I’m a shift lead for a liquor store chain that was recently purchased by a delivery company. Times are hard for tech execs who were counting on an IPO to make them billionaires, and there have been cuts. Now, we use drivers from the main delivery company’s network instead of our own.

This causes miscommunications, which is fine. One of the most common is a customer ordering some food or ice cream for delivery. Without alcohol or tobacco in the order, we sometimes get underage drivers, who cannot legally enter our store on account of our tasting room. Liquor laws are archaic but inviolable, so we turn those drivers away politely and wait for the next.

Tonight, I get a driver who has left his ID in the car.

Driver: *Annoyed* “You mean I gotta walk back out to the car?”

Me: “I’m afraid so.”

Driver: “I’m just gonna cancel the pickup.”

Me: “Fine by me.”

And off he goes. Ten minutes later, he walks back in, on his phone.

Now, this puts me in a tough spot. We don’t card everyone who walks in, but this is an individual whom I’ve asked for ID and received excuses instead. It’s probably innocuous, but maybe it’s not. So, I find him in the store.

Me: “Do you have your ID now?”

He’s still on the phone and pretty pointedly ignoring me, so I ask again, loudly enough for whoever’s on the other end to hear. Now he responds.

Driver: “I have my ID, but I won’t be showing you!”

Well, that makes things easier.

Me: “You’ll need to leave, in that case.”

Driver: “Fine.”

He seems to be waiting for me to walk away, but I gesture toward the door.

Me: “Let’s go, then!”

He scoffs but starts walking, stopping to tell my fellow shift lead how unreasonable we’re being. A kid getting some soda while his parents get their drinks drops a bottle, and the dude crows about how Karma is instant as he finally leaves. That finally pushes me enough to fill out the corporate driver complaint form.

Sometime later, the phone rings. When I realize who’s on the other end, the last bits of my customer service finally come untethered.

Driver: “We need to apologize to each other.”

Me: “You can do whatever you like. I’ve already pushed this up to the corporate level and do not care anymore.”

Driver: “When will the general manager be in?!”

Me: “I will not be providing any other employee’s schedule to anyone, much less you.”

Driver: “You’re enjoying this!”

Me: “Actually, I am. You are free to do as you please.”

I end the call.

Half an hour before close, who should roll through the door but the driver who didn’t have time to go get his ID two hours ago.

Driver: “Call the general manager.”

Fine. Fine. I am only too happy to pass this one up the chain. I call my boss on the store phone, tell her a customer wants to complain about me, and pass him the phone.

He spends a full ten minutes telling her how incredibly unprofessional I am without naming any specifics, tells her she needs to hire a better manager, and finally resorts to repeating how “unsafe” I made him feel. He hammers the “unsafe” line for at least half the call’s runtime, and I start grinning as he strikes out over and over. He looks up at one point and angrily tells my boss that I’m ENJOYING making him come back to complain, and I give him a big thumbs-up. He hurriedly relates my thumbs-up to my boss, hoping for a kill shot. It is not.

He finally peters out and sets down the handset without any kind of goodbye. I pick it up and check: the line is dead. I suspect my boss hung up on him. The driver turns around and goes to walk not outside, but deeper into the store!

I come around the counter to follow him.

Me: “We’re closing, and it’s time for you to go.”

He turns around and sneers.

Driver: “You’re still open for fifteen minutes—”

Me: “You’ve been asked to leave and refused, and so you’re now trespassing.”

He finally left for the last time. Two hours after close, my fellow manager and I were cleaning the store and filling delivery orders, and the phone rang. I let her answer. I already knew who it was.

I was at the liquor store recently purchasing two bottles of wine. That’s not something I normally do, but I cook with wine, and I was out of one type and needed the other for a new recipe. I approached the register and saw that the cashier had a beautiful shade of blue-purple hair. 

Me: “Oh, I love your hair! It’s really pretty.”

Cashier: “I love yours, too!”

I moved the two bottles up the belt for her to scan. She paused and, entirely out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, asked:

Cashier: “Oh, my God, are you pregnant?”

I was taken aback but coherent enough to respond.

Me: “Christ, no. I hope not, anyway.” 

For the record, I am very petite (5’0″), and while I’m not a waif, I am not heavy, either, but with a small chest and not having a bra on, other parts were sticking out more than my breasts at the time. It was already strange enough to be asked that question, without even factoring in that I was buying TWO BOTTLES OF WINE.

Cashier: “Well, we’re all in this together, right? I have one son, and that’s it for me.”

She then proceeded to LIFT UP HER SHIRT and show me her stretch marks! I work in the area of sexuality and am all for openness and body positivity, but I did not know this woman from a hole in the wall.

For lack of knowing anything else to say, I just said:

Me: “…Wow.”

She finished ringing me up.

Cashier: “Have a good day, love!”

Cue me walking to my car, shaking my head in disbelief, and wishing that I would’ve responded, “Yes. I’m drinking for two now,” if I hadn’t been so caught off guard. To this day, I’m still not sure how that whole exchange happened.

