This is a funny one!

And anyone who’s ever worked in any kind of customer service position will smile ear to ear after reading how a customer totally shot himself in the foot when he was trying to show off in front of his friends.

Check out what happened in this story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page.

Break it on purpose? Sure, we’ll replace it!

I was recently reminded of this story even though it took place about ten years ago.

The policy was clear at the store.

Background: I worked at a Gamestop when GS was still pretty hot.

At that point in time we were forced to ask if people wanted to buy a small insurance on every disk we sold. It covered all damage, if people came back with a disk with insurance, we replaced it, no questions asked.

Scene: it like 20 minutes till close on a week night, I’m doing as much close-prep as I can get away with when this guy and his friends enter the store. Obviously bored and just wasting time but since I’m alone in the store I greet them and let them look around for a bit.

D brings up a game to the desk and I ring him up.

“Would you like to buy insurance on this game? We cover all damages.”

This guy thought he would be clever.

In a split second he lights up like he just had the most genius idea in the world.

D: “All damage, even if I break it myself, on purpose?”

Yeah, I can see clear as day where this is going and so can his friends who start chuckling. I play along.

Me: “yup, all damage, no matter what. No questions asked.”

And then it happened.

He buys the insurance, I bag it and hand it to him and they walk literally just out of the store before stopping.

D pulls out the game, takes out the disk and looks me straight in the eye while he snaps it in half.

His friends are laughing. I’m just smiling politely.

So he walks back in, hands me the game and goes: “This is broken, I’d like a new one”.

He was in for a surprise!

Que Malicious compliance.

See, our system would warn us in the corner of the screen if we sold the last copy of something. That disk was the last one we had in the store.

Me: “Of course! Unfortunately, I do not have anymore copies in store, so I have to have it shipped from one of our other locations. They close in five minutes though (as we did) but I will leave a note for the manage to put in a transfer order. It should be here in 3-5 work days, if you write your number here we will call you when it arrives”.

Bam!

His friends are wheezing from laughter at this point because it becomes obvious that D totally played himself and now have to wait a week for his game.

Lesson: be nice to retail workers!

Here’s how Reddit users reacted.

This person shared a quote we should all keep in mind.

Another individual got a kick out of this story.

One reader asked a good question…

This person thinks it was probably a kid just messing around.

And this reader made a good point.

I think that kid learned a lesson, don’t you?

He won’t be doing that again!

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.