Technology is great until it doesn’t work.

If you have ever had your phone or computer suddenly stop working properly or glitch on you, you know that can be all too true.

Imagine working in a retail store when there’s a huge glitch that’s impacting all of the stores in your retail chain.

Not only would it be annoying for the employees, but it would also be annoying for the customers since you’re currently unable to do everyday tasks like process returns and exchanges.

In this story, one employee is dealing with a situation like this, and one customer’s reaction to the technology issue was worth sharing.

Let’s read all about it.

Customer refused to understand our systems being down is beyond our control

To preface, this happened in March and I work at a popular fast fashion retail chain.

Between late March and early April of this year, every location of the retail chain I work at was experiencing issues with our POS system and the system we use for pay roll.

Basically we couldn’t process returns and exchanges, certain card payments weren’t working, and we couldn’t clock in and out of work.

This went on for a month so obviously this was a major inconvenience to both employees and customers.

Naturally some customers did direct their frustration towards us, and it sucked as it was all out of our control as this was an issue for corporate IT.

I can understand why this customer was frustrated.

One day when the issue was fairly new this lady came in to return these pants she had bought about a week ago.

My manager explained to her that our return system is down due to nationwide IT issues affecting all locations.

The customer immediately got defensive and started saying “I need to return this today as these don’t fit me!” “I took a taxi to come here so it has to be returned today” and “why didn’t you tell me I can’t return it?”

My manager kept trying to tell her that she’s not refusing to return because she doesn’t want to, and that she REALLY can’t process the return as our system for returns is not working.

This employee understands why she’s frustrated too.

The lady turned to me repeating her frustrations and I also tried to explain that this is out of our control and that we’re not purposely trying to screw her over, and I further said “I understand your frustration”

To that she kept saying “no! You don’t understand!” each time I was trying to tell her I understand her frustration.

After that my manager called up another manager to explain it to her, and as we were waiting for the other manager to come up, the manager who was with me was able to calm her down for a bit by helping her find what she needs.

The other manager explained the problem again.

When my other manager came up, she reiterated that this is an IT issue that’s affecting all locations and that we don’t know when the issue would be resolved.

The fact that we were uncertain of when this would be resolved made the customer more upset as she thought we sold her an item that was non-returnable and was worried that the 30 days to return was going to pass.

Unfortunately we really couldn’t give a definitive answer of when the system would be back up and running, and she kept arguing because of the fact that we didn’t have that information given it was out of our control.

Here’s how the manager finally ended up handling the situation.

My manager who got called up to further explain just told her to come back exactly 30 days from the purchase date so that she would stop arguing, and the company did extend the return policy to 90 days as a result of this issue.

Also about her mentioning she took a taxi to get to the mall, my manager saw car keys in her purse so she probably said that for pity.

When this whole thing happened luckily most customers were understanding it was out of store associates control, but this customer was especially difficult as she really wasn’t getting that it was out of our control.

I would be really frustrated at first if I were that customer too, but I would be even more frustrated if I were one of the employees who had to explain the annoying and inconvenient situation over and over again.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Would snapping your fingers help? Probably not.

This sounds about right.

This would be a big problem!

Customers can’t always have what they want when they want it.

Despite what they think.

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.