Occasionally, you come across a customer who refuses to take no for an answer.

Imagine you were working in a golf shop when a man walks in and demands that you unlock the business next door and help with his needs. Would you let him leave the machine with you? Or would you explain that there’s nothing you can do for him?

In the following story, one man finds himself in this predicament, and the customer refuses to listen. Here’s how it went down.

Harassed by a crazy customer; saved by the friendly guys down the road.

I work in a small retail unit on an industrial estate. There are three small units: us, a greasy spoon on one side of us, and a sewing machine place on the other, and we are surrounded by lots of much larger factories and warehouses.

My company primarily sells and repairs golf trolleys.

In my last job, I worked at a fancy golf club, so I am used to meeting more ‘entitled’ customers, but not on this scale.

The sewing machine shop also does repairs and doesn’t keep regular hours. The only surefire way to see someone is to make an appointment, and their website makes this very clear.

Out of nowhere, he hears a loud noise.

The factories around us all keep mostly nighttime or morning hours, and the cafe opens at 4 am and closes at midday to get the early breakfast trade. So it’s usually completely dead by around 3 pm.

I’m at work on my own on a quiet December afternoon when all of a sudden I hear a very loud banging sound coming from the sewing machine shop next door, which is closed.

It sounds like someone is repeatedly hammering on the glazing with the flat of their hands. Then our door swings open hard enough to bang into the shelves behind it, and I nearly jump out of my skin and drop the repair I’m working on.

When he entered, the customer was very vague.

In strides your typical pain-in-the-side golfclub type: about 45, posh accent, tweed jacket, etc.

My heart sank because I thought I was going to get an earful about something we’d done incorrectly.

I was wrong…

Here’s how the conversation started…

Sewing Machine Man (SMM): What’s going on?!

Me: Um, can I help you?

SMM: Why is the door locked?

Me: I’m not sure what you mean. Could you please close the door? (Note: our unit is unheated and tin-roofed, so it gets freezing very fast)

Then, he started to get loud.

SMM: Are you serious? “Close the door??” I drive all the way out here, and that’s the attitude you take? This is typical.

Me: Did you want us to take a look at your trolley?

SMM: (Very loudly, like I might be brain-damaged): You need to unlock the door.

Me: …?

SMM: (Gesturing at the wall between the two units): I need to drop something off, and I don’t have time for this.

He finally gets the guy to leave.

Me: I’m afraid they’re closed. There’s a phone number on their website.

SMM: Can you just unlock the door so I can drop off what I need to?

Me: (Indicating the racks of golf equipment): I don’t work there. We are a golf shop, a completely separate business. I don’t even have a key for their shop.

SMM: So they’ve just decided to be closed, and you aren’t even going to let me drop something off? I am going to bring this up with them!

And so on in this vein for a couple of minutes until he leaves, once again leaving the door wide open, and begins to peer in their windows like they might be hiding on the floor (which, to be fair, would be a reasonable reaction at this point).

A few minutes later, the guy came back.

Unfortunately for me, this is not over. A couple of minutes later, the door crashes open once more, and he shouts at me through it, “Are you going to help me with this?”

By the time I got over to the door, I could see what he was up to. He was bringing the sewing machine into our shop.

Except this isn’t your standard sewing machine. It’s huge. Made of metal and attached to its own large table, which probably won’t fit through our door. It’s not quite industrial-sized but nearly. And from the looks of it, it weighs a ton.

He actually arrived with it in a little trailer hitched to the back of his car, which he had backed up to our shop, and he’s dragging it down the ramp with considerable difficulty.

This time around, he was even more pushy than before.

SMM: I said help me with this. Also, how long can I expect this to take?

Me: You can’t bring that in here. We don’t repair sewing machines, and we don’t have room for that.

SMM: Well, I can’t take it in there! If I damage my back moving this on my own, it will be your fault.

Me: (Moving to block his path): I said you cannot bring that into our shop.

SMM: (Completely ignoring me): Write down what’s wrong with it so you can explain it for the repair.

Suddenly, a local man appeared.

Me: No. You can’t leave that with us. We aren’t the sewing shop or their messenger service, and you need to stop blocking the access to our shop!

Then he goes into an incoherent rant about how terrible my attitude is. And what’s his wife supposed to do without her sewing machine? He drove all the way here (from a town less than 10 miles away by good roads…), and he is going to complain to my boss about me, etc.

At this point, I’m getting alarmed. It’s going dark, there’s no one else around, he has physically blocked me into the shop, and is shouting at me.

Luckily, it turns out that not everyone had gone home. One of the lovely blokes from the hydraulics shop around the corner must have heard the commotion (the legs of the table were making a really loud noise as they dragged on the floor) and popped his head in the door.

The two men put the table back on the man’s trailer.

We have a decent relationship with them, as a couple of them golf.

Steve: Everything alright here?

Me: No!

SMM: No, it’s not, this is stuck, and I can’t move it on my own! Take the other end.

Steve: (Assessing the situation): No problem. Gavin, come here a min? 1, 2, 3, hup!

And they each took one end of the table and returned it to the trailer.

Nervous about how everything went down, he never asked about the outcome.

Steve: Bit of a crap parking job there, mate, you should move this trailer. It’s blocking the door.

Not much happened after that, but SMM huffed and puffed and eventually retreated to his car. He did park up across the road for about five minutes, writing a note before shoving it through the sewing shop’s letterbox.

Sadly, I never found what it said, as the woman who works there is a little odd, though nothing on SMM’s level. I was worried she’d think I’d been unreasonably rude to her customer or said something negative about her business, so I didn’t bring it up.

Wow! That guy had the worst approach.

Let’s see if the readers over at Reddit have ever encountered someone similar.

This reader loves the believability of this story.

Here’s someone who would’ve called the cops.

According to this comment, they would’ve turned it around on him.

For this reader, it’s a great example of entitlement.

He should’ve called the cops.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.