'Get me the manager... I want to watch as they fire you': Incensed cafe customer demands to speak to the manager after attempting to steal from their establishment

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Oct 6, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

This customer woke up and decided everyone else should revolve their lives around his happiness. Some people wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and decide to ruin everyone else's day too. In customer service, this kind of entitlement is all too common. 

Some folks never seem to realize that they are one of 7.8 billion people on the planet. Instead, they think that everyone should wait on them like they're royalty. They lack the ability to put themselves in other people's shoes. The person in u/et-regina's story took it even further by attempting to steal from a business. 

The OP works as a manager at a cafe, and a customer paid for a coffee with a £10 note. Then, he immediately told the OP that he'd actually paid with a £50 note! This is a fairly common occurrence if you work in retail, and I bet it works a lot of the time, especially with flustered newcomers. But the OP is certainly not that: they're a manager running the place. 

You can read the OP's entire tale below. Then, take a sneaky listen into the lives of others---these people shared the funniest snippets of conversations they've ever heard. 

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  • 01
    Food
    via Tyler Nix on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - Try to con me (the manager) and then demand to speak to my manager? Okay then!
    via u/et-regina
  • 03
    Font - So I was working as the manager at a small independent cafe; I was in charge of the store and answered happened the store. only to the owner, who to live a few blocks from
    via u/et-regina
  • 04
    Font - This day we had been open about an hour and a half, but mornings are pretty quiet and most of our AM customers pay by card, so we still only had the £150 float in the till, made up exclusively of coin change and a handful of £5 notes. A guy comes in, orders a coffee, and pays with £10 note. I ring him up, hand him his change, and as the till drawer shuts he immediately begins to rage.
    via u/et-regina
  • 05
    Font - Customer: What the f is this? I gave you a £50 note. Me: I'm sorry sir, you definitely didn't. You paid £10, this is your change. C: Don't try to scam me, I know what I gave you. Give me the correct change now. M: Sir, you paid with a £10 note. C: Open the till drawer and
    via u/et-regina
  • 06
    Font - give me the correct change now you dumb b. M: I'm not going to do that sir, you have the correct change already. C: This is outrageous, get me the manager now, I want to watch as they fire you.
    via u/et-regina
  • 07
    Font - Now people try to get extra change like this pretty regularly, either because it's a genuine mistake or because it's a scam, so the standard procedure is to either check the CCTV to prove them wrong or, if its not clear enough, to
    via u/et-regina
  • 08
    Font - close the till and cash it up in front of them, but because I already know that there isn't a single £50 note in the till I could just as easily have opened the till drawer and shown him in this instance. Technically we have the right to call the police whenever a suspected change scam happens,
    via u/et-regina
  • 09
    Font - though in practice neither I nor any of my assistant managers ever do this: I know that the owner, however, absolutely does, and since this guy has been so r de and demanded to speak to my manager, I guess it's a good time to comply with his request.
    via u/
  • 10
    Font - So I put on my best service smile and walk into the back. I call the owner and say that there's a situation going down, can she please come in to help me deal with it. When she says she's on her way, I go back out front and make a point of standing as far away from the till as possible. A few minutes later she arrives, clearly a bit ped off at being called in, and asks the customer what has gone on.
    via u/et-regina
  • 11
    Font - He gives his side of the story, and I explain that I am 100% sure he paid just £10, but that since he asked to speak to my manager would she mind cashing up the till as I don't think he will trust me to do it. The owner walks over to the till, opens the drawer...and reveals the complete lack of any large
    via u/et-regina
  • 12
    Font - notes. She pulls the till drawer out to show him, then turns to me and asks me to call the police to report a suspected change scam. The customer/scammer turns white as a sheet and runs out of the property, leaving his coffee and his change on the bar.
    via u/et-regina
  • 13
    Font - TL/DR: customer tries to claim he paid £50 when there's only £5 notes in the till, insists on speaking to "my manager" the owner who calls the police on his a
    via u/et-regina
  • 14
    Font - SilverBear_92 When I was a manager I had an elderly gentleman who genuinely thought he paid with a 20. We did not have a 20 in the drawer. First cash transaction of the day. He accused my cashier of stealing it... I balanced the drawer in front of him. Lo and behold it was nuts on. He repeated, your cashier must have taken it.
    via u/SilverBear_92
  • 15
    Font - I got a touch sharky and replied "sir if my cashier did take it, why would she go through the trouble of balancing the drawer back with presumably her own money?" He called an hour or so later and apologized to both of us. Turns out his wife took his 20 for groceries
    via u/SilverBear_92
  • 16
    Font - [deleted] When I worked at a video rental store (remember those?) in college, The manager always taught us to put the customers bill on the top of the register in plain sight, make the change, read it back to them (I.E. -> "$10.50 out of $20, and $9.50 is your change."), hand them the change as you count it out, and only take the proffered bill once they had accepted the change. It still did occasionally happen:
    via u/deleted
  • 17
    Font - Scammer Lady: "I paid you with a $50. Where is the rest of my change?" Me; "Calmly points to $20 bill still in the counter, and say, no, here's your original bill." It took me YEARS to regain any hope for society after working retail.
    via u/deleted
  • 18
    Font - GazingIntoTheVoid One thing I learned early while helping out in my mother's little photoshop: Leave the bill the customer gives you on top of the till until after the customer has accepted the change.
    via u/GazingIntoTheVoid
  • 19
    Font - [deleted] That's happened to me before. This guy had a whole routine. His change would include a $20, and after I handed it to him, he would DRAMATICALLY drop his stuff to cause a distraction, and then he would show me that "oops, I had actually given him a $1" luckily my manager was right there. They told him we had to then recount the drawer, and he just left.
    via u/deleted

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boss cash manager malicious compliance customers malicious-compliance-reddit karen-customers note drawer cafe notes store
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