Working retail can have it’s wonderful moments, its boring moments, and it’s absolutely awful moments.

Imagine working retail when a customer accidentally did something wrong that damaged a product, but they expect you to replace it for free. Would you?

In this story, the product is a passport photo, and the customer actually gets her way and gets the photo replaced for free. But that’s not the end of it. She comes back with her husband, and the drama gets even worse.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Kid smudges his ID photo, dad loses it at me

Part of my job is to take Passport and other government ID photos for people.

Of course the requirements for them are very strict and we have to let the customer know what not to do once they get their photos, including keeping them face-to-face since we stamp the backs with date and photo location, and if the stamp touches the face of the other photo it will smudge off.

We also let them know that we don’t do free-retakes for that since it’s on the customer to make sure that doesn’t happen, although we retake most other rejected pictures free of charge.

Now, we get to the source of the drama.

I have a mom and her kid (around 15/16) come in to retake their passport photo since one face had been smudged by the other stamp.

I take them out of the envelope and the one stamp is against the other face (ofc).

I let her know that I can retake it but that she’ll have to pay again since we don’t cover smudging like that.

She was confused and pointed to our free re-takes sign, and I had to point out the “restrictions apply” portion of the notice.

The manager made an exception.

She asks for a manager to be called over so I do, and he just says to do it for free, but lets her know that we wont cover it again.

So I take the photo, print, cut, and stamp them, and say the same thing I do everytime: “Make sure to keep them face to face in here, that way the faces don’t get smudged again.” (I obviously added the again)

She said ok and seemed content and left.

This is when it gets interesting.

They came back.

A few minutes pass and we get really busy.

She comes back in with her kid and another man (her husband) who had to be at least 6’10” but only weighed probably 150lbs; all height.

He cuts the line and cuts me off with my customer, and just starts yelling at me about how I was “blaming his wife for ruining their photos,” and “aggressively telling them to not mess it up again.”

I try to explain that’s not what happened but he wouldn’t let me talk, continuing to yell at me and demanding a refund and gift card.

The manager stepped in.

Gladly my manager saw the whole thing and came right over and pulled him away and talked to him.

Within a minute he had stormed out, wife and kid walking slowly behind.

I found out later that this guy does this VERY often with every part of our store (and other stores). He’ll send his wife in to get something, and then run back in fuming about something that happened within the store, demanding a refund and gift card.

Haven’t seen him in a long time so hopefully he never comes back.

Yikes! Sounds like he has a scam going on where he tries to get free stuff by complaining. Hopefully he doesn’t come back.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who was rudely confronted by a teenager, only to have the teen’s father step up in an unexpected way.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person has dealt with customers like this before.

He definitely isn’t as intimidating as he thinks he is.

This person is worried.

Another person shares their opinion.

The manager handled that situation well. I don’t necessarily agree that the manager should’ve made an exception to the rules, but it was a nice thing to do. It’s ridiculous that instead of being grateful for the free retakes, the woman comes back with her husband. Hopefully they never come back.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who got promoted, then realized they set her replacement up to fail.