It is my second week at a new job at a coffee shop, and a woman who is a regular comes in. It is my first time serving her.

Lady: “Hi, I’d like my coffee light and sweet. No cream. I want whole milk. I repeat, no cream. Don’t let that Asian girl make it. I want you to make it.”

The Asian girl is my shift leader. I give the customer her total and then she pays and I proceed to make her coffee.

Me: “Okay, let me get that for you.”

As I’m making it, the “Asian Girl” goes into the back. She luckily hasn’t heard the remark from the customer.

Lady: “Thank God. That girl almost killed me. Twice. I’m highly allergic to cream. I told her milk and received cream and had an allergic reaction and went to the hospital.”

Me: “Oh, wow, that’s horrible. Glad you are okay.”

Lady: “Yeah, and I came back another time while she was working and asked specifically for milk again, and she made me another coffee with cream and I went to the hospital again. I came back a few days later and complained to your manager and he gave me this.”

She shows me her 10% off coupon that she uses each time she is there.

Lady: “That’s all I got in return. I never want to have her make my coffee again. With all of the mistakes she makes and almost killing me, why hasn’t she been fired yet?”

Me: “Actually, just before I started working here, she was promoted to shift leader. She’s in charge of me.”

Lady: “What?! That’s horrible! I can’t believe they would give her a promotion! Ugh!”

She sips her coffee.

Lady: “Well, you did a good job and you gave me milk and not cream! Thank you, and good luck working for the psycho!”

I am working a Saturday overnight — until 5:00 am — shift at a convenience store. Two guys come in around 2:45 and start looking through the beer cooler. Iowa stops sales of all alcohol at 2:00 am. I tell them that it is too late to buy alcohol, but one of them brings a 12-pack up to the counter anyway.

Me: “Sorry, but I can’t sell that to you. The cutoff time is 2:00.”

Customer: “Aw, c’mon. Just this once.”

Me: “Sorry. No can do. The registers are programmed to not allow the sales.”

Customer: “Can’t I just leave you the money, and you ring it up when the register will let you?”

Me: “Nope. My shift ends before that. Besides—”

I point at the various security cameras in the store.

Me: “It would be too hard to hide.”

I’m still being polite, despite starting to get frustrated by his refusal to take no for an answer.

Customer: “How much would it take for you to let me walk out of here with this beer?”

Now, my patience is exhausted, but I’m still trying to keep my temper.

Me: “$20,000.”

The customer’s mouth hangs open in shock.

Me: “You’re going to pay my fine, the store’s fine, and the store’s lost sales for their liquor license being suspended.”

He then left with no further argument.

I’m a fairly new mobile phone salesperson. A customer I dealt with previously has come back to my store to have me fix a problem with their phone activation. After calling their carrier, I get the error sorted and their phones working.

Customer: “So, where’s our gas rebate?”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “I want a gas rebate! I had to drive a hundred miles round-trip twice to get this taken care of!”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry that you had to make that drive, but all we can do is fix the problem you had with the phone; we don’t do gas rebates here.”

Customer: “Fine. I want an iTunes Store card.”

Me: “Okay, that’ll be—”

Customer: “No, I want it for free.”

Me: “We can’t do that.”

The customer wanders off. Five minutes later, my manager comes up.

Manager: “Hey, we got some people up at customer service that are demanding free gift cards and stuff. I saw you working with them. Did you promise them anything?”

Me: “No.”

They were there for another thirty minutes before apparently giving up. I haven’t seen them since.

I work customer service in a store where coupons are common and almost always used. They’re always off “one single item,” but there are the rare “off entire purchase” coupons. If customers forget their coupons, we always try to get them to come back and do an adjustment to their receipt.

Me: “Hello, what can I help you with today?”

Customer: “I was in here a few days ago and I forgot my coupon.”

Me: “Ah, coupon adjustment.”

Customer: “Yes.”

She hands me the long receipt with the coupon and I look and see it’s only off one single item.

Me: “I assume you want it off the highest-priced item?”

Customer: “No, I want it off the entire order.”

Me: “This coupon is only for one single item.”

I point to where it says that on the coupon.

Customer: “Unbelievable! Your store always does this to me! Why can’t you guys just hold coupons behind the counter like [Competitive Store]? Or better yet, just drop the prices 20% and get rid of the coupons! Your store always complicates things!”

She grabs her receipt and coupon and walks out the door. I then turn to my coworker.

Coworker: “They don’t realize you’re doing exactly what you were trained to do.”

Me: “They act like I have control over pricing and coupons.”

Related:
There Is No Escape From The Terms And Conditions

I work in a grocery store and it is the day of the Super Bowl. We have a lot of sandwich, fried chicken, and chicken wing orders, all of which were called in at least two days before. We have only the bare minimum amount of chicken to get through the rest of the day, so we are sticking firm to our policy requiring twenty-four-hour advance notice for orders.

About thirty minutes before the game starts, a group of four young men is standing in the produce area seeming to discuss something. One of them approaches the hot case.

Me: “Hi, can I help you?”

Customer: “I am having a party for a hundred people. What do you recommend?”

Me: “The only thing that I could recommend you should have ordered yesterday.” 

The customer just walked away, but my coworker heard his companions telling him that I was right.

This story is part of our Super Bowl roundup!

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This story is part of our July 2020 Roundup – the best stories of the month!

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