Customers can really test your patience, especially when you’re already stretched to the limit.

So, what would you do if you were working overtime with a skeleton crew, only for an entitled customer to demand VIP treatment and threaten to boycott your business if they didn’t get it? Would you bend over backwards to appease them? Or would you take them at their word and make sure they followed through?

In the following story, one exhausted retail employee deals with this exact type of customer. Here’s what happened.

Forcing someone to live up to their threatening promise

It was January 2022. A new wave of COVID hit, and it devastated the workforce in the major cities here. On average, about half the workforce for any industry was home sick for about a week at the same time.

Supermarket shelves weren’t stocked because there weren’t enough workers to keep them full. The number of bus routes was cut in half.

The list goes on.

Here’s how this person’s store handled the situation.

At my retail store, all but two of us were sick. With two people on staff, we couldn’t get to everything, so we had to decide what parts of the job we’d neglect.

Most of our revenue is from online sales, so we decided to close the store and focus on dispatching online orders. We still had to answer phone calls and emails, though, so we were very stressed.

This was only happening in the major cities, of course, more rural locations dodged the major disruptions.

Most people had patience, but not this guy.

One day, I got a call from a customer. He placed an online order the day prior, paid for express post, but noticed it hadn’t been sent. He called, asked why it hadn’t been sent.

I looked at his account and saw he lived in a rural town hours away.

This was the conversation:

Customer: Hi, I placed an order yesterday with express post. Why hasn’t it been sent yet?

Me: Very sorry, there are only two of us on staff because of COVID, and we are doing the best we can to keep up with the online orders.

Customer: But I paid for express.

Fed up, he told the customer exactly what it was.

Me: Yes, and as I explained, there are only two of us on staff. We’ve had to close the store, and there are a lot of orders to pack, and we pack them from oldest to newest. We’re trying our best.

Customer: Well, your best isn’t good enough. I paid for express, it should have been sent out by now.

My best wasn’t good enough? What an absolute piece of garbage. At this point, I had dealt with enough stress, so I let him have it.

Me: Paying for express doesn’t mean we pack the order faster; it means that once the courier has it, they deliver it to you faster. That extra money you spent doesn’t go to me or this company; it goes to the courier. There are orders older than yours; they have priority, have waited longer than you, and will be packed first.

This made him laugh out loud.

Customer: I don’t care, you need to ship it today.

Me: I can’t promise that. Do you have any idea what COVID has done to the workforce here?

Customer: No, and I don’t care. If you don’t ship my order today, I promise I’ll never shop with you again.

I genuinely laughed out loud at that.

He made sure the guy could never shop there again.

Me: I literally could not care less; there’s no skin off my nose.

At that point, I hung up.

For the entrée of my revenge, I purposely skipped his order even though I caught up to it. It got sent the next day.

The main course, though, was tasty. I blocked his account so he couldn’t shop with us again. He promised he wouldn’t, so I wanted to make sure he didn’t break his promise.

When he tried to make another account, that one got banned too.

He tried to, though. He made another account. I recognised the name and confirmed it was him through the shipping address.

I cancelled the order and processed the refund.

For revenge’s dessert, I did something truly petty.

When you process a refund, you reverse the payment made by the debit card. You can put a note in it when you do so, so the customer knows why that money is reappearing in their bank.

The note I put was “to help you keep your promise.”

Yikes! That guy was something else!

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit have to say about his story.

This person turns it around on the customers.

Here’s someone who showed appreciation for workers during COVID.

So true!

It was glorious to read!

He deserved that and then some!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.