This takes place at my first full-time job. I’ve worked retail jobs before this one during my high school days, part-time, and even in the restaurant business, so I’m used to dealing with people, but sometimes you get someone that’s so off-putting you just want to punch them in the face.

I have been at this job for three or four years now, and I know a lot of the customers that come in. I know their faces, and I can chat with them for a moment or two, but I don’t know their names. (I have trouble remembering names, but faces are easy.) Nearly everyone who comes in to buy is easy to deal with and doesn’t give any grief with prices or inventory.

One day, I’m working in the showroom. The morning rush has ended, and I generally don’t see many customers until lunchtime. However, in walks a gentleman I’ve never seen before. He holds himself in such a manner that he appears to give off that vibe that he’s better than everyone else.

I greet him and ask:

Me: “What can I help you with today?”

Customer: “I’m here for my order.”

Me: “What account is it under so I can pull it up?”

He gives me that deadpan look in the eyes and doesn’t change his facial expression in any way.

Customer: “Don’t you know who I am?”

Me: “Sorry, I’ve never seen you or met you before, which is why I asked what account the order is under.”

Customer: “Are you some kind of f****** clown? You think you’re funny? I need my order now.”

Me: “I’ll get someone that cares about helping you.”

I walk away and leave the showroom. I go to my supervisor and tell him about the current “customer” in the showroom. My supervisor peeks out the blinds of his office (his window looks into the showroom) and gives a sigh of disgust.

Supervisor: “I know who that guy is; he’s a low-level contractor who hardly does any business through us, thinks the world bows to him, and treats everyone like crap. I’ll go help the guy out.”

Apparently, the customer is upset that a piece of wood floor molding doesn’t quite match the color of the wood flooring he picked up, and he wants to find a piece that matches better.

Months go by, and I forget about this customer… until one day when he wanders back into the showroom. He’s irritated — I can tell just from his body language — that he has to wait for a couple of people to get helped first that were there before him.

Once it is his turn, he comes up to the counter.

Me: “Good morning, how can I help you today?”

Customer: “I need a tapping block.”

Me: “We don’t stock any tapping blocks. I can get one ordered for you, but it’ll be a couple of days before it comes in.”

Customer: “I’ve bought one from here before. Why don’t you have any in stock now? I need it now, and that’s why I’m here. Get me a tapping block.”

Me: “We’ve never stocked tapping blocks. We rarely sell them. If you did buy one here before, it was special ordered, or by some rare chance, we were sitting on a sample tool or a special order that no one ever picked up so we put it into inventory. We don’t stock them.”

Customer: “I drove all the way over here from my job site because you’ve had tapping blocks before. Get. Me. A. F******. Tapping. Block. Now.”

There are two other customers waiting in line behind this rude a**hole, and the one guy who’s standing behind him is a very nice guy. He’s very soft-spoken, has long blond hair, and looks kind of like a derpy hippy guy. I’ve never heard him cuss or swear with other installers who come through when they all chat in the mornings. Most installers swear like a sailor; this guy is the only one I’ve never heard swear or say a bad thing about anyone.

As for the customer I’m dealing with, I don’t know what else I can tell him. I’m getting flustered and trying not to snap at him.

Customer: “Your competition carries tapping blocks. I could go there right now and get one, and you’d lose out on a sale because of it. You think this is a f****** joke?!”

Soft-Spoken Guy: *Boisterously lashing out* “If you can get that tool at the competition, then why the f*** are you here harassing this nice young man when he already told you they don’t carry that f****** tool?! Get the f*** out of here before I make you!”

The rude customer didn’t say another word; he just tucked tail and ran out the front door. I never did see him again.

I thanked the other installer, and he said he hates people like that. He said the customer had no right to treat us like garbage just because he wasn’t getting his way.

For the next handful of years that I worked there, I’d always see this nice, long-haired installer stop in a couple of days a week to buy his supplies, and never again did I ever hear him cuss or swear or raise his voice.

I have been working at this hardware store for just over a month, and I have been trained on the paint mixing station. A customer comes over and tosses a paint swatch at me. The swatch has about ten shades on it, so I confirm which one he wants, the paint type and size, and I get mixing. When it’s done, I show him the color in the can.

Customer: “No! No, no, no! Listen, you stupid little girl! The color I wanted was this one, right here!” *Points to the swatch, possibly pointing at two or three different colors* “You’ve made me this… this ugly s***! It looks like a [n-word]!”

I am shocked by the language, which causes me to stutter a little bit.

Me: “Sir, I… I…”

Customer: “Oh, Lord. That’s why you f***ed up. They got one of the [ableist slur]s working the paint desk.”

He then starts speaking to me slowly, enunciating each word as if I wouldn’t understand otherwise.