I work in a store that sells almost nothing but wine and wine-related items (bottle openers, some wine books, etc.) but nothing else. A customer walks up to my counter and puts down a pack of novelty socks.

Customer: “I want to return these.”

Me: “Uh… this is a wine store, sir.”

Customer: “Yes, and I want to return these.”

Me: “We don’t sell socks.”

Customer: “My wife bought these here and she didn’t like them, so I’m returning them.”

I hopelessly check the socks to make sure they’re not some wine-themed gift thing we might have sold and I didn’t notice, but nope. They’re just regular socks.

Me: “Sir, we don’t sell socks. I can’t refund an item we didn’t sell.”

Customer: *Sighs and tuts* “Get me your manager.”

The manager is summoned, and he tries the refund spiel all over again.

Manager: “Sir, please, look to your left. Take in that entire wall. What do you see?”

Customer: “Wine.”

Manager: “Now, please humor me here and look to your right. Take in that entire wall. What do you see?”

Customer: “Wine.”

Manager: “Good. We are in agreement. Is there anywhere in our store, anywhere at all, that looks like we might sell or refund socks?”

Customer: “Look, both my wife and my GPS told me to come here, and they can’t both be wrong.”

Manager: “Our 10,000 bottles of wine trump your wife.”

Customer: *Finally leaving, muttering angrily* “Pretty sure my wife can beat 10,000 bottles of wine.”

Yay for alcoholism?

I work in liquor. We have to do a lot of refusals, so being yelled at and dealing with aggressive customers is something I encounter almost daily. This was a new one for me, though.

A mother comes in with her two young girls. Anyone who works in this industry knows that these situations are generally the worst to deal with. Parents can never get past “But I’m buying it!” and do not comprehend secondary supply laws. Thus, when we see a teenager and a parent stroll in, we keep an eye on them. If we see the kid pick out the alcohol, we can’t sell it to the parent. That’s what happens here.

My lovely coworker explains to the mother why she cannot serve them. The mother does not understand and asks to speak to the manager. I stroll over and get the lowdown from my employee. They’ve done everything right, but clearly, the mother expects me to come over and correct their incompetence. Alas, no, I back up my employee and explain the legal reason why we won’t serve her tonight or the rest of the day.

She looks ready for a fight.

Customer: “This is ridiculous! So, what if I left them in the car and came in myself? Then you wouldn’t have known, right?”

Yep, that’s correct; there are indeed ways you could have “gotten away with it” if you were smart. Unfortunately for you, this is not the case.

Customer: “It’s for an eighteenth birthday party that my daughters are attending! It’s a present for the birthday girl!”

Again, I do not care. She rants and raves some more before throwing her hands up and saying, “I can’t believe this!”, and begins to storm out. On her way out, she looks at our wall where we have liquor licensing laws displayed. She says, “Hmm, 19,000” — the amount we’d be fined if we were caught selling to minors — and walks out.

It’s weird, but we laugh it off, saying we hope she’s learned something.

I tell my employees that if she comes back in today, they shouldn’t serve her and should call me over.

Four hours later, I get called back to the front. The mother is standing there with a big smile on her face.

Customer: “I wanted to come back and apologise for my daughters’ behaviour. They’re just young girls, so they get frustrated easily, but I explained the law to them, and it was a good teachable moment.”

At length, she explained how she’d sat them down and told them, “They’re in a tough position; they’ll get fined if they serve us.”

In case it wasn’t clear, not once during the whole interaction had either of her daughters even spoken. They’d just stood there looking humiliated while their crazy mother went off.

I kept saying, “We appreciate it; that means a lot,” to get her out of the store, but she held us up for five minutes patting herself on the back, painting this picture of her Hellraiser children, and painting herself as this beautiful example of understanding and good parenting.

Everyone she was speaking to was a witness to what had happened. We all knew that was not how it had gone down. It was truly bizarre.

I am in a liquor store browsing the aisles when a woman comes in and speaks to the cashier.

Customer: “I just purchased a bottle of liquor here a few minutes ago.”

Cashier: “I remember you.” 

Customer: “You put the bottle in a bag for me. I put the bag on the floor of my car. When I drove away, the bottle rolled around and broke.”

Cashier: “Why are you telling me this?”

Customer: “I thought you should know that you should have packaged it better.”

She pauses before adding:

Customer: “I don’t want a refund or anything.”

It’s pretty clear she’s hoping for a refund.

Cashier: “Was the bottle broken when you left the store?”

Customer: “It wasn’t.”

Cashier: “I can’t be responsible for what happens to the bottle once you take it out of the store.”

Before she leaves, the customer repeats:

Customer: “I thought you should know.”

I was shaking my head at the idea that someone would blame the liquor store clerk when a bottle of booze is placed on the floor of the car in a paper bag and the bottle, unsurprisingly, ends up broken.