Having your card declined at a store is not the best feeling in the world, nor witnessing it. These employees share the unforgettable moment when a customer’s card was declined and knew they had to do something about it. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Her Daughter Felt Guilty Over The Chocolate Bar
“While at work I had noticed a mother with her three children shopping for groceries. The mother had two toddlers and her oldest daughter looked to be around 12 or 13 years of age. The oldest daughter was so helpful to the mother as they shopped. She was keeping her sisters occupied while her mother shopped.
Well, when it came time to check out the mother asked the daughter if she wanted anything since she was so helpful. The daughter grabbed a candy bar from the shelf and put it on the belt. When the mother went to pay for the groceries her card was declined. But that’s not the saddest part.
The saddest part was the daughter thought her candy bar was the reason her mother’s card was declined.
She quickly apologized to her mom and told her that she didn’t need the candy bar.
The mother didn’t know what to do. Well the gentleman behind them had noticed what was going on and jumped in. He noticed a mother with her hands full trying to buy a few groceries to feed herself and her children. So he offered to pay for her groceries.
It wasn’t much maybe 30 bucks worth but what made the situation even better was that he added candy bars for all three children.”
“A Terrible Start To An Otherwise Beautiful Summer Day”
“I was much younger then, and I was a hotel cashier. This regular guest, who was a corporate client, was settling his account with his Gold American Express Card, and the card was declined.
In those days, we had to telephone the authorization center, and when I did, I was told to keep the card, do not return it to the client. I was also going to receive a 25 dollar reward for doing so. I never did get that 25 dollars, but that is another story. Anyway, the guest spoke to the AMEX representative, so he knew he wasn’t getting his card back. However, after he had made other payment arrangements, he sheepishly asked me if I would return the card to him, and I had to tell him I couldn’t. While all of this is going on, I am thinking what a terrible start to an otherwise beautiful summer day. And I had just ruined this gentleman’s day.
Soon after that, many high-end hotels stopped confiscating the credit cards of their guests. Hotels felt they were not being paid by the credit card companies to be in the credit card collection business, and they also felt it was seriously unfair to place their employees at risk for the sake of a piece of plastic, and I concur.”
“I Couldn’t Make Him Understand, No Matter How I Worded It”
“I was a cashier at Wal-Mart, working on a super slow Monday back in 2002. A man came through my line that was very obviously differently-abled. I was trying to talk with him while I rang up his overflowing cart, trying to put him at ease. His total came out to 546 bucks and 99 cents – that number has stuck in my head for all these years. 546 bucks and 99 cents. He smiled at me, very proud, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a ten, a five, and three crumpled ones. ‘Is anyone here with you?’
I asked him, ‘Anyone to help you with your things?’
He shook his head and replied that he had walked because his mom was asleep, but hadn’t had to cross the street.
I was very unsure how to proceed at this point. I have an autistic nephew and know how badly most with developmental disabilities just want to be treated ‘normal’, whatever that is. I knew how much it took for him to be there, knew how proud of himself he looked. I couldn’t stand the thought of taking that pride away from him. I looked around, hoping to find a manager to explain to this sweet man that he was short by over 500 bucks. I couldn’t make him understand, no matter how I worded it, that his 18 bucks weren’t enough. I was almost crying as I started asking him about the most important things he had, trying to figure out his most needed items.
Then I noticed a woman watching us. She also had a heaping cart full of items and she walked quickly to my line and looked at his total. She whispered something to me, but I couldn’t hear her.
She repeated herself softly and that time I heard her say, ‘I’ll pay.’
This lady, a perfect stranger, paid over 500 bucks of her own money to help this man, someone that didn’t understand what was going on, someone that couldn’t even really thank her. I was in absolute awe of her. I had heard of things like this happening but had never seen it.”
Heartbroken Girl
“I was working as a closer at a gas station up the street from my house, when this woman walked in, obviously in a bad mood. I waited at the counter so I could ring her up, and it was obvious that she was fighting back tears.
