People’s general lack of common sense and decency astounds me. These crazies are at the top of the list for dumb, dumb, and dumber. Content edited for clarity purposes.
The Crazy Pastor Lady
“I worked for Sam’s Club in the DC area for a few years and had all kinds of customers. I was at the membership desk. Yes, I had a cash register, but it was unlike those in the checkout lines because we had registers that allowed refunds to be rung up and cash returned which the checkout lines did not. We were tasked with refunds, returns, opening credit accounts, and – in a very few instances – ringing up when the lines were full and we were not busy. It was always a manager’s call for us to be used as checkout.
I had a woman bring a piano keyboard and plop it down on the desk apron with no verbal explanation at all. Thinking it was a return or maybe it did not work as advertised, I asked for her receipt. She very rudely told me I was going to check her out because she was not going to stand in no ‘F…ng’ line.
I began to explain that we were not allowed to check out customers unless directed to do so and she said SHE was telling me I was to ring it up! Again, I tried to explain and she got really verbally abusive. People were looking at her and wondering if I would cave just to get her out of the way. Sometimes marketing companies hire such people to see if you follow protocol. If you do not, you get fired, so I was again attempting to explain when she called me a ‘stupid fat bitch’ and wanted a manager. I got her one.
The manager asked me to explain the problem and she lit up like a firecracker sputtering and wanting to know why he was asking this bitch when she called for the manager. He turned to me again and asked me to finish. By now there was a huge crowd and I had said nothing to her other than explain the policy. He now turned to her and asked if she was exchanging or refunding the keyboard and she lit into him about what a dumb idiot he was because it was neither – she was buying. He calmly said he would take it to a checkout cashier for her because the membership desk was not checkout and he would ring her up himself but she refused.
Pointing at me, she demanded the ‘dumb bitch’ do it right here and right now! He asked for her membership card and reached under the counter as she pulled it out. She was smiling thinking she had won the day but he took her card, and cut it into several pieces. He then signed a cash removal sheet for my register and withdrew $40 from my drawer replacing it with the signed sheet. He told her he was refunding her membership and he would not allow her to return to our store to buy another. He handed her the $40 and told her, ‘Good day.’
She proceeded to curse and yell and he looked at the card pieces and saw her name for the first time – it was Rev.____ ____. He asked her if she was a pastor and she said she was. He left simply saying he felt bad for her congregation. She left with her mouth wide open and quietly.”
The City Tax
“Back when I was working at a bakery there was this one woman who came in and bought two items, a slice of cake ($5) and a cupcake ($3.50). So her total plus tax was around $10 because the city we were in had a ridiculous tax.
So about an hour after she left, she called us and I answered. She started off by saying how she bought the items and when she got home, her husband asked how much they cost. And he told her it doesn’t sound right and that we must have overcharged her.
Neither of these people had been to our shop before from what I know and she started yelling at me about the price of her food and how it should have been around $9. Then she was angry because she didn’t receive a receipt. I would like to add that our system at the time would not let the cashier choose to print a receipt and that it was on the customer’s side to press a button if they wanted a receipt or not which she ignored.
At this point, I was trying to find her receipt on the computer to see if there was a mistake. I asked if she used a credit card or paid in cash because if she used a credit card, then her name would pop up and it would be easier to find.
She then started going off on me again yelling about how it doesn’t matter if she used a credit card or not and how that shouldn’t change the tax. I had to tell her it was just an easier way to look up her receipt while she kept interrupting me about the price as if I couldn’t hear her the first five times.
I eventually found her receipt and made sure that everything was correct before telling her that her total was higher because of the city tax. This was not what she wanted to hear and she started yelling at me about the city tax! Which I have no control over! I kept telling her that it was the city tax and that we have no control over how much it is and it got to the point where my manager had to be handed the phone because the woman was not understanding how a family-owned bakery didn’t control city tax. It took my manager 10 minutes to explain to a 40+-year-old woman how tax works.”
Not A Single Brain Cell Was Working
“When I was in high school I worked at a grocery store. One summer day we had a very sudden intense rain storm. In less than 5 minutes the rain was over the top of the gutters and running down the sidewalks. The power went out. That meant the cash registers didn’t work. The owner of the store said if anyone had small orders that didn’t have anything that needed to be weighed and they were paying by cheque, we could add up the total and let them pay. This was before cash registers were used for keeping track of inventory so when the power came back on we could just input the total. So I did that (as do the other cashiers) for a few people.
After a while, a woman came up to me with a few things which included some oranges. So I said, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t sell you the oranges because I don’t have any way to weigh them.’
She said, ‘But you sold things to all those other people.’
I responded, ‘Well if you just want to take the other items then I can sell you those.’
Her response was, ‘But I want the oranges! Why won’t you let me buy them.’
I told her I couldn’t sell them because I didn’t know what to charge her. She said that she would get me the price per pound. In my head, I was wondering how much weirder this conversation could get. I told her the price per pound didn’t matter as I didn’t know how much the oranges weighed. Then she suggested I should just make a guess.
What? I mean, excuse me, but when was the last time you just paid what the cashier ‘guessed’ the price was?! Now, I lived in a small town and working in the main grocery store I knew many people. I knew this woman and she knew me, too. She was not a stupid woman, but she sure looked like one then.
At that point, I just didn’t know what to say. Luckily, the owner must have seen the look on my face and came over to talk to her. He had much the same conversation with her. Luckily for us, about this time the storm stopped and the power came back on (This happens a LOT in the area I grew up in – Alberta prairies.). So then as I rang her up she says, ‘now see, if you’d just done this earlier we wouldn’t have had to have all this discussion.’
She left the store and everyone there just started howling with laughter.”
Anything To Get Their Money Back
“While working at a hotel, I had a guest come over to me and complain that we didn’t have Keurig coffee makers in the room and our bedding was too white.
At this particular hotel chain, there’s a perk where if you’re ‘not happy’ for any reason, you don’t have to pay for your room. So this woman was stabbing the little desk sign that had this policy on it with her Hagatha finger and telling me she wanted her money back.
I reaffirmed what her issues were, just for my own sake:
She wanted us to have Keurig machines in the rooms instead of the coffee makers we had, even though they worked fine, and Keurig has a deal with Hilton Garden Inns, not us.
She wanted us to have dingier bedding, or the weirdly suspicious brown and red bedding you find at seedy places.
She told me, ‘Yes, that’s exactly right. I want my money back.’
So, as the policy stated, she got her room for free. Because we were too damn clean and our coffee came in baskets instead of cups.
I think my face just froze in a ‘How are you still breathing?’ sort of look and stayed there at least twenty minutes after she left.”