I have a story about a PITA customer that actually got banned from the bookstore I used to work at. She was some well-to-do, local celebrity’s wife, IIRC.
She had 2 kids who she would drop off in the children’s section and go sit in the cafe and drink her chai. The kids were absolute terrors- once they took all the books off the shelves and laid them flat on the floor like paving stones and walked all over them. The little boy also peed all over the place. Of course you couldn’t scold her children or complain about her children’s behavior- how rude! Her kids were banned from the store before she was, so she’d leave them in the car while she sat inside.
Apparently she was a huge bitch about the way her drink was made, but I didn’t work in the cafe. But, even though she was wealthy, she still felt the need to steal the (real) glasses and mugs they gave her- so finally they started putting those little security stickers on them and embarassed the hell out of her when she tried to walk out with them. Needless to say, she was eventually banned too, because all the chais she drank could never compensate for the damage her little hellions did to all those children’s books, and all the cups she stole.
But what really pisses me off is when someone comes in with an outrageous request, e.g. cash back on a return without a receipt, or trying to return damaged merchadise, and you calmly explain the return policy, and they get irate, so you call the manager, who obsequiously grants their outrageous request. I always hated that, the return policy is on the back of the receipt and in huge letters on a sign over my head, but the manager will make an exception for this asshole? One of my old managers was awesome, though, and refused to do that. He actually told one woman who was trying to return more than $100 in damaged books that we couldn’t take them back because they looked like she’d run them over in her car (they did).