She Didn’t Realize They Didn’t Have A Factory In The Store
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“When I worked at BabyGap we didn’t have the correct size onesie that a woman wanted to buy. She then demanded that I go into the back and have ‘them’ make her one. I had to explain to her that the clothes are sewn in China and shipped to us from a distribution center. There are no seamstresses making baby onesies in the stock room of your local BabyGap.”
She Literally Wanted To Take The Clothes Off Her Back
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“One time this lady came into the store and starts asking me for different sizes in everything. No problem, we have all the sizes in the back, I’ll go get them. She’s being a bit excessive, but whatever it means I get to spend time digging around in the storage room. Eventually, she comes across a sweater she wants to try on and it just so happens that I’m wearing the same sweater at work that day. She asks for a small and I apologize because we are sold out. This lady then looks at me and goes ‘Well what size is the one you’re wearing? I’ll just take that one if it’s a small.’
Ummm… No chick? Why would you want my dirty, sweaty, stretched out sweater anyway? I was honestly so baffled I just laughed awkwardly and walked away.”
This Lady Decided To Craft Her Own “Return Policy”
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“I was working customer service at a JCPenny’s outlet store when we had a woman walk in wanting to return some items. When I asked for her receipt, she said she lost it so I thought to try scanning the barcode to see if I could bring up the purchase in our system and that’s when I noticed the tags had the store logo on the back…for Hudson’s. A store that had been gone since the 1990’s. When I confronted the lady about the fact these clothes were bought from another store (and had to have been bought at least 8 years prior), she said with a straight face, ‘Well I obviously can’t return them to Hudson’s now can I.’ I was nearly floored by that encounter.”
The Customer Is Always Right
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“I used to work at a little Gothic clothing shop where they sold corsets, dresses, t-shirts, etc. I once had a really huge guy come in, pretty dang overweight, and he asked for a corset. For himself. He also wanted to try it on.
We did have a little changing room but corsets are tricky to get into at the best of times, so he was definitely going to need some help. Not wanting to upset him or make him feel bad (I could tell it was quite a big deal for him to ask), I had to try and help him into this thing. It was a Gothic lacy corset, mainly black and there were some red bits. Both of us couldn’t fit in the changing room so I had to work around the curtain to help him. Long story short: it was a bloody battle but in the end, he was delighted. Thank god because he was fairly sweaty and I didn’t really want to put it back on the shelves. I rang up the sale and he paid.
Next, he wanted a bag. The owner was an idiot and didn’t want to pay out for bags but, of course, this poor man didn’t want to walk all the way through the shopping center clutching a rather large corset. I had to run next door to the pet shop to borrow a bin bag for the poor guy. I hope he was happy with it in the end.
Still, 17-year-old me having to squeeze a middle-aged very large sweaty guy into a seductive lace corset that was a trial. Yes, I could’ve refused but I really needed the sale and he looked so nervous I didn’t want to say no and ruin his day.”
She Needed These Clothes And She Needed Them Now
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“I work at an outlet mall, and I had a lady that hardly spoke any English yell and scream at me that it was a Texas State Law that every store must stay open until sunset (it was a Sunday so we closed at 7 pm, but since it was summer the sun didn’t set until 8:30 pm) so she could use the fitting rooms.
I replied ‘Ma’am, the sun sets later but GAP closes now, the fitting rooms are closed please make your way to the cash register.’
She insisted I call my manager over, who not only hates rude customers, but hates rude customers who are mean to his employees. He basically says the same thing I did, but then tells her just to leave if she’s not going to purchase anything.
She ended up begging us to let her try on the clothes outside the store…in an open parking lot…so she could buy them… We said no. By far the weirdest request we’ve gotten from a customer.”
These Customers Just Made This Job Extra Crappy
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“I once had a customer try to return an empty cell phone box… He told me he lost the phone ‘BUT I have the box, so give me my money back.’ One woman tried to return a pair of pants covered in literal poop. I saw one person take a package off of the shelf and walk directly to the service desk and attempt to return it. So yeah, people are that stupid.
