I work in one of several shops in a roughly fifty-mile radius that buys, sells, and trades trading card games — think: Pokemon, YuGiOh, Magic: the Gathering, that kind of stuff, and almost all of it in single cards. We buy collections of cards rather frequently, and it’s not unusual that people will stop by without their cards just to gauge how we work and how things happen.

A guy comes in one evening. He seems nice enough. He tells me he was sent by another store of our acquaintance because they couldn’t afford to buy his collection. This gets flagged in my brain as a jackpot: good cards that we can then sell? Yes, please! 

I give him the email of my manager to schedule an appointment because it’s a very large collection of cards. He’s happy, I’m happy, and I send him on his merry way. 

I’m not there when he returns, but from what I hear from my other coworkers, he comes back with a LOT of boxes, large and small, and a couple of bins. Again, this is not unusual; collections of this size come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve had people come in with plastic bags of rubber-banded cards. You name it, we’ve probably seen it.

My manager tells one of my coworkers to grab a particular box; that’s where the “good” cards are. We know what cards these are, and they’re GOOD.

My coworker grabs said box… and said box is empty. 

Uh-oh. 

Cue the manager and several coworkers frantically going through the entire collection trying to find at least two cards. I’m told this takes upwards of six hours, and I believe it. They go through the collection. They go through it twice, thrice, several more times. The cards are nowhere to be found. 

We contact the guy and tell him the cards are gone.

Guy: *Nicely* “Shoot, I didn’t check the cards after I took them from the other shop. They are there, in the other shop; that’s how they knew it was a massive collection and they couldn’t afford it.”

We contacted the other shop. They didn’t have the cards, either, they claimed. Cue the other store frantically looking. 

Please note: the guy did NOT blame my store in ANY CAPACITY, AT ALL. He didn’t even seem that fazed, to be honest. These were EXTREMELY valuable products, so what was happening here? 

I came in for my shift the other day to get the lowdown on exactly what happened to those cards, and discovered a few things:

• An employee from the other store was let go. We were not told why.
• The other store cut the guy a check for the value of the missing cards.
• A regular at our store told us that the employee who had been let go had worked at that other store for some time…
• …and there were cameras filming what happened.
• There is now a court case.

I don’t know any other details, but it turns out that it wasn’t just those two cards, it was a grand total of forty cards missing. Where those cards went, who could say, but all I know for sure is that our store cut the guy our own check — for the cards he actually gave us. 

The guy was fine, was chill, and went along his merry way… and our store managed to dodge a massive bullet we didn’t even know was there.

A while ago, I was working the register and heard screaming at the other end of the store. I ran over to see what was happening. Two of our female Loss Prevention officers had stopped a shoplifter at the exit and she was screaming bloody murder at them. By this time, all the customers and employees had crowded to watch the show.

One LP officer reached out toward the shoplifter like she was going to try to grab the stolen merchandise back. Then, the shoplifter suddenly jumped up and tackled the LP officer to the ground. As the second LP officer stepped in to try to break up the fight on the ground, the two officers both started screaming in pain and the shoplifter ran out.

The rest of the employees and customers were freaking out, as the LP officers were screaming:

Officers: “I can’t see! I can’t see! Help! It burns!”

We thought we had witnessed an acid attack; it was awful.

Paramedics were called, and when the officers returned to work, we found out the shoplifter had sprayed mace in their faces.

She was only stealing $30 worth of clothes. That definitely goes down as one of the craziest days at work ever.

I work for a store that operates online mostly. We do have people come in from time to time, but we mostly do online correspondence. This one customer just will not stop sending us emails — for a few days straight — about the item he received being made in China.

Email #1:

Customer: “You cannot imagine how disappointed I was when the [item] I just received was MADE IN CHINA! I’ll never order from you again, because by supporting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), you are, in effect, allowing/supporting the takeover of America by the communists! NOT ON MY WATCH!”

Email #2:

Customer: “You sell crap made in China. I’LL NEVER BUY FROM YOU AGAIN!”

Email #3:

Customer: “And was I ever disappointed. The [item] was made in CHINA. So, that means that YOU are supporting the CCP! Never again will I buy crap from you. OH, what did I do with the [item]? I put it in my vice, cut it in two, and then melted it down in my forge. You could have at least been honest and stated that the crap was made in China… but OH, NO! You’d rather support the CCP than be honest. NEVER AGAIN WILL I ORDER ANYTHING FROM YOU, AND I’LL LET MY FRIENDS KNOW, AS WELL!”

My boss, the owner finally responded.

Owner: “Hi, [Customer]. Yes, many of our items are made in China, and many of your items, as well! If you have any of the following items, they all have ‘made in China’ parts, as well as being assembled there, too: nails, screws, TV, cable box, phone, computer, wallet, watch, clothes, iPad, tablets, food, car, and many other things.

“You might as well become a nudist and be nomadic if you don’t want to support the CCP at all. Live under a rock, and you might never hear about China ever again. But do your research before being so bluntly rude and disrespectful in an email.

“We don’t need your business, but you could have at the very least kept a professional manner instead of telling us you melted down the [item]. You just wasted your own money.

“Best regards, [Owner].”

About fifteen years ago, I am working the cash register at a pharmacy with a corner store attached.

A customer comes up with a gallon of milk. I ring him up and inform him his total is something along the lines of three dollars. He goes from “normal human person” to “incensed screaming ape” in the span of a breath.

Customer: *Screaming* “You’re ripping me off! You must have changed the price!”

Now, fifteen years ago, I am a “novice” retail person at best. All I really know how to do is say, “But the register…”

After a moment to get over this person going demonic on me, I realise what is going on.

Me: “Oh! Sir, I see. The milk is on sale. Two for $5.00 — or one for $2.80.”

He then thrusts his finger into my face.

Customer: “That’s illegal! You have to sell me the one for $2.50!”

Me: “No, sir, I’m sorry, but the sign clearly says—”

He then screeches at me and pulls out his cell.

Customer: “I am calling the police.”

Hearing these magic words, my manager arrived and escorted the man aside — to await his removal from our store by the very police he called.

Moral of the story: don’t call the police over a matter of thirty cents. You will get hauled off.

Where I work, we have these security cages on items that are most often stolen. There aren’t many keys, and we’re super busy, so sometimes customers have to wait a bit. We’re supposed to either walk them up with the item to a register or leave it up at self-checkout for when they’re ready.

People do NOT like this.

I had a lady complain that I had to bring her electric toothbrush up to the front instead of just handing it to her directly.

Customer: “Well, they’ve never done that before.”

Me: “Yeah, sometimes people just give it to you, but we’re not supposed to.”

Customer:  “That’s ridiculous. I’ve never had anyone do this before!”

Me: “Okay? I’m just doing my job. I could get into trouble if I got caught just handing it to you.”

She huffs and puffs like a little kid.

Customer: “Okay, whatever. I’m probably not going to even get it, then.”

I’m irritated because I’m LITERALLY just doing my job!

Me: “Okay, then don’t.”

I walked away and brought the toothbrush up to the self-checkout area. A few minutes later, I WATCHED this woman with a different employee being handed her dumb toothbrush, and she stomped off. The other employee told me that the customer was complaining about me… for doing my job?