Work and employee back up

So as some may know, I work as an assistant manager for one of the oldest types of jobs out there besides the other one lol. Now I’m talking about a pawnbroker; you know someone who evaluates items and loans on the items’ value. Mostly jewelry like gold and diamonds, and to keep it current for this day and age, we take in electronics and tools as well. Now I have been in this profession for years now; I originally started when I was 19ish, so back in 2009, at the end of the year before that, I worked fast food and was a team lead there, the night manager at the time. So now I have always gotten up to a management position of some sorts, and as a manager, you are the person that takes care of any issues and/ or disturbances.

Now for my understanding and how most of the world is, there is a hierarchy to all things, and everything is kinda based off of this. Usually, it goes from employee to a supervisor/ leader in some sort of title, and then an assistant manager and a store manager. In some companies, it even has area managers or a general manager for the company. Each tier of management backs up the lower tier, so if there is an issue, an employee passes it off to a supervisor, and if it keeps up, then the assistant manager handles it and then to the next if the assistant can’t or the customer will not listen to the AM. It goes to the store manager, and the last step of the ladder would be the company’s general manager. This is one more tier, but as a manager, you are paid to handle the issue and not make the owner involved.

Now that we have the tiers out of the way, let’s begin with my story for the post. Now, this was middle of August in 2025, a Friday, and it was already a somewhat steady day, and the customers were on one this Friday. I don’t think there was a full moon, and it was hot but not California hot summer day; I believe it was around mid-90 degrees. So, I believe there was even a breeze that day, so it didn’t feel that bad, but the customers were on another level that day, just issues and straight-out crazy and crappy attitudes. Now, this customer comes in, and I am the next open counter, and he wanted to redeem his item from loan, in other words, wanted to pay the loan off and take it home. At this moment, we are in the process of switching our operating system from one that we used for years to a newer cloud-based system since this program is getting shut down. As we are learning and trying to figure out the bugs since this system is a newer one and not based off the old one, all the data from the previous program has to be transitioned over to the new one, and there are some hiccups with the data migrations, and customers’ info is not being uploaded correctly. As this is going on, we employees are required to mirror the deals, basically write the deal in the old system and also in the new one, even though it is in test mode, still just so we can tweak the system and make sure all the rates, customers, and transactions are correct by doing the mirror process.

Back to this customer who just wanted to pick up his item, but as I’m working on the information, he asks “what is taking so long?” My response is “we are switching to a new system, and I’m just confirming your data is in the new one as well.” So now this customer is eating very irritated and pacing the floor a bit. So I just went and finished his transaction, told him what he owes, and have him pay. Usually, I would confirm his address and phone numbers before I finish since people are always moving and/ or changing phone numbers. They usually forget to update us as we are a choir in their heads that isn’t necessary to update right away. After the customer pays, and I grab his loan slip to go in the back and grab his ring from the safe it is stored in. As I’m walking back to the front, I double-check and triple-check the loan number to make sure I grabbed the right one and the signatures to make sure it is his item that matches with the signature, and even the description are the three ways we make sure it is the same item coming back. This is my process as I have a case of dyslexia, and sometimes letters or numbers would switch places in my eyes. Now, to have dyslexia is not a bad thing, just something you have to stay aware of so you do not make mistakes. Now, as I’m in front of the customer, I am also checking the description, looking at the item and signatures as well as showing the cameras as I say the eyes in the sky. Just the whole cover your ass thing, you know, C.Y.A. method. After that is all done and the transaction is completed, he has his ring and grabs it from the tray and leaves the store, walks out the door, and out of sight. No more than about two minutes later, he rings the bell to come back in, and his yelling and hollering about how “this is not my ring, it is stuck, this is not mine, you guys are f ing with my stuff.” I walk up to the windows and tell him to come over to the side and give him some lotion to remove it from his finger. I grabbed the loan contract that he signed and the loan slip that was attached to the ring to compare again. After wiping the lotion off, I weighed the ring, and it was spot on to what the contract said. The description was a perfect match, and the signature was similar. I took a picture with a store phone and showed him that the weight matched, and I read aloud the description of the ring on the loan contract as it matched.

This whole time, he is hollering about how we are trying to take advantage of him, and the other store messed with his chain, and he is going to sue us for the chain and ring now and how we are a bad company. This he keeps repeating and yelling over me as I’m trying to calmly explain the description and how we would not do anything to his item. NO You Fing messed with my ring; it is not mine; it does not fit on my finger; it gets stuck. I’m still trying to tell him that weather and/ or food intake will change your finger size. No, that’s not possible; I just brought this ring in, and you guys are messing with me. “I want my money back!” Now I’m being very professional and like, “OK, we can do something.” Now he is getting really loud; we have other customers, and he is bad-mouthing us and the company and threatening to call the cops and sue. Finally, I reply with, “We are done; take you your ring; we do not want it, and it is yours!” Now this customer is still irate and not even trying to listen to me or reason. This guy starts yelling, “I’m calling the police!” and starts to walk away; I try and tell him we are not responsible for your ring; that is yours; you must take it, and he just leaves.

