Seems like an ongoing trend. My first semi-IT job 23 years ago I was working at Best Buy service department (before geek squad) as a supervisor while in college. On Black Friday they had me helping out the computer sales department, and there was a pallet of $29 printers that were door buster deals. First come first serve. People were being pretty aggressive to get them. A dude in his late teens or early 20’s grabbed the last one and this lady started yelling at him, he refused to give it to her so she pulled what I assume was a diabetic syringe and stabbed him…over a $50 discount.
I walked back to my desk, grabbed my stuff, clocked out and told the manager I quit. That was the craziest thing I had ever experienced, a dude getting stabbed, and a woman going to jail over a freaking inkjet printer. The police did come and get a statement from me later, then I got summoned to court when the guy started suing everyone. Didn’t end up actually going so I assume they settled.
This is nothing.
Early in my IT career I was onsite installing a new storage array for a customer and my label maker ran out of labels. I told the customer I was going go to the store to get more but because it was late in the week, he told me it could wait until the following week (since I was coming back onsite anyways). We agreed it was a good point to stop and I left the site. The next day on a call he says “I’m gonna put a bullet in the head of the next person that comes onsite without a label maker.” He did this in front of another coworker of mine who honestly couldn’t believe what he was hearing. We were both stunned and acted like we didn’t hear it. I figured since I was young and in a customer service role, it was just part of the job. My coworker on the other hand escalated the situation to our management without my knowledge. I was pleased to find out later on they met with the customer’s manager and said if that happened again they were withdrawing all resources and the customer would be on their own. I learned a lot of lessons from that situation with the most important being to always stick up for yourself, no matter what professional role you are in.