Managing a store can be difficult, and one of the hardest parts is often dealing with upset customers.

What would you do if you managed a computer repair shop and a customer was upset and filed a complaint about you, but she kept coming in for more help?

That is what happened to the manager in this story, so he kept helping the woman, who, years later, told him that she got the previous manager (him) fired for ‘stealing’ her hard drive.

Here are all the details.

She got me fired [Long Post]!

I was running a computer store at the time and once a week, there was a meeting of the managers where we discussed changes to the business, things to watch out for in the store, etc.

During this meeting I had invited a few extra people in (I like to bring in associates from all levels of the business, so they can see the managers aren’t plotting to fire people, or other bad things).

So, in this meeting we were tight on space, so I moved to the entrance of the room and was leaning against my desk (probably sitting on it, I don’t remember that 100%).

I wonder what is happening.

We were talking for probably 45 minutes in total when I heard someone getting upset with one of my computer technicians.

I probably had the best team of technicians in the city for their knowledge, customer service and even pricing.

I hear this lady getting quite rude and to the point of yelling, so I excuse myself from the meeting and go out.

This is how managers should be.

I don’t believe my staff should get yelled at… I get paid for that part of the job though, so here I go…

I come over to the customer and introduce myself, shake her hand and ask her what I can do to help.

She calms down, but then points at my technician and tells me that “HE BROKE MY LAPTOP”.

Okay, well tell me about how that happened and I will see what I can do.

I can see why she is upset.

She proceeds to tell me that the laptop was brought in just to be cleaned, and now there’s no information on it. Everything was erased; all her pictures, all her work, everything.

I agree that this is terribly frustrating, and that I would have to do a little investigating to see what happened.

Well, there is only so much you can do with a bad hard drive.

I turn in front of her and ask my technician what was up.

He explained that the lady brought the laptop in with a malfunctioning hard drive; you know the type… bad sector, read arm scratching the surface.

The drive was unrecoverable, but he went ahead and searched for her receipt, found that she was still under warranty and then phoned her.

He was actually doing her a favor.

He explained what had happened but since she was under warranty, he could replace the drive with one we had from a previous job and she would be fixed next day (typically we order drives in from the manufacturer so that they actually pay for the parts, and the job.

In this case, we didn’t get paid because we used one that was considered our stock and also the manufacturer may or may not even reimburse us for labour for this too).

I turn back to the customer and explain that we definitely didn’t break the drive; unfortunately the drive was dead on arrival and there would be no way for us to have ever saved her data.

The only option she would have for that would be to send it to a data recovery lab, pay around $1,000 and they MIGHT be able to retrieve it.

This wasn’t enough.

I also was able to explain that we did do some things outside of normal policy to speed up the repair, which meant that we straight up lost money to help her out but thought we would get her up and running much faster than normal.

Well, the lady proceeds to lose her mind and accuses us of stealing her hard drive and data (even though she agreed that she could hear the ticking noise of the hard drive before).

I spent another 5 minutes or so trying to reason with her, showing her that her laptop worked now, and even giving her the old hard drive back so she felt more comfortable that we didn’t steal her data.

She said she got it, she understood the situation and left.

Oh, come on, lady.

A couple of days later, we had a complaint in the store against me. Basically that I didn’t even try to help her, I didn’t show her any respect, and we were the worst store in the city.

I got the complaint of course since it was my store, and I closed it off. I record the solution for all of these things and basically just left this one at: customer will never be satisfied, we did a good job.

I made sure to come back and tell the tech that he did an awesome job helping this lady and to continue to be creative in how he solved issues; customer first.

She couldn’t have been that disappointed with the service.

Fast forward two years.

Lady comes back in to the store (she was a semi-regular customer even after the incident) and asks for the store manager.

I come up to the front of the store and say hello… I recognize her and she doesn’t recognize me.

She proceeds to complain about a monitor that “stopped working” last night.

No issues here.

I take it over and hook it up to a test computer and it works fine. I let her know and let her see it. I explain that her video card may be having an issue, or something else.

This was her home desktop, so I ask her to bring it in, which of course she refuses.

I do have people certified (background checks, etc) to go to customer’s homes and do work, so I send someone over to check it out.

Video card is dead. She comes in, buys another, and we go and install it.

Now what?

Next day she comes back to the store and asks for me again. I walk up, shake her hand once again and ask what I can do to help her out.

She wanted to say thank you. She appreciated that I found a way to help her and she was happy for that.

At the end she let me know this… “You are very lucky that you did what you did. The last manager here lost his job because of me! He stole my hard drive and I phoned the owner and then he got fired. He was such a terrible manager and when I was having problems, he just sat in that little room over there staring at me and laughing”.

He is just playing along.

I laughed a little and said “Well, I guess today is my lucky day” and then I thanked her and walked away.

She continued to shop in my store up until I left – probably still does now.

She always made a point to say hi, and I always just had to bite my tongue because I wanted to let her know so bad that she was nuts….

That is too funny. While it would be tempting to tell the customer, it is better to just keep her happy.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about this story.

Yeah, this is the worst.

Some customers are never happy.

Yup, always back up your data.

This would have been too funny.

Yeah, they should have banned her.

Sometimes it’s better to let a customer believe what they want to believe.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.