Not into girls. I wish I said something like “I am the Lord Jesus Christ, give me all thy money”.
I would have done the same thing unless the dead guy’s family was around. What would you want me to do?
As for stupid customers, think about someone coming into a wine store and asking us if we have red wine.
checks thread title The weirdest customer? I had one guy come in, walk to the middle of the store, run outside (we chased him thinking he stole something), run back inside (we checked him and he didn’t), and then run away.
One person, after we cut him off from buying in our store, told us that he hopes my boss would get liver cancer and die.
We had a drunken old lady hit on the cashier while her husband was standing next to her.
One woman even went through a list of ethnic groups that she could not have sex with.
This could have been one of my grandparents. They aren’t drinkers, but had read that red wine was good for the heart, so about a month ago, they called me from the grocery store, asking what they should buy. They were perplexed by the fact that the white zinfindel looked red-- was it a red wine or a white? Was merlot red wine? It certainly* looked* red, but they were becoming suspicious that the color of the was not a sure indicator. “None of the bottles say ‘Red Wine’,” grandma complained. “How’re we supposed to know?”
When I was in high school, I was a cashier in a grocery store. When we worked the express lane, we were supposed to ring up other employees’ lunches ahead of our line, because they were on the clock. Hey, I didn’t make the rule.
In any case, this guy in the middle of the line starts muttering pretty loudly about how this is bullshit, what’s wrong with me, goddamn it, this is the express lane. Really nasty. I’m dreading him getting up to the register because I figure he’s going to ream me out. I don’t even make eye contact with him until he’s being rung up because I can tell he’s an ass and…
… it’s my father’s best friend, my brother’s godfather. You know, the uncle whose mustache always smells like scotch when you have to give him a kiss hello. Never liked that jerk, so I was quite pleased to be able to say to him, in my most faux-genial voice, “HEY, Uncle Paul!” He was terrifically sheepish when he realized it was me and not some other poor teenage girl getting paid minimum wage to get cussed at for delaying his purchase for 15 second. Her apologized and said, “You’re not going to tell your dad on me, are you?” So of course I did. What a schmuck.
I told this story one other time, but here’s a shorter, better version.
It was my last night at a copy/office supplies store. I’d worked there for about three months, but I was quitting to move back to New York. A regular customer was using the self-serve copier for most of my shift, and he was still back there right up until closing time. At long last, having made something like 500 copies, he approached the counter to pay for it all.
And he wanted to pay in change. He had a change purse with hundreds of quarters, nickels and dimes - he had no idea how much - and dumped it all onto the counter. I shouldn’t have helped him, but I did, and it took us about 10 minutes of counting to discover that he didn’t have enough to pay for his copies. He went to go find an ATM, and when he came back, I told him I would only take a couple of dollars in change. He left and I closed up shop for the last time. The register was so full of nickels that I could barely close it.
When I was 18 and a freshman in college, I worked at a Revco as a cashier.
One night, close to closing (this would have made it pushing 10pm) the only employees working were myself at the register next to the doors and the pharmacist and the pharmacy tech in the pharmacy in the back. A clearly crazy homeless man - looking like Jesus Christ on acid/Charles Manson, crazy-ass beard, wearing no shoes, dirty encrusted feet, blanket rolled up with twine tied to his back - came into the empty store, walked up to my register and said:
Crazy-Ass Jesus: Packa Pall Malls
Only, cuz of his accent, it came out like “packa paaaaaw maaaaaws”.
Me (thinking): Hoooooookay…
I glance back to the pharmacy. Because of the way the store was set up, I couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see me.
I turn around to the cigarette shelf behind me and pull down the paaaaaaw maaaaws. Ring 'em up.
Me: Two-fifty, please.
CAJ pulls out a damp five from somewhere 
and lays it on the counter.
CAJ: You ever been Salem Baptist Church in Westboro, Tennessee???
Me: Uh, no.
