We have expensive items locked in a clear cabinet. In particular, one type of high demand phone is locked inside. I walk over to a 30 something man staring into the cabinet while glancing around.

Customer: Excuse me, how many phones do you have in stock?
Me: Just the four you see. We don’t keep any in overstock.
Customer: but… are you sure? There could be one one behind the others that you can’t see.
Me: How many phones are you looking to buy? I can probably find more stock at another store.
Customer: That’s not what I mean. There could be like, five or six phones back there and you wouldn’t know it.
Me: (I quickly key in the item into my tablet, coming up with four phones in stock). Nope! Only four.
Customer: You don’t know though! You should take the initiative and open the cabinet and pull them out and count them.
Me: No, I’m a thousand percent sure there’s four phones.

At this point a coworker walks over, and the guy repeats the same conversation with him before turning to leave and walking straight into a police officer.
Turns out the guy had managed to get two other stores to unlock the phone cabinets before grabbing them and running. I had no clue. I was rewarded for keeping the guy talking long enough that management could get the police!

(It’s within the last hour of my store being open, and it’s my second-to-last week working at this job. A Russian man, with his children, step up to order.)

Customer: *Russian accent* Lipton Tea.

Me: I’m sorry?

Customer: Tea. I want Lipton tea with lemon.

Me: We don’t carry that. Here are the teas we carry. *points at 12 teas we carry*

Customer: I want Lipton.

Me: I don’t even know what kind of tea that is. Is it black? These are our black teas. *gives him two options*

Customer: No black, brown tea.

Me: We don’t have brown tea. Black tea is what you’re looking for. Which would you like?

Customer: *chooses Royal English Breakfast*

*I make his tea, which should steep for 5 minutes before drinking*

Customer: Is there lemon?

Me: We don’t have lemon.

The customers gives me the stink eye, which he’s been doing throughout this interaction, but now it’s worse. I tell him his total, and he hands me a 20$. I’m cashing out his change.

Customer: How much was it?

Me: [Total]

Customer: *digs in pocket and offers me a variety of change* How much?

Me: I… I don’t– *sighs and takes enough change to round up from $0.19 to a quarter, all the while he’s glaring at me*

Customer leaves to the condiment bar, doesn’t say thank you or anything and leaves. Half an hour later, I go to clean the condiment bar and he’s taken out his 2 teabags and just left them lying on the counter, with the trash can 2 feet away, covering my counter in tea.

Me: *to my coworker* First brown tea, and then he couldn’t even use the trashcan. WTF?!

(so I work for a big retail company in the UK, and I work in stock control and carry a pda to check our stock levels or even if we sell something. The other day this happened.)

CUSTOMER: excuse me do you sell any dental repair kits.

Me: I’m sorry I don’t believe that we do but I will have a check on our system for you.

( pulls up my pda and searches for it or anything similar, it shows nothing at all)

Me: sorry the system shows that we don’t sell it at all.

Customer: ok thanks for your help.

( she walks off to my co-worker on the same aisle and asks him something. He walks her to the other end where the toothpaste and such are and it looks like he can’t find something. She thanks him and walks off.)

Me to co-worker: did she ask about dental repair kits?

Co-worker: how did you know?

Me: well she just asked me and I searched the system and nothing.

( as we are talking another co-worker appears at the top of the aisle with the woman looking at the oral care once again, the co-worker also can’t find it since we don’t sell it and the woman walks off once more)

Me to first co-worker: I guess some people just can’t take no for an answer.

Customer: Um you didn’t put my military discount on here after I already showed you
(Note: she already paid and now I have to do an override on the whole ticket just to give her her 10% and there’s a line forming behind her)
Me: I’m sorry, let me go ask my manager
Me: She said you can have a pie if you like ( the pies and cakes are $3.29)
Customer: I don’t want a pie, I said I want my discount
Me: ~eye twitches~ of course ma’am, let me get through these customers first then I’ll get right on it
Customer: Why can’t you do it now
Me: Because ma’am it’s a process and it takes a while but I promise I’ll get to it right after I get this line down.
( Customer comes up every 5 mins seeing if I have got it done then getting mad that it’s not done)

(I manage a small academic IT department. Sometimes I deal with customers directly. This was one of those times.)

Person: “Could you please fix this web app that stopped running?”
Me: [investigates] “Sorry, no. It’s a Flash applet, so I can’t change the contents. It’s not running because the security model in Flash changed to disallow the things your applet is doing.”
Person: “But we paid someone to write it!”
Me: “Ok. Talk to your vendor, then.”
Person: “We can’t, we had it written in 2003. We really need it to work.”
Me: “Maybe it’s an easy fix. Do you have the source code?”
Person: “I don’t.”
Me: “Sorry, I can’t help you then.”
Person: “How come you fixed a broken link a while ago but won’t fix this?”
Me: “Because that was a completely different issue. I literally can’t help with this one.”
Person: “I shall complain to my supervisor that you are unwilling to help!”
Me: HEAD ASPLODE