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Imagine working at a grocery store where one of your jobs is helping customers with Western Union transactions at the service desk. What would you do if a customer had a large transaction?

In this story, one employee was in this situation, and the store’s bookkeeper helps out by counting the money to see if they have enough for the transaction.

Meanwhile, the employee tries to look up the transaction and hits another roadblock.

This story is told from the employee’s perspective, but it sounds like it was frustrating for everyone involved.

Keep reading to see what happens.

I’m not made of money: The sequel

I’m working the service desk at a grocery store. At my store, we do Western Union money services at the desk where someone can send or receive money to/from somewhere else.

I’m in the middle of doing one WU transaction when the guy for this story comes in and gets in line.

Before I even start helping him, the guy threw a tantrum over the fact that another customer was waiting by the lottery machine instead of waiting behind him (the guy by lottery said he knew the WU guy was first) so I’m thinking to myself “this is gonna be a fun one.”

This wasn’t going to be simple.

I finish the transaction I’m in the middle of and the guy comes up to the desk. He’s says he’s here to pick up WU and hands me a piece of paper with the money transfer number (the number used to look up WU transactions, and the amount he’s picking up.

He’s picking up $7500.00

I turn to my front end manager who’s also standing behind the desk and ask him if I’m even allowed to do that kind of a transaction since I’ve never had one that big before.

He texts our bookkeeper to find out and also opens the register where we keep the bulk of the money and starts counting to see if there’s enough in there (I had already done a number of big WU transactions earlier in the day).

There are now two reasons they can’t do the transaction.

I take the paper with the transfer number and type it into the computer.

There are no transactions under that number.

I look at the paper and ask for clarity on a couple of the numbers since the handwriting wasn’t that great. I try again, and once again, no transactions come up.

As I’m doing that, my manager says there’s not enough in the drawer.

I can understand why the guy was frustrated, but there’s nothing they could do about it.

The guy starts arguing with both of us, saying to me the number he was given came from WU and he’s had it for three days and saying to my manager that WU told him he could pick up the money here.

I tell him if the number is not in the system, there is nothing I can do about it and he has to call WU.

My manager tells him that while we do WU services, that doesn’t mean we’re going to have big amounts of cash just lying around.

The guy eventually gave up and left.

That sounds frustrating for everyone involved.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person also hates doing Western Union transfers.

Another person shares how it works where they work.

This person shares their experience doing Western Union transfers.

But this person has a very good question.

I’m sure this was frustrating for the employees, but it had to be much more frustrating for the customer. It’s his money. Western Union told him to go to this specific store. So he does, but they can’t help him. Where is he supposed to go?

It’s not the employee’s fault. It’s not the customer’s fault. It sounds like Western Union is the real problem here.