In the realm of retail, handling unreasonable demands often requires creativity and thick skin.

When a customer demanded a physical manual to their newest purchase, one retail worker happily complied, using their slow printer to teach him an unexpected lesson in patience.

Read on for the full story!

You want the manual physically, Okay

Five years ago, I used to work for a large electronics store in Scandinavia. We sold everything from TVs to dishwashers.

Being a physical store, we had a lot of display items and often sold them at a lower price when the product was discontinued. (Please note that we rarely had the original packaging or manuals lying around, this will be important.)

This story takes place a late afternoon about 30 minutes before closing.

The employee sets the scene.

I worked this shift in the computer department and was asked to help at the camera section of the store, as I was the go-to person for cameras.

I was greeted by a couple, who I would guess were in their late 50s, and they were looking at one of the display models.

I walked them through the camera’s specs, let them test it out, and explained that while we had all the necessary accessories, the original manual and packaging were thrown away.

Things were going well enough at first.

They seemed perfectly fine with this, especially after I offered them a fantastic deal on the camera.

We headed to the checkout, where they paid, and everything seemed to be going smoothly.

But then the interaction started to go off the rails.

That is until the husband turned to me and asked, “Where’s the manual?”

I was thinking “Oh shoot, maybe I didn’t explain it well enough”.

I started to explain again, reiterating that we didn’t have the original manual but that it was easily accessible online. I had even included a link to the manual on their receipt.

The customer didn’t take kindly to this explanation.

This was not taken well by the husband, who started raising his voice at me, and said, “Online? I brought this product and I want the manual physically so I can read through it at home.”

Which I do understand, and tried explaining that I normally would print the manual. However, the manual for this particular camera was about 650 pages.

Please note, that they both are more than capable of looking up the manual, as I saw them browsing the web looking at reviews for the camera.

So he started chewing out the employee, who kept trying to reason with him.

The husband angrily started to berate me for about 5 minutes, about how this wasn’t a way to run a business and how he wouldn’t leave without it.

I tried explaining, that the manual was 650 pages, how long that would take to print and we were closing in around 10 minutes.

But he was having none of it and he wouldn’t leave without it.

So they decide to comply…maliciously.

Now, I am normally a kind and respectful person and would do everything to fix a problem, but he was being disrespectful and I was paid by the hour anyway.

So, with my best customer service voice, I told him “Sorry sir, of course the customer is always right” and started printing the 650 pages, while the husband looked smugged at me, probably feeling like he had won over the big man.

Little did the customers know, this wouldn’t be a quick affair.

But the thing was, the printers we had at the sales desk were only meant for printing receipts, so they couldn’t print double-sided and though they were relatively fast, they were not 650 pages fast and only held around 300 sheets of paper at a time.

As the minutes ticked by, with each sheet of paper that emerged from the printer, the man’s smug expression disappeared.His wife, who had initially seemed passive, began to look annoyed and a bit embarrassed.

Then the printer ran out of paper, and you could see the relief in their eyes as they thought the printer was finally done, but that was quickly gone when they saw me coming with a huge stack of paper to fill it up.

It wasn’t long before the couple began to get antsy.

20 minutes and 400 pages in, the wife started to look even more desperate, realizing that they were the only customers in a store that closed ten minutes ago.

The husband was beginning to realize his mistake and nervously began to ask when it was done printing.

I just smiled with my best customer service smile, “We were about two-thirds of the way”. He sighed and just continued to look at the mountain of paper that slowly got bigger and bigger.

The employee was determined to really make them wait for it.

Another refill and 200 pages later, the husband’s defeat was evident.

He finally asked if he could just take what had already been printed and leave. But by then, only like 50 pages remained.

So I told him “That we were almost done, and I would hate if he left without the last pages, in case he would miss something important.”

It seems this painfully slow interaction taught them a lesson.

When the printer finally stopped, I handed him the entire 650-page manual, still smiling, and said, “Here you go. I hope you have a great day and enjoy the camera.”

They quickly left the store silent and defeated.

And I never saw them again.

Maybe they didn’t want the manual after all, eh?

What did Reddit make of all this?

*Crosses fingers* Please let most of it be unusable!

If only customers listened to reason.

Let’s hope a gust of wind doesn’t strike them on the way back to their car.

This redditor fantasizes about how this sweet revenge could get even sweeter.

Never mess around and find out with an employee who gets paid by the hour!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.