When you work in retail, you often have issues where the cash register doesn’t have the most up to date sale information, so someone has to override a price.

When the worker in this story had a customer who was upset about a price ringing up higher than she expected, the worker went to get the manager to fix it.

While waiting for the manager, this customer kept making snide comments and acting upset, even though her items didn’t qualify for the sale anyway.

Mam.. She’s on break.

I work at a popular dollar store chain in small town Texas.

Technology issues!

We have an old computer system that occasionally needs to be reset due to its glitching. Before the events of the story, we had a problem with some coupons that wouldn’t ring up properly which caused a small bit of a line to pile up at my register. (the only open register at the time)

Most of the customers were super understanding and kind, they usually are, but this one particular person wasn’t the most friendly.

That’s okay, I can deal with grumpy or impatient, I’m almost always in a good mood and happy to help out.

It may sound surprising but I really love my job and my customers.

That seems like a good deal.

This lady, we’ll call her GC for Grumpy Customer, sets down 5 of those candy packages with the 5 pieces of on brand chocolate inside a rectangular cardboard strip, on the counter. We had a sale of five for 5.00$ for candy of the same brand.

This is where things immediately got rocky.

I begin scanning and as I was telling the last customer to have a nice day she cut me off,

Wow, this customer isn’t even giving the worker a chance to do her job.

“Yeah okay, I need you to total those and see the price for five for five to see if you will ACTUALLY apply this coupon.”

Alright. So, I smile and say, “of course we can absolutely check that for you.” I total the candies and the discount doesn’t apply.

“Oh, I’m sorry mam. It didn’t apply.”

Some people just love getting upset.

GC gets huffy and rolls her eyes, “yeah, y’all did this to me last time! You’re shorting me of my discount.”

I check the packages to see if they apply to the discount, immediately I noticed they weren’t made by the same brand/company. GC as I looked at the candies loudly stated,

“They’re made Hershey chocolate, I ALREADY checked.”

This worker is really remaining calm and friendly.

I didn’t wish to argue with her and thought that maybe our system made an error again. “Alrighty mam.. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll go check with my associate to see if we can figure out the issue.”

“Yeah okay.” GC crossed her arms and begin talking to the nice man behind her, who had a full cart, waiting patiently while I walked behind a shelf to find my co-worker. I heard GC loudly ranting to the man, “This is why I don’t come here. They are slow and always on their phones!”

I didn’t know what she meant, we tend to keep off phones unless in the break room. I come back after telling my co-worker, an absolute saint of a woman, that I needed her assistance.

She is really trying to be efficient and helpful.

“Alrighty! She’s on her way” I smile to the man and GC, “We can go ahead and scan the rest of your items mam, while we wait for her.”

I begin scanning the items before I get to one of the last bags of candy before GC says, “Don’t scan that one.”

Caught of guard I say, “what?”

She can’t do that, she has to scan all the items.

“Don’t scan that one. It’s a dollar deference which is what you owe me for that candy. That way you won’t be shorting me.”

I hesitate and say, “mam, I’m sorry but I can’t legally do that”

She scoffs and I try to explain, “we can scan all these items and at the end when my co-worker gets here we can figure out if it’s the system and see if we can’t fix the discount for you–”

GC cuts me off, “okay do what you need to do.”

This customer is looking for support.

I force a smile and finish the item, “this is too much trouble” GC says to the nice man who says something with humor to lighten the situation.

GC speaks again, “This is why I’ve stopped coming here! she is taking forever because she is back there playing on her phone!” She was referring to my co-worker who had been on break, inside our break room, eating, and scrolling on her phone.

Good job standing up for the co-worker.

I speak before I can think and say, “She’s actually on break.” To my surprise this made GC stop talking and my co-worker arrived to save the day. Thank God!

She put her key in the system and asked what the problem was, “The candy–” I begin but GC cut me off,

“THIS is five for five. And its not giving me my discount. Y’all owe me a dollar discount!”

That was easy.

“Let’s see.. we can do this.” my coworker does some magic with the system and sets it right to get this lady her precious discount.

“Alrighty! There we go!” I say and total her items again.

“Finally!” GC pays for her items, “Thanks.” She stormed off quickly with her items.

“You’re welcome.” And I immediately went to the next customer, “sorry for the wait sir..”

At least this customer is nice and friendly.

“Awe it’s okay” he chuckled and cracked a few jokes relieving me of my stress.

TURNS OUT that the lady was wrong about the discount and I had been right to check the candy because it was in fact, not applicable to the discount. We went to check because it was strange even for the system to mess up like that.

That customer definitely did not deserve that discount.

My co-worker just added a discount to defuse the situation from getting any worse than it already was.

Some customers deserve a discount once in a while, but certainly not this one. I wish they would have made her pay full price.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think of this situation.

I hope this commenter becomes a manager.

I 100% agree with this commenter.

I was thinking this same thing.

Sadly, they often get the discounts that they want.

Nothing wrong with having a manager handle this.

Customers like this don’t deserve a discount for having a bad attitude.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.