Customer: “I want to buy [range of toy dolls], but I can’t find it in your toy department.”

Me: “We don’t sell that range, madam. Our department store doesn’t have an agreement with the company that makes them.”

Customer: “That’s a load of nonsense. I’ve bought them from here before.”

Me: “I can assure you, you didn’t, madam.”

Customer: “Are you saying I’m wrong?”

Me: “I’m saying I’m the manager who is fully in charge of our entire toy department inventory, and have been for several years, and I know we don’t carry them.”

The customer says I am mistaken, throws her hands up in the air, and wanders off. 

She came back a couple weeks later. I didn’t recognise her at first, until she started talking about the range of dolls again.

Customer: “Oh, I figured out where I got that doll. It was from [a different independent toy store] in Perth.”

Me: “Perth… as in Western Australia?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “The one that’s over 2,500km away?”

Customer: “Yes! Look, I know what you’re implying, but both of your stores are blue, so it was easy to confuse them!”

Moving vehicles around between depots in Australia for a rental company, we found ourselves in Coober Pedy. It’s an old opal-mining town, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by red dirt for hundreds of miles in every direction. Getting out of the van, it was like plunging into a baker’s oven. It’s blisteringly hot there. Some people actually live underground in old worked-out opal mines. They have a golf course, but you play at night — otherwise, the heat is unbearable — under floodlights, carrying a square of turf to tee off from, because it’s all just rocks and red dust.

It feels a bit like being in a spaceport on the fringes of the known universe — very much like a frontier. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I went into a bar and saw Han Solo shooting Greedo under the table.

We went into a small supermarket, and they had a sign saying, “HOT POP OFFER! 2-litre bottles: $1 each.” In such a stupidly hot place, that was very welcome, so we grabbed a few bottles of pop and went to the checkout. They rang up at over $2 each.

Me: “The sign says they’re only $1?”

Cashier: “No! That says, ‘HOT POP’! This is from the fridge!”

Me: “Wha… What?”

Cashier: “The offer’s on hot pop! These are cold!”

Me: “No… No, surely it’s a ‘hot’ offer? What the h*** is ‘hot pop’?!”

Cashier: “The ones on the shelf by the sign! That’s the hot pop. The bottles not in the fridge.”

Me: “But… that’s not ‘hot’. A ‘hot’ drink is one that’s been actively heated. There’s no such thing as ‘hot pop’. That’s just bottles of pop that haven’t been chilled. It’s the same product… and it cost you the same amount to buy it… so it’s the same price when you sell it.”

Cashier: “It costs to run a fridge.”

Me: “Yeah, but costs for the store are shared out between all the products. It’s not cheaper to buy a product off a small shelf because they’re cheaper to buy than big shelves. Or from nearer the stockroom because it took fewer man-hours to get it onto the shelves. The fridge is running all the time, whether someone buys something out of it or not, so you’re paying for it with a proportion of every sale, not just cold drinks.”

Cashier: “If you don’t bloody like it, don’t bloody buy it.”

The vehicle we were transporting was a Winnebago, so we bought a load of $1 “hot” pop and stuck it in the fridge. There is no way in H*** that anybody really thought “Hot Pop Offer” would advertise an offer on “hot” pop, but it worked, I guess: we saw the sign, made a decision to buy, and then bought. The fact that we had an argument with an intractable baggage at the checkout didn’t change the value of the dollars we handed over. Didn’t diminish the “wild frontier” feel of the place any, either.

I work for a bookshop. We are a very small secondhand bookshop, that specializes — if in anything — in cheap modern paperbacks.

A few years ago, I had a customer ring up and then come in looking for a First Edition of the children’s classic Charlie And The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. They insisted they wanted “a first edition from 1969” and wouldn’t really believe that I couldn’t help them. (It was actually published in 1964. I looked it up later.)

This is a semi-rare and very sought-after collectible that sells for thousands of dollars online, but they seemed to think they could find it in my tiny suburban bookstore for under a couple of hundred. Lots of luck, mate!

For the record, I did try to recommend a couple of my specialist colleagues, but the customer wasn’t really interested, possibly because if they had a copy — if! — they would not only have the correct date but be charging a realistic price for it, too!

I run a secondhand bookshop. The key word here is “secondhand”: it’s a lucky dip as to what we’ll have at any given time. We do occasionally get new books in and they tend to sell well, albeit at a slightly higher price. I also try to keep complete series together as a set as, naturally, they sell better than just odd volumes.

One day, I have a brand new, complete, matching series by a popular author, come in — an unwanted gift.

A lady comes in a few days later and is looking for one of the books of the series. I show her the new set.

Customer: “No, I only want the one title. I have the others.”

I have a look out the back to see if I have an extra copy; unfortunately, I do not.

Me: “May I suggest that you bring in your old ones and trade them in on the set?”

Customer: “No, I just want that one, and I want it now.”

Yes, this lady insisted that I needed to break up a complete, matched set of brand new books so that she could have ONE out of the middle. She was not happy when I refused, and she ended up storming off in a huff.

I’ve never seen her again, but I have sold the set!

A few years ago, I lost my job. One of the conditions of collecting unemployment benefits was that I had to attend a meeting once a month with a “provider” who would supposedly help me look for suitable jobs to apply for.

One month, I called in — three days ahead, so not even last minute — to ask if I could reschedule the meeting.

I was told that a job interview was really not a sufficient reason to reschedule with them, but they would do it this time.