This Scam Has Gone Stale

A customer comes in who I’ve served a few times before. Every time he comes in, he orders a bag of popcorn, eats it, and then tries to claim it was “stale” to get a refund.  

I’ve literally just finished making a fresh batch of popcorn when he comes in and orders a medium popcorn. I give him the fresh popcorn that, again, I’ve literally JUST made. About ten minutes later, he comes back, having already eaten about half the bag. Throughout the whole conversation, he continues to munch on the popcorn.

Customer: “This popcorn is stale. I want a refund.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I just made that about ten minutes ago. There’s no way it’s stale.”

Customer: “It’s stale.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

Customer: “But it’s stale. I want my money back.”

Me: “No. I literally just made it right before you ordered it. It’s literally impossible for it to be stale. It’s literally as fresh as it could possibly be. And in fact, your popcorn has never been stale when you’ve said it is. You’re not going to keep trying to scam us by claiming our popcorn is always ‘stale.'”

Customer: “But it’s stale.”

Annoyed by his constant scamming, I pick up a popcorn tub, scoop some in, and standing in front of him, begin to eat it.

Me: “No, it’s not. It’s actually quite delicious.”

He rolled his eyes and walked away. I alerted my manager that he had tried to get a refund again by claiming his popcorn was stale. When he came out of his movie, she gave him a stern talking-to about not trying that again, or else we’d start to refuse service to him.