Being polite doesn’t cost a thing, but rudeness might rack up quite the bill.

What would you do if a customer repeatedly insulted you, thinking your young age meant he could get away with it? Would you brush it off and stay professional? Or would you find a quiet way to make sure he paid for his behavior?

In the following story, a teenage retail worker deals with a customer just like this and opts for the latter. Here’s how it all went down.

Never be rude to people in small retail shops.

When I was 16, I worked for my uncle. He was a tailor, but also had a clothes store next door to his main shop.

He let me run the clothes store, which basically involved keeping it clean, serving customers, and displaying stock. He ran the business side of it, and I was paid to essentially sit there all day. It was a pretty quiet store in a quiet area, so it was a pretty cruisy job, great for school holidays.

Whenever we got new stock in, I would have to put the price tags on myself.

Most of the clothes we sold were men’s office work wear—suits, shirts, trousers, and the like. The average price for a suit was around $150-$200.

Everything was quiet until the worst customer ever walked in.

One day, I had a belligerent customer come in. He saw that I was quite young, so he took to bullying me around.

He would swear and act very impatient and call me slow and stupid. I’d dealt with rude customers before, but this guy was far too much.

To the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t done anything wrong. He may have been having a bad day, but to me, that doesn’t excuse the insults.

He decided to overcharge the guy for being rude.

He had come in quite early. We usually opened at 9, but we didn’t get any customers until much later. It was rare to get any customers before 11.

That morning, I had gotten a load of new stock in, and I hadn’t finished putting on the price tags, as it was a huge amount of new stock.

So, because of his rudeness, I decided that I would charge him much, much more. Either he would decide it was too expensive, or we would make a lot more money. He selected three suits, and I told him they were $500 for the first two, with the third being $700.

It turns out, his uncle knew the customer.

They were actually around $200.

We haggled a bit, and I sold them for around $350 for the first two and $600 for the third.

He was quite happy with what he saw as a major victory, and I was quite happy that I made an extra $700.

I told my uncle what happened, and he let me keep a percentage of the money as a bonus. My uncle knew that particular customer and had had issues with him before.

Perhaps it wasn’t the morally correct thing to do, but it serves to show you shouldn’t be rude.

Wow! That was so well-played!

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about it.

Lucky for this reader, they don’t deal with angry customers often.

For this person, commerce and morality are not the same.

Here’s someone who explains price as a concept.

It is amazing at his age.

That guy definitely deserved it!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.