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Buying something from a clearance section can feel like a real bargain. After all, the price is significantly marked down as the store seeks to clear the stock to make space for some new merchandise, so – especially if you actually needed the item in question – you can get some really good deals.

However, those deep discounts come at quite the gamble. Because when you buy clearance products, should you change your mind later, the chances are the store won’t accept a return – because they were trying to clear out that stock, after all.

But when the store employee in this story started processing an older guy’s refunds, she noticed that he was trying to return an item that had been on clearance when he’d purchased it. So naturally, she declined the return on that item, noting the store’s policy. But the guy wasn’t about to take no for an answer, taking that as the cue to launch a huge tirade.

Read on to find out what happened next.

Man is outraged he can’t return clearance item that “doesn’t work.”

I work in the returns department of a home furnishing store, and today this older man comes up and has a bunch of things he wants to return.

I notice one of the items is clearance, so I tell him unfortunately I can’t return that as all sales are final on clearance items.

The item is a small suction cup hook, and the customer claims it doesn’t stick to the glass.

When I tell him I can’t return it he gets angrier and angrier and says I have to return it because it doesn’t work.

Let’s see what happened next.

I end up calling the manager and he yells at them and something wonderful happens.

A nearby customer (around in his late twenties or early thirties) starts berating the customer for yelling at us and telling him to shut up and leave us alone.

He and the guy quarrel for a bit and I accidentally let out a stifled laugh at how amazing but hilarious this is, luckily nobody notices.

They even found the error in his argument.

The younger customer even brought a piece of glass to demonstrate the suction cup sticks, and the guy says that doesn’t count because it loses suction after five mins.

Eventually after he’s tired himself out from his whole ‘I’ve spent thousands of dollars here and driven twenty miles from so and so’ he’s like ‘fine take it I don’t want it’ and I process the return for his other items.

Dude still berated the manager as he left though.

Sometimes people just really aren’t worth the time and effort you have to put into dealing with them.

But kudos to the other customer, who didn’t stand for the older guy’s bad attitude.

At least he helps restore a little faith in humanity.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought that the customer was absolutely not always right.

While others were confused about why non-functional products wouldn’t be refunded.

And this Redditor had been in a similar situation to the older guy.

Look, it sucks that the guy was in a position in which his return was refused. Of course, clearance items can’t be returned – that’s a fairly standard policy across the world, and something that most folk are very used to.

But, for the most part, if those clearance items are damaged or faulty, they should still be accepted as a return for a full refund.

Because the customer purchased an item on sale doesn’t mean that they were willingly or knowingly purchasing something that doesn’t work as intended, and thus these broken things can still legally be returned in most countries, regardless of the discount.

However frustrated he might have been at the returns policy, though, that does not give this customer any excuse at all to be yelling at the workers.

They didn’t make the rules, and it could cost them their jobs not to follow the rules. In fact, they get no say at all in how returns are accepted or facilitated; they just have to do as they’re told. And yelling at them isn’t going to change that; all it’s going to do is hurt their feelings or – more likely – make you look like an idiot.