I also used to work at Target. I live in Wisconsin and so there are quite a few farms around my town and one day we had a woman return a TV she had never opened. You’re probably saying to yourselves: ‘Well that seems reasonable,’ and it would have had she not stored said TV in the barn… Yes, that’s right. Another item covered in literal poop. Luckily at that time, we had a wonderful manager who promptly kicked that woman out with her crappy TV.”
This Lady’s Purchase Showed Her Scandalous History
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“I was working at Nordstrom in a big west coast city in the accessories department. It was towards closing time and a woman and a man walked into my department. I overheard her telling him to go look at the men’s clothing while she looked at scarves. He agreed and walked away.
She came up to me and pulled out a case of sunglasses and said ‘Hi sweetie – I need your help. My boyfriend in Texas bought me these sunglasses and I need to return them.’ I asked her for a receipt or a sticker to return the item, she said she never got one. I told her I would try to look it up by the credit card number and asked if the gentleman could come back to the department. And she yelled ‘NO! That man is my husband. My BOYFRIEND in Texas bought me these. My husband CAN’T find out!!’
So I calmly asked her to call her boyfriend – who never picked up the phone. She threatened me some more until I hit the LP button on the keyboard and got it handled by the store manager.”
Fitting Rooms Truly Are A Retail Workers Worst Nightmare
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“Some creepy old dude wanted me to help him try on Speedos and was all pervy and leered at me. I mean, who leers and thinks that’s charming and/or attractive? Does that EVER work? I refused and told him that I existed merely to unlock the fitting room and that he was on his own. I let him into the fitting room and then actively avoided him. I went to clean up the dressing room when he was done and there were Speedos everywhere and you know those little plastic pods of butter you get at a restaurant with your bread? I found 3 empties and 2 fulls. I don’t even wanna know.”
Never A Dull Day In Kohl’s
“I used to be a manager at a department store. One day I’m called to customer service, and this larger lady immediately starts railing into me about how she ‘asked for the store’s buyer.’ The customer service girl mumbles about how she told the customer we don’t have that. Lady continues railing into me about how she demands to speak to the person who buys for the store.
This is a freaking Kohl’s. Obviously, Kohls has a buyer. On a corporate level. Which I explained to this lady. She was upset that the local store did not have a buyer who picked out the clothes that we at that local store sold. Which I explained to her how the merchandise was chosen by corporate and shipped to us each week and we really didn’t have any control about what exactly was carried in the store. This is not a freaking Saks Fifth Avenue or some high-end store.
I keep explaining to this lady that the store does not have a ‘buyer’ and trying to ascertain her problem. However, she ‘doesn’t want to speak to a manager, only the buyer.’ I finally am able to walk her through the process about how corporate sends us a truck every week with merchandise and we have zero control over what it sent, and that it’s primarily based on our demographics.
She acts like that is the most ridiculous thing she has ever heard. But, she finally agrees to talk to me about her problem.
She tells me that the plus size section is far too small. I again tell her that we have no control over that, that the amount allocated to each section is based on corporate data. I use the example of how our local demographic of women who shop here is primarily older women of average size (US 6-18), and thus the ‘misses classic’ section is fairly large. Of course, throughout all this, I am apologizing for her unhappiness and trying to offer suggestions, like how the online store carries significantly more styles in plus sizes.
She continues to just go off on me about how ridiculous it is that we carry ‘so little in plus size’ (actually it was a rather large selection, but was half the size of misses classic) and how absurd it is that we don’t have someone who hand selects our clothing that is carried in the store and how unfair it is that we don’t cater to plus size people. The icing on the cake was when she huffed and declared that our plus size fashions looked like ‘poor people in the 50s’ (like what does that even mean?).
So the craziest demand someone ever made of me was to speak to a person who didn’t exist and to refuse to believe that that person didn’t exist.
I have a lot of stories from that place, like the three different women who insisted on showing me their chests in the middle of the store to ask about bra or blouse recommendations. The best one was this cute guy wheeling his grandma around in her wheelchair, bra shopping for her, and he was flirting with me. Then gramma lifted up her shirt to ask me about her chest, and he, mortified, wheeled her out of the store immediately.”
