I work in a high-end art supplies store. We carry many items that are high quality, hence not cheap or inexpensive at all.

I’m ending my shift and saying goodbye to my colleague (I’m also in a bit of a rush) when I see a lady looking at me like she needs help immediately, so I decide to go see if I can rapidly help before going (always a mistake!).

She points at her daughter, a girl who could be at most twenty years old, and loudly says:

Customer: “SHE has to find a gift for her father-in-law! He paints!”

I start showing them a beautiful handmade sketchbook, it’s a great item, beautiful gift, that is usually much appreciated when I receive that kind of request, it’s the “go to” option which I use to convince people immediately, but she’s not listening to me. 

She points somewhere else.

Customer: “How about those pencils?”

Me: “Sure, these are watercolor pencils, and the price is [price].”

Customer: “Wow! That’s a lot! And are you sure they are watercolor?”

I almost start to laugh and say:

Me: “Well, yes, we do use these every day. I can show you how they work.”

The daughter, very embarrassed, says:

Customer’s Daughter: “Mom! She works here, she knows!”

Customer: “Well, you never know… and what is that thing?”

Me: “That is a watercolor set with a watercolor tin by [top brand]. Price is [three times the pencils].”

She is appalled.

Customer: “WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE?!”

I explain that quality goes with price and the watercolor tin alone is half the cost of the set. She can’t believe it.

She then points to a luxury wooden box, with even more pencils in it than the previous set.

Me: “Well, ma’am, that is [higher price].”

Customer: “Oh my God! They sure didn’t look that expensive!”

The daughter looks even more embarrassed, of course, and I start my spiel again about professional quality, materials, and so on, but she’s not convinced.

At a certain point, she starts telling my colleague and me, who want to save me and send me home, that she used to come in all the time, but the shop was different.

Customer: “When did you open here?”

Me: “Seventeen years ago.”

Customer: “Impossible, I used to come here ten years ago; it was a different shop, with a different name.”

We are honestly speechless; the daughter is even more uncomfortable and tries to take us back to the real purpose of the visit.

Customer’s Daughter: “So, tell me more about the sketchbook.”

We go back to how beautiful it is, how it reflects our history, and it’s usually very much appreciated by artists. The mom is still blabbing about the fact that the shop had a different name and we are surely wrong, because she used to come in ALL THE TIME.

At this point, I find a way to excuse myself and leave them to my colleague.

The lady is nice, just very oblivious, and tells me she noticed I was in a rush and let me go.

In the end, I was told they decided on the sketchbook.

While they were paying, my colleague repeated that it’s all handmade.

Customer: “Yeah, yeah, it’s beautiful and everything, but nowadays we know that everything is MASS PRODUCED!”

My colleague facepalmed, and the daughter dragged her mom out, while she was still asking herself what the name of the shop was ten years ago, because she used to work ON THE SAME STREET and used to come in ALL THE TIME!”

A lady came in with a pretty amateur-looking painting she had made of a dog.

Customer: “What kind of paint can I buy to make it look more realistic?

Me: “Hmm, well, looking at this, it doesn’t necessarily need a specific kind of paint, but some shading and texture. If you—”

Customer: “—I did all that!”

Instead, I bring her to the instructional book area.

Customer: *Offended.* “I don’t want a book! I want paint to make it better!”

Me: “We don’t really sell those.”

Customer: “Ugh! Who does?”

Me: “I don’t think anyone does.”

Customer: “Why?”

Me: “Because you want self-painting paint.”

Customer: “Ugh! Useless. I’m gonna go try Blicks!”

Customer: “I need help with these glasses.”

Me: “Ma’am, we are an art supply store. But you’re in luck, because I used to work as an optician, so I might be able to help you anyway.”

Customer: “Perfect! See, I just picked up these prescription glasses for my son, and they’re all wrong.”

She shows me a case with a brand new pair of glasses with a shiny black plastic frame.

Me: “Wrong how…?”

Customer: “They’re the wrong color! You see, they’re black when they were supposed to be blue!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you want me to do about that. That is definitely something you should take up with the optician you got them from. It sounds like they messed up your order, so it would be on them to fix it.”

Customer: “Oh, no, I ordered the black ones because the optician said these frames don’t come in blue. My son picked these even though he wanted blue glasses, so I am going to surprise him and make them blue!”

Me: “If your son picked these, don’t you think he liked them the way they are?”

Customer: “Don’t be ridiculous, he doesn’t like black! Blue is his favorite color, so I will find a way to make them blue. Now, how do you think I should go about this?”

