I’m putting up new sale signs around the store. I’ve taken my apron off but kept my name tag on, as it lets me get done faster. As I’m also wearing my radio and plain black shirt, I look like a manager. A customer drags a coworker over.

Customer: “You! Manager!”

Me: “Sorry, I’m not—”

Customer: “I need to complain about this girl!”

Me: “Ma’am, I—”

Customer: “I was told last week you could hold my things for me! And I came in today and you didn’t have them! This girl lied and said you only hold things until the next business day!”

Me: “Ma’am—”

Customer: “Why would she lie to me?! I was told you could hold it for a week!”

At this point, I’ve given up on trying to tell her I wasn’t a manager.

Me: “Our hold policy is only until the end of the next business day. The only way to hold things for a week is to either do an online order or transfer to another store. If someone did tell you they could hold something that long, they were not informed of our policy.”

Customer: “FINE!”

She storms off. My coworker shakes her head.

Coworker: “Some people. At least [Actual Manager On Duty] didn’t have to deal with it.”

When our teams work in certain high-risk sites, each worker must wear a gas detector. Due to a number of failures and calibration occurring at the same time, one of our workers needs a detector, and we’re all out of spares. I check who’s on layoff and not needing a detector in the next weeks and start making phone calls. The first guy is a fresh hire and he confesses he left a detector in the shack at a site a hundred miles away.

The human resources coordinator blows a fuse when I tell her. “What? This is not admissible! I’ll write him up!”

“I’d really suggest you don’t, boss.”

“Why not? He signed when we gave him his personal—”

“He didn’t sign because he never got one. He was always meant for [low-risk] site, but a third man was needed at the refinery, so we gave him a random one and sent him with God. Moreover, he was supposed to get safety training within ninety days of being hired, and despite several occasions and several reminders, the term expired five months ago. Of course, you could still write him up, but there’s a chance it comes back to bite us in the back.”

So far, no letter.

I work in the shoe section of a department store that’s closing down. I’m in a sea of red “Store Closing” signs behind the register, ticketing prices on shoes, when a lady comes up and throws her receipt and a box of shoes hard onto my counter.

Customer: *Annoyed tone* “I want to return these; I don’t want them anymore.”

Me: “Well, ma’am, I’m sorry, but I can’t return these due to the store closing.”

Customer: “What do you mean, your store is closing!? Why did no one tell me when I got them?! You people should put up a sign, for God’s sake!”

I was in shock from the amount of stupidity I had just been exposed to, and I glanced at the thousands of signs posted around. I gestured to the one on the counter, which said in big, bold letters, “NO RETURNS/EXCHANGES.”

The customer looked at the sign, let out a big huff, grabbed the shoebox, and stormed out without her receipt. I glanced at the receipt, curious as to when she got them. Know what the bottom said?

“DUE TO CLOSURES: ALL SALES FINAL!”

I am the assistant manager at a smaller restaurant. I am the youngest employee and female, but I’m also one of the most senior employees and was promoted for busting my a** for almost three years.

One of my employees has been here for less than a year, and is an older male, over twice my age. While I don’t quite like him for personal reasons, I’m very good at not letting that affect how I treat my coworkers and employees. Unfortunately, I have repeatedly had issues with this employee, even when he first started. I’m pretty sure he has issues taking orders from a young woman, but who knows. Regardless, he frequently undermines me, refuses my orders, or ignores me entirely. He is actually fairly decent at his job, though — when he actually does it — and even more unfortunately, he is almost impressively good at brown-nosing and kissing a**, so he is more or less allowed to do whatever the h*** he wants by all higher-ups. I make a semi-compromise with this by basically trying to let him be as much as I can. But, as these things go, I sometimes have to, ya know, communicate with my employees.

We recently cut back on some shipments, as business has been slow. One of the things we cut is going from getting deliveries of our microfiber towels twice a week to once a week, which is entirely fine, but it means we have to be slightly more conservative in our towel usage until we reaccustom ourselves or get busier. This employee, apparently, didn’t listen to the meeting we had the morning before where this was explained and I see him taking a sanitizer bucket with FOUR towels to clean a small, already mostly clean lobby.

Me: “Hey, [Employee], why are there four towels in here?”

Employee: *Snarkily* “Because there’s four of them!”

Me: *After a pause* “Okay, but just so you know—”

Employee: “[My Name], it’s fine; just take one.”

Me: “What? No, I just wanted to—”

Employee: “[My Name], I already told you its okay!”

Me: “No, [Employee], I needed to tell—”

Employee: “[My Name], I don’t understand why this is such a big deal! I already told you you could take a towel.”

Me: “But—”

Employee: “There are even towels in the back! Why do you have to make such a big deal of this?”

I say this louder than normal, but nowhere near yelling.

Me: “[Employee]! Listen to me.”

He just stops and stares at me before smirking.

Employee: “Ooooh, you yelled at me in front of customers.”

He turns and walks away, completely ignoring all attempts at communication on my end, and goes directly to the office where my general manager is working. He proceeds to b**** and complain about how “disrespectful” I am and how my manager needs to “teach me some manners,” and he says that I’m “screaming at him in front of customers.”

