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“Can I speak to your manager?”

That sentence usually means trouble.

One cashier immediately starts replaying the entire interaction.

Then the customer surprises everyone.

See why this complaint went wonderfully sideways.

“Can I speak to your supervisor?”

I work as a cashier at a high end grocery store in a very affluent area.

Most of our customers are young professionals and wealthy older people, most of whom are wonderful, easy-going, all-around nice people.

But, as with any retail establishment, we have several customers that would best be described as “devil-spawn”, or “intolerable buttheads.”

Sometimes a busy day can make the time go by faster.

Earlier this week, our store was experiencing its daily midday rush and I was on a register, trying to funnel the hungry mobs and their bags full of kale out the door as quickly as possible.

Despite how busy we were, I do my best to make friendly, albeit brief, conversation with everyone who comes through my line.

Smiling and being personable, I’ve found, tends to make the whole checkout process much more pleasant for everyone involved.

This is a pleasant interaction.

I was ringing up a young couple and their extremely polite 7 year old son.

I jokingly told the boy that he should apply for a job, his parents laughed saying that he could finally start paying them the rent he owed them.

I laughed too, saying something about children being terrible roommates, and soon sent them on their way.

After everything was finished, the older blonde woman behind them in line began chatting with me as I scanned and bagged her groceries.

Besides me telling her that she looked nice today, our conversation was pretty typical- some benign discussion of the weather and other standard small-talk.

I handed over her receipt and told her to enjoy the rest of her day. Then she surprised me by asking if there was a manager available to speak to.

(C: customer, M: Me)

M: pointing to my manager behind the customer service desk That’s (manager’s name) right over there, she can take care of pretty much anything you need. Have a good one!

C: Thank you, I just wanted to discuss my experience here today.

Uh oh.

Some customers always have something to be upset about.

In my experience, customers only ask to speak to a manager if they want to complain about an employee or some perceived injustice.

At this point I’m replaying our interaction in my head, trying to pinpoint exactly what had happened that upset her.

As she made her way to the CS Counter, I began to clean my workstation, trying to subtly keep an eye on the conversation between her and my boss.

Though just barely in my peripheral vision, I saw the woman point a finger in my direction, causing my heart to momentarily stop.

My manager nodded some kind of agreement and the woman walked out of the store.

Nobody likes to get in trouble at work.

At this point I was terrified, worried that I had said or done something worthy of being reprimanded without even realizing it.

I looked over at my manager, giving her a quizzical look, doing my best to remain cool.

She made her way towards me, every footstep causing anxious beads of sweat to gather around my collar.

M: using the most nonchalant tone I could muster What was that all about?

Manager: Well, she just wanted to tell me that you were doing a great job and that she wished everyone she met was as friendly and enjoyable as you and that this is her favorite High-End Grocery location because of how helpful our staff is. So keep up the good work!

Relief washed over me so quickly I felt dizzy.

M: That was sweet of her. I thought I’d managed to make her mad somehow.

Manager: I thought you looked worried, haha. She also wanted me to give you this.

She handed me a gift card with a small, hand-written note folded around it.

What a nice customer!

The note read: “Thank you for making me smile! Enjoy lunch on me today. God bless.”

Even writing this story, I still can’t believe anyone could capable of being so generous ($15 gift card? That’s lunch all week!) and appreciative of just a few nice words and a smile. It’s always nice to know that not everyone thinks of retail workers as mindless drones, put upon this earth to serve them.

It is nice to hear that some customers are actually appreciative of the work retail workers do.

Check out what the people in the comments said about this story.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

I wasn’t expecting this ending either.

This person did something similar.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who makes his boss regret firing him for failing to take the blame for someone else’s error.

This is a great thing to do for hard working employees.

The customer asked for a manager, making OP assume some forgotten mistake was about to come back and bite him.

Instead, she praised his friendliness, left a gift card, and turned a stressful moment into a genuinely sweet retail memory.

Sometimes “manager please” works out to be a happy ending.