Print Center Employee Explains To A Customer That There Are Other Orders Ahead Of Hers, But Instead Of Understanding, She Stormed Out
by Jayne Elliott

Shutterstock/Reddit
Most people understand the idea of first come first serve. This works in a lot of areas of life.
What would you do if someone wanted to order something from your store, but you had other orders you needed to work on first? Would you let the customer jump to the front of the line, or would you tell her first come first serve?
In today’s story, one employee is in this situation with a customer, but what’s really interesting what happens a few hours later.
Let’s read the whole story.
She couldn’t wait 30 minutes, so she ended up waiting 5 hours
I used to work in the print center within a retail store. One morning I got a call 5 minutes before open, asking for a couple of posters to be printed within the hour.
There were also a couple of email orders which needed to be done. Since it was first come, first serve, I made these my priority.
A lady walks in ten minutes after open wanting invitations printed.
She didn’t seem to understand first come first serve.
Lady: I would like these invitations printed and cut right away please.
Me: That will take me about 30 minutes, I have a couple of projects ahead of you. You can walk around the store and wait or come back later to pick them up if you’d like.
Lady: Why can’t they be done right now?
At this point I reiterate myself, trying to explain that there are other customers waiting on their projects to be completed.
The lady tries getting the manager to help her.
Of course, she starts arguing with me anyway.
Just as she becomes more agitated, the MOD walks by to pick up an item for another customer in the store.
The lady asks her if she’s the manager, and asks how long her invitations would take to complete.
The MOD asks me what my workload is, and I tell her I have two other projects needing to be done asap, so it will be about 30 minutes.
Is it more meaningful when a manager says it?
The MOD tells the woman the same thing I said and walks back to her other customer.
This lady is fuming that the manager walked away from her, yells at me some more, then finally leaves the store.
Here we go again!
Jump to several hours later, and a man and his daughter come up to the counter wanting to have invitations printed.
It’s a busier time of day, and I tell them it will be about 30-45 minutes.
The man agrees and says he will just walk around the store.
I open the files and I recognize that they’re the same invitations from the lady earlier.
They definitely were the same invitations.
Me: Oh I recognize these. I think your wife was in earlier, I’m sorry I couldn’t have them done sooner.
Man: That’s alright. She’s my ex wife.
And he walks off.
I have the invitations done within the timeframe I had said, and the man comes back up to pay and ended up buying his daughter a whole bunch of things.
I wonder what the invitations were for…a divorce party? LOL
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
Here’s the perspective of someone who used to run a copy center.
This person also hates entitled customers.
This employee has the same problem.
This is an interesting take on customers yelling!
It seems like this situation is all too common.
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.
Categories: STORIES
Tags: · customer, invitations, marriage, picture, printing, reddit, rude, tales from retail, top

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