Glances at the pharmacy again. Heart rate going up. This guy could stab me and be gone in seconds, and no one would know it.
CAJ: The pastor at the Salem Baptist Church killed a little boy on the altar once.
Me (racing though my head): Thecustomerisalwaysrightthecustomerisalways right… Just agree!!
Me (aloud): Oh, really?
Pause. Pause. Pause.
CAJ: * I’m that little boy.*
:eek:
Me (slowly, gently setting change on counter): Ho-kay, then! Have a nice night!!!
Fortunately, he turned and shuffled out, and I immediately turned the key on the register to start the close-out and called the pharamacist to come lock the door now!!!
This reminds me of what happened to a co-worker of my husband. State vehicles have special tags which identify them as such, and when a state employee has to travel, they’re often issued one of those vehicles to save wear and tear on their own car.
Hubby’s co-worker had been cut off in traffic by someone driving one of those cars, and he knew someone in the office that had access to the records of who drove which state vehicle. He got the other driver’s work phone number, (she worked in another state office) called her up and cussed her out. He bragged around the office about what incredibly nasty things he had said to her, thinkig it was very funny that he’d made “the stupid little cunt” cry.
It ceased to be funny when his boss came out of his office late that afternoon, pale and trembling. He had just gotten a call from the governor who was positively enraged. It was his niece who had been driving that car. The governor said that he was sickened that a state employee would say such horribly nasty things to another employee, and wanted the guy’s head on a plate.
Though I used it without thinking, now I come to think of it, it’s a paraphrase from a stage direction in a Bruce Robinson movie script that amused me. Something like: “I might as well just fuck off!” [And off he fucked.]
Brilliant! It’s always reassuring when Karma moves in non-mysterious ways. 
Hmmm… My wierdest story: I worked as a naturalist in a park a couple years ago, and brought a group of art students from Oakland up to a bluff above the sea for some time to do watercolors. One of their teachers talked my ear off about how HIV was a military-designed weapon for use against black people, and how generals had been overjoyed when they discovered that it affected gay people too.
All I could think was: just keep nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling, for about an hour!
Well, to be fair, no one wants to get dead guy on their shoes.
I had an experience like that at the museum, in which a guy lectured to me and his son in the Civil War exhibit about why black people were better off as slaves, and if they hadn’t been freed, we wouldn’t have “all these problems.”
I did not smile and I did not nod. I stared at him silently until he had finished, and then took them through the rest of the museum. I’m not going to get in an argument because that might make my boss irritated, but damned if I’ll let someone think they have an approving audience of that bullshit.
I’ve had a couple of people who wanted to argue with me. The one who sticks out most in my mind was an incredibly aggressive woman who challenged every sentance which came from my mouth in tones of I-know-better-than-that scorn. When we were out in the reconstructed log house we have on the property, she snapped “That isn’t true!” when I was talking about the staircase. “They NEVER had stairs in log houses,” she intoned. “They had to go outside and climb a ladder to get upstairs.”
“Uhm, well, we can tell from the architectual evidence that the staircase was located over here.”
“That’s not true!” she said, her tone getting ugly. “They ALWAYS had to go outside and climb a ladder.”
“Er, well, uhm, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that,” I said. The other tourists in the group shuffled uncomfortably.
“You should be more careful about what you tell people!” she snapped.
I put up with her the best I could for the rest of the tour, even though she kept “correcting” me. In the parlor, she told me that one of the chairs had been built with low arms to accomodate ladies’ hoop skirts. “Well, this chair was made in the mid 1830s,” I said. “They weren’t wearing hoop skirts at the time.”
She told the other tourists (who were ostentatiously rolling their eyes by this time) that there was a “secret door” in the museum through which the daughter of the guy who built the house had escaped when the rest of the family was murdered. I lost a bit of patience at this point and replied that we knew every person who had ever lived in this house, and there had never been a murder here, nor was there a “secret door.” The builder had lived to a ripe old age, as had his wife, both dying of natural causes in their 80s.
