From u/himym101 Tales From Retail:

I work in a major retailing chain on the returns/exchanges desk. It's safe to say that this retailer has almost a monopoly in my area, where there are only two small competitors in our area ever since our major competitor crashed a few years ago.

On to my customer yesterday. She came into my store, beelining for my counter where I was serving. She drops a sink plug on the counter and asks for a refund. Does she have a receipt? No, of course not, that would be too easy. Never mind, my company has a protocol for returns without receipt.

I pick up the plug and can immediately tell this is not from my store. For one, the packaging doesn't have a barcode which doesn't happen generally at my company. Secondly, and more importantly, it literally has the branding of the competitor across the top!

I apologise to the customer, explaining I can't give her a refund because she didn't get it from us. And she turns and looks at me.

Of course she got it from us! And not only did she get it from my company, she got it from my particular store. I am 100% certain, without a doubt that we do not stock this plug. I have stacked that shelf myself several times.

She's so sure that she's starting to get agitated with me. It's not like I can even just perform the refund to make her happy (as is our policy) because there's no barcode to scan. I would have done it too just to get her to leave because she was literally fighting with me about $4. She keeps insisting that she's got it from us. I tell her she got it from the other company. She obviously thinks that I'm just going to give it.

Then she tells me she's never even heard of the other store.

She's not from here, she's from another state. They don't have that store there.

"Oh where is that?" I asked, wondering what mythical part of my country doesn't have this company.

She replies with a city down south, that what a coincidence... I'm from there too! And we definitely have that store.

"I'm not going to fight with you!" she says, after having fought with me for the last ten minutes, "I'll go get another one from the shelf and you can swap them over,"

She doesn't come back. I have a perfect view of the entrance, my desk only being a few metres from the door. She rushes out about two minutes later as quickly as she can, not even making eye contact with me.

--u/himym101