(Being both senior staff and full time, I’m on the front of house to watch one of the new guys on tills.)

Customer #1: “I’m looking for a [Brand] toolkit.”

(These kits are £500-£700 apiece, many tend to want one in particular before buying one.)

Me: “Sure, I’ll show you where they are in the catalogue.”

(I go through them and they insist on having two that are in the shop as opposed to ones that we can order in. Previous experience prompts red flags to fly, so I open a till as soon as they get the SKU they want, but another customer asserts that they cut in line so I wind up serving them. My new colleague winds up serving the men I wanted to catch, so I watch.)

New Colleague: “Would you like to register?”

Customer #1: “No.”

Me: “Are you sure? It’ll help you back up those tools for a year.”

Customer #1: “It’s fine. They’re going abroad, anyway.”

(That is a huge red flag for me, because I know that fraudulently obtained goods are often sent abroad, so I watch and sure enough, he’s entering a card number manually while his friend distracts my new colleague.)

Me: *to my customer* “Excuse me a moment, sir.” *to the two men* “I’m sorry, but we must take the PIN number due to the value of your purchase.”

Customer #1: “This card doesn’t have a chip!”

Me: “In that case, you need to use it to purchase online or over the phone. They can do more credit checks than we can. I’m afraid this was a memo handed by head office about six months ago, so my colleague wouldn’t have known about it, but I can’t negotiate on this.”

(The men then walk out.)

Me: *to new colleague* “Cancel the order and serve the next customer, I’ll explain this later.” *to my customer* “I’m sorry; my colleague is new.”

Customer #2: “That’s fine.”

(I quickly serve him and then turn to my new colleague.)

Me: “Just a friendly tip, if someone is entering a number manually into the machine, refuse it and ask for me or a manager if you’re not comfortable, that’s often a sign of attempting fraud and that order was worth £1400.”

New Colleague: “So what do I do now?”

Me: “You stay here; I have to talk to a manager.”

(I found one of our supervisors who took me up with the SKU they attempted to buy. He informed our branch manager and every store in the area!)

(I need some of the stuff you rub on cast-iron fireplaces to blacken them, which is called fireplace black. I can’t find it on the shelves, so I go to ask the chap working in the section where it ought to be, who happens to have extremely dark skin.)

Me: “Hi there, do you have any fireplace black?”

(The worker says nothing, just stares me right in the eye. There is a long, uncomfortable silence while he makes prolonged eye contact. Finally…)

Worker: *continuing to glare* “The fireplaces are over there, whitey.”

(I was just starting on stumbling out an incredibly embarrassed explanation and apology when he fell about laughing, and to my great relief he turned out to have been winding me up.)

(I am at a theme park attempting to get on a Disk’O ride. The ride restraints on this ride are automatic and come up from the bottom of the seat at the back and rest on the riders’ backs to fasten them into the motorcycle position. We are called off the ride after the restraints are pulled up and released, and I have the following conversation with a staff member:)

Me: “This is what happens when you have GLaDOS in control of the restraints.”

Worker: “GLaDOS? We’re not Aperture Science; our funding methods are much more dubious!”

I work in a sales office. One of my colleagues is “belligerent” at best and outright hostile at worst. However, he is good at his job, so it is tolerated, much to everyone else’s chagrin.

One day I answer a call from a customer who explains they have placed a large order by email but have yet to see a confirmation. Of course, they sent the email to the general sales email, which is forwarded to the five area supervisors, all of whom are on the phone, and all of whom may have passed it onto their own sales team, totaling approximately fifty people. I ask the customer to resend the order to my own email and explain that when my coworkers are off the phone I will track down who has handled the order and have them confirm it.

The order comes through, and instantly I can see there is nothing on the customer’s account to show the order has been entered onto the system. I ask around the area supervisors as they finish their calls, but none claim ownership of the order.

Finally, my belligerent coworker slams his phone down, shouts across the open plan office — where people are on calls — that he is dealing with the order, but he can’t put the order on the system because we are out of stock and he needs to find out when we can get more. He shouts at me that I should have known he would be handling the order, and accuses of me trying to “steal” his customer.

He then proceeds to ring the customer and shouts at them for being impatient when they should have — somehow — known the order was being handled. When the customer gets defensive, my coworker hangs up on them mid-sentence.

The customer then proceeds to cancel the £10,000 order. When my coworker tries to charge them a 10% cancellation fee, the customer points out that, without a confirmation, no contract has been formed and they are free to cancel without penalty. Cancellation fees have never been in our terms and conditions, anyway.

Several years later, the customer has a new buying manager who has gotten in touch with us, and we have been slowly earning their business back. My coworker is still with the company, despite repeating variations of the same performance at least twice; however, he now refuses to speak to the customer, who now asks for me by name.

(I work for one of the largest supermarkets in the UK, delivering groceries to customers at home. One of the worst aspects of the job is stairs. I often have to take shopping weighing 80 to 180 kg up multiple flights of stairs. Customers often aren’t willing to help at all, and often the response when asking is, “That’s what I pay you for.” There have been two exceptions to this that make me feel good about humanity. The first comes back when I first start working. I have a delivery of about 120 kg that I have to take up three floors. I carry the first tray up and go back for the remaining six, thinking that doing it one at a time is doable but will make me late for my next delivery. Just as I hit the ground floor, the door to the block opens and two young guys come in.)

Guy: “Is that for [Flat Number]?”

Me: “Yes, it is!”

Guy: “We got this.”

(They both grab two trays each and RUN up the stairs. As a man, I can’t allow myself to be outdone, and carry the last two trays up behind. I thank them both for the help, but they just shrug it off, saying:)

Guy: “We’re all humans and need to help one another out.”

(The second came when I had been having a pretty rough day. It was during the heatwave, and I had just had a customer with a big order up several flights of stairs. I had drunk all my water and I was exhausted. I got to my next customer around fifteen minutes late. She was sat outside her house, and I thought I was in for a lecture. However, she was incredibly patient with me and understanding about the substitutes, and despite being wheelchair-bound, she helped as best she could to take shopping indoors. She then insisted I take not only a can of Coke but two bottles of cold water. Some customers don’t seem to think delivery people are humans at all, but the rare times we get a little kindness go a long way!)

This story is part of our Heatwave roundup!

Read the next Heatwave Roundup story!

Read the Heatwave Roundup!