By the time she got to me, she was full-on sobbing. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just rang her up like normal and asked what was wrong. Apparently, she walked in on her boyfriend hooking up with another woman and was simply heartbroken about it all.
I finally got her to swipe her card because I didn’t want her to just be standing in the middle of the store crying in front of anyone else who might walk in and embarrass herself.
The card declined, and my heart just sank.
‘Uh… it’s, uhh… it’s declined…’ I said very quietly.
By this point, she was pretty much bawling her eyes out and it was not like I was gonna say, ‘You’re holding up the line, get out.’
I also didn’t have the heart to really double down and tell her that she was broke and couldn’t even pay for gas on top of getting cheated on. She didn’t even notice I was speaking to her anyway because she was so far gone at that point. So I paid for it all myself, partially because I wanted her to have at least some compassion that night, but also because she was holding up the line. She walked out and went to her car and I rang up the customer behind her.
So after they left, there were no customers left.
The woman was still outside hunched over her car. I literally had to go out there and physically pump her gas for her because she was completely incapable of doing so. I would have stayed so she could vent a little bit, but I had to take care of more customers, as I was the only one there to mind the store. She drove away as I was ringing up other customers.
I worked that gas station job for about six months, and the first chance I had to leave, I took it. Working at a gas station sucks.”
It Was Her Six-Year-Old Son’s Birthday
“Back in 1999, I was fairly fresh out of high school and working at McDonald’s as an order taker/cashier. One day I had a woman come through my drive-thru asking about the price of the different Happy Meals. I could see from the look in her eyes that something was bothering her. I asked if she was okay, and she replied that it was her six-year-old son’s birthday and he was in the hospital.
She then settled on the Hamburger Happy Meal. She said that it was all she could afford. She pulled out her card and attempted to pay. That’s when she saw the dreaded reply, ‘Declined.’
I looked back at her and saw the look of utter defeat as she could not even get her son a Happy Meal. I then asked her what her son’s favorite Happy Meal was. She then proceeded to ask why.
I told her that I had just gotten paid and would take care of it. From our earlier conversation, I could tell that it was the chicken nugget happy meal. I quickly changed the order, pulled out my card, and paid. I told her don’t worry about it and she could go around the corner and get the meal.
She said a very heartfelt thank you and I responded, ‘It was my pleasure and that I hope her son gets well soon.’
I found out after that she was bawling her eyes out at the next window. My manager asked her what was wrong and she told them what I had done and then she told them that she had been going through a rough time, and this was the first good thing to happen to her in days.”
It Was At HER Job
“My older sister, at that time, just started working for me and I had a shop. She went onto the shop floor to purchase something and tried to use her card. The employee got a message on the credit card terminal to phone a number. On phoning that number, they were told to not only decline the transaction but to destroy the credit card. So my sister had just started a new job working for me, her younger brother, and was humiliated in front of her new colleagues by having her credit card cut up.”
David
“I worked as a Barista in a coffee shop, across the street from a park and upstairs from the Subway station.
As a result, we saw many homeless people come in to use the restroom or get out of the cold.
I first met David while I was sweeping the lobby. He came up to me and very quietly asked if there was any food in the garbage that he could have. That he was homeless, and a veteran, and hungry. He would work for it, he assured me, he would sweep and mop and clean the doors of fingerprints. But he had no money to pay. He said he was sorry to have to ask. He would not make eye contact, instead of staring at the floor, at his broken shoes.
It was February in New York City. The snow was on the ground outside and the air was bitter.
I replied, ‘We don’t have anything in the garbage. But we do have fresh coffee. What do you want? On the house,’
He finally made eye contact. He had clear, blue eyes. He looked surprised and said, ‘Let me work for it, at least.’
I told him, ‘Tell you what. What did you say your name was again?’
He answered, ‘David.’
