12. “Do you know who I am?”

I used to work at movie rental store. I am competent enough to not choke on my own drool so they quickly promoted me to a manager position. I got to deal with complaints after the customer service rep (READ: cashier) called for backup.

The best I ever got was a guy who had a movie charged to his account because he never returned it. He got furious at the cash register and demanded to see a manager. I greeted the customer with a smile and said through my gritting teeth, ‘How may I help you sir?’

He proceeded to go on a tirade about how he returned the movie in question and demanded a refund.

Now as you might imagine, movie rental stores don’t treat/pay their employees very well so the quality of employee is close to bottom barrel. More of the place’s fault, a few extra dollars an hour and they would have gotten a much better calibre of employee and probably wouldn’t be bankrupt right now.

So I went through the returned movies as well as the movies that were on the shelf to see if he had indeed returned the movie but one of the customer reps forgot to scan it in. 90% of the time, the movie is on the shelf and all I have to do is scan it in and the system automatically refunds the customer the money. If another customer tries to rent a movie that hasn’t been scanned in, at the point of sale the computer will check in the movie and check it out to zero out the inventory. My point is that if I didn’t find the movie, then there was very little chance this guy had actually returned the movie. I didn’t find the movie on the shelf.

I returned back to the front of the store and told the angry customer that he, in fact, did not return the movie as it was not in the store. The reaction was priceless. A small line had formed as a result of this incident so there were people watching my every move (and giving me ‘the eye’ to speed things up so they could get their movies and go home)

I can still remember almost word for word what he said, in his best condescending loud voice:

‘Do you know who I am??? I am the chairman of the board of education for [local high school]!! How dare you accuse me of not returning this movie if I said I returned it!’

I very calmly looked him in the eye and said, ‘Sir, I don’t care who you are. But I’ll tell you what. I’m going to refund you your money so I can get these other people through so they can go home and enjoy their night. But let’s make a deal. If I find the movie I will call you up and apologize personally and give you a free rental. If you find the movie you return it to me personally and apologize.’

He was taken aback and nodded his head. Not to be outdone, he looked over at his shoulder and said in a loud voice, ‘That sounds like a deal.’
The next day the movie was in the drop box. The guy never entered the store again. He would instead send his wife into the store to rent his movies for him.