(I approach a customer who’s looking at our display of graphic novels).

Customer: What age group is this book for? (She gestures towards a volume of a zombie graphic novel)

Me: That particular series is generally aimed at older teens and adults. It’s quite graphic and violent and leans towards the horror genre.

Customer: Oh… Do you think it would be okay for my eight year old?

Me: Let me show you the young readers graphic novel section…

(Weed in Canada has recently been legalized. Riding the train home after a lunch date, I see this from across the aisle.)

Guy #1: *produces a mini-bong from one of his pockets and turns to his friend* “Give me my engineering degree!”

Guy #2: *instantly whips out and hands over a plastic straw*

Guy #1: *sticks it on the mini-bong, beams proudly at this engineering achievement, and smiles at his friend* “Thanks!”

(They missed their stop.)

(I’m in line at a convenience store in our campus students’ union building, and conversing with the cashiers about a crazy customer they had in earlier. The store has a display of fresh fruit outside the store, but easily in view of the cash registers.)

Cashier: Yeah, he tried to take a mandarin without paying for it-

(At that moment, we hear some raving and a man in a black trench coat and black wide-rim hat starts yelling at the young man who had bought something before me. The young man is standing just outside the store, completely confused as to what’s going on.)

Cashier: That’s the guy… Oh, man.

Raving Customer: *pointing at the young man, who clearly doesn’t work in the store* You think you can’t sell me an orange?! YOU WON’T WORK IN THIS COUNTRY! YOU CAN’T WORK HERE! I want you to sell me an orange, you tell me no – YOU CAN’T WORK HERE! YOU ARE WRONG! YOU ARE AN A**HOLE MONKEY!

Young Man: *shakes his head and walks away*

(Raving Customer then starts pacing around the food court next to the convenience store ranting at no one in particular. As the cashier’s coworker calls security, I cash out and join my boyfriend waiting around outside the store. A few other people are there, watching to make sure Raving Customer doesn’t do anything. He’s made about two laps around the food court by now and passes within earshot, still raving.)

Raving Customer: I’m the New Superman, and I want an orange and a coffee – WHO’S BUYING?! You people won’t sell me – well, I’m the NEW SUPERMAN and I WANT an orange and coffee!

A woman comes in with a blouse to exchange and finds some other items to purchase. She comes in with a return – from a different location – on a super busy day when the tills are lined up, so we know she’s a bit self-involved to start with.

I start to process the return portion and she shouts out in a loud and really snotty tone that I am trying to “disadvantage” her in this transaction because I have to do the return and sale separately (company policy BTW). When I ask how I am doing that, she says “I had a discount on that blouse, now you’re going to make me pay full price.” I say “No, you will get the new one at the same price” and she tells me that this would be impossible and ends the paragraph with “so how will you do that?”
“Same way I would if I were doing this in one transaction, by price-matching the blouse”.

This was not enough. As I told her the total of her purchase, she again began berating me loudly for trying to “rip [her] off”. She insisted that the total I gave her was twenty four dollars too high. I had to get out the calculator (because apparently the cash register doesn’t know how to add) and go over every single item and get her agreement on what the price should be before she finally admitted that she had her math wrong. This is the second week in a row that I have been yelled at by a customer for failing to bend the rules of mathematics to suit how much they think they should be paying. (Last week, it was a woman who refused to believe that 16X4=64.) It was lucky that none of the customers in line behind her suffered an injury from all the head-shaking and eye-rolling going on. There’s a reason we have to keep a calculator beside the tills.

I work in a retail-flooring store that also has a warehouse attached. Earlier this afternoon, we had a large propane leak in our warehouse and we’re in the process of evacuating the building.

A lady walked into our store as we were evacuating the employees out. She looked around and asked us what was going on, so we explained. She then ignored what she had just heard about the gas leak and started asking questions about the flooring that she was looking for.

After trying to guide her to the front door while answering her questions, she started to get very upset. She couldn’t comprehend why we wouldn’t let her back into our showroom to view all of our available products. We once again explained the situation and how dangerous it was for anyone to be in the building, but she wasn’t having it. She wanted to look at every hardwood sample that we had in the building because she had driven 15 minutes across the city and her time was very precious.

Apparently, she really needed that hardwood today if it was worth putting her life at risk. My manager stepped in to prevent her from pushing us out of the way to go look at the flooring. Needless to say, she did not purchase any flooring from us today.