I worked at a Walmart in college, so...yes.

I guess my favorite one (meaning it was more funny than aggravating) was this lady trying to return a Nintendo Wii. She said it was broken and wanted to exchange it (so far, so good). She said she lost the receipt (later claiming it was a gift), but for an exchange, that's usually not an issue (we record the serial numbers for things like video game consoles, computers, etc and those are tied to the transaction which lets us pull up the sale info).

So, we scan the serial number, and it's not in our system. This could mean one of two things:

1. It's stolen
2. It didn't come from our store

So, to rule out #1, we sent the serial number to the loss prevention people to see if it was on their report. (It wasn't.)

But we didn't even have to wait for them to respond because I took a look at the box, and it clearly came from GameStop (had their stickers on the opposite side).

So I tell her that this console wasn't purchased here, and she needs to take it back to Game Stop for service.

She did not like that. At all.

She demanded the manger, who, thankfully, was nearby. Manager took one look at her, got on the radio, and seconds later all three loss-prevention people came out of their little security room and escorted her out (with her yelling obscenities / threatening lawsuits the whole way).

Apparently she was a frequent-flier who had already been banned from the store (and neighboring stores) for return fraud.

I think those are two different things: meme-karens are laughable. Real manipulative people are dangerous

I remember my mother once getting an unfavorable decision in court (civil trial) and faked crying in court to attempt to reverse the decision.

That's called a "pity ploy" or "pity play" and is commonly used by narcissists and sociopaths to manipulate people to get their own way.

My favorite use of the "speak to a manager" trick is to use it in cases where an employee has gone above and beyond. I want their manager to recognize that they've got a great employee.

My mother and grandmother. My grandma was nobility and thought that gave her the right to be mean to people. My mother still thinks this, even though the title is handed down from father to son (my grandmother only had it because her husband did).

As anyone who has worked in customer service for any amount of time can tell you, yes, it happens all the time.

that’s not how the world works

It shouldn't be like that, but a lot times it do be.

I worked retail in banking, so we saw them all the time, Kevins too. Kevins mostly just yelled and belittled you, Karens would try that, then resort to made up facts. For example, Karen give us an obvious counterfeit $100 bill. We say it's not worth anything and we legally have to keep it. She does the Karen stuff and then calms down and says, "Wait, the other teller gave it to me, so you're responsible for the counterfeit and I'm just giving it back." This resulted in people digging through the cameras to verify only that she received money, all in 20s.... Karen had by then went to whine to her loan officer and he said to draw it out of the bank's loan account... She got her way and wasted everyone's time.

My story really needs it's own post, but the short version is I asked a client for a normal piece of information and he wrote a letter to each of the owners of the firm (separate ones posted, and they work in the same building) telling them how awful I am and how he's caught me out (?!) and how he's demands we finish his job. Hint: it didn't work and we dropped him as a client.

We have our very own Karen in our neighborhood. She's the type who's always mad in the neighborhood group chat. Like saying she has her husband kill any snake they see because she hates them, even though other people were saying some snakes aren't venomous and actually help with keeping rats at bay. There was also a time where I mentioned outdoor cats (there is one in our neighborhood), while great at controlling rats, can also potentially decimate other wildlife like birds, etc. And she just scoffed and said she doesn't care. Whenever someone alerts the group that there are suspicious people walking around or something, she always responds with "locked and loaded" or "shoot first before asking", etc.

Anyway, if there's one thing the entire neighborhood, including the Karen, is united in, it's our hate for the useless corporate HOA. So on that front, I'm fine letting her loose on the HOA. We had the annual HOA meeting recently and while homeowners were taking turns airing their grievances on zoom, the Karen was blasting the neighborhood group chat because she couldn't figure out how to unmute herself or type into the zoom chat lmao. So all she could do was swear in the group chat and telling us she was shouting at the HOA that they were liars, etc. even though nobody could hear her. Anyways, it wouldn't have been productive if she could speak in the meeting because she'll just swear and bitch at them, instead of the cooler heads who were making sure the HOA takes notes and commits to fixing the issues with timelines. We had lawyer and accountant homeowners who were more productive in getting what we needed.