When you hear stories about teens getting bullied, it’s usually at the hands of classmates and co-workers around their same age, or from random people they’ve never met on the internet. But sadly, there are instances where grown adults get into altercations with teen service workers over a price dispute or ire over the level of service they’re receiving.
As one TikToker recalls in a viral video, a customer did just this while she was working at an ice cream shop at 14 years old. User Marissa (@flaneurflaneuring) says the store ran a weekly promotion on sundaes, and a father and his two kids tried to take advantage of the bring-your-own-banana deal that got folks half-off of their sundaes.
The man essentially bullied her into giving him two free ice cream sundaes because he brought in an extra banana for each of the items. He argued that because he brought more bananas, he deserved a larger discount. Marissa, who says she is afraid of confrontation and was even more so when she was younger, ended up just giving the sundaes away for free.
Folks who heard her story were shocked at the man’s behavior, especially since the sundaes ended up coming out of Marissa’s paycheck.
@flaneurflaneuring Tbh I probably would have paid $10 just to get him to leave me alone. 🍦🍌 #storytime #customerservice #icecream ♬ original sound – Marissa
“I had this family come in, and they had two kids—and they brought four bananas,” Marissa recalls. “And the dad gets to the counter, puts the bananas down, and says, ‘We’ll have two sundaes, two bananas in each sundae.’”
Marissa obliges making the two sundaes with two bananas each. However, the problem occurred when she began to ring them up for their order.
“I say, ‘That will be $5,’” she notes, having applied the half-off discount for the bananas. “And the dad says, ‘Nice try, but it’s Thursday.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s half off today. These are normally $5 a piece.’”
The man thought he could game the system, tying the discount to the number of bananas a customer brought in. By his logic, it seems that he thought the ice cream shop was effectively paying customers $2.50 per banana and not offering a cute promotion to help move product on that particular day of the week.
“He’s getting agitated, and he says, ‘No it’s 50% off if you bring your own banana and we brought 2 bananas per sundae so that means we don’t pay anything,’” Marissa recalls. “And I said, ‘I don’t really think that’s how it works,’ and he says, ‘You don’t think that’s how math works?’ and I say ‘I just don’t think that’s what the sign means.’”
Marissa said that her last remark didn’t make the customer very happy. What makes this exchange all the more uncomfortable is the fact that she was only 14 years old at the time and she was arguing with an adult: “And that makes him very angry and I was 14 at the time and if I’m afraid of confrontation now, I was absolutely terrified then. So
“I’m kind of just shaking,” she shares. “And he says, ‘Well, let’s think about this what’s 10 minus 50% times 2?’ And I say ‘I don’t know.’ And he says, ‘It’s zero, that’s the answer.’ And listen, numbers have never really been my thing, but I’m trying to see where he’s coming from. I think about it and I say, ‘Listen, even if that was how it worked, I still think it would actually be $2.50,’ and that really pisses him off.”
The man still persisted in attempting to get the ice cream sundaes for free and because Marissa’s manager was on one of their many cigarette breaks, she ultimately just let the irate customer have the food for free. “He says, ‘let me talk to your manager,’ and I say, ‘OK.’ But my manager was on her smoke break,” Marissa notes. “So the dad’s getting red in the face, the little kids started crying, and I end up just saying, ‘Hou can have the sundaes. Have a nice evening.’”
However, at the end of the day when they counted up the money that was supposed to be in the register, it ended up being $5 short. The manager made Marissa pay the difference, despite only making $5.15 per hour.
“So that was basically worth an entire hour worth of wages,” she concludes. “So anyways, I really hope those little kids enjoyed their sundae and that they grew up to be absolutely nothing like their father.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Marissa via TikTok comment.
Viewers were shocked by the man’s behavior and his odd attempt to game the discount system.
“Based on his logic, if he brought 6 bananas, you’d have to pay him??? Unreal,” one user wrote.
Another laughed, “he thought bananas were currency. 1 banana = $2.50.”
“50% is also such a huge discount already,” a third wrote.
Someone else was baffled that there was someone who thought a business would simply give away free food. “How could he possible think the ice cream place is just giving away completely free ice cream ?!” they questioned.
Others were stunned by how much effort one person put into being so miserly.
“The fact that people will get red in the face and waste like 20 mins of their own time to save like $2 is insane. Like was it worth it? Lmao,” one user reasoned.
