Asklemmy

I have a kind of related story. In the area I work, we have a government program that provides assistance to single mothers with young children to buy basic food necessities like baby formula, milk, bread, etc. Because of this program we can't do returns for any of these basic items without a receipt, as it would allow people to convert funds from the program into store credit to buy things that aren't covered, which is considered fraud. This sucks for a customer not in the program who just lost their receipt, but we have other ways to look up a receipt in the store if they paid with a card or used our loyalty program. Or if they know the time date and location of their purchase we can search for it the hard way.

We had one customer who wanted to return one of these items with no receipt, and none of the other options to look it up were possible. She paid cash, wasn't a member, and didn't know when she purchased it. Now, I don't think she was trying to commit fraud, but without proof we literally can't do the return, the register won't allow it. She got very upset and demanded to speak with a manager, who came up and explained the problem the same way I did and she started yelling at him that because our store wasn't "a government agency or legal entity" that we had no right to "enforce" the law. No amount of explaining that we were only following the law seemed to get through to her as she kept screaming "you're not the police, you can't do this!"

And it was all over less than 2 dollars. I'm pretty sure my manager was going to give her an apology gift card anyway before she started screaming at him.