When you work in a retail store, you have to deal with irrational customers from time to time.

In this story, a customer’s child got poked by a pin while trying on clothes, and she became irate, demanding some type of compensation.

While the employee and management were trying to get the paperwork together, she eventually just stormed off.

“I want compensation!”

Scenario: Very popular fashion retail store in the most busy mall in the city.

Keeping busy at work is a good thing.

Not overwhelmingly busy, busy enough that it was me bringing customers to their room and one of my newer co-workers re hanging and fixing the returned clothes.

It’s been a pretty okay day/week/month for me, to be honest.

Nothing spectacularly bad to write home about when it comes to customers so really it all had to come to a head today when a couple with two children in tow come storming up to the entrance.

Sadly, this is true.

Retail Fact: People steal things. As much as you try to prevent it, it’s impossible to be everywhere at once and a couple things are bound to go missing.

Security tags at my store of the the pin/paddle magnet variety and when people steal things they have a habit of putting them into the pockets of other pants.

It’s something you check for if you get the chance, but really, it’s hard to tell sometimes.

I would think this could be dangerous.

Anyway, back to the family.

They had happened to pick one of the pants that had a pin in the pockets.

It’s not super common for someone to get injured by these, and when it does happen people are understandably upset but never blame us, really… This was something else, though.

AL= Angry Lady; Just assume she’s more or less yelling through this whole thing.

I can see why she is upset.

AL: There was a pin in this pocket!

She gestures to her 8-9 year old son

AL: And he got scraped by it!

This worker knows how to handle it.

I immediately launch into the standard apologies and while I’m asking if he’s okay she cuts me off.

AL: No! He got hurt while trying these on! This is ridiculous, why would you let this happen? I need a manager!

She is clearly taking this seriously.

So, I do, of course.

Actually, I called the emergency code to summon ALL of the managers. Just in case.

While I’m waiting for them to show up I try to explain to her why it happened while still apologizing profusely.

AL: I don’t care WHY it happened! I should be able to try on clothes without getting hurt, you could have prevented this! I want compensation!

This customer just saw an opportunity to get a payout. Or so she hoped.

Excuse me?

This was particularly wild to me because I still don’t really know what she wanted.

Something with money, obviously, but the idea that one store out of hundreds in a multi-billion dollar worldwide company could do something right then and there is wild.

Anyway. Managers show up. I try to explain the situation but she interrupts me and does it herself.

Whatever.

She is just not letting this go.

Manager explains the same thing I did and still insists it’s our fault and demands to talk to the store manager. (She didn’t have her walkie on and didn’t hear my emergency call).

I follow my manager out of the fitting room to get her because dang I wanted out of that situation for a sec.

Don’t want out of it bad enough to not see the resolution, though. I go back with them.

Dealing with customers like this would get old very quickly.

Angry lady tells my store manager the same thing. The main thing is the issue of vague compensation. SM explains that there’s nothing she can do at a store level blah blah.

AL: Okay, I want your head office information.

Can’t really give that out, so the managers offer her the customers service number while someone goes to grab an incident report paper.

Keeping track of stuff like this is important.

Incident Report: A piece of paper that you put your information on so our security department can deal with it further. Just a name and phone number, nothing crazy.

She’s still going on about how we’re all useless and no help how she still wants money or like, my kidney or something. Incident report paper comes back and it’s explained to her that we need some information.

Like I said, just the basics.

She isn’t going to get a thing without proper documentation.

AL: No, you’re not getting any of my information until I get my information from you. Why aren’t you giving it to me?

Certainly have not been… Withholding it from her. I can’t even remember my mom’s phone number, let alone my company’s customer service. We need to go to the back and grab it.

Come on lady, calm down.

AL: And I want all of your information, all of your names!

Aw man. But she did say it was my fault so I guess I gotta… Manager then tells her that he needs to go grab the number and she can fill out the incident report while he grabs it.

AL: No, you’re not getting anything from me, this is ridiculous!!

So, she just walked away?

Then she storms off and I guess that’s the end of that.

Don’t really get how external theft is my fault, what sort of compensation she wanted, or why her husband told me the solution was to get better security tags. (Someone always finds a way to get it off) but it was certainly… something. Not sure how we’re giving her $$ without her phone number.

Retail workers are used to dealing with crazy.

I’m not very shook up about it, and huge shout out to the person that stood up for us and told AL that she was being rude midway through her rant, but I guess I’ll never get the things some people get so worked up about.

Conclusion: I put all the empty security tags in all the pockets for sure.

Stories like this make me so glad that I don’t work in retail.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Absolutely, this was a scam.

The soup is your compensation!

This commenter loved the story.

Yup, just running a scam.

This is called proper parenting.

She was just looking for an easy payout.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.