A mother and her two twenty-something-year-old daughters are in the store, all three visibly drunk. One of the daughters comes up and asks:

Daughter: “Where are the airplane shooters?”

I tell her and give the grocery department a heads-up that she’s already drunk since they have to unlock the case anyway. The daughter comes back with three airplane shooters of vodka and the two daughters head out to the car to get mom’s payment card.

The person in charge on duty comes over as I warned them and I like having a witness when I deny people sales. The drunk mom scans a bottle, and this ensues.

Me: “I’m going to be honest with you now: I believe you to be intoxicated and I’m denying the sale.”

Drunk Mom: *Now angry* “Oh, I’m. I’m… not intoxicated.”

Me: “I can clearly smell the alcohol on your breath”

Drunk Mom: *Making a scene, complete with a raised voice* “Well, of course you can! I had half a sip!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but smelling it is grounds to deny the sale and we won’t be selling it to you this evening.”

The person in charge and I grab the alcohol and walk away, but he hangs out just in case they start up again. The daughters come back in a few minutes after, and the mom LOUDLY complains to them about me denying the sale.

Drunk Mom: “This guy won’t sell me the booze just because he can smell it on me. I’m the only one who’s sober here!”

I smile behind my mask because she went ahead and confirmed what I already suspected. I wish the drunk trio a good evening as they leave and one of the daughters yells back to me:

Daughter: “You need to learn not to disrespect your elders.”

We had a good laugh over that comment. I found out the next day that one of the daughters called in later that night and tried to complain about me. The manager who took the call had already been told about the situation and took my side. But that’s exactly why I bring a witness to deny sales.

We run an independent art supplies shop with a busy and sometimes hectic online retail side.

For anybody who provides customer support online, you may know that sometimes you are unable to cancel or amend an order if the packing staff gets to it before you read any messages. It’s unfortunate, and I’m very sorry to anybody this has happened to, but if we’re not glued to the screen then we sometimes will not get there in time!

Often, customers do not understand this and will insist, “But I sent the message minutes after placing the order.” Well, I’m really sorry, truly sorry, about that, but a message being sent does not automatically mean it was read at that same time. And I hope it’s understandable to most people that we will do what we can when we can, but if we can’t, we can’t.

This story concerns a particular online marketplace where you “commit to buy,” so the responsibility to ensure the order is wanted and that all details are correct is really on the buyer, not the seller. Again, to reiterate, we will do what we can if we can… but I would recommend being polite about it if you do make a mistake and you want me to rummage through all the weekend’s worth of parcel collection bags!

Cue this alarmingly screeching lady we had recently. After an order was dispatched that she no longer wanted, she phoned us, berated our shop staff, accused them of lying about not knowing about this specific online marketplace, and called us all liars and cheats.

She phoned again on Monday, shouted at me some more, shouted at my manager because I couldn’t personally undo time, and then grandiosely threatened to darken our name to every friend and craft group she knew. We clearly provided the worst customer service ever in the existence of everything, and she even indicated that we were responsible for ensuring her details were correct, not her. As far as I could gather, we sent her parcel out that she didn’t want to go to that address just for giggles, and we also were the ones who put the wrong address in.

“Good luck!” she ended, smugly, after threatening to smear our business.

All’s well that ends well, because what she didn’t know is that her spreading our name far and wide just meant we got free advertisement to some very confused people who didn’t know understand or follow why this angry lady was all shouty — but they did need some art supplies, and hey, here’s the name of one!

An older lady entered our showroom. I welcomed her, and she just looked at me coldly, so I carried on with my paperwork. She carried on looking around, then turned to me from about twenty feet away, raised her arm in the air, clicked her fingers, and crooked her finger at me.

I just looked at her and carried on with my paperwork.

The younger lady with her came over, obviously embarrassed, and asked politely for my help. I was as nice and helpful as I could possibly be, while totally ignoring the old lady.

I had a customer complaining about his order so I tried to politely tell him that I would get one of our fellows to check it up for him. What came out instead was:

Me: “I’ll get one of our cellos to f*** it up for you.”

Then I laughed nervously before hanging up the phone.

We have a regular customer who brings her mom to the store with her because her mom has a disabled tag. She parks in a disability-accessible parking spot and just leaves her disabled mother in the car as she shops around.

I asked her about this once and she responded:

Customer: “I’m normally out within thirty minutes, and I always leave the car on!”

It still felt wrong.