(There is a town festival event where lots of local vendors set up stalls for charity. There are fairground rides and a local celebrity is due to arrive at six pm — after our store is closed. It is winter and about -4 degrees Celsius, so customers have started crowding around the front of our store where our heating blasts out, blocking the entryway and not buying anything. We make almost no money because of the crowd huddled in our entryway to take advantage of our heating but not coming inside. Closing time comes around.)

Me: “Sorry, guys! You need to move forward so I can close the door. We’re closing for the night.”

Random Man: “But the celebrity is due any minute!”

Me: “Sir, you need to move outside of the store so I can close the door.”

Random Man: “Can’t you just keep them open? It’s so cold outside. I don’t want to buy anything; I just want to stay warm.”

(Convincing as his argument was, I wasn’t going to stay open for a customer that deliberately told me he wasn’t going to buy anything.)

When we decided to get our first dog, a Samoyed puppy, my partner and I searched for reputable breeders and drove over four hundred miles to get her.

About four years later, the breeder — whom I had become close friends with — informed me that she was having another, final litter from the mother of our other pup.

My partner and I jumped at the chance to own “sisters from another litter,” and after the puppies were born, we drove across the country to see them.

Because we were close personal friends of the breeder, she allowed us the first pick of the litter. 

Our first pup was a confident and laid back missus and we decided to try and find a personality that would fit with hers. We sat down in the group of white fluff clouds and played for a few hours.

When the time came, one puppy stood out about the rest. She was so chilled out and affectionate. She curled into my lap and fell asleep. She wanted cuddles and was generally a sweet little girl. We loved her.

I told the breeder that I wanted the sweet girl and handed over my deposit. As soon as the breeder said, “She’s reserved. All yours,” suddenly the sweet one went wild!

The tiny puppy woke up and started to terrorise her brothers and sisters, rolling around, barking loudly, going crazy! It was like watching a completely different dog! Even the breeder said, “She’s never acted like that before!”

My partner and I couldn’t stop laughing and decided that she was too cheeky to pass up, so we decided to stick with our choice.

That brings us to today… We have the loudest, mischievous, most squirrel-chasing, fluffy girl. She drives my big dog around the bend and her big sister has to tell her off with a loud bark.

But overall, I think we made the right choice.

(I run the warehouse for a country store. Customers pay for bags of animal feed and bedding, and then bring their tickets to the warehouse where I load the bags into their cars. Said bags are normally 20kg+ each. On this particular day, a fairly old customer gives me their ticket.)

Me: *sees that they want several heavy bags of animal food* “Okay, no problem. May I ask you to move your car up to the entrance, please?”

Customer: “Oh, my car’s just over there” *points to the other side of the car park, as far away from the warehouse as you can possibly park*

Me: “Okay, but we do ask customers to bring their cars to the entrance if they’ve bought several bags, just so that we can get you your products as quickly as possible.”

Customer: “Oh, my car’s just over there.” *points again*

Me: *realises she’s not going to move her car regardless of what I say* “Okay, I’ll just be a couple of minutes.

(Her ticket says she’s paid for two bags of chicken feed pellets. I pick up a bag of this and take it out to her car, which takes me about a minute because of where she’s parked. I walk back to the warehouse, pick up another bag, and take it across the car park and put in her car, and it’s only when I’ve done this that she says:)

Customer: “Oh, no, I wanted the mash, not the pellets. Could you put the mash in my car, instead?”

Me: *internally rolling eyes* “Your ticket said you’d paid for pellets, so if you’d like to take it back to the shop they’ll be able to exchange it for you.”

Customer: “Oh, I don’t want to walk all the way back to the shop. Can you just put the bags in my car?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but since you haven’t paid for the mash, I can’t give it to you. If you’d just like to talk to the person on the till, they’ll be able to sort it out for you no problem.”

Customer: “Oh, but can’t you just put the mash in my car?”

(This went on for about two minutes before I finally convinced her to go back to the shop. She came back a couple of minutes later, by which time I’d taken the two bags of pellets back into the warehouse. I gave her the bags of mash she’d paid for, as well as the other three bags she wanted. She still refused to move her car.)

(I run a face-painting booth at an annual fair for charity. Every year there seems to be a design that all the kids want; this year, it’s a certain spider-themed superhero. A mother has been waiting in line with her son, and it’s their turn.)

Mother: “He wants to be [Superhero].”

(She pushes him towards the chair. The kid sits down but looks quite unhappy, so I decide to check with him.)

Me: “Is that what you want?”

Kid: “Wannabegreen.”

Mother: *talking over him* “He wants to be [Superhero]!”

(He looks resigned, and I feel bad for him, so I ignore Mum and keep talking to him.)

Me: “Do you mean like [Famously Angry Green Superhero]?”

Kid: “No, I just wanna be green.”

Mother: “You can’t be green. He wants to be [Superhero], like the other kids. Tell her you want to be [Superhero].”

Me: “If he says he wants to be green, I’ll paint him green.”

Kid: “Green!”

Mother: *rolling her eyes* “Oh, fine, whatever!”

(She turned around and stalked off. I went with the kid’s request, and he was absolutely ecstatic… and very green.)

(We offer some additional insurance on our website, as there are a few things the standard warranty does not cover and we do not legally have to accept returns for. We have made the description of this insurance five short sentences, the second of which says that in the event you want to make a claim, we need photos of [document] and the item itself. It is the end of a very stressful week with customers not reading the warnings on our website and at the checkout about our current shipping delays, and about 90% of our job this week has been dealing with customers upset that their stuff hasn’t been shipped within three days, so we are all slowly losing patience.)

Customer: “My item was delivered last week, but I need a replacement item due to [reason]. If you check my order, you will see that I purchased the insurance, so I need it sent out as soon as possible.”

Coworker: “No problem. If you could just email a photo or scanned image of [documentation] and the [item], we will get that arranged for you.”

Customer: “I disposed of them when they arrived last week.”

Coworker: “Would it be possible to retrieve them? It does state on the insurance page that we require this evidence to arrange a replacement for you.”

Customer: “They are at the bottom of my rubbish bin. Do you seriously expect me to dig through and get it?”

Coworker: “If you want a replacement item, yes.”

Customer: “Fine. I will get them. I’m sure I am not the only customer who would not appreciate having to go through this just for the insurance.” *rants for a couple of minutes about how disgusting his bin is and how this is awful customer service* “Do you not think that your company should make this policy about evidence clearer?”

Coworker: *with about a week’s worth of frustration that has now evolved into pure sarcasm* “We always appreciate feedback and suggestions from customers. We took great care making the insurance information as short and concise as possible as we know that not all of our customers like to read things before purchasing. We even made the requirement for photo evidence the second sentence so that customers wouldn’t have to read the whole thing. But if you have any suggestions on how we can make this even clearer to our customers, by all means, please enlighten us so that we can save others having to go through their bins instead of keeping [document] somewhere safe.”

(There is a pause.)

Customer: “I want the name of your manager and how to contact them.”

Coworker: “Certainly. His name is [Manager]. You can email [email address] and make sure that you put, ‘For attention of [Manager],’ in the subject to ensure that he gets it.”

Customer: “Good. He will be hearing about this.” *click*

(Our coworker did not get in trouble over this, especially as this was not the first time the customer had tried complaining about something after failing to read the information on our website.)