Hmmm. I think I met that woman about 20 years ago when I was working for a department store.
Back in those days, we weren’t allowed to ring up sales from a different department; among other things, we didn’t have a list of what was on sale in other departments. I was working in the Budget Men’s department, across from the Children’s department one day when a woman came up with a fairly large number of children’s clothes. I explained that I wasn’t allowed to ring them up and added that I didn’t have a list of what was on sale. She informed me they were all regular price. She must have had a dozen or so items, and I’d been working for the store long enough to realize that most people with that many items would be charging them, so I gently said, “I’ll need your charge card?” “What if I want to pay cash?” she snapped. “That will be fine”, I said, or something like that, and rang up her sale. After she left, knowing she wasn’t happy with me, I apologized to the next customer in-line, saying something like, “I’m sorry if I sounded rude or snappish.” She told me I hadn’t sounded snappish at all. Indeed, she was surprised at how polite I was.
Not long after that, I had to go get change, which happened to be right next to Personnel. Lo and behold, there was my customer, informing personnel that she had her own business and had 99 people working for her and if I’d been one of them . . . Meanwhile, I was thinking, “Lady, if I worked for you, you’d have 98.” Fortunately, I’d been working for that store for four years during summers and holidays, and she was my first and only complaint. I never did hear a word from Personnel about the incident. Some people, I suppose, just like to exercise power.
CJ