Speechless, just speechless.

Noters Beware!! This is a “mean-note” free diary.

I am pretty sure that I encountered the World’s Stupidest Customer today. I say “pretty sure” because you just never know when someone may just top the previous winner. Apparently in Retail-land there is always room for…um….what’s the opposite of improvement???

Anyway, this particular customer is one of our regulars. She is a lady probably in her mid-30’s or so. She has at least 3 children who are teen-aged or nearing it. Today this lady also had her mother in shopping with her. The mother was probably in her mid to late 60’s, I would guess.

These two ladies did their shopping and entered my check-out lane. I rung out the younger lady and had no issues and then proceeded to ring out her mother. Here’s where the issues began. See, Mom only has $20 with her to spend, but has at least $30 worth of stuff in her cart. So, while my line is backing up to 4, then 5, then 6 people, Mom has to decide what to keep and what she wants to put back. One of Mom’s items is a large $3 bottle of Ajax dish liquid. She decides to put that back, but she still needs dish soap, so she decides she will just “run back” and grab a smaller bottle. Now, keep in mind that at my store, we don’t have a function on our registers to put an order on hold so we can wait on the next customer. And the corp. office watches how many times we cancel orders (because it can be a sign of employee theft. Hard to explain, but just roll with it. ) So we try not to cancel orders unless we absolutely have to-like if someone left their wallet at home and has to leave the store. We have no choice then because we cannot tie up a register until he/she returns from their home. So, all I can do is let the lady go get her dish soap while the people in my line stand there waiting. And believe me, her idea of “running back” to get a smaller bottle wasn’t the quickest sprint I have seen. She took her sweet time. I saw her down the aisle looking at a couple other things on the way.

Finally, Mom gets back, her total is $20 to the penny. She couldn’t have done any better money-wise, really. (Speed-wise, yeah, but we’ll let that go for now.) I hand her her receipt and thank her and move on to the next customer.

Now, I need to add here that one of Mom’s other items was a large bottle of Gain laundry detergent. One of the 100 ouncers. A big jug. This was one of the items she decided to keep when we were back playing the “Oh, my total is $30??? But I only have $20!” game.

Finally, I got the rest of my line down to the last customer. But just as I was finishing up, lo and behold, look who’s back!!! It’s the daughter, carrying Mom’s Gain laundry detergent. Our new ad came out today and in it we have our SMALL jugs of Gain on sale for $5. The ones that regularly sell for $6.25. Can you tell where this is going yet??? Yep, you guessed it. Daughter is there to scream at me that I overcharged her mother, because it says in our ad that Gain is on sale for $5! I take the ad and show her it’s only the small bottles. It says how many loads on the bottle and it’s the little jugs. I told her that there were signs on the shelves in front of all the kinds that were on sale and she was welcome to walk back there and see where those were. So we did. All the way to the back of the store we go and voila! When we get there, the big jugs, on the 2 lower shelves have no signs in front of them, but the little jugs on the higher shelves do! Amazing. She was so rude to me from the get-go that I couldn’t resist adding “It would be amazing for a store to give a $6.25 discount on a bottle of soap. I don’t think that stores really do that. That’s an awful lot for stuff to be marked down.” It was my own little “hint-hint. Use your brain, idiot!” I said it very sweetly. I mean, a buck and a quarter off for a sale is pretty good, but over 6 bucks! What was she thinking?? We wouldn’t be able to keep the shelves stocked at that price. For heaven’s sake. It’s only common sense.

So Daughter takes the soap that Mom bought and leaves. I’m thinking “Thank God, she’s gone!” But 20 minutes later, yay-she’s back!!!! This time with a package of Scott tissue. This was one of the daughter’s purchases. She starts screaming at me that I didn’t give her her coupon on her tissue. Can you say, “Here we go again!!!”

Sometimes our store sends ads to the customers in their mailboxes. Those sometimes have coupons attached. However, the ads that are sent to the stores do not have any coupons attached. This is due to the fact that people are greedy and can’t control themselves. If you have ads with coupons where people can just grab them, they will take handfuls. And then all of a sudden you have no coupons left to offer. This is a bad thing when you are supposed to have coupons available up until a certain date. People aren’t happy customers when this happens. So to resolve this issue, our company rarely has coupons in the store anymore. Usually only once or twice a year. They just get mailed in the customers ad and each customer gets one set of coupons. We have no extras. End of story.

Except today. Daughter is mad because I didn’t give her the Scott tissue coupon. She has brought the coupon in with her. This time. She did NOT have it when she went through the line during her first visit. So, I had to explain what I just explained to you. We don’t have extras. The store ads don’t have coupons attached…yadda, yadda, yadda. And even though we are not supposed to refund an item, and then re-ring it so a coupon can be used, in the name of quieting this demon-lady down and good customer service, I offered to do just that….and figured that would be the end of it.

But, no. THEN, she decided to go off on me about bottle deposit. See, in Michigan, all bottles of soda that are carbonated (and cans, too) have a ten-cent deposit on them. Helps keep litter off the roads. This lady all of a sudden, out of nowhere, goes off on a rant that we have been overcharging her on her Coca-cola. She said that we never told her that we charge deposit. She said our sodas were supposed to be $1.15 and that we never told her we charge deposit.

FORCHRISSAKES, LADY!!!!! It’s a state law. EVERYWHERE that sells soda is required to charge a ten-cent deposit per bottle/can!! It’s been that way for years and years and years. This lady isn’t new to the state as she’s been coming into my store for a long time. So, how she missed this one is beyond me. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have to be standing behind my register, explaining the bottle-deposit law to some idiot. I honestly couldn’t help myself this time. I had a hard time doing it without snickering, but I told her “I am so sorry the bottle deposit law confuses you. Let me apologize for that.”

I am sure this lady is going to call my manager and complain tomorrow, but what the hell…she really took the cake. I left my manager a note explaining what all happened, and I know I won’t get into too much trouble for it.

After all, I said everything sweetly and with a smile on my face. And even apologized for the bottle-law.

What a day!