I don't care if you're the customer, I still think you're wrong.

At age 17, working in a food/drug store as a store closer/semi night manager, I was called to the front of the store one fine evening to resolve a problem with a pair of persistent customers. Working in a place such as this, customers always treat you like dirt. No matter what their problem is, they are always right and you are always dead wrong. People always want to return things that have been opened and used, or whine, yell and complain because they came on the very last day of the sale and the $.99 gallons of bleach are all gone: "Ma'am, I have checked the back room twice now and there is no bleach left, I am sorry but you will have to take a rain check." At this point they always want to talk to "whoever is in charge", who just happens to be me. They leave in disgust, promising to "never shop here again" (if only we could be so lucky...)

Now, back to that fine evening near the end of my pharmacy career. I was called to the front of the store to attempt to placate two angry middle-aged Canadian women. These two were giving our cashier a very hard time because our store did not accept Canadian currency. I do not think they were overjoyed to see that I (a punked out 17 year old) was the "person in charge". At any rate, they certainly expected me to accept their lousy money although it had already been clearly explained to them that we are not allowed to do so. After five minutes of my insisting that we cannot accept their money, and they insisting that we take it, one of them blurts out "This is ridiculous, in Canada we always take your money!" to which I was unable to stop myself from replying, "That's because our money is worth something*!!!" The offended Canadians then said some very nasty things, swore to never shop there again, dropped the merchandise they had intended to purchase onto the counter and stomped out of the store. The other employees present and I all had a good laugh and went back to work.

I work with some pretty stupid customers as well, but the title of the write up is a pretty closed minded attitude to have, especially if you are the owner of the business. While I agree that it was stupid for the customers in the above writeup to keep arguing against store policy, the reason given to them was NOT very intelligent either. Sometimes I wonder how some customers I have to deal with are even able to button up their clothes by themselves in the morning, but on the other hand, I have met a few sales people who must have gotten their jobs because the only requirement was that their shoe size MUST be larger than their IQ.

Telling those customers that their currency isn't worth much just because of the exchange rate is not a very smart thing to do. Using this logic, it would mean that the American Dollar cannot/should not be accepted in the EU. ($1 US = .78 Euro) and most certainly cannot be used in the UK ($1 US = 0.52 UK Pounds).

I agree there may be some issues about accepting money from some remote country like New Polokistan, but Canada and the US share a border! People may argue that it is difficult to maintain accounts when customers pay for goods in different currencies, but I have seen this done in places that have as many as 50 checkout counters (yes 50. A place called Carrefour in City Centre, Dubai, has 50 checkout counters).

I have also seen it being done in places so small that they dont even have a cash register, just a drawer where they keep the cash, a UV lightbox to check for counterfeit money and a calculator, to calculate the currency conversion rate.(They check the rate in the newspapers that they sell). And these people would accept currencies from 6 different countries atleast.

I guess it might have felt cool to tell those customers that their money wasn't worth much, but it wasn't really very smart. It just goes to show that the people in charge of making store policy aren't smart enough to pick up a newspaper and a calculator and punch some numbers.