Our store mostly sells home accessories, decorative items, and gifts. As it is Christmastime, we have a lot of advent wreaths made of artificial materials, amongst other things.

Customer: “I want [specific wreath], but you have sold out!”

Me: “We have one of the type you’re looking for hung up as store decoration.”

This wreath is already decorated with candles, bows, small Christmas tree balls, figurines, and the like.

The manager makes the effort to get a ladder to untie and take down the wreath in all the hustle and bustle in the middle of the Christmas business. Not only that, but he sells her the wreath for the price of an unadorned one, so she gets the candles, Christmas tree balls, figurines, and everything else on it for free.

The following day, the customer comes angrily storming back.

Customer: “I demand that you exchange these candles for other ones because these are faulty!”

She argues until she gets the most expensive candles we had for free, in exchange for the ones that she got the day before as a gift!

The old candles were fine, by the way. There was a tiny gap between wick and wax, and you just had to tilt the candle a little bit for the first drop of wax to reach the wick and they burned normally.

One Christmas Eve when I am working retail in a small computer store, a man comes to our door ten minutes after we close.

Man: “I reserved a video card for pickup online and need to pick it up.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but the store closed ten minutes ago and all the point-of-sale systems are going through the end-of-day procedures and cannot be interrupted.”

Man: “I really need to get it; it’s a gift for my son.”

Me: “[Large Retailer] is open for another hour.”

Man: “Okay, can I just get a copy of the invoice to show my son what I’m getting him?”

Me: “I can do that.”

I go into the office to get the invoice and make a copy for him.

When I open the door to give it to the man, he yanks the door open out of my hand and charges me, knocking me down.

Man: “Okay, now put the tray from both registers on the counter and lie down on the floor behind it!”

I did exactly what he asked, and he took both tills and took off, forgetting that I had the original invoice with his name, address, and phone number.

I bet that Christmas sucked for both him and his son.

It’s Christmas and my family is shopping at a big box store. My husband and kids browse the toys while I grab some essentials. My husband whispers to me that he’s found a perfect gift for our oldest and he has stuffed it under his shirt to keep it a surprise.

We head up to the checkout and I unload our cart. At this point, we hear the employees’ walkie-talkies going off with some random code. We ignore it and push up our items. I then grab the kids and announce that we will get loaded into the car while my husband pays. The kids are delighted and skip out. 

My husband then pulls out the toy and pays for all our shopping, making a joke with the cashier about how hard it is to keep gifts a surprise. He looks around and realizes that there are three security guards now stationed at the door and the cashier confirms that they assumed he was trying to shoplift. 

Lesson learned: just come back to buy the gift later instead of worrying security.

Customer: “I have a coupon for a free iPad.”

The customer hands over an obviously fake coupon. The fine print says: “Guaranteed and payable by Bill Gates.”

Me: “Why would Bill Gates pay for an Apple product?”

The customer realized their blunder and quickly left!

Sometimes I can’t believe these people are real.

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name]. How can I help you?”

Customer: “You can tell me why my parcel isn’t at my front door! It was a Christmas present for my son that I ordered before Christmas, and [Discount Retailer] promised me that the parcel would be here today. And they’re very pissed at you guys and are going to press charges.”

Me: “Well, we’re not beholden to a delivery date that a third-party company gives you. Do you have a tracking number so I can check where the parcel is for you?”

Customer: “No, I haven’t gotten it from them yet.”

Me: “Okay, can I get your address?”

Customer: “Yeah, it’s [address].”

I go use another piece of software to find the tracking for the parcel.

Me: “Okay, I’ve got the tracking number here and I can see that we’ve only received the manifest from the sender today and haven’t actually physically received your parcel, so you’re looking at an estimated delivery date of three business days from now.”

Customer: “[Discount Retailer] is going to press charges against you guys because, in their terms, if the parcel doesn’t arrive on the day they say, then they have to give me a refund.”

Me: “Okay, well, you can go tell [Discount Retailer] to call us and they can certainly try to press charges against us.”

Customer: “Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll also press charges cause you’re f****** with my son’s Christmas present. I sued the state government because I got cancer working for them.”

He then goes on an expletive-laden rant.

Me: “If you continue to be abusive, I’ll hang up on you.”

Customer: “Hang up, then!”

Me: “Thank you, bye.”

He never called back, so I guess he must be speaking to a lawyer.