If you work in a store, you’ll be quite familiar with the bizarre exploits of demanding, dissatisfied customers.

Whether it’s yelling or demanding to speak to a manager, insulting employees or loudly projecting their complaints to nearby customers, there’s no limit to the extent these customers will go to to get their point across.

And, ideally, to get their own way.

Even though they’d worked in retail for a long time, however, the retail employee in this story had never encountered a disgruntled customer interaction as odd as this one.

Read on to find out what happened.

Karen goes nonverbal halfway through her rant

At my job we offer online grocery orders through Instacart. We shop the items, bag them up, and deliver them to the person curbside when they arrive.

However, the Instacart app turns off at 6pm and customers can no longer place orders after this time.

It was around 8pm or so, and I was ringing out a customer and having a nice conversation when I saw a lady storm in through the front doors.

She beelined for my register and stood there waiting for me to acknowledge, her even though I was clearly helping another customer.

Let’s see how the cashier reacted to the woman’s presence.

I ignored her because that was rude, and after a few seconds she said, “I’m here for a Instacart pickup. I didn’t realize you weren’t going to bring it to my car and I paid for that.”

I replied, “We usually do carry out Instacart orders, however it turns off at 6pm so I was unaware there was anyone here for pickup.” I realize this is a bit of a flawed system on Instacart’s part, however I don’t work for them so I’m just using what information I have.

Then she said, “Okay?? Can you just get it? This is already taking more time than if I had just come inside and got it myself.” It had been literally one minute, but ok.

I said “no problem,” and ran to the back to look for her order. Of course, nothing was where we usually keep the Instacart orders. I checked the customer service desk and found her order of one singular item.

Read on to find out how things panned out when they delivered the order.

The label had her name on it (it was actually Karen!) So I grabbed that and headed back to the register to hand her her item.

“Well I was charged $4 for carry out, so I want my money back,” she told me.

“Unfortunately, all Instacart issues have to be dealt with through Instacart,” I replied.

And then: “THERE’S NO WAY TO DO THAT. GET ME A MANAGER.”

Of course, nothing was good enough for the customer.

So I called my manager who was very clearly busy doing something else but said she would be there in a minute.

So Karen was on the side of my register tapping her foot, arms crossed, waiting while a new customer approaches to check out.

She only had a few items, so I rang her up and made some small talk trying to diffuse the tension. She was pleasant and I was getting the vibe that she could sense Karen’s energy and was understanding my pain as she kind of smirked at the lady.

My manager approached Karen and said, “Hi, I’m the manager how can I help you?” I was still helping the other customer so I was busy, but I was listening to see what Karen was going to say.

But no one was expecting Karen’s response.

She said nothing. For a second I thought that maybe Karen didn’t realize she was being spoken to, so I turned and said to my manager, “This is her” and gestured towards Karen.

My manager tried again, and still Karen was avoiding eye contact, looking at the floor, arms crossed. I was really confused.

So I went to hand the receipt to this other lady and Karen started wildly gesturing at me and pointing between me and my manager. She makes the hand gesture for talking and pointed at me.

I was actually flabbergasted because, is this real life? Was she too good to explain her story, all over $4? I was just looking at her thinking, I’m not going to be bossed around like that.

Then, something even more unpredictable happened.

Then when I thought things couldn’t get any stranger, the other customer ganged up on me. She said, “are you not going to help her? She can’t talk!”

I look at her confused because firstly, I thought we were bonding over this Karen and secondly, she can talk – we just had a whole conversation!

So she just kept repeating, “are you going to help her?” and me and my manager explained, “Yes, we are just going to step over here,” because other customers were approaching at this point, and a different cashier had arrived to help out.

Still Karen refused to speak, and instead pulled out her phone and started wildly typing.

Let’s see what she typed on her phone.

She showed the message to my manager. I tried to read it, but it was incredibly jumbled and just said that she can’t talk but wants a refund.

My manager told her the same thing: that we can’t offer refunds and she needs to contact Instacart.

Karen threw her hands up at us and stormed out, while we were left dumbfounded wondering what we had just witnessed.

I’ve worked retail for many years and have had my share of Karen moments, but this one left me scratching my head. Was she trying to pull a power trip on me or my manager? Did her voice box run out of juice? Was she trying to garner sympathy from onlookers? I’ll never know.

This is super bizarre, and perhaps points towards the customer suddenly realising that she was in the wrong, and trying to play the sympathy card. No one would deny the whims of a customer who was unable to speak, right?

However, there’s a chance (however small) that the woman was experiencing some sort of medical episode that caused her to be unable to physically speak too.

Let’s see what the Reddit community thought about this.

This person joked that maybe Karen was impaired by a curse.

While others explained how commonplace these kinds of complaints are.

Meanwhile, some Redditors explained that her behavior could have been a symptom of selective mutism or a stroke.

Whatever happened here, Karen came into the building being unreasonable, so it’s logical for the employee to assume that she was being unreasonable throughout.

If she was having a medical episode this is concerning, and something that the store may want to be aware of in the future.

But if she was just having a tantrum and posing this as a genuine medical condition for sympathy?

That’s unhinged.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.