Me: “Alright, I will try to figure something out for you here. But let me point out that I strongly advise against messing with your son’s glasses in any way. Especially considering these are brand new, if you modify them in any way and it turns out the prescription isn’t quite right for your son, your optician will most definitely refuse to exchange the glasses.”

Customer: “It’s going to be fine, don’t worry. Just tell me how I can paint the glasses!”

Me: “Alright. First of all, I recommend only painting the outside of the frames, where they don’t come into permanent direct contact with your son’s skin. Also, these are high-gloss plastic frames, so you will need to sand the surface so that any color you put on will have a chance to stick. Then you will have to paint them, and finally, you will need a clear gloss varnish to protect the paint. And even then, I cannot guarantee that the paint will actually last.”

Customer: “Sand them?! No, that’s far too much work. I was thinking more along the lines of blue tape.”

Me: “Tape won’t last at all, Ma’am.”

Customer: “Then what about acrylic markers?”

Me: “That’s the same as using normal acrylic paint. The surface of the frames is way too smooth for any kind of paint to stick. You’d be able to scrape it right off with your fingers.”

Customer: “What about felt-tip pens then?”

Me: “Those are water-soluble, so they will come right off with a bit of sweat and natural oils from your skin. Not to mention, felt-tip pens don’t work on plastic.”

Customer: “Well, you’re not being any help at all. I feel like you don’t want me to get creative with these glasses at all!”

What tipped her off?

Customer: “I’ll just have a look around the store myself. I’m sure I will find something that works!”

And off she goes. As the store is pretty quiet at this time, my boss (who is the sole owner of the store) and coworker have both been able to listen to the conversation I just had. My coworker is now standing next to me as we watch the customer walk back and forth between the aisles, wondering what unhinged idea she will come up with next. Eventually, the customer returns to us with the smug air of someone who has no idea what they’re doing.

Customer: “I found the perfect thing!”

Me: “…Ma’am, that’s wax. For decorating candles.”

Customer: “I know, it’s exactly what I need! Candles are smooth, and the wax sticks to them with no problem.”

Me: “Wax is also soft and malleable at room temperature.”

Customer: “I’m sure there’s a way to make it harden. Maybe I can put it in the oven, like those oven-bake clays!”

Me: “…”

Customer: “Now you’re speechless! Hah! I knew I’d figure this out.”

Me: “Ma’am… please humor me here: What happens to wax when it gets hot?”

Customer: “It melts. …. Oh.”

Me: “Yup. And before you go back to that oven-bake clay idea—”

Customer: “—I wasn’t! I was just going to use ceramic paint pens!”

Me: “Those also need to be baked into the material in the oven. And what do you think happens to plastic, the material those glasses are made of, when it gets hot?”

Customer: “Now you’re just making me sound stupid. Fine, I’ll take the paint you suggested first. But I won’t do the sanding! That’s just ridiculous.”

Me: “Certainly.”

I show her the outdoor weather and corrosion-resistant acrylic paint. The customer picks a blue shade and struts off to the registers, where my boss is waiting to ring her out.

Boss: “Hi there! I heard you talking to my employee and that she expressly advised you against this project. I trust and support her judgement on this. Please also keep in mind that paint is non-returnable. I still hope you’re successful with your art project anyway.”

You’d think that would be it, right? Wrong! That was only part one. This part of the story, I only got to hear about via my boss and colleague, as I was on lunch break when this happened:

Lo and behold, a few days later, the customer returns in a sour mood and walks up to my boss at the registers.

Customer: “I want to return this paint I bought a few days ago.”

Boss: “I’m sorry; as I told you when you bought this, paint is non-refundable.”

Customer: “But I didn’t even use it! My son got home before I got to painting his new glasses and said he didn’t want them to be blue! He liked the black ones, can you believe it?”

Boss: “Be that as it may, I still can’t refund the paint. Maybe your son can use it for his next art project at school.”

Customer: “No! I don’t need this paint, and you have to refund it!”

Boss: “I do not. You wanted blue paint; this is blue paint. You bought it even after my employee and I both advised against it. I am not taking it back.”

Customer: “You will! And I will keep standing right here until you do!”

Boss: “Sure, go ahead. We close in about five hours, so you will be standing for a while.”

She ushers the other customers in line to the next registers, literally three feet to the right, to cash them out, and proceeds to ignore the now sulking customer. The customer lasts for all of five minutes before she snaps and stomps her foot.

Customer: “THIS IS RIDICULOUS! REFUND ME NOW!”

Boss: “Absolutely not.”

Customer: “I WILL SUE YOU! JUST WAIT UNTIL MY LAWYER HEARS ABOUT THIS!”

Boss: “I’m sure he’ll be delighted over this much drama over a 4€ bottle of paint.”

