Henry never did try to discover why, or what happened. And didn't give it another thought other than as a story to share.

I guess there must have been a concrete reason for it...

The customer has cemented his place in On Call history though.

It's a fair cop...

Bet he was bricking it when he saw who was in-line behind him...

Fair to say his resolve cracked and crumbled...

I think there's mortar this story than he's letting on

Obviously he was a hardened criminal?

For once the police were actually there when they needed.

That's probably why that has never happened since.

The poo-lice certainly gave their stamp of approval.

#QTooSoon

An attempt at humour, one supposes?

Yes, an attempt at humour which failed and ended up looking a bit silly.

Lets be honest, it was a pretty crap joke.

I don't know about your "for once" but once upon a time there was a bookie's in East Belfast that was suffering repeated armed robberies. One of our radio alarms was installed. the next robbery there was an almost instant response. The alarm was going straight to the police training centre across the road. It was the trainers who responded. To be precise it was the police firearms training centre.

Yeah, but you refer to Beflast. Depending on which country or continent things are different. The OT should have stated his country/continent/island/state....

Many years ago a friend of mine was waiting to turn right at traffic lights when she was reat-ended by someone who didn't notice in time that she was stationary and signalling, correctly, to turn. She, in turn, was shunted into the oncoming traffic causing quite a pile up.

Fortunately no-one was injured, and it all got sorted very tidily and quickly, because half the cars involved belonged to policemen. It was shift change at the local barracks and most of those involved were going on or off duty.

Or course the police are going to act when they can directly benefit.

I take it that by 'all got sorted tidily and quickly' you mean she admitted (nonexistent) fault and pled guilty to a charge of obstruction of a public road? If you're going to claim the police accepted the blame, we'll all know you're making it up...

She was correctly positioned in the right hand lane at the traffic lights, signalling to turn right. The blame lay completely with the driver who hit her, not paying attention to the fact that the lane he was in could be used (and was clearly signposted) for cars wishing to turn. The police involved were either behind him and saw the accident, or travelling safely in the other direction and hit my friend's car when it was pushed across the road into their lane. They were not at fault, nor was my friend.

In any normal world, the customer would have been arrested on the spot as they had just committed a criminal offence by threatening to assault the shop worker.

In English law they had just assaulted the shop worker by threatening to batter them. Assault doesn't require contact: just the "apprehension of immediate unlawful violence".

Gotta love it when timing works out like this.

For a while I was working as a service engineer/helpdesk agent at my father's company. I always made a point of only introducing myself with my first name and never mentioning I was related to him (unless it was brought up of course).

One time a customer was going absolutely ballistic at me, screaming at me how useless I was and that our company was shit and that they were going to replace us etc. etc.

Then my father walked in, she suddenly became super friendly and everything seemed okay.

All I said was "Hi dad". I've rarely seen someone go that pale.

I had a 3rd party support engineer behaving like a little sh1t know-it-all* to me on the phone. What he didn't know was that I dealt directly with, and was friendly with, their customer services director. Apparently he was somewhat surprised to be tapped on the shoulder by said director and basically asked, "What the f*ck are you doing with my customer?"

The engineer wasn't there for very long - I think it was suggested he wasn't suited to a customer support role.

*Suggesting I didn't know what I was talking about and saying, "You don't need to know that" wasn't helpful, especially as I'd been an IT professional since before he was born!

We were quoting a contractor for small but key part of a very large project. Because of the nature of our business, we knew the end-user very well and this particular job had been under discussion for years.

Anyway, the contractor secured the project order and moved to place sub-contracts. However, now included were new T&Cs which stated that 'Every invoice will have a 15% discount'.

"No problem", we said, "We'll increase our price to accommodate this discount; i.e. +17.6%."

We were summoned to the contractor offices to meet Head Office 'heavy mob' from overseas, who explained that this was how things were going to be or we wouldn't get the order. And they always get their way......

Our Sales Manager made a quick call to the end-user. We received the order at our original price the next day. No discounts.

Much to the enjoyment of our friends at the contractor, 'Head Office' lost face and never interfered again.

Nothing the public try on when it comes to trying to return goods surprises me. My late first wife worked first in a Consumer Advice bureau, then in debt collection at a major energy supplier and finally in the Customer service desk of a major High Street store. While she had her share of very satisfied customers who gave her nice presents (we saw the live recording of a Maureen Lipmann comedy show courtesy of one client!), she also had her share of customers like that in the story (the Consumer Advice Bureau was in SE London). Fortunately, none resorted to actual violence, but threats happened - at that point, a large male member of staff usually turned up!

One thing that really annoyed her in the last job at the High Street store was that she was directed to let people get away with things that she knew weren't legitimate, in the name of customer relations. She knew they were trying it on, her manager knew they were trying it on, but company policy... She was especially annoyed because she knew the law better than her managers!

Of course, stories about "Karens" abounded in our home.

I know of one that survived being run over by a BMW, at the same time an old Tosh suitcase laptop mostly survivied bar a cracked screen - same incident.

If it was like the above, or my first one, I am surprised that he did not wait for the concrete to set and just knock it off with a hammer/mallet. Those things were seriously well built