Imagine going shopping at the mall when all of a sudden the power goes out leaving half of the mall in the dark.

Would you still want to shop in stores without power, or would you postpone your shopping trip to another day?

In today’s story, one dad isn’t going to let a little thing like a power outage stop him from checking off everything on his shopping list, but one store manager isn’t about to let him break the rules either.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

“So you can shop but I can’t?”

A few years back I was a store manager for a denim brand in a big mall.

One day somebody drove into a power pole or something, and one half of the malls power went out.

Luckily for my team and I, we were on the now dark side.

Power outages are generally loved in retail because you have to have all customers leave to store due to safety.

Then if you’re lucky, it’s too dark to accomplish any work.

So you sit. And wait.

And get paid.

One dad thought he was an exception to the rules.

At least until an impatient customer comes along and expects the circumstances and their rules to be different for them.

“It’ll just be us,” says the 40 something father next to his clearly embarrassed 15ish year old son.

“We’ll be really quick, we only want to try on a couple pairs.”

Bottom line and easiest excuses include, “it’s against policy,” and/or “I can’t put your safety at risk.”

I was feeling frisky and went with, “Sir, even if you could see what you were doing in here, I don’t have the ability to ring up your purchase. So unfortunately no.”

He was annoyed, but they walked away.

They didn’t really leave that easily.

I had been looking into getting a new phone at the time, and like every mall, there was a cell phone kiosk right outside my store.

It was day time so the skylights allowed me to still see my options.

While talking with the cell phone guys I get a text from a coworker inside the store. It just said “turn around.”

Standing at my store again is the man and his “I don’t want to be here” son.

And the way the man looked at me can only be described as the best resting witch face a man in cargo shorts can accomplish.

The customer thought he had won.

After a few more minutes I head back to my store where the man says to me, “so you get to shop but I don’t?”

Retail employees rarely get their way, so I decided to truly enjoy this moment.

With the biggest, happiest of customer service smiles I responded, “Sir, you are absolutely right. Enjoy your day.”

He later returned to inform me that he’d bought our products at Macy’s and gotten them 30% off.

Oh and that I should be ashamed of myself.

To which I replied once again with the biggest of smiles, “Macy’s carries our outlet line, which are 40% off online currently. I hope you enjoy our products!”

Sometimes the customer isn’t right, and it feels so good.

What a great way to put the customer in his place!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Another employee shares a similar experience.

Yes, the 40% tidbit was a nice way to end it!

Here’s a similar story about a movie theater.

He hasn’t worked in retail, and it shows.

The customer is not always right.

Money doesn’t talk when the power’s out.

This guy just refused to get it.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.