As a staff member in a charity shop, who worked closely with handling and checking donations and working the till and dealing with customer complaints, I was used to difficult customers. It was part of the nine-to-five grind of working in a shop at times. Usually, customers complaints are reasonable or down to a simple misunderstanding, with their intentions never meaning to cause upset. However, there are some people whose intentions aren’t so concerned with who their actions impact.
It was two minutes until official closing time of the shop, at 4.58pm on a Tuesday. Having worked at the shop for two months at this stage, I was used to seeing the high street outside moving like a fast conveyer belt of parents pulling their kids along to get home; the kids clutching onto the magazine their parents bought them or the fizzy drink they caved in to buy them. In this blur of bustle one person locked my attention as he stood still like a street mime in the doorway. The reflection of the shop’s lights on his glasses masking his eyes. His stillness catching my attention because usually people move through here like an old living room they know the exact layout of, but he stood with stillness like he was calculating something.
He waited a beat and nodded at me without saying a word, moving at a glacial pace looking through the clothes lines at the back wall of the shop. Usually at this time I relied on my manager to climb out from the bags of donations round the back and close the front door, flipping the white card hanging from a silver chain to read ‘closed’. But today she hadn’t heaved herself up the staircase. I’d just have to deal with this man myself - but I felt he would be harder to deal with than other customers.
The hand hit five and I noticed the man was in no rush to leave. He had jackets and t-shirts slung over his arm, even a kids’ fire engine and a cheap vase in his spare hand. Our usual customers are aware of the time of closing, like its synced with their body clock. I didn’t usually have to bring out my white lie, “I am sorry, sir, but we close at five. Unfortunately we aren’t insured past this time.” The latter is a spiel I found to be like gold dust. The straggling customer always believed it. But this man didn’t even acknowledge what I said to him. His eyes still hidden by the shop’s lights forming a sheet of white over his square glasses. He continued picking out clothes and any small bit of bric-a-brac like it was a car boot sale. I moved to the door and stood there to hopefully nudge his conscience. But he called my bluff; he stood in front of the counter with the same idle menace as when he entered.
I shuffled towards the counter not knowing whether to just be blunt and say, ‘We are closed’ but my guilt kicked me, telling me, ‘What if this man loves this shop so much and he couldn’t get here because he’s been working hard all day.’ I let me inner critic win this time.
“How much for these?” he said.
I could now see his eyes behind the two glass panels that were his glasses, his dark eyes peering at me with authority.
I decided to make the sale quick, so grabbed each item through one at a time under the barcode scanner. I gave him the total amount. He didn’t even contemplate the number, saying, “Do you not do discounts?”
“Not with these items, sorry.”
“I need a discount. I don’t buy these things for myself but for people who need them. Who are poor.” His words weren’t inflected with any emotion, just a banal rehearsed tone to them. As a way of trying to weigh up what decision to make in this situation, I remembered the mother with Alzheimer’s and how the daughter never forced me to retrieve the frying pan.
“I am very sorry - these items are priced way below what you would normally see. That’s all I can do. I am only a staff member.”
“Don’t you care about people who have nothing?”
I felt the words shoot through me. I stuttered and didn’t give a response. His eyes fixed on me. Melting me. He was rooted in his hard-bargaining stance. My moral compass out of sync like a stuttering old watch. I couldn’t solve this mystery of whether he was genuine or not while under this pressure. I also had no idea where my manager was. Why hadn’t she come up here yet?
I looked up past him to the clock. 5.16pm. I said I would be back, “I need to ask the manager about this discount.” I then paced to the back of the shop,and as soon as I peeked around the wall I at least solved one mystery: her head was turned away from me resting on the work bench surrounded by tens of unchecked black sacks. Her breathing slow and consistent. The mundane nature of checking donations must have sent her into a dream of something else. It wasn’t a surprise to see she was counting sheep instead of donations. She hated sorting through each bag, declaring: “If it isn’t Ralph Lauren or another good brand, it isn’t worth keeping.” Like the checking of all these donation bags, I realised I was left on my own to deal with the man at the counter.
I decided I would attempt to end this interaction as fast as I could despite me feeling weak and defeated. I have caved in to this man’s story. I gave him 50% off. He stuffed the items into a haggard Bag for Life and he left the shop without another word. I headed round the back feeling relieved that he had gone but questioning whether this man was going to be greeted at his home by kids/adults who were over the moon to see his gifts, or whether these items would be on sale on the internet the next day. It felt like I had witnessed a robbery and done nothing to stop it.
I collected my bag from the locker in the kitchen behind the shop and noticed my sleeping manager was now sitting upright, about to grab her bags from underneath her workstation bench. She asked why I was still here. I said, “A man refused to leave.”
She rolled her eyes and asked if he was, “short, wore glasses, and asked for a huge discount.”
According to her he had been there a couple of days prior when she had been the last person in the shop. She always caved in and gave him a big discount to get him to leave. He had said he needed a discount “because of my mother who is unwell.”
I had only been working at the shop for two months at this stage but this encounter was a lesson learned. Everyone does build a connection to the shop. But it’s not always an honest one.
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