It is Christmas Eve and we’re closing at 10:00 pm. The store is closed tomorrow, and we are all looking forward to having the day off. I am checking out a customer just before close.

Customer: “What time will you be restocking the cranberry sauce and holiday cutlery tomorrow? I find it incredibly inconvenient that you don’t have them this evening.”

Me: “We’re closed tomorrow, ma’am. It’s Christmas Day.”

Customer: *Blank stare* “Closed… tomorrow?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am. For Christmas.”

Customer: “But… why?”

Me: “Because we want to be with our families?”

Customer: “Fam… ilies? No. Nonsense. You need to be open for my cranberries.”

Me: “I’m afraid that we won’t be, ma’am. We open again at 6:00 am on the twenty-sixth.”

Customer: “If you wanted to be with your family, you shouldn’t be working retail! Now… my cranberries—”

Me: “Ma’am, I—”

Customer: “My… cranberries!”

Narrator: “She did not get her cranberries.”

Our daughters are two years apart. When [Older Daughter] was in kindergarten, she and her classmates took part in the school’s annual Christmas pageant. At the start of the pageant, one of the teachers announced:

Teacher #1: “Now, parents, don’t just watch your child’s performance and then leave. Stay until the end of the show.”

That was fair; a mass of people getting up at the end of each act would be disruptive. The trouble was that our younger daughter (who was only around three) got restless and fussy at the end of her sister’s turn on stage, and we knew that we couldn’t stay. So, we bundled her up and headed over to [Older Daughter]’s classroom, where she and her classmates were blowing off a little steam.

Her teacher physically blocked the doorway and hissed:

Teacher #2: “Oh, no, you don’t. Go back and watch the rest of the show. [Older Daughter] is happy here.”

Me: *In disbelief* “That’s all fine and dandy, but her sister is tired and needs to go home.”

She refused to budge.

Teacher #2: “Then have your husband take her.”

Me: “Excuse me? We’re taking both of our daughters home, now. Move.”

She very begrudgingly moved.

Season of peace and goodwill, my a**.

It’s December 23rd. I’m a freshman in college. My bagger is in the second year of his master’s degree. I’m not available to work on the 24th, so I offer to pick up extra hours on the 23rd. The store manager enthusiastically takes me up on my offer… and schedules me from 10:00 am to 10:00 pm.

It’s about 9:30 pm and we are still busy. They’ve started making “store closing in thirty minutes” announcements. My bagger and I are commiserating over our sore feet and legs when a well-dressed older woman descends upon my register with an overflowing cart.

Me: “Hi! How are you today?”

She waves me off with a dismissive gesture.

Customer: “Just ring it up, will you?”

She stands there and stares at me.

Me: “Ma’am, I need you to unload the cart, please.”

She huffs and starts unloading items on to the belt. I start scanning and sliding items to my bagger. She finishes unloading but does not push her cart forward.

Bagger: “May I have your cart, ma’am?”

She rolls her eyes and pushes the cart forward. My bagger loads it up while she swipes her card.

Customer: “Do y’all have expanded holiday hours?”

Me: “No. Our normal hours are 6:00 am to 10:00 pm, so we don’t really need them.”

Customer: “You need expanded hours. That way, people with real jobs have more time to shop.”

Me: “I’m sorry, what?”

Customer: “It’s not like you people are doing anything else.”

She snatches the receipt from my hand and marches off. My bagger and I just stare at each other.

Bagger: “So, we don’t have real jobs? I guess those must be imaginary paychecks that go to our imaginary tuition.”

It’s an average night so far. We have a larger order for a specific time, around 4:00 pm or so. The order consists of somewhere around eight pizzas and ten pounds of wings. A woman picks up the order. Everything is good but she calls back about three hours later.

Customer: “I picked up my order and my wings and pizza are cold!”

Me: “All right, I can help with that. Okay, I have the order pulled up and it seems like you picked your order up about three hours ago. Did you just start eating the food now?”

Customer: “Yes, but that shouldn’t be a problem!”

Me: “Okay, well, our policy states that if you are unhappy with your order for any reason we can remake or refund your order provided that we get at least half of it back. Other than that, I cannot offer you anything else.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous. My food is cold! And the wings are overdone and slimy! We already ate all the pizza and some of the wings, so I wouldn’t be able to bring at least half of it back. You’re making it seem like you think I’m lying to you!”

Me: “Well, our wings are baked not fried, and we put the sauce on before we cook them, so some people don’t like the way they come out and that’s fine. I do not at all think you’re lying. I truly believe that if you wait three hours to eat your food that it will be cold. If you have at least half of the wings left, I can give you a refund on the wings, but that’s about all I can do.”

Customer: “Okay, I’ll bring them back up there, but I’m not happy.”

Me: “Okay, no problem. We will refund it for you when you get here.”

After a while, my shift ends. I let the closing manager in charge know what’s going on and what to do for her. She comes in after I’m gone and will not stop complaining to the closing manager about it, exclaiming that she wants a full refund and more. Unfortunately, he gives her a full refund to get her out of his hair. This isn’t enough for her. She emails the owner of the business and claims that I treated her terribly and that I acted as though she was lying, and he gives her a gift card for the full cost of her order. So, she receives a refund and gift card. She then writes a review on our social media site.

