So, this woman comes in and insists she had a tray to pick up and that she had placed the order weeks ago. I asked her if she had the right store (we have two stores within a few miles of each other and people who place orders over the phone always get them mixed up.) She says "no, I came into this store and placed the order right here!" So I called over the deli backup to help out. The lady tells her story and then points at me and says "it was her! She was the one who took my order and she probably lost it!" Now, I had never seen this woman before ever and I haven't taken a tray order in months. Plus she didn't know this - I only work weekends due to college except for spring break. So as normal I didn't work that week. I told her it wasn't me and that it couldn't have been me, but she kept insisting, so I said "okay, what day of the week was it?" "Tuesday!" The deli back up spoke up for me that I had been off on Tuesday. Then she said "well I don't know then it was either Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday for sure! The day when she worked!" I told her that I was off all week and she got extremely huffy and angry and started yelling we were trying to con her.
Eventually she got a free tray anyway unfortunately. I hate blatant liars, especially ones who try to get random employees in trouble just so they can get free crap.
The thing that gets me is she made the whole thing more complicated for herself. If she hadn't randomly started accusing me we would have just said "oh okay, yeah we'll make you a free one. Sorry about that." There was no need for it at all.
People in general don't like being wrong. So when she came in and made all these accusations, the only thing she could do to maintain her pride is just double-down on stupid and try to push the lie through in hopes of getting something out of it. In that case, the best thing to do with assy customers like that is to just call your PIC over and let them handle the customer. They can lie to the PIC, but they have more resources available to them to deal with the lie than a regular employee, so they'll be able to call BS, and since it'll come from a PIC/Manager, it'll carry more weight and is more likely to make the person stfu.
