‘Don’t you dare cheat me again!’ A Customer Demanded That He Gets An Exact Amount, So This Guy Gave Him What He Deserved

“When I was 13 or 14, I decided I wanted a PS3.

My dad refused to buy me one but my uncle made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said that if I worked at his sweets shop for the two months of summer break, he would buy me a PS3 and some games in lieu of payment. For teenage me with no commitments, this seemed fantastic!

My uncle sold a kind of specialty snack known as a mini-samosa in his shop. They are like samosas, but smaller, about 3.5 to 4cm in size (about 1/2286 of a football field for my American friends). They were sold by weight, in sealed packs of 250gms and 500gms as these were the most common amounts people bought.

Making those packages turned out to be my job. You see, sometime between now and when uncle started his business, he realized that 250gms was roughly the weight of 28 mini-samosas and thus 56 were 500gms. So instead of weighing each packet, I was told to just pack by counting individual items, which was easier and saved time.

We also sold them individually for people who wanted larger, smaller or unusual amounts.

This was also around the time when our government started airing customer awareness PSAs. Basically, just telling customers to beware of fraudulent business-people. This is relevant.

So, one particularly hot afternoon, it was just me and my uncle at the shop. In India, frequent powercuts were very common during summers and thus there were no fans or AC running. Both tempers and temperatures were running high at the shop that day.

It was then that the villain of our story, Mr. Karan made his entry.

He was a local resident and a regular. He seemed angry from the onset when he barged into the shop.

He took a look at the fans and saw that they weren’t running, then angrily picked up a 500gm pack of samosas and asked, “How many samosas are in this thing?”

“That’s 500gms.”, I said.

“I said how many, NOT how much!”, Mr. Karan literally screamed, “Again, HOW MANY in this?”

“56”, I replied immediately since, you know, I packed them.

“How can you be so sure? You didn’t even count! You’re trying to cheat me!”, Mr. Karan was now in full scale Karen mode. “I demand you pack me 500gms of those individual ones and don’t you dare cheat me again!”

I looked over at my uncle, wet with sweat, fanning himself with yesterday’s newspaper. He slowly nodded.

I beamed a huge smile, “Sure sir! Whatever you want!”

So I took a bag, picked up some samosas and started putting them on the balance. I kept counting samosas as I put them in until they were a little over 500gms. Then I removed the last samosa and the weight fell below 500. Now, keeping eye contact with Mr. Karan, I crushed the samosa and started putting its powdery remains in the bag until it was exactly 500gms.

But wait, there’s more! Mr. Karan apparently didn’t seem to mind powdered samosa but instead asked smugly, “So how many samosas now?”

“48”, I claimed triumphantly!

You see, sometime in the past, my uncle’s old chef retired and the new chef made samosas with a little bit more filling in them. They looked the same size on the outside and only weighed a couple grams more each and since he made them in bulk and also sold to other shops in the area, the price wasn’t too much of an issue. So my uncle let it slide. But those couple grams added up on mass orders and that is what Mr. Karan found out the hard way.

He looked sheepishly at the pre-packed samosas and then at his own package and asked if he could buy the former instead.

“No, my nephew made a package specially for you, at your own request. So that is what you have to buy.”, my uncle finally spoke.

Mr. Karan silently took his pack, paid and left.

He was a lot more respectful during his subsequent visits.”