Vitamin(imum) Return Period

(A woman comes in, rattling a bottle, and goes straight to the my register.)

Customer: “I need to return this.”

Me: “Okay; I just need to ask why, and we’ll get started!”

Customer: “These vitamins contain [obscure ingredient], and I’m not putting it in my body.”

(It now becomes pertinent that our entire chain stopped selling vitamins over a year prior to this story.)

Me: “Well, I’m not sure if I can help or not, with something purchased so long ago. Do you have your receipt?”

Customer: “No, I don’t. Are you saying you won’t stand by your product?”

Me: “The problem is I don’t know how much to refund you, and it was purchased a very long time ago.”

(I try to ring up the bottle, but of course I get “item not found.”)

Me: “At this point, I’m not able to refund this. It doesn’t appear in our system, and you don’t have a receipt.”

Customer: “So, you won’t stand by your product.”

Me: “I literally cannot ring it up.”

Customer: “So, you won’t stand by your product.”

(This goes on until a manager gets involved and decides to give her a gift card just to get rid of her.)

Me: “Ma’am, do you have any idea how much you paid for this?”

Customer: “$4.99.”

(When it was all over, my manager and I looked at each other and burst out laughing over this woman raising a fifteen-minute confrontation over five dollars she spent a year ago.)