Imagine working in a store where a lot of teenagers stop by after school. What would you do if one of the teen’s parents got mad at you for letting her son buy something from your store?

That’s that situation the employee in this story finds themselves in, and they go above and beyond trying to appease the teen’s mother. That’s still not good enough for her.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Selling energy drinks to my kid? I’m phoning the police!

I was working at a relatively small convenience store in a village.

It was around 3:30pm, so the kids had finished school and were coming home on the bus.

This was usually a very busy time as the bus stop was opposite the shop, so a lot of them came into the shop with a few pounds in change and bought sweets, drinks, etc.

No real problem there – in fact, I enjoyed serving them, as they were clearly looking forward to their sugary goodness after a day at school.

One teen was happy with his purchase.

Anyway, I serve some kid a 500ml energy drink. It was quite popular since my company stocked a 99p PMP version instead of the non-PMP version that the supermarkets sold for £1.50+.

The kid was around thirteen, it turns out, but looked 15/16-ish.

He leaves, happy.

The boy’s mom was not happy.

Five minutes later, the boy’s mother comes in, furious at me. “How dare you serve this energy drink to my son,” she says. “It’s against the law – it’s not for children!”.

I explain that I’m sorry to have served her son, and that while company policy says that I should serve everyone if they have the right money and there isn’t a law against serving them (ie alcohol, tobacco, lottery etc), I’m sure that a written letter asking us not to serve her son again would prevent any repeat of this.

She wasn’t having it.

This woman sounds a little crazy.

She was demanding a refund – not going to happen. The drink was half-finished, and if I processed a refund I’d get a formal warning from management for going against refund policy.

Obviously, I didn’t tell her this as she wouldn’t care if I received a warning (she wanted me fired anyway), so I begrudgingly gave her £1 of my own money, thinking that would be that.

Nope.

Turns out that she had phoned the police, saying that a shop had served an underage customer “something illegal”.

The police got there pretty quickly.

The police arrived about fifteen minutes later, probably because if I had served the child alcohol I’d get prosecuted and face a £2,500 fine and criminal record, and the shop could lose its premises licence – so quite serious.

The police officer spoke to the woman asking her to explain what happened.

He looked a little confused.

I explained that the company didn’t have a policy against selling energy drinks to kids, that I was sorry to have caused offence and that the matter could be dealt with by the store manager – who by this point had got back from her 30-minute cigarette break…

Now, the mom has ticked off the police.

The police officer gave the worst death-stare to the woman for wasting his time, and told us that we should refrain from serving her son energy drinks.

After one hour of wasted time and a police call-out, she gave up on her quest to get me fired and left.

It’s an energy drink. It’s not alcohol!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This employee broke this rule.

The mom really wasted the cop’s time.

Apparently there is an age limit on energy drinks in some locations.

This is probably accurate.

It really doesn’t make sense.

This is a clever way to work energy drink brand names into a summary of the story.

Her son probably felt so embarrassed.

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