The cost of living always just seems to be going up and up, and in many countries, minimum wage is not rising to account for that. So it’s no wonder that plenty of people are finding ways to save money – whether that be cutting down on luxuries or growing their own fruit and vegetables, spending nights in instead of going on nights out, and even vacationing a little closer to home.

And of course, one great way to save money is to shop sales and offers. Often called out for leading people to buy more of things than they need – or even to buy things they don’t need at all, by being duped into getting what seems like a great deal – there’s no question that cut prices and multibuy offers are a lifesaver for many, especially for those with large families to feed.

But it’s important that you ensure you understand the offer and its parameters to ensure you get the most out of it – which is something that the customer in this story really did fail to do. And whether you think it’s his fault or the store’s fault, there is one person who absolutely is not to blame: the cashier he checked out with. And yet, guess who ended up getting the blame?

Read on to find out what happened here.

That’s not how buy two get one free works, sir

I work at a major retailer in the northwest, and we run sales for buy two, get one free for underwear and sock on occasion.

I thought it was a pretty straight forward promotion and assumed that everyone knew how it worked – but apparently this man didn’t.

One day I was put in charge of the self scan for the duration of my shift, and everything was going pretty smoothly.

That was until an old man scanned his two pairs of underwear and yelled at me to come over.

Let’s see what happened when he went to help the old man.

The old guy said, “I thought these were buy two get one free.” I replied, “Yeah, you only have two scanned so you need another one, and that one gets put as the free one.”

The guy replied, “that’s not how it works. It’s BUY two (holds two up) get one (shakes the one in his left hand) free.”

I told him, “Thats not how buy two get one free works, sir,” to which he replied, “yeah, it is.”

I confirmed, “Sir, what you just described is buy one get one free.”

But the older guy had other ideas.

The guy said, “Do you have a manager? You obviously have no clue what you are talking about. You should know your sales and honour them.”

I called over manager, who was within signalling distance, and who asked what he could do to help.

The man told my manager, “your employee doesn’t know what buy two get one free means!”

So my manager replied, “ok, let’s see what you have rang up here.” He saw that the guy had only has two pairs of underwear scanned and said, “You need another one to complete the set.”

Uh-oh! Let’s see how the old man responded.

The guy was now very angry and yelled, “NO, THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS! IT’S BUY TWO GET ONE FREE!”

Then, using the same motions as before, he continued, “IS THERE ANYONE THAT IS COMPETENT IN THE ******* COMPANY?”

The guy was huffing and puffing he stormed out.

My manger and I looked at each other and laughed because he just made a fool of himself in front of the whole store.

Look, especially when you’re older, it’s easy to get confused.

And despite being wrong, it’s logical to understand how he made his mistake.

But it was the way he handled that mistake that was completely uncalled for.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a hardware store employee who lost his cool with customers wandering around after closing time.

Let’s see how the Reddit community reacted to this.

This person thought that the customer really should have this figured out by now.

While others thought that the sale wording was quite logical.

However, this Redditor suggested a better way to phrase the signs, to avoid all confusion.

The trouble is that the wording of the sale could be interpreted in quite an ambiguous way, even though those of us who have grown up with the exact same wording take our understanding of it for granted. It’s not always easy to understand these things, particularly if they have been shortened into a culture’s vocabulary from longer phrases that were more common in the past. And if you’re learning the language, or you’re very young or elderly, it’s easy to misinterpret these things, and get yourself in quite a muddle.

But if you do find yourself in a similar muddle, the correct thing to do is absolutely not to abuse the shop assistants until they just back down and let you have it your way. And this retail worker and his manager were absolutely right not to back down, even though the guy was clearly quite a difficult character. Because yelling at someone and then expecting them to help you is not something that many people would ever expect to go their way. Unfortunately for everyone in this story though, the guy was either stubborn or deluded – or both.