While working the checkout, I spot and recognize a customer we call “Yelling Guy” behind a couple of other customers in line. He has a big pillow-thing in his hands. When I get to him, I gave him my usual cheery greeting.

Me: “Did you find everything okay?” 

His response is to violently throw what turns out to be a dog bed onto the counter. 

Yelling Guy: “I want a refund on this f****** piece of s***!”

I’m a little taken aback, but I nod. He doesn’t have a receipt, but it’s our store’s policy to either allow an exchange of the same item without a receipt or offer store credit. I notice that the inside of the dog bed is completely ripped to shreds.

Me: “What happened?”

Yelling Guy: “It’s supposed to be made out of f****** chew-resistant material, but my dogs still chewed it up! This is bad advertising! How the h*** are you supposed to make people believe that this s*** is tough like the label says?!”

I notice that, while the sides are made of reinforced, canvas-like material, it’s the center of the bed — the soft, pillow-y part that’s supposed to be comfortable — that has been chewed to shreds.

Me: “Well, as you can see, the edges are chew-resistant. The middle part isn’t, though. It isn’t indestructible.”

Yelling Guy: “I don’t care! If it’s advertised as tough, my dogs shouldn’t be able to chew it to s***!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but since there was nothing wrong with the bed before your dogs chewed it up, I can’t refund it.”

He opens his gaping maw and howls about how horrible the customer service in this store is, which is enough to bring my manager running.

Manager: “What seems to be the problem here?”

Me: “He wants a refund on this bed.”

Manager: “What was wrong with it?”

Me: “His dogs chewed it up.”

Yelling Guy: “It’s supposed to be chew-resistant! Does this look chew-resistant to you?!”

Manager: “Sir, you have two choices: store credit or a straight exchange. And since you’ve been abusing my staff, this will only happen this one time. If you come back with the bed destroyed a second time, you will be turned away.”

Yelling Guy: “I’m a f****** customer!”

Manager: “At this point, you’re a hair’s breadth from getting banned. Accept what you’re getting or the police will be involved.”

Since my manager is busy with other hectic, demanding customers, he has to go off to put out another fire — something about a lady shrieking just as loudly but at the other end of the store. Today is a day for yelling, it seems.

Me: “Very well, we can give you store credit.”

Yelling Guy: “I don’t want store credit. I want the cold hard cash I spent on this d*** bed!”

Me: “Since you don’t have a receipt, I can’t give you a cash refund.”

Yelling Guy: “This is the worst f****** customer service I’ve ever received!”

By now, he has scared away all the little old ladies — a huge part of our primary demographic — in line behind him. They’ve probably run to cower in the canned cat food aisle, the aisle furthest away from the registers. I’m trying my best to be civil.

Me: “Look, if it were my decision, you wouldn’t be getting anything at all, so I suggest that you take your store credit before they decide to kick you out.”

Yelling Guy: “I don’t want anything in this store! I want my f****** cash back!”

Me: “And as the manager just told you, you can either have store credit or a straight exchange. Those are your only choices.”

He can tell he isn’t going to get anywhere, so the miserable jerk takes his shredded bed and stalks away to the back of the store. After a few of the sweet little old ladies return to have their birdseed and cat treats rung up, he returns to the end of the line with a brand-new version of the exact same bed in tow. By the time he gets to the front of the line, my sanity has partially returned.

Me: “All right, you want an exchange, then.”

He says nothing, just stands there looking like a child who threw a temper tantrum but didn’t end up getting the candy he wanted. After I exchange the bed and hand him the receipt, I remind him:

Me: “This is a one-time exchange. If your dogs chew this one to shreds, we will not be exchanging it or offering you store credit. It’s chew-resistant, not indestructible.”

He looked at me creepily and says:

Yelling Guy: “We’ll see about that.”

The manager had a meeting a few days later with the rest of the supervisors and managerial crew. The next time “Yelling Guy” showed up, he got the surprise of his life when a pair of uniformed cops showed up during his bellowing tirade and politely asked him to come outside for a little talk. I don’t know what was said, but he hasn’t shown up at our store since.