“I’ve been here before,” she informed me in a haughty, hostile voice. “I KNOW what I saw.”
She told the group that I was wrong about the shape of the bottom of Conestoga wagons being a design to keep the freight from shifting-- everyone knew it was so they could float across rivers.
Later, when the tour was over and the group was in the gift shop, she ran up and bitched out a guy who was buying a wooden flute for his son. “Why are you buying this over-priced JUNK for your kid? You should go buy him something decent somewhere else! That’s nothing but JUNK!”
Now, we have some pretty nice things in our gift shop, and our prices are extremely reasonable compared to what other museums charge. The way she said it left no room for doubt that she was trying her damndest to insult me one more time. The customer turned to her and said archly, “I want to buy something to support this fine museum.” He handed me his money and said loudly that he had appreciated the wonderful tour I had given them, and instructed his son to say “thank you”. The other members of the group concurred and gave me a round of applause.
The other example which sticks out is the leader of a home-school group who kept correcting me when it came to dates in the Native American room and the natural history exhibits. When I told the group that these stone points dated back to about 14,000 years ago, she said in a loud stage-whisper, “Now, we all know that can’t be true, don’t we? The earth itself is only about 6,000 years old.”
You’ve got a good point. It wasn’t one of my finer days, to be sure.
I’m pretty amazed that I never get folks like this, and I’m regularly telling members of the public about things in multi-million year time scales. Someday…
Do you know the story about the tour guide who said a dianosaur fossil was 3 million 17 years old. A tourist asked how he could be so certain and the guide said “well, it was 3 million years old when I started working here and that was 17 years ago”.
When I worked at a Subway, there was one guy who ordered a meatball sub, then came back with it (re-wrapped) ten minutes later and started screaming at me about how horrible it was and threw it at me.
The great ones where when I was working at a movie theater. There were the normal crazies, various complainers and the like. There were two that stand out, though. One was the woman who’d come in every Saturday afternoon, like clockwork, buy popcorn, sit through the pre-show slides and ads, then come out and scream at the managers about the ads until she got a refund. Why? I don’t know, but she was there every week.
The other one was a woman who demanded a refund on her unbuttered popcorn because it tasted like air. Um, okay.
Bonus coolest customer story: I was working one of the auxilliary concession stands alone. A woman ordered popcorn with butter - at the main concession stand the butter was self-serve, but on aux we had to do it for them. A bit of the butter dripped onto the outside of the bag as I was dispensing it, and as I was passing the bag over the counter to her, it slipped out of my hand and proceeded to pelt her with hot grease and salt. Her reaction? She stood there (no line behind her), helped me clean it up, and told me a story about how when she was working as a caterer and dropped an ice-cream sundae on a CEO’s lap during a business dinner. Then she tipped me two bucks.
I’m shopping at the grocery store and see a toddler, probably 1-2 years old with a guy who seems to be his dad.
The kid takes an egg out of a carton and drops it on the floor, getting all over, some on toip of his shoes.
Then the “dad” takes the carton out of the display case and offers him another, which he also spatters, then another. Then put the carton back and they walked away like nothing had happened.
Mine isn’t as weird as others, but it still weirded me out.
Was working at BJ’s Wholesale Club some time ago. The deal here was, you had to bring in a cart to take a cart out, for some strange reason. We took all your stuff from one cart and transferred it to the next, as we rang it up…BJ’s doesn’t give you grocery bags.
Anyway, at one point on a busy day, I know I glanced up and some guy was standing toward the back of the line with a bunch of purchases in his arms. I continued ringing people up, until he got up there.
He had dumped all his stuff on the belt, and then tried to take the cart next to me. I stated the company policy, “Sorry, sir, that cart is for me to transfer stuff from other carts”, and the man simply went off on me. He began yelling at me and screaming at me, saying “Do you think I carried these things across the store? GET YOUR MANAGER OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!”