Customer: “I WILL NEVER COME BACK HERE AGAIN!” *Storms out.*

Boss: “Good riddance.”

Other Customer In Line: “I will definitely be back. You don’t get this kind of entertainment elsewhere!”

At this point, I return from my lunch break, having heard the screaming.

Me: “What happened here?”

Colleague: “You’ll never believe who didn’t want their blue paint after all…”

We had a repeat customer from Hell who unfortunately checked all the boxes of the typical entitled American customer, including the bit about Americans refusing to learn any language other than English – but that was the least of the problems we had with him, as I’m fluent, and my boss’ English skills are also pretty good due to having family in the US. 

This customer would come in every other week, demand instant attention from the staff, make ridiculous demands, but never listen to our responses (or just deeming them unsatisfactory and would thus make up his own answers), never put any item back where it came from, and just all around treat us employees like his personal slaves. I could go on about him for ages, but this is going to be about the instance that finally got him banned from our store.

As always, our customer comes in and head straight to the aisle with the high-quality brand watercolours and brushes. The shelves with the singular little dishes of colour come with clear plastic rails that hold strips of paper with printed-on colour swatches. In addition, we have an easily accessible booklet with actual painted colour swatches that are perfectly accurate to the colours you buy. The customer has been told before to always use the booklet to compare and choose the colours he wants.

Customer: *Points at the plastic rails.* “How am I supposed to tell the colors apart when this plastic is so old that it’s turning yellow? I keep telling you that you need to fix this, and you never do. How is this store even still in business when you’re this negligent?”

Me: “Sir, I know we’ve told you before, but I’ll explain again: We got these rails exchanged just a few months ago. But as they are right next to the window, the sunlight WILL yellow them, no matter what. Also, these colour swatches aren’t accurate anyway; they’re more for us staff to make restocking a little easier. If you are looking for colour swatches, please use this booklet here. It has swatches of every available colour, painted as-is, diluted with water, and mixed with white, respectively.”

Customer: “That’s not good enough! The swatches need to be accurate on the shelf!”

Me: “Sorry, that’s impossible. But if you go by the booklet, I guarantee you’ll find exactly the colour you’re looking for. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

Customer: “No, I’m fine. I know more about this than you anyway.”

Me: “…Of course. I’ll be over by the registers if you have any questions.”

About fifteen minutes pass during which the customer rummages around in his corner between rambling and loud phone calls. Suddenly, I hear a loud noise from his end of the store and immediately go to check it out. The customer is coming towards me as I’m halfway through the store, looking annoyed.

Me: “What happened? Are you okay?”

Customer: “I’m fine, I just dropped something. But I’m ready to pay now.”

I return to the register with him, where I scan his purchases. Notably, he has a somewhat more expensive metal paintbox that comes with twelve pre-selected dishes of artist-grade watercolour in his shopping basket, an item that always comes sealed in plastic. This one is no longer sealed, and I have to rummage through his basket to even find the plastic with the barcode on it to be able to scan it.

Then, on a whim, because the packaging has been opened, I open the paintbox to check if it’s complete. And what do I find? TWELVE DIFFERENT colours and an expensive paintbrush, neither of which is part of this paintbox. I look up and just stare at the customer.

Customer: “Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the paintbrush. I didn’t want it to get damaged outside of the box.”

Me: “The paintbrushes come with protective plastic. And those are NOT the colors that come with this set, either.”

Customer: “Yeah, I put the original ones in the basket because these are the ones I want in there.”

Me: *Sighs.* “Okay, fine. This will take a while now, because I have to check if the original colours are all there and then ring these ones out one by one.”

I give him the benefit of the doubt with the paintbrush and check whether all the colours from the paintbox are there, then ring out all his items. He leaves pretty quickly afterwards (unusual) with just a small parting shot about how we “don’t know anything about running a business” and should “hire him as a consultant”. Pretty tame for him.

Finally, I go back to the watercolour aisle to see what needs restocking, and find myself in what can only be described as a warzone. One of the wooden shelves with the watercolour dishes is partially collapsed, with hundreds of the small dishes strewn across the floor of the entire aisle in a three-metre radius. I quickly figure out how this could happen:

Our dear customer decided he didn’t like using the swatch booklet and instead tore the printed swatch strips out of the plastic rails on the shelf. However, he somehow managed to tear off some of the rails, which also serve to hold the watercolour dishes in place. I can only assume that in an attempt to stop all the items from sliding off the shelf, he also somehow managed to dislodge some of the boards holding the product, which then collapsed onto the boards below and knocked the colours below down as well.

