What's your retail horror story?

I wrote about the wacko customers at my first job here. And part 2 is here.

Well, I work in retail and I have some pretty good horror stories.

My personal favorite happened last year before the Christmas rush. It was just me and my two managers in the store and no customers. Finally, this one guy walked in. He was obviously very high and we could smell him in the back of the store. The store is not that big but still, he was a good thirty feet away and you gotta smoke a lot of pot to be smelled at that distance. He walked over to the body jewelry which is locked up and since I was the closest employee, I went over to help him. When I get over to the cases, he pointed at one odd set of rings we had that were large-ish ovals instead of circles. The conversation went something like this:

Customer: What piercings are those for?
Me: You could use them for a lot of piercings but I think most people would use them for their ears.
Customer: Would they work for nipple piercings?
Me: Uh… I would imagine you could use them for almost anything.
Customer: Because I’m gonna get my nipples pierced. at this point, he lifts up his shirt and points to his nipples
Me: ...
Customer: And I want to get a bunch of those and use them for a male corset piercing.
Me: ...

He continued to chatter on about nipple piercings and corset piercings on men and then just walked out of the store.

I bought my parents a VCR (it was about a grand, back in 83). When I hooked it up, the tape played really badly. The heads were screwed up.
I took it back to the store, and the merchant said he wouldn’t exchange it, and I had to go thru the manufacturer to fix it.
I set the machine on the counter, and told him I refused to take it.
I then called the Visa card people, and they said the merchant denied I returned it, and they could not take the charge off my card.
I went to the store, and the merchant denied that I had ever been there since buying the product. I grabbed the salesman who helped me when I returned it, and he just looked at me and said “don’t involve me in this…I need this job.”
So, I have a huge bill, and no VCR.
I went home and set up my stuff.
I called the merchant, and begged him to just give me the item back.
He fussed a bit, then agreed to give me the vcr back, but not fixed.
I told him to fix it first.
He told me I had no proof I brought it back, and he would tell Visa I didn’t return it. He would only give me back the machine if I brought him cash.
I hung up on him, and turned off the tape recorder. I wrote to Visa, and told them I had a tape where the merchant admitted he had the machine. They canceled the charges, and canceled their card acceptence at his store. In two months, he was out of business.

I work in retail. I could type stories about meth heads and shoplifters until my fingers turned black and fell off.

Just today, I had a lady with a black eye and what appeared to be a drug problem looking at wedding rings. She got mad at the clerk for whatever reason and called her a bitch and a fat hooker. I told her my clerk wasn’t going to take her verbal abuse and escorted her to the door.

My favorite thing that’s happened lately is a couple that bought a window AC and then moved after about a month. They didn’t need the unit anymore. They decided to bring it back to the store to get a refund. I told them that we couldn’t return it just because they didn’t want it anymore. It was unsellable as it was dirty and had been used. They pitched a fit, so I called my store manager. I explained to him what was going on and he said to the customers, “We really don’t do equipment rental here.” The looks on their faces was priceless. They left with their used AC in tow.

Oh, I love this question. I have worked retail in a very popular imports store for about 10 years now. I pretty much grew up with retail (I started when I was 18).
I have many horror stories but more odd customer stories.
One of my favorites:
I was the manager on duty (I was an assistant manager). A man entered the store and asked a sales associate who our regional manager was. He told him. The customer then approached me and told me “Sam” (our regional manager at the time- I later found out he got this name from the associate) told him he could enter any of our stores and tell the manager he bought 5 $25 dollar candles and immediately be given 125 in cash w/o the product or a receipt b/c his candles were defective. Obviously this was shady. So, I told him “o.k. I will just need your license to process the return in the back”. He said alright. So, I took his ID in the office, called the customer helpline and found out from them that he has a history of doing this. Once, they told me, he even waited until after hours and “jumped” the employees at another store. Then they told me, even though he has a history of harming employees, not to appease him and tell him he can not have any money or even a home office check issued to him (which would have been fine- they could have voided it later). So, I did. When I told him he was FURIOUS and got very close to my face and called me a bimbo and my associate a “weeny head”. He then ran through the store knocking down all the fixtures and products and had (what I would have guessed at the time) to be some type of drug reaction or “roid rage”. Seriously, he went crazy. Customers were freaking out and hiding children.

Not to go on forever but I guess the most recent and short example would be some crazy customer that complained about a candle. We sell a candle called “Ocean”. This woman picked it up, sniffed it, and then approached a co-worker to complain that, in fact, that candle does not smell like the ocean. She was serious.

@jenandcolin But… Candles that smell like the actual ocean smell like rotting fish and kelp… Nobody wants that smell…