am, I’ll keep it at fifty cents.”

She was very pleased with her special deal!

Related:
Email Fail, Part 56
Email Fail, Part 55
Email Fail, Part 54
Email Fail, Part 53
Email Fail, Part 52
Taxing Faxing, Part 45
Taxing Faxing, Part 44
Taxing Faxing, Part 43
Taxing Faxing, Part 42
Taxing Faxing, Part 41

Back in the day, when fax machines were all the rage, a woman came in asking us to fax something for her.

Me: “Sure thing. How many pages is the document?”

Customer: “About five swatches.”

Me: “Swatches?”

She reveals five fabric swatches.

Customer: “I want to send these to my sister so she can pick one out for her couch.”

Me: “Ma’am, I can’t fax swatches.”

Customer: “What do you mean? I saw on the news! You put it in the machine on this end, and it comes out on the other end!”

Me: “Paper documents only, ma’am, and in black and white. I can put the swatches under a scanner for you, but it would come out black and white on a piece of paper on the other end.”

Customer: “Paper? No, I need my sister to feel the fabric! The texture! I want you to fax them as they are!”

Me: “As I said, that’s not how faxes work. You’d be better off mailing the swatches to your sister.”

Customer: “The news said faxing was the future! My sister’s husband spent almost a thousand dollars on a fax set up at home! Are you telling me it was a waste of money?!”

Me: “Faxing may be the future, ma’am, but matter transportation is just a little bit after that.”

She wrote a letter to our corporate office to complain, which was forwarded to my manager, who had to come up with a diplomatic way to reply to the customer to explain that faxes send information, not upholstery.

Related:
Fax Me Up, Scotty

I used to work in a copy shop/post office in the early 2000s.

Customer: “Your fax machine doesn’t work!”

Me: “It was working fine an hour ago.”

Customer: “Well, it’s not working now!

I walked over to the fax machine with him and ran his document through.

Customer: “See!? The paper just comes out the other side again!”

Related:
Taxing Faxing, Part 44
Taxing Faxing, Part 43
Taxing Faxing, Part 42
Taxing Faxing, Part 41
Taxing Faxing, Part 40

I work in a printing facility, and we recently ran a promotion for five-cent prints. Unsurprisingly, this was popular, so we went into overload and had thousands of prints to catch up on, and we had to turn away a lot of customers trying to pick up their photos but weren’t ready yet.

Most customers understood and didn’t mind too much, but this one lady… 

This one lady kicked up such a stink that we pushed hers through ahead of the orders in front of hers. We told her to come back in twenty minutes, and they’d be ready.

On her return, she presented a receipt from the local café and said in a demanding tone:

Customer: “You will reimburse me for the coffee and cake I had to have because I was waiting.”

Me: “You didn’t have to pay for a coffee just because you had to wait twenty minutes.”

Customer: “Well, what else would I do in that time? Sit there and do nothing?!”

Me: “You can do anything you want, but it’s not our responsibility to pay for it.”

Customer: “So, it’s mine, is it?”

Me: “Uh, yes. You’re responsible for spending your own money.”

Customer: “Well… I shouldn’t be!”

Sure enough, we didn’t reimburse her. Looking forward to her formal complaint that she threatened to make!

A customer came in to order 250 one-sided copies. Production runs them while she waits about twenty minutes, boxes them up, and brings them to me to ring up. She opens the box and, with a look of horror, says:

Customer: “They printed upside down!”

Her one-sided copies were face down in the box.

Me: “No, they’re just face down.”

Customer: “Re-run them! Now! I need to get these back to the office!”

Me: “No need, you just need to—”

Customer: “—Stop wasting my time, cashier boy, and just get them to re-run my order at the back!”

I nearly laughed at her face as I went back to “re-run them.” I just stood behind a wall for five minutes, flipped them over, and gave them back to her.

Customer: *Still upset.* “How come you didn’t print it this quickly the first time?!”