I work as a cashier at a popular pet store chain. We currently have a buy-two-get-the-third half-off deal on all dog treats, rawhides, and bully sticks. Part of the deal is that you can mix and match whichever three products you want; however, as most BOGO-type deals go, the cheapest one will always have the discount. 

Customer: “Hi, I bought these three bully sticks, but I didn’t get one half-off like the sign said.”

Me: “Oh, no! Do you have your receipt on you? I can do a quick adjustment!”

The customer hands me the receipt. I notice that she also purchased a bag of training treats which were a little cheaper than the bully sticks, so the discount was applied to them. I explain this.

Customer: “But I saw the deal on the bully sticks and I got three of them!”

Me: “Yes, but the deal goes for all treats and chews, including the training treats, as well. The cheapest product will always be the one that gets discounted.”

Customer: “But I got three bully sticks!”

Me: “Yes, but with the sale, you can mix and match with any of the treats and chews, so two of your bully sticks were counted as the ‘buy’ and the training treats were the ‘half-off.’ Make sense?”

Customer: “No! I got three bully sticks!”

Me: “Yes, and since the sale goes for all treats and chews, two of the bully sticks were counted as ‘buy’ and your training treats, which were also part of the sale, got counted as the ‘half-off.’”

Customer: *Nodding*

Me: “Make sense now?”

Customer: “No, I still don’t get it.”

Me: “Would you just like to return them?”

Customer: “Yes. But I still don’t get it! I got three bully sticks!”

I’m giving my usual spiel about tank requirements for some fish.

Customer: *Flips, and in a nasty tone.* “I’ve been keeping fish since before you were born!”

She ends up buying fifteen fish for a single twenty-gallon tank, so she obviously hadn’t learned much from her decades of experience!

I’m in my local pet store buying large bags of cat litter, and they happen to have an eight-kilogram bag of cat food available, so I get that, too. The cashier offers to help me to the car, which they often do with heavy purchases.

Me: “I’m sorry! The car park was unusually full, so I had to park about fifty metres from the store entrance.”

Cashier: *Laughs* “That’s fine! The previous customer wanted their trolley pushed around the entire building to the opposite side.”

That was an approximately 500-metre walk through a busy car park with no footpath and a steep hill. The nerve of some people!

I train dogs for a chain pet store. The training arena is in the back corner of the building. It has a solid three-foot wall and another three feet of plexiglass above that with a solid door to enter or exit. People often stand outside and watch. Unless they seem to be recording or taking photos of the class, this is totally fine. I am teaching one of my beginner classes when a student interrupts me.

Student: “Hey, [My Name], there’s a guy out there.”

She points behind me. A phone is visible through the plexiglass beside the door. As soon as I open the door, the guy puts his phone down, still pointing the camera toward the arena. He’s wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, a hoodie, and jeans, and he won’t look directly at me. Everything about him makes me suspect he is up to something, but I still maintain a professional attitude.

Me: “Hello. How can I help you?”

Man: *Defensive* “I’m just getting some tips.”

I smile, gesturing at the phone in his hand.

Me: “I’m sorry, it’s against policy to allow—”

He not-so-subtly tilts his phone so the camera is pointed up at me.

Man: “I’m not hurting anyone by standing out here.”

I move my hand so it’s covering his camera’s view.

Me: “Sir, I’m going to have to insist you leave.”

Man: *Stepping into the arena* “This is a public building! I am an American citizen and I have the right—”

Student: “Dude, get out of here!”

The student stood and approached the man quickly and he left. Later that same shift, a manager approached and asked my side of the story.

According to the man, I cussed him out, insulted and made fun of him, and then tried to bully him into paying me directly instead of enrolling in the class. I told her what actually happened and which class it was if she wanted to contact the other students or watch the security cameras.

She called every one of my students and they all told the same story I did. The man came back a few days later, smugly expecting compensation for how disrespectful I had been. The manager silently stared at him until he left.