A customer is in our tile warehouse looking at blocks of marble tiles.
Customer: “I like this tile, but I can only find one of this style.”
Me: “Ma’am, everything in this pile is the same size and type of marble.”
Customer: “Yes, but they’re all different patterns. I just like this pattern.”
Me: “Those patterns are made by Mother Nature, ma’am. We can’t get more just like that.”
Customer: “Ugh, fine. Give me the number for them and I’ll order them myself!”
This is a story from my high school days when a chemistry teacher taught me that you can be good at what you do and still not take yourself too seriously. The incident occurred in my senior year.
I don’t recall what the experiment specifically was, but [Teacher] was heating something in a glass beaker over a Bunsen burner. He then needed to cool the mixture off. This he did by holding the beaker with a pair of tongs and carrying it over to a sink, where he ran water over the sides of the beaker.
Thermodynamics being what it is, as soon as the hot beaker touched the cold water, we heard a very loud CRACK. The beaker had broken by cooling too rapidly.
While the class chuckled, [Teacher] sighed, dropped the broken beaker into the trash, and calmly began preparing a second sample. He then heated the second beaker and carried it to the faucet.
Another CRACK. The class began outright laughing now.
[Teacher] sighed again, tossed the second beaker in the trash, and picked up a third. We were still laughing. He looked up at the class with the third beaker in his hand, shrugged — and suddenly threw the beaker into the sink, absolutely shattering it! After a brief stunned silence, the class went into hysterics.
After I graduated, I learned another lesson from [Teacher]: you don’t have to follow traditional paths or be stuck in a mold. Most teachers who aspire to greater things move into administration or pursue a doctorate. When [Teacher] got bored, though, he’d just take a sabbatical year off, attend a few more college classes, and come back teaching a different subject. When I visited the school two years after I graduated, he was teaching Art.
There’s no telling what he got to break doing that!
Today, I learned not to make small talk with customers.
Customer: “Cheeseburger, fries, and orange juice.”
Me: “Oh, getting in that vitamin C, very good!”
Customer: “What? What vitamins?!“
Me: “Oh, just that orange juice is a good source of vitamin C.”
Customer: “What are you adding to the orange juice? I just wanted oranges! None of that chemical crap!”
Me: “It’s just a naturally occurring ingredient in oranges, ma’am. It’s not anything that we added here.”
Customer: “So, you added it at the factories?! All you big companies are pumping our bodies full of chemicals! Where is your manager?!”
I call my manager over and explain the situation, while we both share a look that says, “This woman is scared about putting chemicals into her body, but she’s not worried about the fries and burger. No, it’s the 100% pure squeezed orange juice she has an issue with.”
Customer: “You guys are illegally pumping chemicals into our bodies! I want a complete list of all the ingredients in everything you’re serving!”
I leave my manager to it and go to serve other customers. A minute later, I see the customer run out of the store screaming about chemicals and how she’s been “unlawfully vaccinated.”
Me: “What did you tell her?”
Manager: “Just that there was sodium chloride in her burger.”
Me: “So… salt?”
Manager: “Yes, but most anti-vaxxers can’t tell the difference when you start using chemical names for household ingredients, so I figured I would just go down that route.”
Throughout the day, he goes on to Google on his phone and starts shouting out little ingredient factoids:
Manager: “From now on, I’m not gonna tell people that the orange juice contains citric acid, but instead 2-Hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid!“
And so on…
Five-Year-Old: “What would happen if we didn’t have the sun?”
Me: “We’d all turn into popsicles.”
Five-Year-Old: “What flavor?”
Several years ago, I was shopping at a discount retailer. I found a cart of items with a big sign saying, “Take an extra 50% off the lowest ticketed price. Discount will be taken at the register.” So, I found three items: a $1.00 item that would be $0.50, a $3.00 item that would be $1.50, and lastly, a $5.00 item that would be $2.50.
I picked out a few other things around the store and got in line. It was a long line, and there was only one cashier. I was in line for about twenty minutes before it was my turn. I watched as the cashier used a calculator to figure out the extra 50% discounted price. I paid for my purchases and walked outside.
Then, I started thinking that the price I had paid was more than I had calculated; I looked at the receipt, and I was right. The $1.00 item was rung up as $0.75 instead of $0.50, the $3.00 item was rung up as $2.00 instead of $1.50, and the $5.00 item was rung up as $3.75 instead of $2.50.
I went back into the store to see if I could get my purchases corrected to the right sale prices. There was another long line, so I waited again for at least another fifteen minutes. When I got up to the cashier, I showed her the mistakes on those three items.
Cashier: “No. Those are the correct prices.”
Me: “No, 50% of $1.00 should be $0.50, not $0.75.
Cashier: *Sighing* “Okay, well, you’ll need to wait back in line so I can take care of the rest of these customers.”
I turned around and looked behind me. There were at least ten more customers waiting.
Me: *Politely* “I’ve already waited in line, and I can’t wait any longer. Would you please just go ahead and fix it?”
Cashier: *Sighing again* “Well, you’re going to hold everyone else up, but I’ll do it. I’ll return the items and re-ring them.”
She did the return, and then she started ringing them up again using the calculator. She picked up the $3.00 item first.
Cashier: “Okay. This one should be $2.75.”
Me: “No. With 50% off, that would make it $1.50.”
Cashier: “No, it is $2.75.”
I got out my own calculator and showed her what 50% of $3.00 was. She sighed yet again and entered $1.50.
The next item was the $1.00 item. She did her calculations again and said this one should be $0.75. I got my calculator out again and showed her that it would be $0.50. She sighed again and put in $0.50.
Lastly, she did the $5.00 item, used her calculator, and came up with $4.25. I got my calculator out again and showed her that 50% of $5.00 should be $2.50.
She was now upset with me. I did remain patient with her and polite throughout the transaction.
When she gave me my new total, it was still more than what it should’ve been.
Me: “Could you please tell me what the prices were by item?”
The only one that was wrong was that $5.00 item. She rang it up as four dollars instead of $2.50. I told her politely it should be $2.50, not $4.00.
She didn’t like this at all.
Cashier: *Rather rudely* “I came up with $4.00.”
Me: “Can I speak to a manager, please?”
Cashier: “I am the manager.”
Me: “Fine. Just take the [$5.00 item] off, please.”
She did so and then threw my bag and the receipt at me.
Me: “Can I have your corporate phone number?”
Cashier: “I don’t know it.”
I gathered my bags, and as I walked out, I told her I would find corporate’s phone number and give them a call.
As I was walking out to my car, I heard somebody yelling at me. I turned around, and it was the cashier.
Cashier: “I am the manager! Go ahead and call corporate!”
I got home, found the store’s corporate number, and called them to tell them everything that happened. I gave them the cashier’s name and told them she’d said she was the manager.
Two days later, I got a phone call from a man saying he was the district manager. He apologized to me for my experience, and he said he would look into it and then call me back.
A few more days passed, and the district manager did call me back. He said he looked into the situation. He had spoken to the real manager of that store, who would contact me next.
The real manager, who was a male, did call me back and apologize to me for what happened. They had investigated the incident, and the cashier who’d claimed that she was the manager was no longer there.
It was a small amount of money, but either she didn’t know what she was doing or she was ripping customers off intentionally.
Related:
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 10
The More You Read, The Worse It Gets, Part 9
The More You Read, The Worse It Gets, Part 8
The More You Read, The Worse It Gets, Part 7
The More You Read, The Worse It Gets, Part 6
