and addition to "Pretending you Care: the Retail Worker's Guide"

So tonight I'm closing in the Deli (we start shutting down around 9 and hopefully are done by 10:30-11:00). Well around 9:45 this man comes up to the meat counter and asks a co-worker for some meat, she tells him that we are closed, and sorry but you can come in tomorrow. He cannot except this as an appropriate answer and tells her to open the slicers back up (they take 30 minutes to clean when they aren't too bad) and cut him some meat. she refuses telling him that she would have to go get the pieces from the sink that she had already cleaned and sanitized just to cut him some meat, and then re-close the slicers, and we don't want to be here all night. He asks to see her supervisor, which turns out to be me (i'm just her superior) so I walk up and ask, "is there something I can help you with?" and he says "yeah, I'd like some meat."
"I'm sorry we're closed down for the night, we close at 9 o'clock."
"I understand that but it won't take you very long to just cut me some meat."
"I'm sorry, we do have some pre-cut Sarah Lee products right over here if you want those, but we can't open the slicers back up, they are shut down and washed already."
"Look if you would just do it you'd be done by now."
"I'm sorry"
"can I see YOUR supervisor!" So I go to the phone and call the "console" (the fitting room has a radio and since our "page" button doesn't work we have to call and ask them to radio for a manager). I say, "we need any available member of management to the Deli, we have a customer waiting." and I go back to cleaning out the fryers because I don't want to get any more behind, and I don't want to deal with this guy anymore. He walks over to where I am and asks, "WELL IS ANYONE COMING? OR ARE YOU JUST THAT LAZY AROUND HERE!!" I retort with, "it's not lazy, we're busy!"
and I walk back over to him and ask, "are you sure you can't just get something out of our pre-cut section?"
"NO I want fresh stuff!" "Look the customer is right, I own my own business and if you worked for me you'd be fired!"

Oh, so you own your own business! well let me break out the secret stash of quality meats, you don't want to eat these dog scraps anyways your highness! Frankly jackass you'd be lucky to have an employee like me, but I guess your employee turnover is so high you have to hire people who are too stupid to stand up to you. Do you want to know why you can't get an employee to stay on longer that 2 months? it's because you are an unbearable prick who's head is so big it's got it's own moon!

So my manager comes over and sees this guy yelling at me, and asks "what can we do for you?"
"I'd like some meat cut." (very calm and polite I might add the SOB)
so I cut in with, "but we've already shut down the slicers and cleaned the parts!"

so of course I get told to cut this guy whatever he should desire, and without being told, I know I'm expected to apologize to this guy.

So I go get the parts, put the slicer back together (it took another 5 minutes) and in my best customer service voice I ask what it is he would like, how much, and what size cut? and without showing the slightest bit of uncomfortableness he acts like a human and asks nicely and gets just whatever it is he should want. Then I break down the slicer, and clean the pieces while my co-worker re-cleans the slicer fully, because you never know where meat particles will fly on those things. and we end up leaving a full hour late.

about half an hour after this first guy showed up another customer came up asking to get some Havarti, now this guy is a regular, he comes in and gets turkey legs and Havarti because it's all he can stomach while being on chemo, he was shaking and this guy is not looking good, I just hope it's a good sign that he can still come in and get it himself. Now for this guy, who asked like a human being, nicely, and even offered to just buy a whole log of cheese and take it home and cut it himself I would gladly have stayed another hour... but because of the first guy, a manager saw him over there and came over to take care of the situation himself, and he kept telling this guy that there was nothing we could do, you'll have to come back tomorrow. but I told this guy off, I said, "no, it's okay, I know this guy, I've got no problem getting it for him."
"but Warren (assistant manager from story 1) said we can't open the slicers"
"no it's okay" and I ended up just selling him a whole 4 pound hunk of cheese. I'm not sure what kind of cancer he's got but I hope it turns out alright for the second guy, maybe god can give his cancer to the "I'm better than you and always get what I want" guy.(who, I forgot to mention, had his son standing right there with him, way to show your son how to treat people father-of-the-year)