Customer: “Get… me… someone… else… Understand?”

My coworker is passing by as the customer is doing this and decides to step in.

Coworker: “Can I help you, sir?”

Customer: “Your special little case here mixed me the wrong f****** paint color!”

Coworker: “I see, sir. Let me get that remixed for you straight away. And, sir, if you’d like to make a complaint about this incident, please provide your name, phone number, or email on this form here, and we will take it very seriously.”

Customer: *Filling out the form* “D*** right, you will! This is not the quality of service I expect!”

The customer gets their paint mixed (after confirming the code number of the color this time, not just the name) and they’re on their way. My coworker is looking at the complaint form and then looks at me.

Coworker: “Looks like we have another contender for ‘The List’.”

Me: “What’s ‘The List’?”

Coworker: “Our list of especially bad customers who deserve our… ‘special attention.’ I overheard him use both the n-word and the r-word, right?”

Me: “Yeah…”

Coworker: “Then he qualifies for ‘The List’.”

Me: “Who is on this list?”

Coworker: “Oh, they have to be a special kind of awful to go on to ‘The List’. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are all qualifiers. Also, when you’ve worked retail long enough, you get to recognize the truly terrible people — the kind of people who live to make others miserable, who aren’t happy until they’ve made some high-school part-timer cry because it’s the only joy they find in the world. You learn to spot the ones who just want to f*** with us because they think they can.”

Me: “And what happens with ‘The List’?”

Coworker: “We sign them up for every spam, scam, and impossible-to-unsubscribe-from service we can find. We have a separate list of those services, too!”

Me: “Is this all… I mean… Does management know? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this.”

Coworker: “When a customer wishes for you and your family to die slowly in a fire because you misspelled their name when signing them up for the loyalty card, then you’ll feel differently.”

Me: “Hmm, we’ll see.”

By the end of the month, I had a phone number and email for “The List”.

Customer: “I want to return this.”

She places towards me a toilet plunger.

Customer: “It didn’t work.”

It was still wet and in a plastic bag. She was perplexed that I was disgusted and threw it straight in the bin. Like we were going to wash and dry it and sell it to someone else? 

Related:
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 36
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 35
On The Need For (Bio)Hazard Pay
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 34
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 33

This tale begins on a cold autumn morning a few years ago in the hardware store where I had been a cashier for about a year. That morning, I was set to be the one opening the store, and as I walked toward the doors, I could see a lady patiently waiting in front of them. I unlocked the doors whereupon she immediately walked in.

Lady: “Good morning, miss. Could you please tell me where I can find the plungers?”

Me: “Good morning, sure can. Row number sixteen on the far side, right in the middle, top shelf.”

The lady gave me a strange look and walked off without saying another word. I kind of wondered why she didn’t say anything after being so polite, but I just shrugged and went about my business opening the store.

One minute later, she reappeared at the register, and I went over to scan her out.

Me: *Scanning her out* “That was fast.”

Lady: “Yeah, holy s***, that was exactly where you said it was. I thought you were pulling my leg because you were so specific. Do you know the location of every item in this store?”

Me: “More or less, yeah.”

Lady: “How much do they pay you? They should pay you more.”

Me: *Laughing* “Yeah, they should. Here’s your receipt, ma’am.”

Lady: “Thank you. Have a wonderful rest of the day.”

Me: “You, too!”

And that concludes the most pleasant conversation I ever had working that job.

Disclaimer: This story contains content of a medical nature. It is not intended as medical advice.

Back during the panic-buying phase of the global health crisis, the flapper in my toilet broke, and I had to make a run to the hardware store.

While there, it occurred to me to check the filter masks aisle. At the time, the focus for masks was on self-protection, not protecting others from you, so valved respirators looked like a great idea.

All the dust masks — useless for blocking [contagious illness] transmission either way — were sold out. My guess is that people saw them as a bargain. All the N95 masks were sold out. But there was a full rack of N100 disposable masks untouched, and they had five entire cases — twenty-five masks per case — of reusable P100 respirator masks.

People were actually avoiding the masks that were better than N95 because they never bothered to learn what the alphanumeric code meant; they just panic-bought N95s.

I actually helped this grandfather-type pick out enough P100 masks for his entire family. He had no idea P100 was better than N95, and we both took a moment to boggle at the five cases of P100s left untouched.

The local drugstore had similar craziness; all concentrations of ethyl and isopropyl alcohol were gone, but the shaving section had cleaning cartridges for electric shavers, and those cartridges were between 85% and 90% alcohol.

Likewise, the store’s stock of povidone-iodine was completely untouched; povidone-iodine is thirty times more effective at killing [illness] than 80% ethyl alcohol is.

The whole thing was utter madness.