Working in retail often means handling customers who think rules don’t apply to them.

One drive-thru pharmacy employee learned this the hard way when she encountered a grown man who refused to move his car, despite her repeated requests.

The situation spiraled into tension that tested both her patience and her nerves.

Read on for the full story.

You can’t park in our drive thru.

This is an oldie, from when I worked at a retail pharmacy as a clerk.

The store I worked at was at the end of a shopping center. We shared the center with a gym, a Family Dollar, and a sports training area. Behind the center was a small football field, which was often used for little league games.

This created a lot of confusion for local parkers.

As you can imagine, we had a lot of people parking in our lot, sometimes near our drive-thru, and often blocking the drive-thru lane.

It was a two-lane system. The first lane was obviously part of the drive-thru, but the second lane would routinely be parked in because it wasn’t obvious.

They had a go-to approach for handling problems like these.

Most of the time, whenever we caught someone parking there, they would apologize and move.

Sometimes we wouldn’t notice until they had already left, and then we would ask the store manager to go out to the field and make a “We’re gonna tow this car” announcement. (We never towed, ever.)

They would either move the car or they wouldn’t.

The store did their best to prevent confusion where they could.

We ended up putting signs up and doing our best to make a cart barricade whenever we knew there would be a game, but it didn’t always happen.

So, I’m working in the pick-up booth, which was next to the window.

But then the employee watched yet another parker fall into the familiar trap.

It’s dark out, probably around eight, when I see a car park in the second lane of the drive-thru.

I turn on the intercom as he is getting out of his car.

Keep in mind, I was about seventeen or eighteen at the time and looked like a thirteen-year-old. He was at least in his early thirties.

“Hi, sir, you can’t park there.”

This customer is immediately aggressive towards her.

“Why the heck not?”

I’m kind of taken aback as he seems really hostile almost immediately.

“Well, we’re a business. That’s our drive-thru lane,” I explain, keeping a smile on my face even though I’ve been here all day.

I’ve had this same conversation, though with less swearing, twenty times in the past three days.

He’s holding his ground and her patience is wearing thin.

“No one’s even here,” he says, shutting his door. I can barely see him as the sun is going down, and he has a full view of me through the lit drive-thru window.

“But someone might come. We really need you to move.” I don’t understand why he won’t just move his truck. It’s not like the extra twenty feet of walking would kill him.

“But no one is even here,” he says again. Well, “says” is a bad way to describe it—he’s basically yelling now.

She knows she has to settle this dispute — and soon.

I would leave the window to grab the pharmacist, but I know that if I did, he would be gone and his truck would still be there when I came back.

I frown and take a deep breath. I really don’t like being mean to people, but this guy.

“Listen. You’re going to move your truck right now, or I’m going to call the tow company. If I tow you, you have to pay for it.”

So she told a convenient lie to get him moving.

I fibbed a little after this, considering he still wasn’t even motioning to get back in his truck. I don’t know how tow services work, but luckily for me, he didn’t seem to either.

“Since it’s after hours, there’s a decent chance you won’t be able to get your car until tomorrow morning.”

Finally, he got back in his truck, called me a jerk, and parked a measly twenty feet away in a marked parking spot.

Good grief.

All this drama over 20 feet?

What did Reddit make of all this?

This user can’t help but give it up for this retail worker’s professionalism, even at her young age.

Maybe her little “fib” wasn’t actually that far off.

Shouldn’t it have been obvious to this guy that he couldn’t park there?

Turns out this guy responds better to threats than politeness.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.