He’d Try On This Outfit, But Not In A Fitting Room
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“I worked at Dillard’s (a plague to your soul to work at). A chubby old man comes in, you can tell something is off about him. He smells like relish and sweat among other bodily odors. He asks me to find him a pair of pants because his current one I guess broke on him since he’s holding it up with one hand. While I’m searching with him for a pair of jeans, this guy is dangling a plastic bag with I guess some drinks in it, while trying to suck and lick a jawbreaker candy. I look at his lips and they’re just massively swollen like he had dental surgery. He’s slobbering all over the jeans and kinda hollering to what sounds like a ballpark concession stand person who walks between the stands. The guy finally likes one pair and he asks where the fitting room is.
It’s in clear sight but I point 15 feet away. He grumbles to himself and slowly while balancing to not drop his jawbreaker and his bag, he takes off his pants right there near the register, which is the closest one to the main mall entrance. I start panicking internally but chuckling because I’m just thinking my coworkers should totally be seeing this crap. The guy finally has his pants all the way off only with a huge button up shirt on and his underwear to which you can smell even more foul odors. He slowly rustles the new pants up and puts them on slowly. He asks me how much he owes and I have to rip the tag off him to ring him up. He gives me his old jeans to ‘just keep it.’ And off he left slobbering elsewhere. Somehow I was the only one in the whole dang store to see all this at a busy time of the day.”
Going Out Out Of His Way To Help This Customer Definitely Paid Off
“I worked at a Levi’s and a man came in to try on a plaid shirt that was displayed in the shop window. He said he had OCD and asked to try on every plaid shirt (probably 50+ shirts) we had in his size because he needed the lines to match up at the seams. I was bored as heck so I decided to help him instead of focusing on other customers.
The sale took about an hour and a half but he bought $400+ worth of clothing and then called our district manager to say how happy he was with me because other employees wouldn’t take him seriously.”
When All Else Fails, These Rude Customers Won’t Hesitate To Yelp
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“I worked at a small local menswear store in New York and a woman came in and bought her brother that lived in Tucson a sweater for his birthday. A few months later, I get a phone call from some guy saying he’d like to return a sweater his sister gave him but he doesn’t want her to know so can I please credit his credit card instead of hers so she won’t find out. Unfortunately, the garment was also missing the tags and there was no receipt. I politely explained that the store policy was a ten-day exchange or store credit with the accompanying receipt.
Unfortunately, we were well past that threshold, there was no receipt (only the sticker on the paper gift wrapping telling the store’s name) and on top of that, he didn’t want the payment reverted to his sister’s account. This dude starts screaming at me over the phone about my poor customer service and that he’s a SHERIFF and demanding better service. He then abruptly hangs up and writes a scathing Yelp review about my obstinacy and lack of customer service. Of course, I got in trouble and had a stern talking to about the incident was made to be the scapegoat because I was following the written directions that were posted literally directly above my head every day in that shop.”
Nike Shoes Aren’t Tevas Dude
“I worked at a Nike Outlet store for a little while, and primarily worked in the shoe department. We sold shoes ranging from boots to cleats, sandals to running shoes, we sold them all.
This one older gentleman requested a sandal with a strap over the top, sort of like Tevas. I told him that Nike didn’t really have any sandals like that, especially at the outlet store. He proceeded to tell me that I’m wrong and that Nike definitely sold them because he got his current pair at Nike.
I took a look at his current pair and low and behold, they’re Tevas…branded Tevas…so there’s a 0% chance we sold them. After I explained this, he told me to check the stock room in which I basically told him no – it’s a waste of time. He called a manager, requested that the manager show me where these sandals are in the back room because y’know…we had the sandals(??).
My manager took me to the stock room, we sat down for a minute and chatted about the guy and went back out and told him that we don’t have the shoe anymore and he should try somewhere else.”
“Must Have Been Something In The Water”
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“We once had a lady come in and tell us that the parking lot was full. But angrily. She asked if there were any other parking lots (I feel like I need to add that this was in a sleepy town where it was quite obvious there was no other lot nearby).
