How often do you actually read the signs at a retail establishment? Many customers have their own interpretations for special sale signs, business hours and ordinary price tags. Some people believe their whims take precedence over rules, procedures and simple logic. Everyone seems convinced that they are special and thus deserving of special treatment commensurate to their god-like status.

A typical symptom of customer syndrome is the apparent belief that signs and price tags were printed just for them and therefore display the information that they want to read. If the sign shows information contrary to their petty desires, the sign's validity is rejected or the existence of the sign is ignored entirely. Paying attention selectively is the hallmark of a childish mind. Being in an oddly charitable mood, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

We all notice a tag that reads "$0.99." Have we let our imaginations run amok, rendering us oblivious to the fact that this tag was for an entirely different than the one which we had foolishly hoped it to be for? The usual way of resolving a price dispute is doing a price check. Waiting for a department such as grocery to show up for a price check is comparable to waiting for Christmas in Hell. Therefore, I prefer to do them myself.

There is often a discrepancy between the price on the tag and the price on file in the computer system. The remainder of the time, the dispute stems from the customer's complete failure to pay attention. For example, he saw a $1 tag in the general vicinity of the $4 item he wanted so it's damn well going to be $1. Or so this intellectual colostomy bag thinks. The customer is usually wrong, and there will be no appeasement giveaways while I'm in control of the situation.

That 39 cent store coupon sure would make those Red Delicious a bargain. Unfortunately, this coupon was for Gold Delicious apples. The yellow ones, you would-be rocket scientist. Obviously, this advertisement was criminally misleading and caters to the masses' ignorance most inadequately.

In the interest of common decency, the cashier must page a professional bend-over manager at once so that this travesty may be rectified. Management at your service, victimized and hallowed customer! I eagerly agree that this circular is full of insidious lies and of course this coupon is valid on any unrelated item you wish. I now smilingly renounce a sliver of my battered corporate concubine of a soul by giving in to your idiocy/impudence and kissing ass with reckless abandon! Thanks all to Hell and back for your whining ass tightwad business.

The front end couldn't go a day without those customers who think that gracing us with their business is a grand occasion warranting royal treatment. At 7:30 a.m., customers demand a door unlocked for them, the hours for this door are clearly marked "9 a.m. to 9 p.m." It seems that the door should open 90 minutes premature for these people, as they were obviously chosen by God to forgo the 15 second walk to the other door. "Could you just open the door so I could get out," a customer asked the manager late one night. Clearly, pushing her cart to the unlocked door would have been beneath her.

A detestable bastard comes to my express lane with 64 items. Some lowlife forgot his rain check at home and expects to be charged the price on the alleged rain check. An assbrain thinks I should accept a store coupon that is 12 days expired. "But it's your coupon," the hag protested. A jackass shows up four hours before a sale which begins at 3 p.m. and wants her Mountain Dew for the 57 cent sale price. A lobotomy patient with a coupon worth $5 off a $50 order wants to use the coupon towards her $44 order. These are real incidents which I have seen repeatedly. Please, get over yourselves and join us in reality.

Being that my store's customer base is largely Jewish, an extensive Passover section is erected annually. Passover ended on April 12, so logically, Passover items could not be returned after that date. Signs stating this painfully straightforward policy were posted in strategic places including on all doors and the customer service booth.

For the following two weeks, I witnessed numerous people strut to customer service for refunds on Passover items while a sign in 72-point font prohibiting such refunds stared them in the face. One of these treasured customers was a middle-aged woman who threw a shouting tantrum more than a week after April 12. "No! I don't want you to help me," she growled at a front end manager. The assistant store director rushed down to cave in to madam arrogance incarnate. This childish punk should have been given an unambiguous "no" and escorted out by police if that one syllable word failed to register with her puerile mind. She, like typical delusionals, believe they are unique and that their desires are of cosmic importance.

I'm not a stickler for rules, but I am rightfully annoyed when they are broken on the whims and demands of insolent scum. Considering the frequency with which management needlessly makes exceptions to the rules, I wonder why we bother to have them at all. By consistently capitulating to arrogant fools, the American service industry has made it's workers the general public's bitch. Forget your indoctrination, the customer is generally wrong. For those of you whose mother declared that you were special, your mother is a lying whore