Working with customers can feel like a gamble when you never know what kind of response you’ll get to even the simplest requests.

Such was the case in this story of an employee who ignited an explosive reaction from a customer while trying to rent out a storage shed.

What followed was an encounter neither of them would soon forget.

Read on for the full story.

“Do I LOOK Like I Have Common Sense?!”

Where I work, we have storage units that customers can rent.

To get these units, we need two phone numbers from them and then an alternate contact to reach who does not live with the customer.

The store had a perfectly good reason for this, but of course, not all customers saw it that way.

This is so that in case there are changes to the unit, or if the customer were to disappear or become deceased, we have someone else to contact.

I already knew this customer would be tough when she didn’t like me having to see her driver’s license as photo ID.

I asked if she had homeowner’s insurance so that she didn’t have to take the additional insurance from us.

It was immediately clear that this would be a difficult interaction.

“Do I LOOK like I have a home?” she replied.

I didn’t respond.

And it didn’t get any easier from there.

So it came to asking for the alternate phone number. This alternate number to reach the customer could be any other number. It could be a spouse, friend, family member, or work number.

Technically, if someone were to give me a fake phone number for this second part, I wouldn’t know. It just had to be another number.

I asked for the second number, and she said she didn’t have any, with a look to me as if I asked if she would like to see me slap a puppy.

The employee continues to plead with the customer.

I relayed to her it could be ANY number. Perhaps a work number.

“Do I LOOK like I have a job?!”

I tried again and told her that I can’t keep going on in the screens unless I had SOMETHING to write as an alternate number. Any kind of friend or family member.

“Do I LOOK like I have friends?!”

Finally the employee is nearing giving up when the customer decides to drop a very surprising detail.

“Ma’am, I can’t determine your life story by your appearance,” I told her in the nicest way I could. “I know it’s annoying, but please, I just need a number.”

At the top of her lungs, in front of the rest of the customers and my manager, she screamed at me, “Everyone I know is dead!”

She starts to cry.

Of course, the optics of this aren’t great.

Now I look like a complete jerk, and I STILL need another number.

She ended up giving me the number of the hotel she was staying at, and as an alternate contact, my manager begrudgingly said just to put his information in to please the system so I could go on.

This interaction stuck with this employee for long after the initial interaction.

Now every time I have to ask someone wanting a storage unit for an alternate phone number, I flinch a little.

Definitely a customer I’ll never forget.

Well at least they finally figured out why she was so cagey.

What did Reddit think of this story?

People like this tend to do just about anything for attention.

This commenter would have abandoned this interaction far sooner.

This user has a compliment for the author of this clever story.

In the end, the employee got the answer they were looking for, but not without a side of public humiliation.

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.