When I worked at RadioShack we had a frequent customer who believed he was an android. He was constantly buying headphones because (he said) the resistors in the back of his head and neck got really hot and melted the plastic in his old ones, of which he wore at least a half a dozen at any time. And he never had them plugged into anything either, as far as I know. Or at least I hope to Cthulhu that he didn't, because he had them stuffed down the front of his pants.
Sometimes, he would yell "BUFFER UNDERRUN!" and fall over, then crawl up the counter saying "Reboot. Reboot. Reboot." Oh, and any time someone asked him a question he would make a grinding noise in his throat and then yell "BEEP" before answering.
His brother, who is quite sane, says that he used to be a savant of some sort. He was able to do freaking calculus in his head in highschool, and he was really quiet, but socially he got along well enough. But his parents were murdered when he was a senior, and he locked himself in his basement with his computers for years, taking them apart and rebuilding them, only eating takeout that his brother brought him. When he finally emerged, he was convinced that he was a computer himself.
He was by far the weirdest of our customers, but he was harmless. We did have a vast array of really foul people, ranging from just nasty rude folks to a convicted rapist who runs some sort of satanic cult near the store. (Seriously. They sacrifice horses and shit.)
One of my favorites was a guy who was constantly bringing in things which he had obviously actively wrecked, and trying to get refunds for it. Once he had a stereo system which we had sold him two years prior (the warranty was only for one year, never mind that the refund policy stops at 90 days) which looked like it had been struck in several places with an axe. He claimed that "it just happened". When we refused to refund him the $230 it cost, he called us thieves and claimed he would never be back. Too bad he lied.
A few months later he had an ancient Tandy tape recorder that wasn't working, and wanted a refund. First of all, the thing had to be twenty years old. Second, it was wet. Third, when we opened it up (at his insistence) there were crickets living inside. My manager, by that point hoping to ensure that he really wouldn't ever come back, told him that insect infestation was not under the warranty, and the dude threw it across the store, screamed like a little girl, and claimed that he would never be back. For the next year, we had to live with the crickets. We never saw them, but after dark we'd hear them cricking obnoxiously in inaccessible areas.
Then, in the middle of the Christmas season, when we were way too busy for his shit, he came back again. With a gorr'am washing machine. RadioShack has never sold washing machines. And this one was old. And huge. He freaking dollied it in and dumped it on the floor. Then, alternating between yelling and whining petulantly, he complained that "our washing machine" was a piece of crap and he wanted his money back. Gary asked him how much it cost, and he gave us some bullshit number like five hundred dollars. So Gary told me to give him a "special gift card", so I did.
A special gift card is a gift card with one cent on it.
He figured it out a week later, and came back in yelling, grabbing pens from the counter and throwing them at us. Gary threatened to call the cops, and he left. As far as I know (I've been gone for three years), he hasn't been back.
Another one of my favorites was one of the most disgusting women I've ever known. She was a resident of the nearby welfare farm. Like her neighbors, she was a filthy, ignorant, petulant, envious, rude ogre of a woman. But she was also fat. I don't describe people as fat very often. I reserve it for people for whom there is no other word. The sort of people who are that way because they are too lazy even to wash themselves properly, and are constantly eating horrible shit. This woman went to McDonald's for each of her five or six daily meals. I do not exaggerate. The McD's was across the lot from us, and we counted.
Not that we couldn't have guessed. Some fat people look like pears, some like apples. This woman looked like a watermelon. She had no neck, only an hemispheric chin which overlapped her bosom. She barely had legs. Cankles? Hell no, she walked - nay, shuffled - on what looked like tree stumps with varicose veins. And she kept her purse tucked up under her armpit, which smelled from yards away like she put live food in there to die. And forgot about some of it.
Though her visits shared the same theme, one sticks out in my memory. She decided that she would have a cell phone. Or, a cellophone, as she pronounced it. (Gary, to me: "Isn't cellophone that stuff they wrap up sandwiches in?")
It took her a good twenty seconds to squeeze through the doorway, giving the manager time to remember some paperwork and retreat to his back room office. She approached the front counter with a Huttlike motion, and breathlessly informed me that she wanted a free cellophone. One that takes pictures. I went through the motions of explaining to her the two-year contract which Verizon required for the two-hundred dollar discount.
Hutt: I don' wanna contrack.
Me: Well, the phone isn't free by itself. Verizon actually buys the phone from Motorola for you in exchange for you signing the contract.
Hutt: But I don' WAAANA CONTRACK! I just WANNA CELLOPHONE!
Me: How much were you willing to pay for one?
Hutt: NOTHING. Pssssh. (The last was a sound of derision.)
Me: I'm afraid none of the camera phones are free without a contract of some length.
Hutt: That's STEALIN'!
Me: No, stealing is what you do when you take tax money to pay for the grease you stuff your face full of six times a day.
Actually, I didn't say that. But I wanted to. There were other interesting people, but I can't remember them at this time. I'll post more later, if anyone wants to hear about them.