Being rude really doesn’t get you what you want, at least not when it comes to your interactions with retail store employees and other people in customer service positions.

Nobody likes a diva.

What would you do if you saw a rude customer yelling at an employee because they couldn’t find what they were looking for? If you were able to help them find it, would you, or would you refuse to help?

In today’s story, one customer faces this dilemma. Let’s see how it works out.

PROFILES IN COURAGE

I had a part time job as a bookseller at Borders, the late, lamented book store. (I loved working there!)

I live in suburban Chicago, but this story took place in Florida, where I was on vacation.

I visited a Borders about an hour before they closed on a Sunday evening. (This was a tiny location compared to the store I worked at.)

One customer desperately needed one particular book.

A horrible, entitled customer came in and demanded a copy of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning PROFILES IN COURAGE (1956). His daughter absolutely had to have the book for school tomorrow.

The girl working there punched it up on the computer and announced it wasn’t in stock at the moment.

The customer asked her to call the other stores in the area and see if they had any.

In the meantime, because I worked at Borders, I knew that at our store we had the book as a Bargain Book.

She decided to check this store’s Bargain Book section.

Bargain Books arrived in boxes on a pallet, just random books, with a red label instead of the beige label our regular books had.

Because they were just shipped at random, Bargain Books weren’t in the inventory and couldn’t be found on the computer (and also couldn’t be ordered).

So, while this girl was calling the other stores, I walked over to the Bargain Book section and had a look around.

There was a stack of the book in question.

She was going to help but changed her mind.

I picked up a copy and started towards the front of the store.

As I approached, I could hear this jerk customer absolutely reaming the poor girl out because she wasn’t able to find the book at another store.

So, I took the book back to the bargain section and the jerk went home empty-handed.

It’s too bad the employee didn’t think to tell the customer to check the Bargain Book section. I really feel bad for the jerk’s daughter who needs the book. It’s not her fault her dad is horrible.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person feels bad for the store employee and the customer’s daughter.

Hopefully she told the employee what she did.

This is a good suggestion.

This person would’ve played it differently.

He could’ve had what he wanted if he had just been nice.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.