tl;dr: overly religious semi-regular costumer who makes us all uncomfortable previously tried to walk out of the store without paying, talking over employee who was ringing her out. When she came in again, our boss warned my co-worker about it, co-worker mentioned he was uncomfortable servicing her because she gets preachy. Our boss told him to go ahead and just provide the service (a notary signature). Co-worker went to ring customer up at checkout, she repeated what she did last time, this time successfully. Boss is now assuming my co-worker wants to “fuck him over” and “doesn't care about this store” despite co-worker constantly going “above and beyond” and being a great employee. Our boss keeps bringing it up and refuses to listen.
Okay, some background: This is in a franchised store that focuses on shipping, printing, faxing, notarizing, etc located in a strip mall. Out of the 5 shifts my boss (who owns the store) works in a week, 4 are with a co-worker we’ll call Daniel, with a small amount of overlap from the other shift.
Sometimes, customers will get multiple services at our store, and by the time checkout comes around, certain small services get forgotten about. The service is never more than $10 (I can go into more specifics about the pricing/services if necessary). Occasionally, if someone is especially nice, we’ll take off certain services at checkout, since it’s a retail location and nice customers are a gem. However, because our boss mostly works with Daniel, he thinks this is a Daniel-only issue.
Honestly, Daniel is a great employee, constantly goes “above and beyond,” and our other co-workers half-joke that Daniel and I are the actual managers (which is something to unpack and complain about, but not on this post).
A few months ago, Daniel did a notary for free because the customers were very nice, and our boss said that Daniel “wants to fuck him over,” “doesn’t care about the store,” and other stuff like that, even after Daniel offered to pay for it. I told my boss that pretty much everyone does this, but I don’t know how much he believed that. To avoid this again, we worked on getting better about remembering to charge people, and we're more careful about taking stuff off at checkout for nice customers.
We have this semi-regular customer we refer to as The Jesus Lady. Every time she comes in she basically preaches about Jesus and the bible and she’ll pray for random strangers, sometimes literally stopping them in their tracks to pray for them. Once, she stopped me mid-transaction with a customer and prayed for both of us. It’s always just really awkward when she comes in.
When she came in this time, my boss and Daniel were in the back of the store, and our boss mentioned that last time he (our boss) provided a service for her, she kept talking over him, making it difficult for him to get a word in and ring her up at checkout. My co-worker then mentioned that she makes him very uncomfortable, and asked if my boss could please be the one to take care of her. Daniel did not mention this at the time, but he grew up as a queer man in an extremely religious household, which was pretty traumatic. This makes him want to deal with her even less, which I can’t blame him for.
Boss reluctantly agrees, goes up, sees that she needs a notary, and despite being a notary himself, asks my co-worker to do it for him. I think it might be because our boss has an Arabic name, and if he’s worried the customer will be weird about it, he’ll pass the notary on to someone else.
Daniel provided the notary, said he would charge her at the checkout computer, only for her to walk away and keep talking over him so he couldn't get another word in. Our boss watched this play out, and once she stepped out without paying, blew up at Daniel about it, saying he purposefully let her walk out because of her sob story, wants to screw our boss over, doesn’t care about the store, and that he keeps doing this.
Daniel tried to defend himself, stating that he said he was going to ring her out and had moved to the checkout computer and there wasn’t much he could do besides chase after her (which we don’t get paid enough to do), and that our boss can check the cameras if he doesn’t believe it. Our boss wouldn’t listen and just kept complaining and jumping to conclusions.
Daniel, a different co-worker (who was helping a different customer when Jesus Lady came in), and I (who came in shortly after Jesus Lady left) discussed this, and we’re all feeling pretty frustrated. We'd like to find new jobs, but have no idea how to deal with our boss in the meantime.