Review: “The wings are baked, not fried. They were very slimy and the pizza was cold and overcooked. When I called to let them know, they made me feel like I was lying and making it up. They told me that in order for them to do something, I had to bring food back which I did because no one ate it; it was awful. It was our family Christmas, and that’s what our dinner was, and it got ruined. They did give me a full refund, but I won’t be back and if you’re looking for good wings, this is not the place.”

The owner said he was very disappointed in the way I handled the situation and that he couldn’t believe it was me at first as I’m always friendly and fair with the customers. Of course, she keeps coming back.

Back in the mid-1980s, a friend and I frequented a certain sub shop across the street from a shopping center. There were three key reasons we went here: 1) at the time, it was the only sub shop that was open on Sundays in that neighborhood, which is the day we were typically in the area, 2) they used very high-quality meats and ingredients, so the food here was quite delicious and high quality, and 3) their prices were very reasonable.

Initially, there were no problems. But after a few months, a guy started working there every Sunday. He was a college student who I swear would score a minus on an IQ scale. These are just a few of his, shall we say, shortcomings.

We had to be alert to be sure that what we got from him was what actually we ordered. For example, if I ordered a chicken breast sub, I might get turkey or ham, or one time, a meatball, which I fortunately noticed just as he started making it. If I asked for no tomato, I had to watch him to be sure he didn’t put it on anyway. He also could not make change to save his life; electronic cash registers were just reaching their peak in popularity among retail stores, but the owner of this place still had the older mechanical ones, where the staff had to figure out the change in their head. For example, if my meal came to $4.50 and I gave him a five-dollar bill, it would literally take him a good sixty seconds to figure out that the change was fifty cents, and this happened every… single… time.

One of the more idiotic things this employee did occurred one day when I ordered a large turkey sub. For sake of explanation, let’s say that a large sub was $5.00, a medium was $4.00, and a small was $3.00.

Me: “I’ll have a large turkey, with lettuce and pickles, please.”

Employee: “Sure thing. Oh, sorry. I forgot we ran out of the large sub rolls. Do you want another size?”

Me: “Ah, yeah, okay, I’ll have a medium, then.”

Employee: “Sure thing. Oh, you know what? A medium and a small together equal the size of a large. Do you want to do that?”

I agreed at first, but remembering his knack for screwing things up, I asked him an important question first.

Me: “Oh, thanks so much. That sounds good.” *Pauses* “Oh, wait. How much would that be?”

He turned and looked at the menu board above and behind him, and he took a few seconds to figure it out.

Employee: “The small is $3.00 and the medium $4.00, so $7.00.”

Me: “Sorry, that makes no sense. You said they are equal in size to a large sub.”

Employee: “Yeah.”

Me: “Yeah, so why are you charging me $7.00 when a large sub is only $5.00?”

Employee: “Well, a medium and a small together cost $7.00.”

Friend: “Are you seriously going to charge him $2.00 extra because you’re out of the large sub rolls? That is plain silly. At your suggestion, he is still getting the equivalent of a large sub, with the same amount of meat and so forth, but yet you’re overcharging him $2.00? Come on, man. Can’t you just think about that and see the obvious logic?”

At this point, I was practically banging my head against the counter at the absurdity of this guy’s lack of reasoning ability, logic, and even common sense.

Employee: “Well, it costs what it costs, you know what I mean?”

Me: “No, I don’t. You are the one who suggested it and even told me that they are the equal to a large size; it’s not my fault you are out of the large sub rolls. You suggested the alternate as a solution. It’s not like I demanded an unreasonable solution; you brought it up, not me. I shouldn’t be penalized for accepting your reasonable suggestion. I mean, why is this such a difficult concept for you to understand? If you’re going to charge me more than a large size costs, why are you even bringing it up in the first place?”

Employee: “Yeah, but I don’t want to get in trouble with the owner, you know, by giving away two subs at less than the menu says they should cost.”

I was completely frustrated at this point.

Me: “Honestly, geez, that’s just not going to happen. The owner can’t possibly be that stupid. I mean, really. Apparently, you have no clue about making the customer happy, a practice I’m sure the owner would have no problem with you doing.”

Employee: “Well, they cost $4.00 and $3.00, so I have to charge the $7.00 for both of them.”

Me: “Geez. You know what? Forget it. Just give me a medium.”

Employee: “Okay, so that was a turkey, right?”

Me: “Yes, with lettuce and pickles only, please.”

My friend and I looked at each other and just rolled our eyes at the total cluelessness. My friend ordered the same thing. We would have gone elsewhere, but the only thing open in the area on a Sunday back then was a [Fast Food Place] which we weren’t interested in. We were also really baffled that someone actually hired this guy. I mean, every week there was something beyond ludicrous he’d do.

I tried to call the owner during that week to complain, but he was impossible to find or get ahold of. He was never on site and never seemed to be in his office. He apparently owned several other retail businesses and was the epitome of a hands-off owner. 

Sadly, this type of thing went on for over a year until, finally, another sub shop opened across the street, basically putting this place out of business within only a few months.