People of retail: What are your crazy customer stories?

I worked at a gym as a new trainer, so kind of retail. I see an older man approaching the gym with a walker, obviously partially disabled. My coworker left in horror saying, “oh god... you deal with him” before he even made it to the front door. I thought she must be a real jerk by not wanting to work with someone disabled. I greeted him, making small talk about some minor current event, whatever he said, I just gave a “yeah, that can be a problem” reply. Well he just fired back with, “Well you know what really IS a problem? We’ve got x number of non-whites moving into this country every day...” and proceeded to go on the most racist diatribe I’ve ever heard. Well he was a new member and was entitled to his free orientation/training session. I was so shocked, and this was over 20 years ago. I was 19, I don’t think my spine was fully developed. I thought I was supposed to just be nice and tolerate anything. I had to basically give Hitler a training session. Later I found out this guy was a public access TV nut job white supremist of the worst possible kind. We’re talking full Nazi uniform TV show. I didn’t do anything overt that day, but I can tell you I gave him the toughest workout I could get away with. I was just in shock the whole time and didn’t know how to deal with it. 30 minutes of a disgusting unfiltered hate sermon. I wish I could go back in time and do that day over.

/r/AskReddit Thread