I said that the only thing I could suggest was trying to find a spot on the street. She looked at me like I’d lost my mind and said ‘Well obviously!’
Genuinely confused as to what was expected of me.
Another story that happened in the same place, an older guy came to the counter and asked if we had found any keys, he’d lost some that day. I checked, no keys handed in. He seemed to accept this and wandered off. A few minutes later he’s back with a younger guy. Asks the same thing. I say nope, no keys yet. The younger guy starts listing random facts. ‘He’s 86 years old!’ Right… okay… still we don’t have his keys so… ‘He’s fought for his country!’ I had to check with him like… you don’t think I have them and I’m just not handing them over right? Nope. But here are some more facts anyway. ‘His wife is very ill!’
Must have been something in the water back there, or a gas leak or something.”
This Card Reader Left Everybody On Edge
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“I worked at Esprit in Vancouver before debit machines were a thing. We used to run credit cards through a slot at the top of the keyboard. Customers used to get antsy because it was slightly out of sight and it was useless to capture the info because you had to swipe it 5-10 times. Most of the time a quick explanation reassured them.
A Quebecer dude got super irate because he was convinced he was being charged per swipe. He freaks out after the second swipe and my manager comes over, hearing me trying to explain in broken French and the customers yelling in broken English.
Of course, my manager doesn’t listen to his concerns or my explanation and swipes his card rapidly 4-5 times thinking I’m just an idiot who can’t get the card to swipe and that’s what the problem is.
The guy goes NUTS and demands to see proof we have only charged him once. We, of course, can’t prove it beyond verbally promising because it can only charge once all the info is captured so the manager tells him to come back in a week. The guy is going back to Montreal after the weekend and loses his mind even more and his wife is now joining in. It took 30 minutes for my manager to finally listen and get him calmed down. Now the customer demands a refund and starts pushing the clothes back over the counter onto the computer.
Of course, back in those days, we couldn’t reverse a charge like that until it was posted (it even said so on our receipts that refunds couldn’t be done the same day) so it was an endless loop of jaded annoyed manager versus angry Frenchman.
I hated working in that store.”
This Comeback Was Worth Every Penny
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“I used to work at a certain office supply store.
One day I was in a particularly bad mood, and this woman came at me as I was covering the cash register. She has about $30 worth of paper and stuff and is demanding a discount with her loyalty card, demanding for the most amount of rebates.
I take her loyalty card and enter it into my system to see the purchase history. Amazingly, she’d spent a whopping $20ish dollars in the previous 4 years. So I calmly said to her, ‘Ma’am, unfortunately, due to what the loyalty card says here, you don’t qualify for those rebates you’re asking for. You’re currently sitting at $0 purchased this quarter, $0 purchased in the last year, and the big rebates start being available to you after you purchase $1000 every quarter. If you would like, I’ll take you around the store, and we can get you enough items on this purchase to qualify for this quarter’s rebates.’
Needless to say, my favorite manager was just coming back from his lunch break (wearing a shirt over his uniform) to hear this exchange. He pulled me aside a few minutes later and explained to me while I was doing nothing technically wrong, and it was freaking hilarious, that I should not handle that kind of situation in that manner. I agreed. However, very worth it.”
This One-Year Warranty Wasn’t Enough For This Customer
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“I briefly worked at a Red Wing Boots & Shoes after college. If you’re unfamiliar with the brand, they’re work boots. At the time, they were made in the US, were of pretty decent quality, and had a one year guarantee. As long as you brought your boots back within a year of purchase, we’d either have them replaced or repaired at no cost.
I had a guy come in one day wanting us to replace his boots. He was in our system as having purchased them from us, and he’d had them just shy of two years. I told him about our policy and explained to him how two was more than one, but he was dead set on not having to pay for another pair of $300 boots. He eventually left once I let him know that there was no one higher ranking than me in the shop at the moment that could give him the answer he wanted, and let him know when the manager was in next if he wanted to argue the case.”