A woman looks around for a few minutes and comes up to the register. We are a department store that sells mostly clothing and cosmetics; we are not a grocery store or a supermarket and it is very obvious we don’t sell grocery items.

Customer: “Where is your cat food?” 

Me: “Ma’am, we don’t have cat food. [Major Retailer] down the road has cat food and I think [Pharmacy Chain] across the street does, too.”

Customer: “I don’t want to go to [Major Retailer]. I came here for a reason. What department is your cat food in?” 

Me: “There isn’t any cat food in this store, ma’am. This is [Store]. We don’t sell that kind of thing.” 

Customer: “Okay. Thanks, I guess.”

She then goes on to write a bad review to our store manager about how the cashier wouldn’t tell her where the cat food was and how we should have a better selection of pet items. 

My manager laughs at it the next day in our usual morning meeting.

Manager: “You can’t fix stupid.”

Customer: “I’d like to pay half with my [Store] card and half with my debit card.”

Me: “Okay, that’s no problem. Which one would you like to use first?”

Customer: “My debit card.”

Me: “Okay.”

I hit the option for credit/debit.

Me: “It should be ready to go.”

The customer slides the [Store] card.

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you said your debit card.”

I go back and hit the option for [Store] card.

Me: “Go ahead with your [Store] card.”

Customer: *Inserts debit card* “It’s not working.”

Me: *Internally screaming* “Ma’am, please use your other card first.”

Customer: “Wow, they sure make these computers complicated, huh?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am. They sure do.” *More internal screaming*

She was very sweet, so I didn’t get too frustrated with her. But please, people, open your ears!

A customer comes in with a pair of sunglasses to return with no receipt and no tag. There isn’t any brand name on them and no identifying marks or numbers. While I’m looking on our website for the sunglasses (for the UPC number), the customer interrupts me. 

Customer: “Can’t you just look them up from my card?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am. That is why I have to find the item number, to search for it in your card history.”

Customer: “But my card is right here.”

Me: “Yes, ma’am. I understand. I’m trying to find the item so we can search for it on your card. It doesn’t give us a list of all your transactions.”

After I spend about fifteen minutes looking through about two-hundred different sunglasses, none of them is a match. This means we don’t carry them anymore or we never have.

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am. We don’t seem to carry these glasses anymore, which means I can’t do the return without the receipt or the tag.”

Customer: “But you guys told me when I got this [Store] card that I could return things without a receipt as long as it was on my card! I want to speak to the manager!”

Me: “Yes, ma’am. But that is if I am able to identify the item you are returning, which I cannot do. If you’d like, you could call the card customer service and they’d be able to look at all of your transactions and find the UPC number for you since they have access to more information than I do.”

Customer: “I still want your manager. This is ridiculous.”

I called a manager over and she decided to take out her own personal phone and call the card company for the customer. Of course, they wanted to talk to the customer because she had all of the information that they needed — birthday, social security, etc.

She threw the phone back at my manager when she was done talking so that my manager could write the UPC number down for her. We were finally able to do a return, even though we could not be sure that the UPC number even matched the item. The customer then looked at me and said, “And YOU wanted ME to do that!”

Next time, leave the tag on or have the receipt if you want a flawless return!

Related:
A Different Kind Of Returner Burner
Returner Burner, Part 8
Returner Burner: International Edition
Returner Burner: On Location
Returner Burner Until Burning Point

I work at a historic theater owned by my college. Like almost all historic theaters, it was built in the vaudeville age and then converted to a movie theater in the 1950s. It went out of business, closed, and was then purchased by a local college. Since then, it has been used for a variety of live events, but it has not shown movies to the public in over fifty years.

Our website says verbatim that the theater is a live show venue that hosts “operas, plays, musicals, ballets, and concerts.” Nowhere on the website or in any of our advertising material are movies mentioned.

My boss walks in one day to an angry voicemail from a man demanding to know our movie showtimes because they are “not listed anywhere on our site.”

I still wonder if he was old and remembered seeing movies at the theater in his youth, or if he was just plain ignorant.

I work at a very large factory. At my particular spot in the factory, we work in a two-hour rotation for twelve hours a day on most spots on the line, save three. These three are super easy spots where you stay there all day and are therefore coveted.

Today is my first time at this specific spot since I started three weeks ago. I sign into the station and sit down on the provided stool. A coworker whom I have never met, running late, comes up, signs me out of the spot, signs herself into it, and sits down on the other stool.

Me: “Hey, that’s my spot. You are over there.”

Coworker: *Loudly* “Nope, it’s my spot! I just worked eight days in a row. I need to be here!”

And she turns her back to me and starts talking just as loudly to another workmate.

Me: “No, it is my spot. I was assigned to it.”

Coworker: “Well, I’m taking it!”

I’m a very shy and non-confrontational gal, so I shut up for a second, completely taken aback by this obnoxious behavior. A minute later, I decide to compromise with her. 

Me: “Okay, well, you take it for this quarter, but it’s mine after that. Or maybe we can do every other one?”

She only looks at me with a glare, which I return. 

During that day, she bullied a guy into buying her a soda, forced another girl to let her have another easy spot and made that girl take the hardest on the line, and was loudly belligerent to anyone coming near her.

It turns out she was able to give others negative marks on their work when she was assigned to that spot, which not everyone gets. Those who kissed her behind were not given marks. Those who did not, like me, were given mark after mark.

After too many complaints against her, she was demoted. She now refuses to look at me and requests others to sit in my spot if we have to work together. I happily comply.