I work in an academic library. I am overhearing my manager’s side of the conversation with one of our regular patrons.

Manager: “Yes, that is correct, we’ve rescinded your right to eat food in the library.”

Pause.

Manager: “Because this is an academic library, and we do not allow food. You got special permission to bring in a snack for health reasons related to blood sugar monitoring.”

Pause.

Manager: “That was provided that you didn’t leave things messy. We repeatedly had to remind you to clean up your wrappers and clean away your crumbs, which you failed to do.”

Pause.

Manager: “If you started that habit, we might have something to discuss, but you know as well as I do that the ban became necessary after my staff noticed the full-blown slow cooker plugged into power sockets on the study desk reserved for laptops.”

Pause.

Manager: “Yes, sir, give an inch and the mile stretches on. Good day.”

I’m looking at the schedule for the Thanksgiving period for my large superstore.

Me: “Hey, [Manager]?”

Manager: “What’s up?”

Me: “I’m just wondering, and I’m sure there are reasons, but why does [Coworker] always get Black Friday off? I’ve been here three years now, and she’s always off that day.”

Manager: “I guess you would have missed Black Friday of four years ago then.”

Me: “What happened?”

Manager: “Some customers started fighting over the last of the large TVs, and they toppled the whole display on top of [Coworker]. She went down, and all the TVs fell on top of her.”

Me: “Oh my God!”

Manager: “Even now, you can’t say Samsung in front of her without her going into some kind of PTSD trance.”

Me: “Wait, I thought for Black Friday customers don’t physically grab the electronics in the box, they grab a ticket and bring it to the register?”

Manager: “And now you know why.”

Me: “Oooooh.”

I worked in a gas station where we had a notorious customer we referred to as “can guy” (because he did all that I’m about to talk about with a one-gallon red gas can).

Every month, our station puts coupons in the paper for a dollar of free gas. One coupon per customer per visit.

Can Guy would collect these coupons and then park his car on the adjacent street, and then go post up on one of our pumps and get gas. One dollar at a time. He’d pump a dollar, come in and give us the coupon, and go walk out to the sidewalk (off the property) and then turn around and do it again… for hours.

As a pump attendant, we have to approve every pump by pushing a button. So, every three minutes, for hours at a time, we’d be stuck standing at the till, doing the same transaction over and over. The longest I clocked him doing this for was two and a half hours.

Corporate added an addendum to the coupons because of him pulling that s***.

I ain’t even mad. That was next-level commitment.

There’s a customer who keeps buying the same $50 luxury shampoo. Every time, she brings it back a week later.

Customer: “It just wasn’t good enough. I want a refund.”

Except every time we open the bottle, it’s been refilled with bargain-bin goop that smells awful. She’s done this three times now, and she thinks we don’t remember her.

Oh, we remember. We remember enough that we brought it up with management, and they came up with a change in policy: no returns on opened haircare.

A few weeks later, she marches up to my register again with that same bottle.

Customer: “I need to return this. It didn’t work for me.”

Me: “Oh, sorry, ma’am, we can no longer accept returns on opened merchandise.”

Customer: “What!? Since when?!”

Me: “Since some customers decided to keep returning this exact brand of shampoo, but were refilling it with cheaper stuff instead. Thanks to those people, we’ve had to change the rules.”

I stare at her. Hard.

She slowly closes the bottle, tucks it back into her purse, and walks out without another word. She never came back.

I have a friend who works in another department store, and I told her this story a few weeks later. Guess who had started doing the same trick over there? 

A few weeks after that:

Friend: “I told my manager about the shampoo lady, and about what she did over at your store. My manager told her that all the stores in the city know about her now, and she got banned.”

Me: “Seriously?”

Friend: “Yeah! My manager brought out a poster with her face from the camera footage, saying, ‘Shampoo Lady: Do Not Serve.’ The look on her face when she found out she was called ‘Shampoo Lady’ by every department store in the city… it was a thing of beauty.”

I bounce between the bakery and deli at the grocery store where I work. It’s very busy at the grocery store, with long lines at every checkout lane.

Customer: “I need to get these baguettes, but is it okay if I buy these [non-bakery items] as well? The lines at the front are so long.”

Me: “It’s only a couple of items, so it should be fine.”

Customer: “Thank you!”

The next customer sees what just happened.

Next Customer: “Oh! Can I do that, too?”

Me: “Only if it’s a couple of items.”

Next Customer: “Sure thing! Let me just go and grab it.”

She runs into the aisles. I don’t see her for a while, so I assume she found a shorter line at the front and checked out there.

Nope. 

I see her wheeling a full cart up to the bakery.

Me: “Ma’am, I said just a couple of items.”

Next Customer: “I know, but then I remembered I needed toothpaste, and I can’t get toothpaste without the mouthwash and floss, and then I remembered I’m always flossing out pork, so I got the pork, and, well…”

She shrugs in a “what can you do?” way and starts to hand off the items to me.

Me: “Ma’am, no, I can’t accept all of that. We don’t have a checkout belt or counter to hold it all anyway. This is why I said just a couple of items.”

Next Customer: “But it’s sooooo busy up front!”

Me: “That doesn’t change the fact that I can’t ring out a hundred items from the bakery. Now, if you want to buy a couple of bakery items, I can help you with those, but everything else needs to be rung out at the front.”

Next Customer: *Walking away.* “I never wanted anything from the bakery!”

That was a record for how quickly things went from “sure” to “this is why we can’t have nice things.” About one customer…