It’s 10:30 PM, and the store’s phone starts ringing.

Caller: “Hi! I was there earlier, and I think I left my wallet there!”

She describes the wallet and confirms her name on the ID inside it.

Me: “Yes, we have it. We have it safe and secure in the security office.”

Caller: “Oh, thank goodness! I’m coming back to get it now!”

Me: “Please note that we close at 11 PM, ma’am.”

Caller: “What?! But I’m still about a hundred miles out!”

Me: “Then we’re going to be closed long before you can get here. We open tomorrow morning at—”

Caller: “—No! You will stay open until I get back; otherwise I’ll say you’re stealing my wallet!”

Me: “These calls are recorded. If you like, I can leave it in the newspaper machine outside, but there is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that it will not be stolen in the time it takes you to get here.”

Caller: “You have to stay there for me! I’m a customer!”

Me: “After 11 PM, no one is a customer. What’ll it be?”

She opted to come in tomorrow morning and collect it in the store. When she did so, she complained to a manager that I wouldn’t stay late for her, and he literally laughed in her face.

Customer: “Do you sell gift cards?”

Me: “We do!”

Customer: “Great! Can I get one with $100 on it?”

Me: “Sure thing!”

I scan the card and type up $100 on the register.

Customer: “Why is it charging me $100?”

Me: “You said you wanted $100 on the gift card, right?”

Customer: “Yes, but you have a 10% off everything in store sale right now. That should be $90!”

Me: “That doesn’t apply to gift cards.”

Customer: “The sale says everything in store! The gift cards are in your store!”

Me: “Yes, but us giving you a $100 gift card for $90 would essentially be us giving you $10 for free.”

Customer: “Yes, I know! That’s why I’m doing it!”

Me: “We can’t do that.”

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

I call the manager over, who has a hard time not laughing when the customer repeats their issue.

Manager: “No, sales don’t apply to gift card purchases. They never have. You get the same amount on the gift card that you put in.”

Customer: “That’s not fair!”

Manager: “It kinda is.”

Customer: “No, it’s not! I had a plan to make some money today, and you ruined it!”

Related:
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 37
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 36
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 35
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 34
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 33

I work in a dollar store. A customer has been laying into me about everything for the last few minutes, and I’m about to snap.

Customer: “And another thing! You need to have more bathrooms!”

Me: “We’re not a large store, so one bathroom usually—”

Customer: “—There’s only one! You can’t sit there and tell me you thought only one bathroom was a good idea!”

Me: “Yes, totally, it’s all my fault. When I designed the store, and we had the meeting on the number of bathrooms, I decided on one, and then I quit my job as an architect and started working here, at the dollar store, as a cashier.”

Customer: “Are you f****** talking back to me?!”

Me: “Considering you’ve spent the last few minutes talking at me, I figured you wouldn’t notice. If you want to talk at my manager about it, they’re at lunch and will be back in an hour.”

The customer scrunched up their face like they were sucking lemons but finally shut the f*** up and let me cash them out.

I used to work at one of those old-school newspaper stands when people still read physical newspapers.

I just got my weekend paper and am about to walk back home with the dog when a customer who had been served before me storms back up to the guy working the stand.

Customer: “This is the Saturday paper! It has last night’s lottery numbers in it!”

Newspaper Vendor: “Well, yeah, it wouldn’t have tonight’s in it, would it?”

The customer just stares for a moment, as if coming to the realisation of a fundamental truth.

Newspaper Vendor: “Oh, mate. Were you really expecting tonight’s lottery numbers in today’s paper?”

The customer tossed his paid-for newspaper on the floor and stormed off. Did he think he’d just discovered a cheat code to getting rich and didn’t think that one, that would require knowing the future, which is impossible, and two, even if it were, no one else who read the newspaper had ever thought to do it…?

I work in technical escalations for a Fortune 500 technology company. Had a ticket come in from our L2 team for an older gentleman who had recently purchased a fully kitted-out Ruggedized laptop (a specialized computer built to withstand extreme environments, drops, vibrations, dust, and moisture) for personal use… I’m talking about something the military, police, and fire departments would use.

For the sake of this story, we will call him Lou.

After reviewing the case details, I give Lou a call to help get the machine set up. His primary concern is that he wants to get GPS up and running, and none of the other technicians could get it working.

This laptop comes fitted with both a WWAN module (like putting your smartphone’s internet service inside your laptop) and a dedicated GPS module. I explained that if Lou wanted to use the dedicated GPS module, it would require line of sight, so he would either need to get close to a window or step outside to establish a connection.

I went through the steps of testing and confirming we are getting a good data stream, then validated that everything is working as expected.

Assuming we had wrapped up the issue, I asked Lou if he needed anything else, and he responded with “Well, you still haven’t gotten the GPS to work!”.

Confused by this, I asked Lou what he meant, as the GPS coordinate data was clearly coming in and working with all the apps we tested. Lou responded with “I still cannot see the live view; the whole reason I bought this computer was so I could see a live satellite view of my neighborhood and keep watch.”

Now I understood.

Lou has purchased a $6000 specialized laptop, expecting that he would have some clandestine spy capability to keep watch over his neighborhood.

I then had the unfortunate task of crushing an old man’s dreams of having the most advanced Neighborhood Watch in North America…