I love “Bob’s Burgers” a lot. It’s my favorite comfort show, and I’ve seen every episode multiple times. One day, my mom decides to quiz me.

Mom: “When did they get married?”

Me: “Easy, September third.”

Mom: “Okay, now when is my anniversary?”

Me: “I honestly don’t know. I think sometime around Memorial Day?”

Mom: “How is it you remember a fictional character’s anniversary but not your parents’?”

Me: “Same as how Linda remembers in the show. Nine is divisible by three. Get a date that’s easier to remember, and then maybe we’ll talk. Be glad I know when both your birthdays are.”

I work in a hotel, and like all of you, I am so tired of the entitled idiots with shiny status. I’m in Texas, and like most of the rest of the state, we had rolling blackouts during the winter storm a few months ago. I lived at the hotel for twelve days, including my birthday, to make sure that all shifts were covered. The vast majority of our guests were part of a stranded hockey team here for a tournament.

The power wouldn’t stay on long enough to complete a load of laundry, it was freezing when the power was off, and after the fire department came out twice to rescue folks stuck in the elevator, we were required to shut them down.

The reviews we got afterward were mostly complimentary and most of the stranded guests made the most of the situation. Not [Guest], though. [Guest], a parent of one of the players, wanted a refund for his entire eight-day stay.

Guest: “You shouldn’t be open when there is no power, no elevator, and no regular laundry or housekeeping service!”

You’re so right, [Guest]. We should have kicked your flight-cancelled a** to the minus-two-degree curb immediately so you could actually be inconvenienced by sleeping in the park across the street.

On a more positive note, the hockey team apologized for their crappy parent and sent our housekeeping staff a fat check as a thank-you for their hard work cleaning up after they all left.

Over the weekend, a customer purchased over a hundred items, paying in part with a gift card and the other part with her credit card. She comes back later to return a pair of jeans for $13 and purchase a $10 sweater.

When returning items, the refund goes back to the form it was paid in; this makes it very difficult to deal with customers who want cash back when they paid with their debit card, but those are stories for another time. When two forms of payment are used, the POS automatically decides between the two forms used to process the refund. For this transaction, it decides to refund her $3 to her card, and she goes on her merry way.

On Monday, she comes in to return the sweater. This time, the system decides to refund her $10 back on a store gift card. The customer then begins to argue with my cashier that she is being shorted $3 from the first return she made. 

The store manager is called up to take care of the situation, and then she asks the customer to step to the side to allow the cashier to take care of other customers. The customer then proceeds to give the store manager a list of demands at the top of her lungs.

Her first demand: reprimand both cashiers involved in both of her returns, as they were rude as h*** when working with her and shouldn’t be working in public. The first cashier that handled her exchange of the jeans and sweater should have just returned the jeans, then rung up the sweater, instead of doing it all in one, she said. The second cashier was shorting her money for the sweater because she wasn’t wearing a mask. The store manager refused to reprimand them in front of the customer, as they had done nothing wrong, and if such a reprimand were needed, it would be done in the office. The cashiers had done their job.

Her second demand: the customer wanted the $3 owed to her from the $13 pair of jeans. She could not find her original receipt and threw whatever receipt she had at the store manager. Out of the wad of paper, she found the original exchange receipt and the most recent return receipt. The store manager showed the customer where the $3 had been returned to her card, and the rest of the refund was used to purchase the sweater. By returning her sweater, she was refunded all $13. The customer wouldn’t listen to a word, insisting we were crooks and shorting her money. The store manager explained it every way she could other than shoving it straight up the customer’s nose. It went in one ear and out the other.

Her third demand: to prove that we weren’t taking her money, the customer wanted us to return the one hundred items she had originally purchased back to her card and then ring up all one hundred items again. Then, she wanted to return the $13 jeans, purchase the $10 sweater, and then return the $10 sweater. In that order. Right in front of her. We can’t refund any items that were not currently in the store, obviously. The store manager says we will not be able to accommodate her request, as she has none of the items with her, and she’s had all of her money refunded to her, so there is no need to redo every transaction.

