Taking Stock Of All Your Crazy Customers

(Once a year, we close for a day to do a complete inventory. About three hours in, someone begins shouting excitedly near the front of the store.)

Customer: “Hello! Hello! Is anyone going to serve me?”

Me: “Um, hi. We’re closed today.”

Customer: “What do you mean, closed? I need to buy these things!”

(Sure enough, he has a pile of products — which completely throws off a few counts — at an unmanned register.)

Me: “Yeah, I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t help you. We’re closed today for stocktaking.”

Customer: “I don’t care about that; just check me out so I can go!”

Me: “I can’t. We have no cashiers today, or tills, for that matter. We posted signs and locked the doors. How did you get in?”

Customer: “Nobody would let me in, so I had to come in through the garage.”

(The mechanics had left the garage doors open by less than a meter for ventilation. He would have had to crawl under the door and go through the mechanics’ lounge into the warehouse, to eventually wander onto the sales floor. Quite the detour.)

Me: “I’m sorry, sir. You can’t buy anything today. Let me unlock the door so you can leave.”

(He got rather heated at this point, screaming and threatening, until enough people came to herd him out. He yelled and pounded on the doors for a while until a passing police car stopped to chase him away.)