I am checking out at my grocery store and an item isn’t scanning.

Customer: “What’s taking so long?!”

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, part of the barcode is ripped off so I can’t scan or key it in. I’ll have to get someone to check the shelf.”

Customer: “Can’t you scan it in?”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Customer: “You know can’t you look at the barcode and know what the price is?”

She became very frustrated that I was not, in fact, Cyclops from the X-Men and thus could not scan barcodes with my eyes.

I have just finished serving a customer.

Me: “Have a nice day!”

Customer: “I want to speak to your manager.”

I call the manager over, and he asks how he can help.

Customer: “Your clerk told me to have a nice day.”

Manager: *Waiting for the issue* “Yes, ma’am?”

Customer: “Well, I’m not having a nice day, and I am very upset that your staff is ordering me to turn my day around!”

You just can’t please some people.

A customer’s child knocks over a display, some of which falls on a coworker. [Coworker] is getting up while the customer is acting like nothing has happened. I rush over.

Me: “You okay?!”

Coworker: “I’m okay. My whole life flashed before my eyes for a little bit.”

Me: “What was that like?”

Coworker: “It was like a second of Legos, and then the rest of it was working retail with heartless customers.”

We both make a pointed look at the customer, who looks down and scuttles off.

Me: “What if she complains?”

Coworker: “I suppose I could be concussed?”

A while back, my brother-in-law was waiting in the checkout line when a couple nearby started arguing. They had one container of ice cream in their cart, and the woman was trying to convince her husband to go back and grab the last one. It was a slightly unusual flavor from a popular local brand, and she was in full panic-buying mode. If it’s almost gone, we have to buy it all!

To hear my brother-in-law tell it, the exchange went something like this.

Woman: “Come on! Just go grab the last one.”

Man: “But we don’t need two tubs of ice cream!”

Woman: “But there’s only one left!”

And so on and so forth. They argued back and forth until my brother-in-law got fed up listening to them. He walked over to the nearby ice cream cooler, grabbed the last tub of ice cream, and put it in his cart.

They quit arguing after that.

A customer checks out and buys three candies for a dollar. I start serving the next customer, but then he comes back holding his receipt.

Customer: “Excuse me, but why are two candy bars $0.33 and one $0.34?”

Me: “That’s how they ring up with the deal — three for a dollar.”

Customer: “But they should all be the same price.”

Me: “If they were all $0.33, then it would be $0.99 cents, not a dollar. It’s just how the system counts them when applying the deal.”

Customer: “No! They should all be the same price!”

Me: “What price should they be?”

Customer: “A third of a dollar!”

Me: “Which is what?”

Customer: “Well… it’s…”

He starts doing the mental math as I finish checking out the next customer. The first customer slowly realizes that you can’t evenly split a dollar into even thirds using just pennies.

Customer: “Oh, my God! You should have just told me! I swear I’m not the dumbest person on the planet.”

I’m about to reassure him before the next customer speaks up:

Next Customer: “You’re not the dumbest person on the planet, but you’d sure better hope he doesn’t die.”

I filed that under my list of things I can’t say to customers but wish I could…

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