I’m a manager at a pretty big retail store. I thankfully don’t have to deal with checkout or the service desk, or anything. I just have to deal with the cranky customers on the sales floor.

But one day, my coworker, who manages the front, had to deal with something with security, so she was out of commission for fifteen minutes.

This guy at the self-checkout demanded a manager, so I got called up, and the employee monitoring self-checkout explained that this man believed a particular sale on these candy bars made them less than a dollar each.

This guy had an entire box of the large Hershey’s candy bars that rang for about $2 each. He was trying to buy them for fifty cents apiece.

When I scanned the candy bars, the actual sale was for fifty cents OFF, not on sale FOR fifty cents. I went back and forth for several minutes with this guy about what the sale meant. I showed him the sale on my device, read the sale on the register screen, and I even pulled out my phone and went to the store website to show him the more thorough sale description. He wasn’t buying any of it.

I really don’t care about saving the company a couple of dollars. I think the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company will sleep just fine at night if someone gets a candy bar a couple of dollars cheaper at one of the stores. What I do care about is protecting my job and the job of the employees around me, and I wasn’t about to bend the rules for this guy and risk getting reprimanded.

So, I just kept telling him the reality of the sale, that he was wrong, and he wouldn’t be getting the candy bars for fifty cents.

Appalled, he angrily told me, “Well, the store in the neighboring city let me buy them for fifty cents!”

Wondering how many d*** Hershey’s bars this guy could possibly need, I just replied with, “Well, they did it wrong.”

When he finally realized I wasn’t going to budge, he slammed the candy down on the register and stormed out. I would say I’m surprised seeing a grown-a** man get so heated over candy bars, but I definitely am not. I’ve worked retail long enough to understand that customers will get mad if one of the mannequins looks at them the wrong way. I just can’t imagine being so pressed about something like this. Wherever he ended up, I hope they had fifty-cent chocolate for him.

The store I used to work at has a front that faces west, and it’s all windows. We’re in Texas, so it’s always hot with the sun streaming in and, of course, the sun glares in our eyes and the register screens, etc.

Customer: “You should have blinds or something!”

Me: “We agree, but we’re not allowed to put blinds up.”

Customer: “Why not?!”

Me: “Some time before I worked here, when there were still blinds on the windows, a customer drove by through the parking lot, saw the blinds were closed, and instead of reasoning that it’s very sunny hence the blinds, parking and going up to see if the store was open, or calling the store to ask if it’s open, she called customer care to complain that the store was apparently closed in the middle of the day because blinds down equals store closed. Corporate responded by taking the blinds away and banning them.”

Customer: “…oh.”

Me: “Of course, you could call corporate yourself and say you’d like the blinds put back.”

Customer: “Hmm… nah, that sounds like a lot of work.”

A customer answers her phone just as she starts unloading her groceries onto the conveyor belt.

Customer: *Into her phone.* “Oh, hi. No, I’m not doing anything important. Just grocery shopping, I can talk.”

And talk she does. Non-stop. Meanwhile, all the scanned groceries are piling up. She puts her bags up at the end of the belt, so I just stop until she realises I need them. 

She tuts, rolls her eyes, picks them up, and practically throws them at me.

Customer: *To her phone.* “No, that wasn’t for you. The cashier is being a bit of a b****.”

Moving from passive-aggressive to just aggressive!

I’m normally a bit fussy about how I pack a customer’s bags, but not this time. I do keep soft fruit, bread, and cleaning products separate (I’m not a monster), but for the rest, I don’t care.

Customer: *Interrupting her phone call.* “Uh, excuse me, you’re bagging it wrong.”

Me: “It’s just grocery shopping, ma’am. It’s not important. Keep talking to your friend!”

Customer: *Staring at me, but talking to her phone.* “I’m gonna call you back.”

She hung up and did her own bagging (yay!) while I finished scanning her items in silence (from both of us!).

I’m helping a guy look for something in our superstore.

Customer: “But your website says you have it!”

Me: “That’s a popular sale item. It’s likely they’re in someone’s cart in the store, and they haven’t been checked out yet. The online system can be delayed sometimes.”

Customer: *Grinning.* “What if I order it for curbside pickup?”

Me: “Yes, you can do that. However, if we can’t find it, the order will be rejected, and you won’t be charged.”

I’m about to tell him which nearby locations show the item as still in stock, and am even going to call them to ask them to confirm and hold one for him if they do, but then he says:

Customer: “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?! You’re enjoying my suffering!”

Me: “No, sir, but there isn’t some magical gotcha from ordering an out-of-stock item online. There’s no glitch in the matrix in the retail source code, I’m afraid.”

Unsatisfied with my answer, he demands a manager. The manager tries to explain the same things I’ve been explaining, but for much longer. After I’ve dealt with a few other customers, my manager is still there, half an hour later, re-explaining it to him.

Manager: *At the end of his rope.* “Sir! In the time it’s taken for us to ‘discuss’ this, you could have been arriving at our sister store that is still currently showing several in stock.”

Customer: “You wasted my time by making me come here, so now I’m wasting yours! Make me go away by bringing me what I wanted!”

Manager: *Snapping.* “It amazes me that you think saying that with that grin will suddenly make the item appear from thin air, and you could grab it while it floated in from the void and run off with it. We… are… done… here. If you talk to me or anyone else in this store about the item again, I’m trespassing you.”

Customer: “Fine, fine! Where is the other store that has it?”

Manager: “[Store Location], and like us, they close in fifteen minutes. Good night and good luck.”

I take a call on the customer line a minute before we close.

Caller: “Don’t close yet! I’m five minutes away!”

Me: “Ma’am, we close in one minute—”

Caller: “—I know, but I’m driving, and I’ll be there in five minutes, and I know exactly what I need! I can pay by credit card!”

Me: “Okay, ma’am, if you can be here in five minutes and you promise to be quick, I can let you come in as I go through the closing procedures.”

Caller: “Thank you! Thank you! I’ll see you in five minutes!”

I close the store and go about the closing routine. I save cashing out the register until the end, but when I get to it, it’s fifteen minutes past closing. I’m not going to wait, so I close out and am walking to the door when I see a woman knocking on the door.

Me: “Ma’am, we’re closed.”

Customer: “You said you’d wait for me!”

Me: “And you said you were five minutes away.”

Customer: “I was! But then I passed by a McDonald’s, and they had drive-thru, and I was hungry, and I figured if you were good to wait five minutes, you could wait a few more.”

Me: “Well, I was not. I hope you enjoyed your burger, and I hope it was worth it.”

I pushed past her and locked the door behind me.