You’ll encounter all kinds of crazy situations if you choose to work retail. Sometimes the drama is from the customers, and sometimes the drama is from the managers.

You’re actually in for a treat because this isn’t just one story but think of it as a double feature with two very different stories about working retail. One is about a dad who is buying a car for his daughter, and the other is about working at a fast food restaurant at night during an ice storm.

Keep reading for all the details.

The rich dad and his more humble daughter, and why staying open is more important than employee safety.

Two stories here today, from a couple different jobs.

The first is actually from my current job at a car dealership. We aren’t a high end sports car dealer, but we’re also not an affordable average Joe type dealer. I actually work in the shop so I rarely interact with customers (lucky me) but this time was an exception.

Ok, so one of my regular jobs is to clean and detail cars sold by our salesmen. The cheapest of these cars is around $45k and the most expensive can approach $100k. They are not cheap cars, and I pride myself on making sure they look as good as they deserve to, with how much the customer pays.

There was a minor problem with one car.

Anyway, we have a car to do one day, nothing out of the ordinary. Its a nice silver luxury sedan, and I’m completely in love with this particular model so I put an extra bit of work into it. We clean it, wipe down the interior, clean the leather, the works.

However this particular car has a scratch on the side of it near the tail lights, about 3 inches long but not too noticeable. This happens all the time, stuff happens between the production line and our lot so its usually no big deal.

If the customer cares enough about it they will either take it to our body shop to get it buffed out (at a significantly lowered price since it was manufacturer error) or will just ignore it. Otherwise we have plenty of identical vehicles they can purchase.

The salesman assured us he had already informed the customer and he was okay with it.

Imagine buying so many cars that you’re a “regular” at a car dealership.

When it comes time to pull it inside the customer is there waiting with the salesman. This is one of our regular customers, and he buys quite a few cars from us.

This conversation includes 5 people including myself. Present were the customer, who we shall call “rude dude” (RD), his young adult daughter who couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20. (ND) The salesman who sold him the car (SM), and our sales manager (MG).

Anyway, they’re talking as I go to hand off the keys and I overhear RD talking to MG about how he is buying the car for his daughter to congratulate her on moving out and getting her first real job.

Seems innocent enough, however ND seems noticeably uncomfortable. Oh well, customer service is not my problem anymore. My job is done.

The dad seemed nice at first.

However RD calls me back as I’m walking away.

Me: Yes sir, can I help you?

RD: I recognize you, you’ve cleaned a lot of cars for me. You do a good job, I appreciate it.

Me: Thank you sir, I try. I hope y’all enjoy the car.

All this is being said as he does a walkaround of the car, but he suddenly stops.

Now about that scratch…

RD: Umm, what’s this? Could you get this scratch out?(Pointing at the scratch)

Me: That actually goes into the body of the car, if it were a scratch in the paint we have a compound that can get it out but for anything deeper you will need to get it buffed. SM can set you up an appointment with our body shop to get a quote, it was a manufacturer error so it will not be an expensive fix at all.

SM: That’s right, if you’ll recall I showed you that scratch when you first looked at the car and you said you weren’t bothered by it.

RD: I figured you would take it out when you were cleaning it.

The daughter didn’t mind.

Me: We don’t actually have the means to get out a scratch that deep here in the shop. We don’t do significant body work here.

At this point ND has been gradually looking more and more mortified.

ND: Dad, its okay. Its no big deal, really. Its just a small scratch.

RD: No, honey, it is a big deal. This shouldn’t be here.

OP learns a bit more about the dad and daughter relationship.

Now he is starting to get a bit more aggressive with his demands, and MG steps in.

MG: Sir you agreed to purchase the car in that condition after we offered you some identical cars with no damage. Like they have said we can get you a quote on getting it buffed at our body shop, but that’s all we can do. You signed the paperwork, we can’t exchange it for another car at this point.

A long, heated argument ensued and I’ll cut most of it out to save on space. Anyway, it comes to light that RD always provides really nice things for ND, but she would rather live for herself than have everything bought for her. She wanted to get a cheaper car herself but RD insisted on buying a $50k luxury car, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

At least they finally left.

