Cashiers often work the front lines, encountering difficult customers of all kinds. This one, however, hit a new low.
After throwing his receipt at an employee in anger, he soon found himself digging straight to the bottom of a dusty trash bin to get it back.
Read on for the full story!
I worked at a hardware store about seven years ago.
We sold big gas bottles (11kg or 24 in “freedom units” of LPG). If you brought in an empty bottle, we would give you a filled one in exchange for a price.
The employee explains the process.
How it worked was that the customer came to the checkout, expressed their wishes on what kind of bottle they needed, and paid. The gas bottles were given to them outside the store at a loading station for bigger goods.
The checkout machine would automatically print two receipts: one normal receipt and one the customer would hand over to a worker in the loading station outside the store as proof they paid for the gas.
Receipts were pretty important to the business, but customers didn’t usually think so.
By law, we had to always verbally offer a receipt to every customer. This was to prevent selling things under the table, and a cashier could get fined if they didn’t offer a receipt.
A lot of customers automatically denied having the receipt and would just tell you, “No receipt, thanks,” before you even opened your mouth.
Some would take the receipt but drop it directly in the trash bins right after the checkout.
But some people aren’t satisfied with politely discarding their receipts.
In comes the villain: a middle-aged man who wanted to exchange his empty bottle for a filled one.
He was being a generic jerk and barely acknowledged me, the cashier in my mid-twenties.
He paid and took the receipts. Then, he crumpled them up and threw them at me, saying he didn’t need a receipt.
The employee is incredulous at this point.
Working in customer service was not a peak career point, and, as every sane person knows, customers are often wrong.
However, never had I been disrespected so much that someone would throw a piece of trash at me.
In kicks the malicious compliance.
It turns out, the customer really did need this receipt.
I knew the dude needed the receipt to get what he paid for. I took the receipt ball he had made, dropped it quietly into the big trash bin next to me, and started helping the next customer in line.
The disrespectful man took a few steps away, realized his mistake, and said he actually needed the receipt back.
So he was going to have to work to get it back.
I was already busy with the next customer, so with the brightest smile and happiest tone, I said, “Sure! It’s in here!” and handed the trash bin to him.
Divine justice had also arranged it so that we had recently cleaned the checkout floors and emptied the dust into the trash bin.
He had to hand-pick his receipt ball from the middle of gray dust, old chewing gum, and whatever yucky stuff had ended up in the huge bin.
Turns out, that little exercise resulted in a huge attitude adjustment. Win!
I’m glad to say the jerk turned a lot nicer and lost his demeaning attitude as he was shuffling through the trash.
There’s nothing quite as humbling as being elbow-deep in a dirty trashcan.
What did Reddit think?
For some customers, their entitlement knows no bounds.
This customer played dirty, but this server played dirtier.
Anything for the customer.
Shame can be good for a person.
Let’s hope this customer learned a valuable lesson in respect. After all, when you trash someone else’s dignity, it can leave you sifting through your own mess.
Looks like both his receipt and his pride were crumpled that day.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
