Pants on Fire

I told an inadvertent fib in my last post. I have lost my temper at one other customer. During another busy morning filled with rude customers and hassle and annoyances I encountered the rudest customer ever. It wasn't actually her that I lost it towards but she nearly tipped me over the edge. One more rude customer without a suitable cooling off period (and ideally a scotch) would be all it takes to send me off on one. Predictably enough, two minutes later a rude customer came in.

Her car was parked out front in such a way that it was blocking the entire road out there. It was the first time I'd seen someone manage to park on the double yellow lines on both sides of the road. It was quite spectacularly selfish, lazy, illegal and potentially dangerous. When I asked her if she could move her car she told me that her husband was still parked in it. I told her that was irrelevant because it was still causing a major obstruction and there was a perfectly good car park literally 50 yards down the road that also happened to be totally free and very rarely full. She told me that as she was only popping in to post one letter she didn't see the point of parking properly. I responded with a bit of a lecture (no shouting or obvious stroppiness) about how she was blocking access to my business, that the car was parked next to a lowered piece of kerb that wheelchair users and pram pushers need in order to cross the road safely, that my neighbours are being prevented from getting to their houses and how difficult was it to park out of the way? At this point she got a little upset and said that she was returning from hospital and her treatments made her weak and she's got a disabled badge and aaahh, poor her.

I could have pointed out that disabled badges don't allow you to park on double yellows. I could have told her that if she was so ill, she could have got her husband to park in the car park and come in himself. I could have carried on with several other things I wanted to say. I didn't. I'd already figured out that I wasn't going to win this one and perhaps the best thing to do would be serve her and get her out of the door as soon as possible. I gave her a half-arsed "sorry" and then sold her a stamp.

Three weeks later, I received a letter from her moaning about my attitude, how if Post Offices are doing so badly then I should be grateful and polite to everyone that comes in, complaining that her treatment for cancer makes her feel really ill and just two pages of whinging and whining and could I write her an apology please? I mentally filed it under "Can't be bothered to do anything about" and carried on. Another few weeks pass and I get a phone call from customer services about this woman. She'd sent them a copy of this letter and then chased it up with them when she didn't get a reply from me. I fobbed off customer services, "yes, I'll send her an apology honest." I promptly didn't bother. A month or so passes and I get another phone call from customer services. This time I told them I had no intention of apologising because although she had a bit of a lecture I wasn't rude or angry (outwardly) and she was dangerously and illegally parked. This seemed to get customer services off my back. Two years later, I've not heard anything else so I reckon I've got away with it. She's probably dead. Result for me!