Hardware store employee gets 30+ copies of a refrigerator manual delivered to a customer's house because she's too impatient to comprehend snail mail: ‘I started calling Maytag twice a day’

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Mar 27, 2026 1:00 PM EDT

There are a few, rare moments in every retail employee's career where they get the opportunity to be wholly and completely compliant with customer service policy, while also making a customer pay for their rudeness: This is one of those moments. 

A hardware store employee sold a clearance sale refrigerator to a woman in her 60s, promising to have a fresh copy of the owner's manual sent to her directly from the manufacturer via snail mail. When the woman left the store that day, and he ordered her manual from Maytag, this employee thought that would be the last he heard from the customer. 

Except she started to call them on their personal extension. Every. Single. Day. 

Within 48 hours of sending her off, the salesman had received several furious phone calls from the woman complaining that her manual hadn't arrived yet. Well, ma'am, it's only been two days. Any regular, logical person knows that normal snail mail takes weeks for a delivery, and it was unrealistic to expect a teleported copy of her owner's manual. Alas, customer entitlement knows no bounds; sales reps should be able to make the post office YIELD to their demands, right?

So this employee did what any self-respecting, petty, and maliciously compliant customer service rep would. He made sure that the woman would receive her manual, and then some…

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  • Hardware store employee looking proud of a sale.
    via andresr

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • Customer berated me daily for not sending her refrigerator manual fast enough. I fixed that.
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  • Back in the early aughts, I worked at Home Depot as a department manager, primarily selling appliances. I was young, eager, idealistic,
    via AintMuchToDo
  • genuinely wanted to help people. Getting me to volunteer was almost as easy as getting me to smile. Etc, etc. It was a decent job that taught
    via AintMuchToDo
  • me a lot of great lessons about how cheap and entitled some people can be, but this story is about the moment it taught me the most important lesson of all:
    via AintMuchToDo
  • The customer is always right. We were doing a model shift on the floor, so, next year's models had come in and the current
    via AintMuchToDo
  • floor models got marked down to sell. Floor models don't come with the original packaging or manuals, because those got tossed weeks or
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  • months earlier since there's no "back" of the store to store them in. That's why they're marked down. Everyone understands this.
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  • So I've got a Maytag refrigerator on the floor, IIRC it was a bottom freezer, marked down to a price I thought was more than reasonable.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • An older woman, probably in her sixties (so born during the Depres on, solidly pre- Boomer) comes in and wants to buy it. Great.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • We get it all squared away, and as we're wrapping up, she asks: "Can I get the manual for it?"
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  • I said, "We don't have the original manual anymore, but I'll tell you what. I'll call Maytag directly and have them mail you one. They're
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  • always happy to do that." I'd done this plenty of times before. She said great, perfect, thank you.
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  • Refrigerator goes home with her that day. Before EOD, I'm on the phone with Maytag. They said no problem, they'd get a manual in the mail to her. Done.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • Woman who is happy with her new fridge purchase.
    via SHORTPRIME

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • I didn't think about it again. Two days later (and I want to stress, barely two days, not even a full 48 hours) I get a call
    via AintMuchToDo
  • from the customer service desk... and it's her. No preamble, no pleasantries. "Where's my manual?"
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  • I blinked. It took me a second to even process the question, because... it had been two days. Not even! I said,
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  • "Ma'am, it's only been two days. They're mailing it from Iowa. It'll probably be a week or two."
    via AintMuchToDo

  • People have grown accustomed to overnight delivery, but mail services haven't always had fulfillment centers and armies of delivery folk waiting to get packages out to every premium customer in the region. Package delivery modernity is a monstrous beast of logistical wonders, baffling the mind of any off-the-street plebeian who sets foot in a fulfillment warehouse. But this colossal corporate wonder is not the norm, and the federal postal service is actually largely unchanged in the last several decades. 

    As old souls understand that mail delivery is called “snail mail” for a reason: It takes time! 

    Luckily, this hardware store employee had nothing but time on their hands and decided to work hard, going above and beyond to complete this Karen's request. After weeks of hard work, they received a satisfying phone call from a confused woman with an exploding mailbox and a zipped lip. 

  • She launched into a 30- to-60-second tirade about how we were all liars and cheaters, how dare we promise something and not
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  • deliver, the whole thing. I assured her and reassured her it was coming and we hung up. The next day. She called
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  • again. Same thing. Where's my manual? Why isn't it here yet? Why are you trying to cheat me? I was incredulous. I explained,
    via AintMuchToDo
  • again, how the postal service works. She didn't care. The next day. She called again. I was starting to
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  • get angry now, but I kept it professional. Ma'am, I have personally confirmed with Maytag that your manual is on its way. These things
    via AintMuchToDo
  • take time. Day four. Consecutive days. When customer service transferred the call, 1 %$*#ing lost it.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • Internally. Externally, I said (still very politely) "Ma'am, you are absolutely right, and I am going to make
    via AintMuchToDo
  • sure I make this right for you." Now, between her purchase and this point, I had already called
    via AintMuchToDo
  • Maytag twice. Once the day she bought it, and once more just to confirm it was on its way. So she was already getting two manuals.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • Mailman looking at a pile of letters for a resident.
    via BassittART

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • But that clearly wasn't enough. This woman needed her manual, and I was going to make sure she got it.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • I started calling Maytag twice a day. Every single day I worked. Each time, I'd politely request that they send a manual to her address. A fresh request. Every call.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • Eventually, one of the Maytag reps said, "Hey, man... we've got about ten or fifteen requests in the system for this address. Are you sure?"
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  • I said yes. Absolutely! The customer needs her manual. Please send another one.
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  • To their eternal credit, they did. God Bless whoever was working that phone line at Maytag, God Bless them and may the light forever shine on their
    via AintMuchToDo
  • life, because they never questioned it again. I want to be clear about my level of commitment: I came in on my day off
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  • to make the call. I'd worked SAT/SUN and had MON/TUE off, but since Maytag's office was closed on the weekend, I was not
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  • going to let a non- business day cost this woman a single manual she was owed. I drove to the store specifically to call and ensure we held
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  • up our side of the bargain! This went on for just about two weeks. And then, finally, the day I'd
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  • been waiting and praying for arrived: she called. She sounded... very confused.
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  • Full mailbox
    via ideabug

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • She told me she'd received six or seven manuals at that point, and they were still coming. One arrived one day, then another the
    via AintMuchToDo
  • next, then three showed up the day after that. She didn't understand why she was getting so many.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • "Oh my goodness, ma'am," I told her. "Really? I am so sorry for the inconvenience."
    via AintMuchToDo
  • I just wanted to make absolutely sure she got her manual After all, she'd been very clear about how important it was.
    via AintMuchToDo
  • jonrpatrick. My takeaway: Maytag is a stand-up company I can trust.
    via jonrpatrick
  • work_acco... On matters of taste and preference, the customer is always right.
    via work_acco
  • Scared_Ha... She asked for a manual. She received a library. You delivered exactly what was promised, repeatedly, with great enthusiasm. Truly nothing to apologize for
    via Scared_Ha

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