I was reading the Sunday Journal Star and came across this article about customer service. I must admit that Larry the pretzel guy’s response made me chuckle because anyone who has worked any job where you provide customer service has had days when they felt like Larry the pretzel guy. Every job I have every had I have always tried to go above and beyond, all in the name of good customer service. I do have to confess that I have had a “Larry the pretzel guy moment”.

When I was in college I worked at a video store that was across the street from a bar. I dealt with drunks on a regular basis. All the regular customers liked me and I never had a complaint. I even had a customer contact the home office to tell them what a good employee I was. One night I was working when a woman, who had been in earlier, came back with a bag of microwave popcorn that was completely burnt to shit. She told me she purchased the popcorn and it tastes terrible so she wants her money back. We had a no cash refund policy but we would provide store credit. She said no she wanted cash. I explained the policy again and that I could not give her cash. Then she told me the popcorn was expired so I had to give her her money back. I explained again that I could not give her cash only a store credit. She proceeded to show me a product code (not an expiration date) that was on the INSIDE flap of the box. I told her that that was a product code and not an expiration date and told her that I would gladly give her store credit but not cash. She starts screaming about the popcorn being expired and me not giving her cash. Then I had my “moment”. I asked the woman if she had ever eaten cottage cheese. She looked confused so I continued to say that you don’t eat an entire carton of cottage cheese, get to the bottom and find out that it expired three months prior because expiration dates are on the outside of packages not the inside flap. The popcorn wasn’t expired, you burnt it and I am sorry for that but I can not give you cash back only store credit. She snapped. She wanted the manager, who wasn’t there, and she wanted her cash. She told me she would be back to talk to the manager about me and get her money. I kindly wrote down the manager’s phone number and his schedule so she wouldn’t miss him. She never called and never came in to talk to him. Sometimes you just can’t hold it in anymore and she was damn lucky that was all I said to her!