Now I agreed with him 100% that it was a retarded rule, and they even changed it later…but my Og, he really lost it. And I never was able to understand what kind of Type A personality you have to have to react like this. I mean, he had a red face, veins bulging, everything. I thought he was going to have a heart attack!
I tried to get a word in edgewise to tell him forget it, he could just have the cart, it was just company policy, but he wouldn’t shut up until the manager came over - who completely caved, not even trying to explain the policy. I hate pussy managers.
But still - it was just a cart!
Oh where to begin…
I’m a part owner/manager/indentured servant of a Quizno’s. A few things I’ve dealt with are:
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A guy paying with a $5 and then going off on a rant about how Lincoln was a crook and killed more white people than George Bush
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A woman calling the store and scream that someone deliberately put feces on her sandwich and then demand gift certificates as compensation
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Another woman going absolutely ballistic at a co-worker and accused her of stealing her money, tampering with her food, giving her AIDS :eek:, and demanded that she be fired. My co-worker’s offense? Taking the crazy woman’s money out of her hand while she was busy talking to her friend standing next to her. :dubious:
Reposted from another thread:
I managed a pet store for several years and let me tell you… I love animal people, but they’re nuts. Ever seen “Best in Show”? We served those people on a daily basis.
This story isn’t about whacky dog show people, though. Or about the lady who came in wearing spandex bike shorts and proceeded to reach into the feeder rat tanks and shove a rat down her shorts, then walk around the store, put the rat back, and walk out.
Or the guy who came into the store and proceeded to follow me around, twelve inches behind me, for several minutes until I could get out the back door and call the owner.
Or the two college student roommate girls who came in to buy a lovebird, went through the forty five minute consultation with our avian specialist we required before anyone’s allowed to walk out the door with a parrot, wherein she mentions several times the sorts of airborn toxins that are leathal to birds, teflon in particular, not to mention the stack of fact sheets about teflon (they made a really big deal over teflon and the birds because it’s something that most people have in their home and need to be very careful to either replace all their pans or keep the bird in an area where there’s no chance of the fumes reaching them), then go home and make pancakes on a teflon pan with their new lovebird on their shoulder and kill it. Then come back, mystefied, as to why their bird died, neglect to mention the cooking and teflon, and go home with another bird, kill it the same way three days later, come back for another bird. Our avian specialist went to their house to see if there was something wrong in the environment–cage in front of an AC, air freshener, something, didn’t find anything, necropsied both birds, couldn’t find anything, waited for the path reports to come back, we ended up destroying (euthanizing half the aviary and farming the rest out to a rescue type group that housed terminally ill or mental parrots that didn’t make good pets) that entire aviary of beautiful handfed birds due to suspicion of Psittacine Beak and Feather infection or something else that I can’t recall.
After their third lovebird died, not to mention untold thousands of dollars and birds’ lives later, hours spent with us, and so on, they told the bird girl about the pancake incident and dots were connected.
But, that’s not even the story I wanted to tell.
The story I wanted to tell is about the nutcase who came in to buy a couple cans of cat food. She was standing in line with a neck brace on and complaining loudly to anyone within earshot about how much ner neck hurt and how disabled she was [note, I am extremely sensitive to the needs of the disabled, but honestly, who goes around saying --exact quote–“I am so disabled”?] People behind her look midly annoyed but nod and murmur appropriate expressions of sympathy. Someone, making conversation, asks her how she hurt her neck, and she shrieks at the top of her lungs that it’s none of his business.
I am helping people as fast as I can, but I’ve only been there for two weeks; I’m there by myself and am still learning about the products and how to use the cash register all that. She gets to the front and hands me her cans of cat food and a coupon for two free cans, I ring them in and subtract the coupon value leaving her with a total of seven cents–sales tax on a dollar’s worth of product, which I was legally obligated to collect as we were in California.
