Ooh so many from my days in retail. Will try & remember my favourites. Worked at a MN favourite type clothes shop for almost 4 years, 3 as a manager.
The weirdest was someone who shouted at my boss, because my boss had greeted her in passing- mouthed morning- whilst on the phone. Said she was rude and it was unacceptable to the people on the phone... who had put my boss on hold.
People who scream first & show you the offending item later 9/10 times bought it in a different shop or have trashed it beyond reasonable wear & tear/intended purpose. I worked for a brand in their own store but we had concessions in different department store chains. People got incredibly nasty when we couldn't really refund them for an item bought from John Lewis, complete with John Lewis receipts. I think my branch used to good will do it for faulties with receipts as we decided faulty was faulty, goodwill could make lives easier and HO would have done something anyway as brand customers, but we would photocopy the receipt if it was multiple item & we couldn't keep it because we had audits to account for and needed PoP! Some people got very precious that we had a copy of their receipt on file.
A customer who was always a bit precious was refunding stuff she'd bought online because it hadn't suited. Chucked a wobbler, however at getting the £180 she'd paid back. She'd bought £200 of stuff and the company had automatically applied the "£20 off if you spend £100 and over" offer on the website so kept complaining that since she'd spent £200, she really only should have paid £160. Her receipt/paperwork showed the individual amount paid for each item and cited reason for reduction and the offer was indeed £20 off over £100 not £20 off per £100.
I explained this about 4 times, she would not have it and kept complaining she'd been misled and should have only paid £160- which she kept pointing out was much better value for money. She only shut up when I pointed out that she should complain to customer services about it, not me who had no control over it, but I could find a way to only give her £160 back if it helped? Stupid bitch.
Also my absolute favourite- the tiny holes people. Someone wanted to buy some jeans off the sale rail. Pockets tacked closed as is standard for new items. Someone/repeated try ons had obvs caused the thread in one to come loose. Customer & her late teens/early 20s Dd asked why one pocket was deep, one shallow- clearly hoping it was a fault and could result in more money off. Explained it was just tacking & perfectly normal. They declined the item because there would be "tiny holes" left where the thread had been! Yes- like on every other thing you've ever bought including the clothes you're wearing!
Someone was 5p short of a voucher offer minimum spend. Voucher was old & I only agreed to honour it out of goodwill- we'd been told not to take them anymore but she was quite nasty. Woman REALLY pushed her luck trying some trick with faulty items- either or voucher £off or faulty %off not both, dems the rules- and then lost her shit because I wouldn't sell her a 5p plastic bag to hit the magic number. I COULDN'T sell her a placcy bag because ours were still free- I had no way of putting it through the till and it wouldn't have counted anyway. She then screamed at me and made me cry by saying I had a judgy face and looked at her funny (was racking brain trying to suggest the cheapest possible thing she'd like that would go through the till) and I don't think the dogshit on my shop doorstep that evening was a coincidence. She was furious I wouldn't get myself in trouble with audit or be defrauded, basically.
Unluckily for her I rang my area manager - in tears- before customer services did and whilst I think we officially apologised, nothing happened internally because they recognised some people are fraudulent, spiteful cunts.
Someone else got chatting to my sales assistant whilst paying for loads of stuff & found they lived near each other. SA left a tag on by accident. This woman rang up the next day to complain- so far, not unreasonable- and demanded that "Jane" personally visit her house to detag said item. Err, no. When I worked for another company- subsidy division of a huge sports fashion brand, claims to be sports shoe royalty- we didn't detag without a receipt, they were shit hot on loss prev, and someone actually threw a t-shirt back to land in my face for this.
Got shouted at for refusing a full price refund on an item which had subsequently gone in to sale and the customer had no receipt. Dems the rules. Once she flounced off, the next three people in queue agreed she was a knobber and asked if I was ok.
We had a collection featuring bees. All the merchandising was centered around bees. We had bees everywhere including on the product. Someone returned a scarf they'd picked up from the bee collection rails, because they hadn't noticed the bees on the item til they got home and they had a phobia of them. Fair enough but they'd walked around the day before in a shop full of bee-things with no drama!