By the time this happened, I'd been in customer service for years — back office for a major clothing retailer, handling escalations after something had already gone sideways — a bad shipment, a product issue, a store visit gone wrong, whatever it was. You'd think nothing could surprise you anymore. This one still did.
A woman calls in, and she's upset. She lost her retainer. Not "misplaced it somewhere in the house" lost — lost it in the store, specifically in a fitting room. I ask her to walk me through it, and there's this long pause before she admits she took it out while she was trying on clothes and just... left it there.
Okay. Fine. People do weird things in fitting rooms. I tell her I'll call the store and see if anyone's turned it in.
So I call, and I get the manager on the line, and I ask if by any chance a retainer got left behind. And the guy just goes quiet for a second and says, "Yeah. I found it. It was covered in vomit."
I actually laughed out loud before I could stop myself. He explains that he was walking past the fitting room and caught a smell he was not prepared for. Opened the door, and the whole room was covered — floor, walls, all of it. They had to shut it down and called in a janitor. The retainer got swept up with everything else and thrown out.
So now I have to go back to this woman and explain that yes, we found her retainer, and no, she cannot have it, because it is currently sitting in the trash covered in vomit.
I try to say this as gently as I can. She does not take it gently.
Her: "So they found it?"
Me: "Yes. In vomit."
Her: "Is there a way I can go dig through the garbage?"
I want to be very clear that I did not laugh at this part, even though I wanted to. I told her — as calmly as I could manage — that I understood she wanted her retainer back, but it was in a biohazard bag, in a dumpster, covered in vomit, and that I could not in good conscience recommend she go looking for it.
She said, and this is a direct quote, "OK, I get it. It was covered in vomit."
And hung up.
I sat there for a second with my headset still on. Just… blank. Some days you help someone track a package. Some days you're the one who has to say the word "vomit" four times to a stranger who will not accept that her retainer is gone.
Sincerely,
Disgusted in Chicago
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