I explain this, and she starts hollering about how they’re free. Yes, says I, but I can’t do anything about the tax. She shrieks at me to get the manager, I say I’ll certainly call. Customers behind her start to shuffle and look irritated. I offer to pay the seven cents out of my pocket or out of the penny cup at the counter. She screams about how she’s going to miss her disability bus. I offer to just give her the cans, forget the tax, she screams how she doesn’t want them anyway, picks them up and chucks them at my head. I duck and she storms out. People are gaping after her with their mouths open. I’m trying not to cry, start ringing up the next customer, and crazy catfood lady stomps back in and says “I forgot my cat food, could you hand them to me? They must have fallen off the counter”. No kidding.
I finish helping the rest of the customers, call the owner, and give him a rundown of what happened. The next day, she comes in, and starts screaming at him that he ought to fire me because I made her miss her disability bus and how I threatened her. He points to the security camera aimed right at the front counter and says “See that camera? That camera recorded the entire incident, I saw what happened and so did our bookkeeper who was watching the monitor at the time. I absolutely refuse to let you treat one of my employees that way. Get out of my store and don’t come back.”
I had only been there for two weeks at the time. He was a dick in other ways, but he really stood up for his employees. I worked my ass off for him for four years and ended up managing the store.
Ok not too strange but OMG. I was working at this office supply store for about 2 years already. So I’d gotten pretty used to getting screamed at for pretty much no reason at all. But this one got to me.
Lady comes in, goes to the back to make copies out of a cook book or something.
She wanted color copies (which we have to do for them). Well, we can’t make copies out of books and such because of the copyright laws.
She snapped, went off on about five people, made black and whites herself and
continued to wander around the store and bitch at everyone who looked like they worked there. (some didn’t though :rolleyes: )
Anyway, my manager warned me about her before she got up to the register (me)
And stood at a safe distance to watch. She comes to the counter w/6 reams of paper. I proceed to ring her up. She proceeded to bitch (very loudly) about our policy, I apologized for the inconvenience. Then she looked at the total and flipped out about how the competator was 20 cents cheaper blah blah blah. So I offered to check the price with them over the phone and, no they were more expensive. She paid all pissed off and said she was going to go check herself and if it was cheaper she was come right back and return this paper. I said Ok, but if you bring it back today make sure you bring your ID. It’s required for same day returns.
So an hour goes by and she storms back in w/ her paper from my store and her cheaper paper from other store. The cheaper stuff was a completely differant brand and quality than what she bought from us, but whatever. I started to return the paper and, when prompted from the register asked for her ID. Yeah, well she didn’t have it. Of course. I offered the gift card instead of cash back. She went off on a tangent. By this time, by the way, there’s maybe 7 people waiting to ring out behind her. Eventually I get it through her head that she can’t have cash back w/o ID. She proceeds to throw a ream of paper onto the counter while yelling “You can keep your paper and shove it up your little butt.” :eek:
Now this shouldn’t have bothered me so much. But it did. My manager stood up for me though and told her she had no right to speak to me that way. Anyway I’m trying to wring up the people in line without bursting into tears. They all told me not to let her get to me 'cause she was just being a bitch and that I handled all very nicely. That made it a little better.
I worked in a grocery store in high school. I had one woman who insisted I not scan the items, I must ring up every UPC code by hand, because of the radiation from the scanner. 
I had one woman who cradled a bag of flour like a baby. She gave it to me to scan, then refused to let me put it in a bag for her. I saw her several times throughout my time there, cradling a bag of flour. I don’t know if it was one she brought from home or if she just like to carry it that way, but she paid for it every time.
I had one store manager (male) who griped about how all the women cashiers (us) just couldn’t get along because it was in our nature. Now, there was one lady cashier manager who was a bitch, and she got busted down to regular cashier because of her attitude, but according to the store manager, it was because we were female.