Fortunately, as watercolour is really just pigment and binding agent poured into small plastic containers, all individually packaged, none of the items are broken. I managed to fix the shelf too, though we have to order new plastic railings from the manufacturer. 

Picking up all the spilled little watercolour dishes and sorting them back onto the shelf by colour (based on tiny printed-on serial numbers) takes me over an hour. They are small and they are SO. MANY.

My boss comes in as I’m about halfway through tidying up the aisle, and I regale her with the story of what I assume happened here. She is furious. And I see a chance in mentioning the opened packaging of the paintbox and the paintbrush inside the box. At this point, my boss only tells me to call her the next time I notice the customer coming in.

About two weeks later, he’s back, and my boss happens to be the one to approach him first as well. She stays within view of him, casually ‘straightening shelves’ during his entire shopping, and then rings him out but doesn’t immediately hand over his bag of purchases.

Boss: “My employee also informed me of what happened last time you were here. I do not stand for such behavior from our customers. From now on, you can take your business elsewhere. Dealing with you is far more trouble than your purchases here are worth.”

Customer: “Are you banning me?!”

Boss: “Yes. I do not want to see you in my store again. Have a nice day.”

Customer: “FINE! THIS STORE IS S*** ANYWAY! I’LL GET MY SUPPLIES SOMEWHERE WHERE THEY KNOW HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS!”

He stormed out, and I thought I had seen the last of him, but what do you know? He returned another two weeks later with his tail between his legs, asking to speak to my boss.

Turns out he realized that we were the only ones having the art supplies he needed regularly available within a several-hour drive, so he tried to apologize to my boss so she would un-ban him. Too bad for him that my boss has a backbone of steel and is the walking, breathing example of ‘do no harm but take no s***’. She told him he “should have thought of that earlier,” and sent him on his way, and we were finally free of our most annoying customer.

In our arts and craft supply store, we also repair people’s jewellery (if it’s a simple enough fix) as we have the tools to do so. The way this works is that the customer leaves their piece of jewellery – mostly necklaces with broken closures – with us for an hour or so, and we replace what’s broken at the retail cost of the spare part(s) + a small fee for our time. We always take the customer’s phone number so we can give them a call when the repair job is done, or should we have realized that the repair is outside of our capabilities after all? 

This customer, an old lady, had brought in her necklace for repair a month earlier. We fixed it within an hour, but the customer had refused to leave a phone number as she claimed she was going to come in again later that day to pick up her necklace – well, she didn’t. It was almost a full month before she came back.

Customer: “I’m here for my necklace. You guys probably thought you could steal it and I’d just forget about it if you didn’t give me a call!”

Me: “Ma’am, I have no use for your necklace, as you can see, I have my own ones. You simply didn’t leave us your phone number as you said you would be back within the day to pick up your belongings.”

Not to mention that her necklace was a) worthless, dull glass beads, b) hideous, and c) disgustingly caked in makeup. None of us staff wanted to touch that thing without gloves.

Customer: “You should have called me anyway! This is awful service!”

She kept griping for a few more minutes until my boss and the owner of the store (an awesome lady) managed to calm down the customer, check her out, and send her on her way. But it’s not quite over yet!

Another week or so later, the customer is back, her necklace in pieces and the closure completely broken and warped. This damage could by no means happen from our repair just coming undone. Someone must have yanked at the necklace so hard that I’m surprised the customer isn’t showing any bruises around her neck.

Customer: “Look at what you did to my necklace! You were supposed to fix it, but you made it worse! You need to fix it, and I want my money back!”

Me: “We did fix it. It was in one piece when it left the store last time. You were even wearing it. What happened?”

Customer: “You gave it to me like this! You dirty thieves thought I wouldn’t notice! You probably think I’m stupid!”

Me: “Actually, up until now, I just thought you were confused. But now that you mention it…”

Customer: *Gasps like a fish out of water.* “YOU CAN’T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT!”

My boss, who has been standing next to me all this time and knows about the previous encounters with this customer:

Boss: “I’ll allow it. And don’t YOU talk to MY GIRL like that. The necklace was fixed when you picked it up. How you managed to destroy it like that is beyond me, but we’re not dealing with it again. Since you’re so unhappy with our service, I recommend you bring it to an actual jeweller for repairs. There’s one across the street. They charge about [amount easily eight times what we ask for].”

Customer: “WHAT?! No! YOU messed this up; YOU need to fix it!”

Boss: “Nope. We already did, then you broke it again, and now you’re trying to blame us. We’re done here. You can leave.”

Customer: “But I—”

Boss: “NO. Out. Now.”

And she did indeed leave. My boss then turns to me.

Boss: “She really was stupid, wasn’t she?”