Imagine being the only employee working at a store when there’s an emergency that requires you to leave the store for a few minutes.

Obviously you wouldn’t be able to leave the store open without anyone working there.

What would you do if you told the customers that you had to close the store for a few minutes but one of them refused to leave?

That’s the situation the employee in this story faced. Let’s see how it all played out.

Customer doesn’t understand the parking deck is flooding

So I work at a greeting card company in the mall, and our parking deck floods easily if it rains.

Yesterday it was raining, and they announced over the mall PA system that the first level of the parking deck was beginning to flood and advised all customers and employees to move their cars accordingly.

I’m the only employee in the store, so that means I have to close the store so I can go move my car so it won’t get flooded.

Most of the customers understood, except this one lady because OF COURSE she didn’t.

The employee explained the situation.

Me is me, BC is bad customer

me: okay everybody, they’re announcing the parking deck is flooding so I’m going to have to move my car, as I’m sure some of you do too. So what we’re gonna do is evacuate the store for ten or so minutes while we get this squared away!

BC: I’m not leaving this store.

me: ma’am, my car is about to flood so I have to close the store. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m going to have to ask you to step outside for just a few minutes. I promise I’ll be back quickly.

She gave the customer two options.

BC: absolutely not! I am a Paying Customer™ you can’t do this to me.

Now, admittedly I could have handled this better moving forward, but I already was tired since it was near the end of my shift. So naturally I wasn’t being as friendly as I could have been.

me: ma’am, we can do one of two things. You can evacuate the store as I’ve asked you to do twice now, or I can lock the gate with you in the store. I don’t care which happens, but I’m closing the gate now.

That got the customer moving!

BC: rushing out of the store this is so unprofessional you can’t do this!

me, bluntly: ma’am I’m not letting my car flood because you don’t want to leave the store. Have a nice night 🙂

BC: I’m calling customer service! I’ll have you fired for this!

I don’t understand what exactly she expected to get out of that though. Like what would you say? “An employee asked me to leave the store due to an emergency”?

That was some quick thinking to get the customer out of the store.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s a story about a customer who clearly misunderstood!

Another retail worker shares a story about having to close their store.

This is probably the truth.

This would’ve been a good response to the customer.

Some customers can be so unreasonable!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.