I feel pretty bad for her at this point, she just wants to live her own life but has a pretty bad case of helicopter parent.

After much yelling, swearing and threats, RD finally accepts defeat and storms out, ND in tow.

They drive off, we all share a sigh of relief and pity for ND, I go back to work expecting it to be over.

But the daughter came back.

About an hour later, though, I’m outside getting another car to bring inside and ND is there talking to a tech outside. When she sees me she comes over and starts apologizing about how much of a jerk her dad can be, how she loves the car and doesn’t mind the scratch, etc. etc.

She then tries to give me $20 for cleaning it (which normally I would happily accept, we don’t have a policy against tipping and detailers and techs regularly take small amounts of cash to give a bit of extra love to a car.) but I turn her down, and tell her it was no problem.

She insists a couple times but finally gives up, apologizes again and leaves.

It seems like the drama is over.

On the bright side, her dad was a lot nicer to us after that, never had any issues from him again and he would regularly compliment me and my coworkers on the work we did on other cars he purchased from us.

His daughter actually comes in every few weeks now after closing or on the weekend when its slow and pays us $10-15 to wash it for her.

A happy ending I guess, but man did I want to punch him a couple times when it all first went down.

These sound like unsafe driving conditions.

The second story recalls my fast food job again, its winter and I’m scheduled to work third shift. I normally like third shift, but there is a particularly bad storm coming overnight and there is already about 3-4 inches of snow and icy roads.

I’ll be driving into work in pitch black conditions on icy roads at 10pm, working a painfully slow night (people tend to not want to go eat greasy food in the middle of the night while ice and snow is pouring down on them).

We call up my DM and tell him the three of us won’t be working, because we don’t feel safe working in those conditions, especially with how few customers there will be.

The manager sounds really annoying.

He didn’t care, we had to be open because its what our customers expect.

Okay, fair enough, if its so important we suggest he comes in and works with us to help us out.

Of course he can’t, he’s busy but he’ll “be with us in spirit” and be “supporting us any way he can” from in front of his fireplace in a recliner with some coffee. Great.

Being open really doesn’t seem to make sense when there aren’t any customers.

Closing time comes around for the lobby so we clean up and get everything done in record time because – surprise – the drive-thru is completely dead.

Once 2am rolls around and the storm is approaching we’ve had all of two cars in 3 hours, at this point just being open we’re losing money.

We call the DM again and inform him of the situation and how he is losing a lot of money by keeping us open.

He tells us basically “if you close that store tonight you don’t need to bother coming in tomorrow night.”

They stayed but made sure to report the situation.

Whatever. We hunker down, help ourselves to some hot chocolate (its going to be wasted and thrown out at the end of the night, why not?) and watch some tv in the lobby.

We actually manage to server a whopping one car between two and six when first shift came to relieve us.

We raised hell to the GM about what happened, and left after he assured us he would talk to the DM about it.

Sure enough, the following night we were closed. And guess what? Nobody complained about us not being open, because they were all at home not risking their lives with black ice and sub-zero temperatures for a cheeseburger.

Those were two very different and very interesting stories. One about a dad who needs to back off and let his daughter make her own decisions, and one about a manager who needs to prioritize employee safety over keeping a store open.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a bus driver who is sick and tired of covering everyone else’s weekend shifts.

Usually, this is the point where I would include comments from readers over at Reddit, but surprisingly, there weren’t any comments! I really am surprised about that because with all the drama in both of these stories, I expected lots of comments, either showing compassion for the daughter, or perhaps sharing stories about working during a storm.

I’ll give you my opinion instead. For the car dealership story, the situation sounds pretty annoying, but I love that everything seemed to work out okay after the fact. It’s not like the dad or daughter held a grudge against the dealership or anything. It was just a misunderstanding about the scratch.

For the ice storm fast food story, I’m glad they contacted the manager’s boss because those really sound like unsafe driving conditions, and there’s no point in being open when no customers are driving in a storm anyway.

It goes to show that you never know what’s going to happen when you work retail.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a professor who missed a major funding deadline after they told their graduate student to leave them alone.