Eventually, the customer gives in to fits of screaming at the store manager and the cashier, calling everyone idiots and thieves before threatening to call corporate. She leaves the store, only to stay in her car and call us three times to continue to scream at us. On the third call, she demands to speak to the manager and is given to the store manager. She screams, “I DON’T WANT YOU! YOU’RE AN IDIOT! YOU’RE THE BIGGEST IDIOT IN THE WORLD! I’LL HAVE YOUR JOB!” and hangs up.

She did call corporate, but I never heard anything back from it.

Related:
Refunder Blunder, Part 55
Refunder Blunder, Part 54
Refunder Blunder, Part 53
Refunder Blunder, Part 52
Refunder Blunder, Part 51

I am a manager of a discount retail chain. During a busy Christmas season, we fill all six of our registers from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm. From 9:00 pm to 1:00 am, I am left with just two cashiers. This is fine, as business is getting slower in the late evenings.

This is also during the health crisis, when we have to keep a count of customers coming through the door. Just after 10:00 pm, both of my cashiers are working on a small line. I am currently covering my metering person for their lunch, but I’m close enough that I can hear every conversation at the registers.

Customer: “Wow, they left you up here all by yourself? With this line?”

Cashier #1: “Oh, I’m not by myself. My coworker is also checking people out; she just has a larger purchase.”

Customer: “That’s horrible of them to do that to you, especially when it’s so busy.”

Cashier #1: “We’re fine, really. We had a lot of cashiers on during the day, but it’s not as busy now, so we have less people on register.”

Customer: “And where’s the manager at a time like this?”

I wave my tally counter at the customer.

Me: “Hello, over here.”

Customer: “I bet they’re sitting in the office right now, huh? While you work so hard out here. They should jump on a register every once in a while and help out.”

Lucky for me and my cashier, we got to listen to him bad-mouthing me, my work ethic, and the lack of cashiers, all while I was six feet away with a shiny manager badge on my shirt. It was almost like the customer wasn’t completely there mentally, as he ignored every attempt I made to greet or help him, and he refused to see the other cashier on register, as well. The cashier that checked him out said it was the most uncomfortable conversation she’d had with a customer.

I’m a female working in a tech shop, repairing computers. A woman comes in dressed head-to-toe in black with a long skirt and a large cross necklace.

Me: “Hello! How may I help you?”

Customer: *Scowls* “I want you to fix my computer right now, missy! And do it for cheap!”

Me: “Okay, let’s take a look here.”

I open the browser and immediately see multiple pop-up ads for different things, including adult websites, gaming, and so on.

Me: “Okay, it looks like you’ve been going to [Religious Website] every day.”

Customer: *Scoffs* “Yes.”

Me: “Well, that site has a bunch of malware. I personally prefer—”

Customer: “You little heathen! How dare you say that [Religious Website] is contaminated?! You’re probably a devil worshipper!”

Me: “No, actually, I go to church every Sunday. It’s just that you can’t always trust certain religious websites, and this is one of them. I personally prefer [Different Website] because it has no malware. The way you can tell if it’s got malware is by—”

Customer: “SHUT THE F*** UP! I don’t care about your hip new website. I want you to fix this one!”

Me: “Okay, first of all, watch your language. There are kids here. Secondly, I don’t control what goes on the Internet. You need to stop going to this website. I can clean out your computer for [price], or you can do it yourself and I can walk you through it. Or you can buy a new laptop altogether, which would probably be best, based on the amount of crap on here. I will not tolerate you cursing at me and calling me names. I am a Christian and I go to church every Sunday morning with my parents.”

Customer: “I WANT TO SPEAK TO ONE OF THE MEN, RIGHT NOW!”

Me: “Of course.”

I found my supervisor and warned him about her. He looked furious, and I thought I was in trouble for a second, but he went straight to the woman and told her to watch her mouth or he’d throw her out. He said the same thing I said about cleaning out the computer.

She finally agreed and paid in cash, muttering about how I was a female dog and the church hated witches like me. My boss cleaned her computer and told her not to return unless she planned on being nice.

She hasn’t been back since.