Imagine having someone send you money through Western Union, but when you go to pick up the money, you’re told you can’t get the money after all.

You’d probably be pretty upset.

But think about it from the employee’s perspective. There are very good reasons why employees sometimes have to say no to customer requests.

Let’s see what happens when the employee in this story has to say no to a customer.

I’m not made of money: The sequel

I’m working the service desk at a grocery store.

At my store, we do Western Union money services at the desk where someone can send or receive money to/from somewhere else.

I’m in the middle of doing one WU transaction when the guy for this story comes in and gets in line.

Before I even start helping him, the guy threw a tantrum over the fact that another customer was waiting by the lottery machine instead of waiting behind him (the guy by lottery said he knew the WU guy was first) so I’m thinking to myself “this is gonna be a fun one.”

The customer was there to pick up a lot of money.

I finish the transaction I’m in the middle of and the guy comes up to the desk. He’s says he’s here to pick up WU and hands me a piece of paper with the money transfer number (the number used to look up WU transactions, and the amount he’s picking up.

He’s picking up $7500.00

I turn to my front end manager who’s also standing behind the desk and ask him if I’m even allowed to do that kind of a transaction since I’ve never had one that big before.

He texts our bookkeeper to find out and also opens the register where we keep the bulk of the money and starts counting to see if there’s enough in there (I had already done a number of big WU transactions earlier in the day).

There are a couple problems.

I take the paper with the transfer number and type it into the computer.

There are no transactions under that number.

I look at the paper and ask for clarity on a couple of the numbers since the handwriting wasn’t that great.

I try again, and once again, no transactions come up.

As I’m doing that, my manager says there’s not enough in the drawer.

The customer was NOT happy.

The guy starts arguing with both of us, saying to me the number he was given came from WU and he’s had it for three days and saying to my manager that WU told him he could pick up the money here.

I tell him if the number is not in the system, there is nothing I can do about it and he has to call WU.

My manager tells him that while we do WU services, that doesn’t mean we’re going to have big amounts of cash just lying around.

The guy eventually gave up and left.

If it was a legitimate transaction, I feel bad for the customer. If it wasn’t, what a creep.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person finds the amount suspicious.

Another person complains about Western Union transfers.

This employee has handled a LOT of Western Union transfers.

This store sets a limit.

This is a good question.

This sounds frustrating for the customer and the employee.

Sometimes there are days like that.

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.