You’ve (Nut)Cracked The Case

(I work at a typically quaint little shop that sells various Scandinavian items. One of our more popular items during Christmas is our wooden nutcracker statue. On this particular day, we get a woman who bought three such nutcrackers the day before and is complaining that they were all broken when she got them home.)

Customer: “This is disgraceful! That you would willing to sell such cheap, third-world products at such inflated prices! I can’t believe this! You’ve ruined our Christmas!”

(She continues berating me while I check the nutcrackers and find all of them are missing their jaws. One has the broken piece in the box with it, but the other two don’t have anything. I grow suspicious, as the nutcrackers are shipped to us with plenty of padding in their boxes, meaning it’d be very difficult for their jaws to be broken in transit, and even if that were the case, then all three should have the broken pieces, not just one. I call my manager over and show him the nutcrackers.)

Manager: “Interesting. Ma’am, to clarify, you said these were broken when you first opened the boxes?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Manager: “And you just put them right back in the boxes and brought them back to us?”

Customer: “Are you calling me a liar?”

(My manager picks up the one broken jaw.)

Manager: “Well, allow me to show you something. This nutcracker has white hair, yet the beard attached to the jaw piece here is black. And if we have a look at the display.”

(He walks over and picks the same nutcracker out of our display case.)

Manager: “We see it’s supposed to have both white hair and a white beard. I know for a fact that can’t be a factory defect, since the company that makes these for us is very thorough with its quality control… not to mention it also doesn’t explain why the other two jaw pieces are missing.”

(He looks expectantly at the customer… who is now looking very pale.)

Customer: “Uh… Well… Mm… What if I told you it was actually my kid and me who broke them? That we went through them one by one to see if they could actually crack nuts?”

Manager: “I would first direct your attention to the box, right here, where it says, ‘For display only. Not to be used to crack actual nuts.’ I would also mention that we’d have happily refunded your money, anyway, meaning there was no need to lie to us or subject my employee here to all your verbal abuse.”

Customer: “Geez. Well, now you’ve made me feel like a first-rate d****e!”