My patience is running thin, and I try to interject to tell my side of the story, but he cuts me off every time with a hand-wave, saying, “I’m not done yet!”

By the time he’s done with his little rant, I am almost shaking in anger. He leaves, giving me a smug smirk, and I take a moment to compose myself.

I fully explain the situation, complete with me NOT yelling, only slightly raising my voice, and his complete dismissal of me, briefly mentioning that this is a pattern — which my GM is aware of.

General Manager: “All right, but you have to stop making such a big deal over little things. [Employee] knows what he’s doing; just leave him to it.”

Me: “I’m trying, but I need him to at least listen to me, and I would like it if you and everyone else stopped automatically taking his side for things.”

General Manager: “I’m not taking his side in anything, but you need to stop yelling at him and let him work.”

I’m thinking, “You are literally taking his side. Right now. Over the assistant manager that YOU promoted.”

Me: “I’ll try. Could you at least ask him to listen to me instead of interrupting? I just want to have a conversation.”

General Manager: “Yeah, sure.”

I think I need a new job.

I work customer service for a furniture store. This is a small store, family-owned, and our only location. A customer comes in and looks around and decides to purchase a couch from our floor. This is a couch that is on sale due to discontinuation.

Because it is discontinued and “last chance,” there is a no-exchange-or-return policy attached. Because of this, the salesperson is asking her questions and trying to make sure that the couch will fit into her apartment building and even offers to put it on hold for her to go back and measure and call in to complete the purchase if needed.

The customer refuses.

Customer: “I know that it is just fine and is what I want.”

We go through the process, I write up the invoice and go over policies and charges one more time, and then she signs the invoice and we schedule delivery for the next day.

The next day comes, and our guys go out to deliver it and run into a couple of problems. First, there’s no freight elevator in her building — she lives on the second floor — and the halls are too narrow for them to get it easily up the stairs. They manage to get it into her apartment and where she wants it and one of the drivers notices her dog immediately jump onto the couch. She signs the necessary paperwork and they leave. A couple of hours later, I get a call:

Customer: “Hi, I had a couch delivered today and it doesn’t fit. I want to return it.”

I pull up the order to double-confirm, although I know that she’s not going to like my answer.

Me: “It looks like you purchased one of our last-chance items. Unfortunately, we can’t return that.”

Customer: “Well, I don’t want it! It’s stained and it doesn’t fit in my apartment!”

Me: “Stained? What kind of stains are there?”

We always check the furniture before it leaves and if there had been a stain, she would have likely gotten a further discount on the initial purchase.

Customer: “Your delivery guys must have done something! It’s stained and it doesn’t fit. I want them to come back and get it and I want a refund!”

Me: “Hold, please.”

I flag down the delivery guy who is heading towards the back of the store.

Me: “Hey, do you remember this delivery?”

I show him the invoice.

Me: “She says it’s stained and doesn’t fit.”

Driver: “Yeah. It fit, but it was tight to get it up there. There weren’t any stains on it, though; we had it in plastic until it was in her apartment. I bet her dog did something.”

Me: “Great.”

I pick the phone back up and start talking to the customer again.

Me: “Thank you for holding. Unfortunately, because this couch is listed under our last-chance option, it can’t be returned. I double-checked your invoice and that was listed and explained when we went over it.”

Customer: “No, it’s stained and doesn’t fit. You need to come and get it.”

Me: “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but store policy is that furniture listed as last-chance or discontinued can’t be returned or exchanged.”

Customer: “It doesn’t fit!”

Me: “Your salesperson asked you those questions yesterday and you assured us that it would.”

Customer: “You need to have your guys come and get it. I want to return it!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but this furniture can’t be returned.”

Customer: “What’s your name?”

Me: “[My Name].”

Customer: “Email address?”

I give the work email address.

Customer: “Goodbye.” *Click*

Within about twenty minutes, there was an upset email sent to her salesperson with me CC’d in it. It explained in detail how the couch didn’t fit and was stained and how it needed to be returned.

She went on to explain that if we didn’t allow her to return the couch, she was going to email corporate — the store manager’s husband — and tell them how we were horrible employees. The salesperson and I discussed it and he decided he would call her to see if he could get her to understand the policy. He never made the phone call; within five minutes of her email to us, I got a call from the manager’s husband telling me that we needed to process this return.

I tried to explain the situation, but he didn’t want to hear it; neither did the manager. So, I called the customer back and managed to schedule a time for our guys to retrieve the couch the next day.

When they got back, we looked it over. There were a few scratches — mostly on the underside — from when they were trying to get it into her apartment and there were most definitely yellowish stains in a couple of places. There was also dog hair UNDER the cushions. I tried to explain to the manager that the stain was likely dog pee and that we shouldn’t refund the money or have retrieved it, but she refused to listen to me, basically telling me to shut up when I kept trying to point out that the stains hadn’t been there before and neither had the dog fur.

She refused to listen and just paid a cleaner to come and get rid of the stain and then marked it down a little more. When the customer came to pick up her check, she had her dog with her and looked entirely too pleased with herself.