'Ten thousand pennies... And she'd just committed to carrying them': Client asks repair shop workers "Do you know who I am?" and insists on paying large bill with change

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Sep 15, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

Some customers won't ever be happy with the work your company does, no matter how well you actually do on their project. Take this woman, for example. She decided to take a broken electronic to an electronics repair store. The OP writes that this customer "didn't like the bill. She didn't like the work. She claimed that we'd broken something else." Nothing they did was good enough for this cantankerous customer.  

The incident was a great lesson for the young folks who the OP employed to work at their electronics store. People tend to follow your actions, not always your words. The kids got a masterclass in how to kindly deal with a disagreeable client---now they know for next time! 

Read the story below for a cautionary tale about what happens when you plot out some malicious compliance or petty revenge without thinking through the consequences. Turns out that massive bags of coins are heavy! This is a lesson you'd know if you've ever emptied your piggy bank and took it to a coinstar, which this client clearly never did. 

Next up, these teachers spilled the tea about their most pretentious students, who thought they knew everything by the time they arrived at school in September. 

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  • 01
    Font - Malicious Compliance to Malicious Compliance L OC I run a repair shop where I employ a bunch of local kids (ages 16+) to learn skills and make some money while we generally sit around and talk about the world while we fix things.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 02
    Font - We had a client come in with a busted electronic; we fixed it up for her and gave her a decent discount on the work; her final bill for parts and four hours of labor was a hundred dollars even, discounted down from two- hundred and twenty.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 03
    Font - She didn't like the bill. She didn't like the work. She claimed that we'd broken something else. She claimed that the kid who did the work didn't know what she was doing (she did, and I had supervised her) and that the kid who helped her in the front room was rude to her (he wasn't, but she didn't like the little pride flag pin he was wearing). She demanded to see the manager, so I popped out, listened to her tear into my kids, validated how she was feeling, but pointed out that the work
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 04
    Font - The last straw for her came when she pulled out a credit card and I had to inform her that we don't accept that particular card. She literally asked me "Do you know who I am?" (which I didn't, still don't, don't care), and I told her we'd take a personal check. She wrote out a check, problem solved. I deposited the day's checks, and got a note from my bank that one had bounced. Her check, of course.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 05
    Font - I called her the next day to inform her that her check had been returned for insufficient funds, and that she'd need to come in and pay her bill, plus the extra fee for a returned check. All of these fees, just to point this out, were clearly outlined on the service agreement she'd signed - and we'd already discounted her a hundred and twenty dollars, just to be nice. Anyway.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 06
    Font - She rolls up into the office carrying a bag, and I knew exactly what was going on. She drops - of course - a bag of pennies on the front desk. She's breathing heavily - we're on the second floor and she'd taken the stairs - and she announces triumphantly that she's here to pay her bill. She just needs to go get the rest of our "hard-earned money" (said with a sneer, of course). The kid at the front desk looks like he's about to cry, so I stop working on the thing I'm working on and take o
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 07
    Font - "How many more bags do you have?" I ask her, and she says that the nice people at the bank loaded them up in her car. She didn't count them. I told her that was fine, we'd wait for her to bring them all up and then settle up her bill. She was expecting a bigger reaction, I think - either that or she hadn't thought this through.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 08
    Font - Ten thousand pennies, plus the extra twenty-five dollars, weighs a lot. And she'd just committed to carrying them through a parking lot and up a flight of stairs. One of my kids, bless his heart, offered to help her carry them. She refused. Finally, shaking and sweaty, she deposited the last of the bags on the countertop. The pennies were loose, not in coin-rolls. She'd done some work to prove her point.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 09
    Font - What she hadn't counted on was that we'd need to count the pennies. While the other kids took care of other clients and fixed things in the back, the front-desk guy and I counted up the pennies. She started to realize that this was going to take a while, and tried to leave; I told her that she couldn't leave until we'd signed off on her bill, since at this point she was in violation of her service agreement and had passed a bad check, we couldn't just take her word for it, and I would inf
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 10
    Font - the shop came and went, and we counted. Phone calls came in and were handled by my kids, and we counted. She sat down in a chair (folding steel, not super- comfortable), stood up again, walked around the office, and we counted. After a while, she said "Just forget it," and took out a hundred and twenty-five dollars in bills. We signed off on her agreement and she started to leave.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 11
    Font - Another one of my kids, bless his heart, asked her if she wanted help carrying the pennies back to her car. She looked at all of us with a face of sheer panic, mumbled "no, thank you, just keep them," and bolted.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 12
    Font - The whole shop was silent for a moment. Then one of the kids started giggling, and nobody could stop. People coming in thought we'd gone nuts, and I finally had to banish everybody to the back room until they could breathe again. We loaded the bags into my vehicle - we used the elevator she'd walked by a few times - took them to the bank and used the coin machine to deposit them, then wrote out a donation to our local shelter for the amount she'd dropped off.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 13
    Font - She posted something nasty on facebook about it and got ratio'd; she had, of course, posted earlier about what she was going to do and she got called out with her own post. My favorite response was something like "You said you were going to pay your bill in pennies, you paid your bill in pennies - what went wrong?" Please don't pay your bills in pennies, folks. Especially if you're just doing it to be a di
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 14
    Font - ✪ [deleted] we used the elevator she'd walked by a few times I am at work so am having a difficult time holding in my laughter. What an amazing cherry on top.
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  • 15
    Font - PracticalDadAdvice OP. Yeah. It was just a little bonus on top of everything else. The kids kept whispering "why isn't she using the elevator?" until one of them realized that she was walking by it and not noticing it. Multiple times. She was the first one to lose it when the client finally left.
    via u/PracticalDadAdvice
  • 16
    Font - rockhall73 Bless you for making the donation. This is very wholesome. Love it!! 1.8k Reply Share PracticalDadAdvice OP. Eh, she'd paid her bill. Whatever money she wanted to throw away to prove her point needed to go to a better use. A hundred and twenty- five dollars isn't much, but it's enough to get some hot meals to people who need 'em.
    via u/
  • 17
    Font - chaoticbear This would have been a super cool place to work when I was a teenager. In 2022, I have Youtube videos to help me figure out how to fix things, but getting the chance to learn in a more structured environment would have been neat!
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  • 18
    Font - PracticalDadAdvice OP. Hey, however you learn is good - YouTube's a valuable resource for a lot of people, and there's never any shame in picking up new skills, however you learn them. Good on you for challenging yourself and acquiring some sweet new knowledge, my dude.
    via u/
  • 19
    Font - dexmonic Do you run this repair shop for a living or as a side thing? I wouldn't mind starting something like that in my area it sounds like it has the potential to do a lot of good. 47 ↓ PracticalDadAdvic e Reply OP It's basically my retirement project.
    via u/
  • 20
    Font - mister-ferguson "I'm sorry ma'am, there are four Canadian pennies, what appears to be a Chuck-e-Cheese token, and two bottle caps. We cannot accept this payment." 188 Reply Share PracticalDadAdvice OP. Oh, that would have been... just chef's kiss on that one. I wouldn't have been surprised (she did say she got them from the bank, though).
    via u/

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repair jobs work stories malicious compliance retail malicious-compliance-reddit pennies electronics coins workplace business money store karen
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