I said, ‘Tell you what, David. You hang out in the lobby. When we’re ready to close, anything that has to go out is yours. Your job is to help us get all this stuff into someone’s belly.’
David came back every day, for the next few months that I worked there. I let every other manager on duty know that we would no longer be throwing away the extras at the end of the night.
And, after we would lock our doors, I would watch David shuffle across the street to the park, large coffee in one hand, huge shopping bags full of food in the other.
And I would watch him open up the bags, and share his bounty with other homeless people.
Here was a man with very little. But generous with what little he had.”
A Make-A-Wish Family
“I used to work at a hotel next to Disneyland. I had just graduated from high school and it was just a job back then until one day there was something that changed my view on the industry as a whole.
Being next to Disneyland, the hotel had a contract with Make-A-Wish foundation which is a non-profit organization that gives terminally ill children a wish. For example, if a child had cancer and wanted to go to Disneyland, they will pay for it with money they raised via their partners and vendors like the hotel I used to work for. However, the hotel was only a vendor and made no donations or give any bigger discounts to the foundation that it did not give to wholesalers.
There was one family that was checking in with Make-A-Wish that was trying to check in at the front desk. The person checking them in was always kinda rude to everyone but never broke any other rule. He requested a credit card as was normally the policy however for Make-A-Wish families, it was not required since their room was paid for by Make-A-Wish. The family was asked to present a credit card at check-in and they presented their debit card for which the hotel tried to obtain an authorization for their seven-day stay. The debit card declined and the front desk agent was not understanding what Make-Wish was.
He had sent them away saying their card needed to be good or they could not check in. I did not know they were with Make-a-Wish at first but just saw them making phone calls trying to have people send them money so they could check-in.
The front desk agent kept saying, ‘Oh they don’t have a valid card for their stay or a cash deposit for incidentals. They look like we would need one so when they get it, they will come back.’
Later on, the father came up to me and said that if there was any way whatsoever that they could check in, even for one day only so they could take their sick child to Disneyland the next day. I opened his reservation and realized who they were and that they did not need to have a credit card to check in. I felt really bad for them. The system showed that they had been declined for even 50 bucks and that they tried different cards.
I quickly checked them in and started to chat with them. I told the child that our hotel was a real castle and that Snow White had just left.
I told them, ‘OMG! She stayed in your room last night. I can’t believe you just missed her!’
Since then, me and a couple of other people from the front desk at out expense would plant things and say things to make the child believe that Snow White had been looking for her but she could not find him. I had a friend with a really sweet voice leave a message saying she was Snow White and she could not wait to meet them but she had been busy in a mine, helping Dopey with something. I had a Goofy friend leave a message saying he was Dopey and was looking for Snow White and that she had said she was going to see the family so he wanted them to pass a message to her when she got there.
I had my friends at Disney tell me when there would be a Snow White character scheduled at the park and after a few calls, the person actually playing Snow White agreed to play along that she had been looking for them at the hotel and agreed to say she forgot one of her dresses under the bed but instead, the child could keep her dress. I planted a Snow White dress while they were away at Disneyland which the child believed was Snow White’s real dress and she wore it for the last two days of their trip.
When they checked out, her father pulled me over to the side and thanked me for everything, and while holding back tears, he said it had meant a lot to the child who had been so sick that she did not even feel like going on the trip but she had all this energy and for once, spoke about getting well soon so she could visit Snow White again soon.
To this day, I can not remember of anything that made me feel so happy at work. So much that it made me see things differently and I stayed in the hospitality industry for 18 years.
It has been years now and I don’t remember their name. I was too afraid to look them up and find out if the child made it or not. I imagined what the parents would say if I called all of the sudden to check on them and they had bad news. It would have just been too weird and I just want to remember what happen and know that she is likely better now and hopefully she remembers me.”
How A Beautiful Moment Turned Ugly
“My boyfriend of three years took me on a glorious romantic picnic overlooking the San Diego Bay. It was there he told me the words that excited me more than any I’d heard before, ‘I think we should get married!’ I was elated! The proposal was a little offbeat since there was no ring and it wasn’t exactly a question… but none of that mattered to me. I was 24 and excited for my life to be coming together.
