Believe it or Not!

Over the course of close to 10 years of doing this whole t-shirt thing, I have come across all kinds of people. 99.9 % of whom have been simply fantastic - and 0.01 % that have been, well, unbelievable!

What you are about to read may make you thing "surely not" but trust me when I say this - each and every one of these stories is factual. You literally had to be there to appreciate it (if indeed that's the right word to use). These are my Top 3 all time greatest "hits". The ones I will NEVER forget...

1. The Xmas Day Joint (!)

Pun intended on this one! Xmas Day 2017. I'm sitting down literally to eat Xmas dinner with Lisa and I get a message from an Etsy customer in the USA. Long story short it was to complain that there was a cigarette burn all the way through a t-shirt.

I ask for photos and there it is - front to back. Now yes, I do smoke, but I have never smoked in my office (in fact I don't even smoke in my house full stop). The customer had received the item from me a week before but left it in the packaging to give to her daughter on Xmas Day. Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked if her daughter smoked - a rather blunt "NO!" was the response. How dare I ask if her 15 year old had such a filthy habit!!! Then i got really curious....

For some reason I will never remember I decided to zoom in on the photos she had sent me - and there it was - cigarette ash all around the burn. Fresh as a morning daisy! It seems little Miss Prim n' Proper was partial to the "medicinal" tobacco and after dropping her doobie on the t-shirt panicked and claimed it arrived that way. Needless to say I didn't hear from that customer again - although I still wonder now how on earth she couldn't tell from the smell ???

2. Dude, Where's My Sleeves?

Another one from an Etsy customer in the USA (and you wonder why I don't ship internationally anymore!) This one needed the powers of Sherlock Holmes!!

Customer contacts me to complain that the sleeves (yes, SLEEVES!) on a t-shirt she had washed have both, well.....FALLEN OFF!

This one took a while to figure out. After many a to and fro on messages, photos, threats of ruining my reputation with bad reviews (pretty much everything except being sued) my brain had a lightbulb moment.

Turns out the t-shirt was bought as a gift for her teenage son - who loves to play basketball. Hmmmm.....Sherlock Time!

Another teenager. Who plays basketball. In California...is there a possibility that he has cut the sleeves off to make it more of a "vest" type look???

Now apparently this was an outrageous suggestion (so I was told). Really? More outrageous than the concept of not one but BOTH sleeves miraculously falling off in the washing machine? I think not. And as quickly as I had sent that reply...if the silence had been any louder I may have been clinically deaf! TEENAGERS!!!

Needless to say, I never heard back from that one either.

3. Let's Get Naked

This one is from my time in the shop (let's not go there, another time maybe). Ok, bit of background. Same guy, all the time, coming in and wanting discounts. That set the tone for me, anyway, moving on...

Buys a t-shirt, brings it back as it's "too small". Ok, so we swop it (even though it's been a couple of weeks and clearly has deoderant white lines on it). Few weeks later comes back AGAIN saying the replacement is also too small?? It gets swopped again against my wishes (don't ask, I will just get annoyed as I wasn't in the shop that particular day).

Comes back in a 3rd time - yes you guessed it - wants to exchange it yet again. Only this time he doesn't have it in the bag.... HE'S WEARING IT!!!

Now as far is i'm concerned this is now clearly taking the p!ss. It's too small but he's wearing it. He's had 2 prior replacements, which by the way were DIFFERENT designs each time. Now he wants an exchange - and to do so has to take it off in the shop, with customers present, and we had no changing rooms. Don't know what sort of parties you go to mate but there's no bowl full of keys in here and this is most definitely not happening. Needless to say it didn't.

Whilst writing this I've had several moments where I have thought to myself "what the actual f*ck?" when it comes to some of the things I have heard and witnessed. Like I said before, it's 0.01% of people who think that the world revolves around them. If I tapped into everything I've dealt with in my 30 years of dealing with the public it would end up being a book bigger than War & Peace. Maybe one day I will write my memoirs???

The moral of the story - keep it honest. Just because you're dealing with a small business doesn't mean your dealing with an idiot. If anything, we are a bit more switched on. We usually have a background in retail, with customer facing skills. And we've normally seen it, done it, heard it.

Normally ha ha ha!