At this moment, I am believing he is going to call the cops and bring either the sheriff out here or a police officer as we are on the boundary of two zip codes and two jurisdictions. But they never came, and we watched the cameras to see if he left, and he did. So, trying to C.Y.A., I wrote a report explaining everything that’s happened, especially since he stated he was going to sue. In the report, it put down how he acted and the events of the confrontation and how I did not yell at this customer; I was calm and collected about it. I attached pictures of the ring on scale and the loan contract with the two signatures to cover all bases. No more than about 10 minutes after I sent the email, the store received the phone call, and I’m open, so of course, as to the job, I answered ASAP, and guess what? It was my company’s general manager on the phone.

Now he asks if my manager was there for this, and of course, he is out of the store on his lunch, so I was in charge during that transaction. Then the general manager just starts to lay into me, not yelling but telling me I should not have done this or that. We have the ability to lock/ban a customer so they can no longer do business with us, and I’m under the impression that he gave a good reason to lock him. Well, my company’s manager disagreed with this and was like, “He has a good record, and we do not lock out customers with a good record. Ok… was my response, and he was asking me if I knew the customer, and I didn’t really recognize him, just knew his loan pick-up ratio was good and he only loans a few items. One thing that got me flabbergasted was he said, “We do not lock people out just because your emotions get in the way.” Now, no way my emotions were involved; I was thinking that we as a company do not want to be treated like shit and yelled at and be a punching bag for someone we do not know. Turns out after I spoke with the company’s general manager, that the other employees had seen this customer more, and he is always acting impatient in a hurry, trying to hurry everyone up and/ or being very impatient and short with them. I wish I knew that so I could tell him and defend my judgment. This is the real kicker, so after unlocking him, my general manager asked my store manager to call the customer and tell him along the lines of, “We have changed our opinion or something like that, and he can come back in and do deals with us, and we will return his money and put the ring back in the loan.” So basically, I handled the whole thing wrong… I do not believe so, as that situation is a situation I would not let a customer do to my employee. I have seen my company’s general manager blow up many times on customers over situations that were less than the one I dealt with. I asked my other employees about the situation to get some feedback back if they thought I was in the wrong, and they were mostly in agreement and even said that he is the perfect example of customer service in a rhetorical way.

I was asked to review the cameras of when the ring came in and to make sure it was the one that came in and it matched the video. The thing is when he first came in, the ring was in his pocket, and he was not even wearing it when he came to get a loan on it. How long has it been since he wore it was the new question. My manager tried to call him, but the phone is either blocked from receiving calls or he has a different number. Now I know I messed up by not confirming his info, but he was already thinking I was up to no good or messing with him by taking so long. But the Blair is not all on me for the phone number as the previous person to write the before he picked up with me is our store supervisor, and they said I asked him if his info was correct, and they being impatient probably just said yes, or they are trying to do something fishy is what I’m thinking by not updating their number and claiming we did something to his shit.

Now the best part was the general manager told me before he hung up is that we should keep him if he is a good customer and I should not have refused to return his money. I explained why I did and I tried to give him his ring and he just left it. Now that was something that made him upset even more, so you have the ring and didn’t give back his money? Yes I did try to give him his ring that was his and usually if an item leaves the store after pick up we are no longer on the hook for the item since they left. I said that and how I didn’t lose my cool and I thought I handled the situation okay just wanted him to listen and calm down basically. That is when my G.M. started to tell me that if this does go to a lawyer and I have to send a question packet about it, it costs $10,000 every time we talk about a lawsuit and the company is in the process of 2 or three I guess and that I should have handled it differently. I even tried to call him and yeah the phone was not working and my boss the store manager asked me to inform the company general manager about the phone not working. Just passing the buck it seems. No backup and I might be in trouble for doing something I was trained to handle and seen from other managers do the same.

Now with the customers yelling, cursing and accusing us when we are not and always on camera. Making it seem like we are the worst and bad people I do not feel that is okay and managers should back up their managers and supervisors but to basically blame them and tell them this is going to cost this much since you did this or that. That feels like we should just let them walk all over us and just take the beating.

What do you think am I wrong? or was I completely wrong?