On a clear, Saturday morning was when things really started to come together, or so I thought. He whisked me away to the local engagement ring store. I was so torn between my fantasy of having a big beautiful diamond and the reality that we should probably be careful with the budget. I asked him about the budget and he said he thought 5,000 bucks should be pretty reasonable.
Even so, I felt bad maxing it out so I decided to get the most bang for my buck that I could with about 2,500 bucks. So here we are, the moment that every girl wishes and waits for her whole life, I’ve just picked out my engagement ring! It’s about to be mine! I was beyond excited and then we step into that office.
They went over financing options and everything was rung up and ready to be paid for. Then the moment happened which changed the whole course of my life. The associate came back into the room and let us both know that my fiance was declined. Shame crept over him like a shadow and a cold wind. Our hearts sank as we realized a new obstacle was in our path. We went home and reviewed all of our finances as well as his credit report and all of his debts and put together a plan to get his credit up so that he could be able to afford that wedding band.
My fiance started to drift away from that point forward. When I would come over to visit, I would find him not excited to see me and working on dinner like normal, not even doing work or doing something productive, but sunk into a haze that revolved around video games.
He was constantly involved in playing video games and let himself get wrapped up in that world and lose sight of any of our other goals. He moved into a new house with roommates and things started to drift even more. His job was tapering off yet he had spent a bunch of money on skydiving equipment, which was his latest hobby. Not even thinking of saving up for the wedding ring.
One day I showed up and he had adopted a cat. This kind of reignited my delight in coming over because I’m a cat lover myself. I played with and just adored that little animal. It almost made me forget that it had been six months since the incident and no forward momentum had been made on cleaning up his credit, improving good finances, or getting a ring on my finger. We weren’t acting engaged and there was no talk of any wedding in months.
One day I came over and the cat was gone. My boyfriend informed me that he was sneezing, coughing, and even had a bloody nose… so he had him put to sleep!!! It has only been a few weeks since he had adopted him, I knew about a policy they had at the shelter where if the animal is sick within the first month, they would treat him for free! But he didn’t think of this, and since they didn’t have the money to get their pet treated by a vet, my boyfriend had made the rash decision to put the kitty to sleep. I was appalled. He did this without consulting me and this kind of behavior did not speak well about any future parenting abilities!
That was it, I informed him it had been six months since his credit card was declined on the wedding ring and there’s been no forward motion in correcting any of that situation and now to take an innocent life due to inconvenience. I told him we needed a break to reevaluate things. A month later there was nothing done by him to remedy the situation. It was final.
Flash forward six years and I was involved in a relationship with a wonderful man who loved me more than anything and was willing to do whatever it took to spend the rest of his life proving it to me.
For the record, a few days before the wedding, he also bought me a brand new ring of my own to wear, just in time for the ceremony. You could imagine my relief when that sale was approved.”
Shopping Without Mom
“I worked in a shop and a boy, maybe eight or nine years old, came up and asked me where an item was. I showed him and he asked if he had enough money for all the stuff he had in his basket.
So I counted his change with him and asked if his mom (who was getting other stuff I assume) was going to be getting the rest for him.
He said, ‘No.’
He was getting it to have treats for a movie night with his mom. I knew he didn’t have enough but was like ‘Ok, I’m not sure if you do but let’s find out.’
I helped him through a self-checkout, put his money in, swiped my work card, and paid the rest of the balance. I told him I would get the rest as a gift. I helped him bag it up and said that when my son was his age we used to do movie nights too and I hoped they enjoyed the snacks.
I didn’t make a lot myself at that time (still don’t) but I do feel that if you can help a kid out and show them that bit of kindness that it sticks with them. More so coming from a complete stranger because it isn’t expected. It’s not very often in life that we can get exactly what we want.”