(I am in a queue waiting to be served when a woman joins the line behind me. The woman is trying to stop her toddler standing up in the trolley, and she is trying to get her purse out at the same time.)

Woman: “Please sit down. How about I give you some money so you can buy yourself something? But only if you stay in your seat.”

(The child sits down and holds her hand out, and the mother tries to hand her a coin.)

Toddler: “I WANT PAPER MONEY.” *gives her mother an attitude look*

Man In Queue: “Oh, my God, are they starting earlier now? I thought my teenage daughters were bad. How old is she?”

Woman: “Two, but going on sixteen; she has teenage sisters.”

(I am a department supervisor in charge of housewares in a small store. Every once in a while I have to run a backup register or cover the main cashier’s lunch. This happens one night while I’m covering someone’s lunch.)

Woman: “Hello. I would like to exchange this water bottle for this one.” *places both on counter*

Me: “Sure! Is there anything wrong with it?”

Woman: “Oh, it’s cracked at the bottom.”

Me: “No problem. The one you’re exchanging for is the exact same one, so we don’t have to run it through the register.”

Woman: “Would you mind if I kept the ball inside, though?” *referring to the ball inside the bottle for tea, fruit, etc.*

Me: “Sure, that’s not a problem.”

(I open the bottle to find out she hasn’t washed it at all, and it has what looks like oatmeal stuck around the edges.)

Me: *forced smile as I remove the ball* “Here you go.”

Woman: “May I ask, what are you going to do with the cracked one?”

Me: “Since it’s not resellable due to the crack, we simply write it off, damage it, and throw it away.”

Woman: “Well, if you’re going to throw it away, can I just keep it?”

Me: “If you keep it, ma’am, you’ll have the pay for the second one.”

Woman: “Why?”

Me: “Because if you take both and only paid for the first one, you’re technically stealing the second one.”

Woman: “But you’re just going to throw it away!”

Me: “Ma’am, no one is going to buy a water bottle that leaks liquid everywhere.”

(The woman stays quiet for a solid two minutes.)

Woman: “Fine, I’ll just take the ball from the first one.”

(I place the water bottle and the extra ball in a bag and hand it to her.)

Me: “Have a nice evening, ma’am.”

Woman: “You, too.” *walks away mumbling about why she couldn’t just keep both bottles*

(I work at a pharmacy in a low-income neighborhood. Our prices are fairly high compared to what our local clientele can actually afford, and most of our customers either only shop for the items on sale or take the bus up the road a few miles to a grocery store. We’ve tried to get corporate to lower our prices, but they refuse to see reason. On this day, a young man enters the store and asks for assistance locating a high-end facial soap. I help him find it and we bring it to my register to cash him out.)

Me: “All right, your total comes to $15.”

Customer: *hands me cash, six dollars less than he needs to pay*

Me: “Oh… Oops! You handed me $9. Did you mean to give me a ten instead of one of the one-dollar bills?”

Customer: “That’s all I have.” *looks at me expectantly*

Me: “Um… okay. I can hold the item here if you want to go get more money. Or we can go look for something that isn’t so expensive.”

Customer: “I don’t have any more money. That’s all I have.”

Me: “Okay, well, let’s go look at the other products. I’m sure we can find something in your price range.”

Customer: *getting agitated* “No! I want that one. I need it for my acne!”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but you only have $9. The product is $15. You either need to bring me more money or find something else.”

Customer: “But I want that one.”

Me: “Then you’ll need to go home and get more money. I can hold it back here so you don’t have to find it again.”

Customer: “I already said I ain’t got more money!”

Me: “Well, then, I’m sorry, but you can’t buy this item.”

Customer: “BUT I WANT IT! I NEED IT FOR MY ACNE!”

(We go back and forth for several minutes, and the customer is getting more and more angry. Eventually, I’ve had enough.)

Me: “There’s nothing more I can do for you if you can’t afford this item and don’t want anything else.”

(The young man tries to snatch the item off the counter, but I grab it first.)

Me: “Sir, you cannot have something you have not paid for. That’s stealing. Either purchase something or please leave.”

Customer: “F*** YOU!” *storms out*

(I inform my manager of the incident, including that the young man tried to grab the soap and bolt.)

