She probably shoplifted something while you were in the back getting more creamer and was upset at you because you came back too soon.
I suppose that’s possible. Her response does seem bizarre and extreme.
I get what you are saying but I seriously doubt it. I wasn’t naive about shop lifters and certainly knew how to spot a scam or a set up but she didn’t fit the profile. She impressed me more as the type of person who though she deserved more respect from a “lowly” “minimum wage type service workers” and expected to be groveled to and evidently I didn’t grovel to her sufficiently in her own mind therefore to her, her actions toward me were completely justified.
While managing this same store and not long after, a middle aged professional looking guy came in one Monday morning to complain to me about one of my employees who waited on him and his kids the previous Sunday. He told me that my employee had been rude to him and he “demanded” that I fire her.
This worker had been in my employ for several years and she was a good worker, quite dependable and I’d never had any other customer complaints about her. I asked this customer to describe what happened. He told me that she had scrimped on the scoops of ice cream she served them and had been nasty and rude to his children. I politely told him that I took all customer complaints quite seriously and that I would look into the matter and take appropriate action if warranted. This was not good enough for him and he again “demanded” that I fire her right then and now, on the spot, expecting me to call her at her fulltime day job and fire her on his say so and while he was there to listen to me do it.
I calmly and politely explained to him that while I took his complaint very seriously, I wasn’t about to fire a long time worker based only on his say so, but that I would talk to her and get her side of the story along with that of her co-worker on that same shift and make a determination based on his complaint, what her co-worker had to say and weighed along with her overall performance and any other complaints against her previously (which there were none) and any future complaints and if warranted that I would reprimand her, write her up but that I wasn’t going to necessarily fire her on the spot based on his sole complaint.
This really incensed the guy who went on to tell me how he was a very important and highly paid executive at “xyz corp” and that I didn’t know who I was f-ing with that he would not only get her fired but me too. I told him that if wanted to make a complaint about me or how I managed my store, that I would be more than happy to provide him with my district manager’s name and phone number, I even wrote it down for him. He took the info and stormed off but not before calling me a stupid moron, and “I don’t have to take any sh!t from any minimum wage types like you”. FWIW, I made a lot more than minimum wage but that was beside the point. I called my district manager and told her about what transpired and to alert her in case she got a call from him and what I was doing to investigate and deal with the matter and she agreed with my plan of action and investigation.
When this worker came in for her evening shift that same day, I told her about the complaint and asked her what had happened. She told me this guy and his three kids came in late that Sunday afternoon and ordered ice cream cones. But that while she was scooping them, they kept changing their minds about what flavors they wanted after she had already scooped them and she had to throw several cones away and then on what size cone they wanted – at first a double scoop was too small but a triple scoop was too big but that the double scoop was too skimpy even though she told me she gave them two full scoops. She also told me that while she was waiting on them that his kids were running amok around the store, squeezing the bread and snack cakes and that they were pulling comic books off the magazine rack and after looking at them, throwing them on the floor and that she asked them to stop. And when she asked them to stop the dad told them, “You don’t have to listen to her”.
So I called, at home the worker who worked that same shift with her that night. He was also a long time employee and someone who I trusted to open and close the store, make bank deposits in my absence, a really good honest and stand up guy. I only asked him if anything unusual had happened the night before. At first he said “no not really” but then he related what happened with a male customer and his three bratty kids, how very rude and obnoxious they had been to Katie and to him and to the other customers who had been waiting in line behind them, he basically described the exact same events to me that Katie did.
Needless to say, I didn’t fire Katie, I didn’t even write her up. I also never heard anything more about it from my manager.
Working in retail as long as I did, I have a lot of other stories about rude, obnoxious, unreasonable and some downright bat sh!t crazy scary customers.
I have to wonder if the shooter in this case was a lot like one of them. He stormed out of the theater to find a manager to hear his complaint but when the manger wasn’t immediately available to speak with him and no one else jumped on his “complaint”, that only made him even more angry.