Intro to Dealing with the General Public

Before I start my blog I figure that I should give you, the reader, a little background into my subject. To begin I should tell you that I work for a large retail corporation in the guest service department. Working in guest service my duties include handling returns, processing defectives (all the opened and destroyed items that we can no longer sell), sorting reshop (random crap that you the customer/guest leave all over the place), and most importantly staying as cheerful as possible in the face of very aggravated/rude people. I will admit that many times I do have an incredible amount of difficulty staying nice in the face of true evil; but I'm only human.
Now with that out of the way we can dig into the juice that is the random crazy people that I deal with on a daily basis. I will start by talking about a "regular", someone who comes in often enough for me to actually recognize.
This particular woman likes to come in around closing time. Once she is spotted everyone who knows her will do whatever they can to avoid her, because once she spots you it is impossible to get away. She is like a pitbull. She latches on and will not let go. Now while I wish that I could get a still from a security camera to show you what this woman looks like (so that you can avoid her) this is the best I can do.
One night she came in about 2 hours before closing. First she came to guest service, asked a few pointless questions, and got a sales ad. She proceeded to spend about the next hour and a half in one of the motorized carts reading the sales ad, bothering employees passing by, and talking to random customers. Throughout this time my supervisor "D" (who is her favorite person) would periodically walk over and ask why she hadn't started shopping yet, to which she answered some nonsense.
Finally this woman actually goes out into the store (in the motorized cart). She is driving around everywhere, bumping into things, knocking over displays, just in general making a mess. I'm glad that I don't work on the salesfloor. So by this time the store is closing, announcements have been made but she is still shopping. People throughout the store politely tell her that the store is closed and finally she is led to the front to be rang up. This woman who closely resembles a bag lady spent more than a thousand dollars! By the look of her you would think that she is homeless. I mentioned this to one of my fellow employees and he told me that she does this all time time, spends an obscene amount of money on random crap. It is his opinion that she is a hoarder. He is probably right.
Anywho, this is one example of the many interesting/crazy people that I deal with on a day-to-day basis. More stories to come.