true customer tales: yer outta here!

86'ed my first customer in quite a while this morning.

He was one of those borderline cases, maybe homeless, maybe mental, or maybe just an eccentric with poor hygiene.  He'd been in yesterday looking for bibles and I thought I'd gotten off easy when he found a nice burgundy leatherette one, paid for it without much kerfuffle and left.

Too easy.

He was back in an hour running some game about how the friend he was buying it for was really picky and it had to be a particular color, and he wasn't sure this was the right color, and what color would you call that?

"It's burgundy." I declared with finality.

After another few minutes of argle bargle I cut him off and issued a refund, which should have ended things, except that he turned around at the door and was thinking well maybe it WAS the right color after all and....

"It sounds like you should try Barnes & Noble," I said, walking into the next room to shelve books & hope he took the hint.


This morning he was back, again looking for a bible.  In an effort to be less rigidly judgmental, I let him slide and he brought up another leatherette bible, in navy blue.  This time his hang up was the sales receipt.

"Does the receipt have the name of the store on it? Because I need to have the name of the store on it."
"Yes."
"Well, can I see it?"
"I have to ring the sale first, there's nothing to see until I run it through the register."

So I complete the transaction and hand him the receipt, store name proudly emblazoned across the top.

"But *my* name has to be on there."
"Excuse me?"
"You need to print MY name on there."
I slid the receipt across to him, along with a pen.
"Here ya go, you can write it on there however you like."
"No *you* have to do it."

Things devolved from there.

It's interesting how parenting a contrary toddler has educated me on dealing with kooks who try and power trip retail clerks.  I was able to get him out with a minimum of fuss by refusing to engage and repeating my basic point regardless of what he said- "I don't want the aggravation, so you have to go."