(I am the store manager for a hat shop. A man stomps into our store right as I open, clearly very upset.)

Customer: “Are you the one who told my wife she couldn’t try on your hats?!”

Me: “I honestly doubt it. All of our hats are available to try on. Do you know when your wife was here?”

Customer: “Last night! She described you and said you refused to get a hat down for her to try on! That’s discrimination!”

(Right at this moment his wife walks in. I clearly remember her from the night before.)

Me: “Hello. I do remember you, ma’am. Sir, the only ‘hat’ I said I couldn’t take down for your wife was the light fixture behind you, because those are not actual hats on it, but lamp shades. They are wired to the fixture.”

Customer: *looking at me with dawning understanding and then slowly turning to his wife* “They aren’t real hats! It’s a d*** lamp shade!”

Customer’s Wife: “I know that, but I wanted to just try it, and she refused to take it down! She wouldn’t even let me take it down myself!”

Customer: “That’s because it’s not a hat! It’s a lamp. Shade.”

Customer’s Wife: “I know that, but I just wanted to try it.”

Customer: *to me* “I’m very sorry about this.” *to wife* “Come on. I’m taking you to the hardware store so you can try on all the d*** lamp shades, if that’s what you want!”

(This happens to my husband while on a road trip. He pulls in to a well-known coffee chain and sits in his van in the parking lot, just going through the accumulation of stuff from his trip, throwing out trash, etc. A woman in a Range Rover pulls into the space on his right, so close that the side mirrors are nearly touching. She then puts down her window, motioning for him to do the same.)

Husband: “Can I help you?”

Woman: *very snooty* “You have positioned your vehicle in such a way that I am unable to get out of mine. I need you to move.”

Husband: “Lady, I’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes. You parked too close to get out.”

Woman: “Well, are you going to move?”

Husband: “No!”

(She sat for a minute, and then when she realized he really wasn’t moving, she huffily left, presumably to park in one of the other spaces. The kicker? Two spaces away, in the same row, there were at least five empty spaces in a row.)

((A customer who I recognize from my shift yesterday walks in and comes to my register. I should note that she is Indian, and her family is vegetarian for religious reasons.)

Me: “Hello, ma’am. What can I get you?”

Customer: “Well, I came in yesterday to get soup, and I got chicken noodle with my order. My family is vegetarian.”

Me: “I am so sorry about that, ma’am. I’ll go get the manager and we can do a refund—”

Customer: “No, no, we got all the soup that we wanted; there was just chicken noodle in the bag. I wanted to pay for it.”

Me: “Wait… You want to pay for soup that you didn’t want?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Did you eat it?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “Ma’am, it’s fine. You got all the soup you wanted, and we don’t make customers pay for our own mistakes. Besides, you said your family was vegetarian.”

Customer: “But I would feel bad.”

Me: “I refuse to charge you for this soup, ma’am.”

(After that we awkwardly bid farewell to each other. The woman is now a regular, and I tell that story to every new employee. She is one of my favorite customers.)

(I’m using a bread slicer machine to slice a loaf of bread for a customer.)

Customer: “No, no. You did it wrong!”

Me: “Excuse me?”

(I show him the bread. He points out a small indent in the bread and says I need to slice another loaf while holding the top of the bread slicer machine up so it doesn’t squish the bread. I comply, and the bread comes out clean with no minor dents. I place the rejected bread on the sample board, and as the customer is checking out, he takes slice of the bread.)

Me: “So, the bread wasn’t good enough to buy, but still good enough to eat?”

Customer: “That’s right.”

(I wish I could have charged him for that.)

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(A major highway leads to the mall where I am store manager. I’m driving to the store in the morning during a freezing cold and icy day, when all local schools have been cancelled. Normally, I plan to be at the store a half-hour before my employees. This day, my GPS tells me that the entire highway is blocked off ahead of me due to an accident. I quickly reroute to go around the blocked highway, but spy thousands of cars stuck in standstill traffic across four lanes. I then find myself navigating slippery back roads, passing cars that have slid off onto the shoulder. Traffic is slow or stopped along the back roads, too, as commuters avoiding the highway overwhelm the smaller streets. Finally, I get to the store, a half-hour later than anticipated, and find that two employees have arrived before me out of my opening staff of 19. I send one of my employees a few doors down to a doughnut shop for two dozen doughnuts and a large box of hot chocolate. Then, as employees arrive, I assure each of them that I will be overriding their late clock-in, and I sweeten the deal with coffee and donuts to calm frayed nerves. We manage to get the store open ten minutes before our first customer arrives, and all my employees are in great moods despite the miserable morning. It seems fine… until corporate calls.)

Corporate: “You had a seventeen people come in late, and you overrode every single one. Explain yourself!”

Me: “We had dangerous driving conditions.”

Corporate: “And?”

Me: “And I was later than I anticipated, as well.”

Corporate: “And?”

Me: “And I bought them all breakfast.”

Corporate: “What?!”

Me: “Look: I want my people to know that they should be safe. Their lives are more important than being on time.”

Corporate: “Well, that’s not corporate policy!”