Rude women tries to avoid paying tax at store, cashier maliciously complies.

Working retail during Black Friday might be one of the worst jobs ever. Shoppers are ruder, more violent, and will do anything for a deal. Sometimes the rude deal seekers get a plate of just desserts.

On a popular Reddit thread in the Malicious Compliance Subreddit, a woman making a cashier's life miserable does not get the deal she expects.

She writes:

Years ago, I worked as an assistant manager for a retail store in art supplies. My store was in a relatively affluent area, and we got many bored housewives who’d drop $500 because they wanted a hobby.

So one year, the company offered a 1-day-only coupon for Black Friday. The store was swamped. Saturday was swamped. Sunday was swamped.

I am running a register and trying to get people through as rapidly as possible when SHE arrives. We’ll call her Debbie. Debbie throws three bags of merchandise on my counter and says, 'I want to return all this stuff and rebuy it.'

I say, 'Okay. Can I ask why?' (People sometimes did this because they’d used the wrong payment method or something, but I needed to verify.)

Debbie says, 'I bought all of this stuff on Friday at [store 1500 miles away], and their tax rate is higher. So I want to return all of it and buy it here, to pay lower taxes. Now hurry up. I’ve been driving all day, and I’m tired.'

On a hectic day, this will be a pain over what comes out to about $2.50. I confirm with the other manager, who agrees this is ridiculous, but we must do it. So I start her return.

But the totals don’t match up. So I have to call and talk to the on-call support rep. He tells me I can only refund my state’s tax, not the other amount. The solution is to adjust prices until the tax and totals match manually.

As I’m doing this, Debbie is complaining about how she’s tired from driving, and I’m taking too long, her dog, her feet, her back, whatever. But eventually, I got everything balanced and processed her return.

'Okay, the return has been processed.' Debbie says, 'It’s about time. You’d be done already if you weren’t so stupid. Now I want to repurchase it all.'

Cue malicious compliance part one. The thing about art supplies is they can be small and in multitudes. And that’s what she’d purchased—individual pencils, brushes, pastels, sheets of paper, etc.

I say, 'Sure thing, ma’am. But I want to be certain I ring everything up right. Since I’m dumb.' So, with a sweet smile, I take everything out of the bags and ring them up individually. Of course, some stuff doesn’t scan, so it has to be looked up.

As I go along, she is getting more and more agitated. The insults get more frequent, and now everyone on the other lines glares at her. At last, everything is rung up, and I give her the total.

Cue malicious compliance part two. Remember that coupon from the beginning of the story? The code has been pulled from the system. So her new total, with the reduced tax rate, is significantly higher than the old one.

Debbie loses it and starts screeching; it’s not even words, only noise. I say, 'Sorry, ma’am. But it looks like you used our exclusive coupon on Friday. Unfortunately, that coupon is no longer valid. Your new total will be [total].'

She kept screaming but eventually paid, snatched her items, and left. It was a good day to be in retail.

The internet does not see the logic in this shopper.

jetah says:

Spent more in fuel.

aamurusko79 says:

She must've felt so smart coming up with this plan. or just on a huge power trip. This reminds me of some people I met when I was a cleaner. Since they were the ones whose mess I was cleaning, it apparently enabled them to also consider themselves smarter, more attractive and all around better people than me.

Ironically in some places where they actually had educated people, it tended to be that the higher up the person was, the more mellow they were towards the cleaners. Some of the managers at the lower end of the food chain didn't necessarily even talk to me, while the higher ups would just shoot sh*t with me.

porkchop2021 says:

Was in Publix last week. Lady comes in with a shopping cart half full of meat. Steaks, chicken, pork. She wanted to return it. 'Weird.' Someone had to ask someone for permission because she was still there when I left having her items scanned in.

I go back a few days ago and one of the neighborhood kids (from about five houses down) is scanning my groceries so I ask her what the deal was with the lady returning all that meat?

They buy it on the last day of a sale and then return it the next day. Since they can’t refund at the sale price (no receipt) they have to refund at the current price and it all has to be thrown out. $100 worth of meat yesterday is $130 today.

They buy at store A and return to store B. Next time they buy at Store C and return to store D. Since it’s Florida and there’s 50 Publix’s in the area they can conceivably do this as often as they like.

At the end of the day the house always wins.