(I work at a local used video game store chain. Since we deal in every console, we receive a lot of cool things sometimes. However, it also brings a lot of questionable material. For instance, today a customer walks in and doesn’t even look at me.)

Customer: “Hey, man, I need 30 bucks for this unopened Kinect.”

Me: “Well, normally, I’d be happy to take it, but this location already has two of them and it has to be open. Also, I don’t really have any spare cash avail–“

(He cuts me off.)

Customer: *in a pitiful tone* “Dude, I’ll take 25; just please give me some money!”

(At this point I have no intention of dealing with this man, so I tell him we aren’t able to do it. He walks quickly back to the door, opens it, and shouts:)

Customer: “This place sucks; they never give me money!”

(He then exited the store and ran off. He forgot his Kinect. Upon closer inspection, the box was opened, and instead of a Kinect, it had a few DVDs and a PlayStation 2 controller.)

(I work at an extremely well-known big box retailer known for having virtually everything and a very lenient price-matching policy. However, if I am told a price that I think is incorrect, I am allowed to ask what store it’s from and make sure it’s not ludicrous.)

Me: *preparing to scan an item*

Customer: “…and that’s [price that seems too low].”

Me: “Okay, sir, and which store is that from?”

Customer: “I don’t have to tell you that! The [Company] policy says I don’t have to tell you!”

Me: “Actually, sir, I can ask, and the store you are asking me to price match must be within 50 miles of this store.”

Customer: “No, it says in the policy I don’t have to, and I happen to know insider information about this kind of thing because my ex-wife is the store manager of one of these stores in New York, so you are wrong. I have the personal phone numbers of all sorts of people in the corporate office, and I can get anyone I want fired.”

(I go ahead and give him the price — it is busy and my supervisor has asked me to send someone home at another register — finish out his order, and give him his receipt while he continues to tell me his story.)

Customer: *becoming more smug by the moment* “Once, a cashier at another store, not here, wouldn’t honor the sign saying the pants I wanted to buy were $3 and told me I’d have to pay $15, and it was 3:00 in the morning, mind you, and I made her get her supervisor. Her supervisor told me that I couldn’t pay $3 for the pants and would have to pay $15, and I asked her if she was sure about that because there are laws in this country that require companies to have truth in advertising, and she said she was just doing her job. I told her I had the personal number of [Executive that does not actually exist], and I would be perfectly happy to call him, and I did, and he screamed at her on the phone and told her she’d be fired if she didn’t make me happy! Then she had the cashier change the price for me.”

Me: “Ah, yes… I—”

Customer: *positively gleeful* “Then, that manager told me I am a horrible person! And if you think that’s bad, when my wife was an assistant manager at a [Company] in California, her boss was a gay man who decided he hated women and sexually harassed my wife, and I called [Executive that doesn’t exist], and he not only fired that man and promoted my wife, he made that gay man unemployable in the state of California!”

(I was completely unable to figure out how to extricate myself from this conversation, which actually took over 15 minutes and nearly cost me my break, and in addition, the person I was supposed to relieve wound up being sent home by the supervisor because I couldn’t get away from this man. I found out later from a friend of mine that he comes in all the time and tries to pull that crap on people, and none of it is true.)

(A customer walks up to the counter.)

Me: “Hello, what can I do for you today?”

Customer: “I’d like to sell this phone for cash.”

Me: “Okay. Let’s get you the price and then book it in to be tested.”

(Moments pass during said process.)

Me: “All right, I just need to get a time from my tester, and then you can come back to pick this up in a little while. I just need you to sign this consent form…”

(The customer signs it and then waits.)

Me: “Is there anything else I can help you with? You’re free to go now.”

Customer: “Yes, I’m waiting for my money.”

Me: “We can only give you that after your phone passes all of the tests.”

Customer: “But it works. Can I not just have the money now, and I’ll come and sign the agreement later?”

Me: “But we don’t know that your phone does everything that it’s supposed to.”

Customer: “It does, though. Why would I lie?”

Me: “…”

(A Windows scammer had been calling me every ten minutes for the past hour.)

Scammer: “Your Windows server is broken; we need some information to fix it.”

(I panic and start thinking of what to say. I am fed up with this guy and don’t want him to call again.)

Me: “Hiyaah!”

Scammer: “Hello?”

Me: “Hiyaah!”

(I see a restaurant menu on the table, and start listing Chinese menu items in the most garbled voice I can manage.)

Scammer: “What language are you speaking?”

Me: “Chow mein?” *exaggerated, then more garbled gibberish*

Scammer: *in the background* “Help, I think I’ve got Japan… What do I do?”

Background: “Hang up, hang up!”

(I didn’t hear from him again.)

(I work at a rehabilitation facility. The set up of the facility is a community-based one, and is an office, which previously was a residential dwelling. The houses that our clients live in are also regular houses that were previously neighbouring properties until the organisation bought them. Therefore, our houses’ landline numbers end up being contacted often by scam calls. This is hilarious for a number of reasons, given that our client population have all experienced severe traumatic brain injury, and while very independent in some areas of their lives, there are some concepts about the world they just cannot grasp. Scam calls are one. The one doing the rounds at our site at the moment happens to be the good old “your computer has a virus.” While the staff at the office usually deal with this call by immediately hanging up — a tragic missed opportunity in my view — sometimes the clients get these calls, instead. I just happen to be coming into one of the houses to help out one of the clients when I notice him fiddling around behind the television. I notice him on the phone, which he puts down when I come in.)

Me: “What are you doing?”

Client: “My device has a virus.”

(I note he is putting blankets all over the TV cables.)

Client: “Well, if it has a virus it must be sick, so I thought blankets would keep it warm and make it feel better.”

(He also needed to be persuaded that chicken soup did not work on TV devices. I am mostly thankful he had no ingredients to attempt to prepare this concoction, or after staff leaving he may have tried this. We did keep a close eye on him and his “Sick TV,” though! Another house receiving a similar call with another client a few weeks later responded with the glorious, “Okay, but what is a computer?” Another client, again in a different house, ended up hanging up on the scammer by pulling the cord for the phone from the wall, thinking that this was “rebooting the modem,” and then, while recalling the event to staff, reported, “I must have fixed the issue, because they hung up and haven’t called back.” I am holding out for when they try the office again and I get to answer. This website has given me so many pro tips!)