Manager: *looks at product* “This isn’t even for acne! It’s for treating extremely dry skin, like psoriasis and eczema! There’s so much grease in this soap it would have made his acne worse.”

Me: “I guess it’s a good thing I was quicker than him. He probably would have used it, then tried to return it saying it wasn’t working. This isn’t the first time a customer has tried to swipe an unpaid order off the counter and run out.”

Manager: “I think we’ll start keeping unpaid purchases in the bag-well.” *the recessed area in front of the cashier that holds the plastic bags, which is out of reach of the customer*

(The young man never came back, and with our new policy of keeping unpaid transactions out of the customers’ reach, we’ve had a lot fewer attempts to grab “purchases” and run out. I hope corporate listens to us and lowers prices soon.)

(I am taking a phone order for merchandise to be shipped to a customer in another state. Our POS software requires us to gather transaction details in a certain order, over which I have no control.)

Me: “Could you please give me your billing address?”

Customer: “Okay, so, my [Credit Card] number is—“

Me: “Ma’am, please wait a moment. I need to take your billing info and create an invoice before I’ll be ready for your credit card.”

(I manage to get her name and her billing and shipping address.)

Me: “If you’ll give me your email address, I can email you a tracking number.”

Customer: “Yes, please do!” *silence*

Me: “May I please have your email address?”

Customer: *after another long moment* “Oh, yes, my phone number is—“ *rattles off a phone number extremely quickly*

Me: “Okay, I can take your phone number, but please recite it slowly for me.” *she does* “Thank you. Now, you were going to give me your email?”

Customer: “Why was that again?”

Me: *growing frustrated* “So I can send you a tracking number?”

(We go around this mulberry bush two or three more times. Finally, I wrest her email address out of her.)

Customer: *as I’m typing in the email* “Now, what was the total?”

Me: *patiently* “I can give you the total as soon as I’ve finished creating the invoice. Just a moment.” *does so* “The total will be [total].”

Customer: “Can I give you my credit card now?”

Me: “Just one moment while I get to the payment screen.” *in fairness, our software is annoyingly slow*

(I process her payment and thank her for her business.)

Customer: “When will it arrive?”

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t tell you that until it’s been boxed up and processed. Once the tracking number has been created I’ll have that information.”

Customer: “Okay, why don’t you just email me when you know?”

Me: *bangs head against keyboard repeatedly*

Related:
Email Fail, Part 22
Email Fail, Part 21
Email Fail, Part 20

(I work at a store in a mall, so every once in a while a customer will come in with a gift card that works at any store within the mall. We have to run these as credit cards.)

Customer: *after paying with one of the aforementioned gift cards* “Can you tell me the remaining balance on my card?”

(I have never been asked this about one of the mall-wide gift cards before.)

Me: “Um, it should say on your receipt. Let’s see.”

(No such luck. After printing the receipt, I find that because it ran as a credit card, it doesn’t list the remaining balance the way it would for a gift card to our store. I inform the customer of this.)

Customer: “Really? There’s no way to check my remaining balance? Because there was $300 on this gift card; I don’t want to go to the next store and find out there’s zero balance left.”

Me: *thinking: “WTF, lady, how would that even happen?”* “Well, it shows here on the receipt that you were only charged [amount well below $100], so there’s no reason you wouldn’t have the rest of the balance left.”

Customer: “But are you sure there’s no way to check? I just want to make sure I still have the rest of my money on there.”

(I see a manager nearby, so I call her over and explain the situation, just in case she knows a trick for checking the balance that I just don’t know about.)

Manager: “Unfortunately, as far as I know, there’s no way of checking the balance if it doesn’t print on the receipt.” *to customer* “But if you go to the mall customer service down on the lower level, they may be able to check for you.”

Customer: *taking her items, preparing to leave* “Okay, but if I go down there and there’s no money left on this card, I’m going to come back up here and you’re going to have problems.”

Me: *a bit flabbergasted at this point, but trying to keep my retail smile intact* “Okay, ma’am, have a nice day.”

(She never came back, so I’m guessing she still had the rest of her money, but seriously, lady, when has a cash register ever charged anything other than the cost of your items?)

Related:
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 9
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 8
The Gift Card That Keeps On Giving, Part 7