A customer tried to return a stained shirt, yelled at us, called us removedes, and threatened to call the police when we wouldn’t let him

Our customers were generally very nice though until there was a minor convenience. Thankfully there weren’t very many

When I worked at a grocery store I used to do pretty much everything around the store. Pushing shopping carts back in the winter was the worst. I remember many times people being pissy because they had to get a cart that was wet. Oh boo fucking hoo.

Lady ordered “well done WELL DONE” pizzas from dominos. I did the usual +1-2 minutes more in the oven and noticed plenty of burnt cheese and toppings when I boxed it. Lady picked up the food and left. Fifteen minutes later, her redneck husband throws the boxes on the counter, asks for me, and demands I “cook this raw food” and threatens to pulls me over the counter.

So I remake the pizzas and give them an extra +4 minutes (oven only takes 5) to where there was essentially a layer of char across the entire top of the pizza. I drive over and deliver the pizzas. Their son, who I went to school with, is walking around shirtless with a big iron cross tattoo on his chest. They approve the burnt pies and I go on my way, swearing to myself one day I’ll get out of this removed town

I was once in a store I used to work at, but had quit and was just there shopping. I guess some lady recognized me and started asking me questions, but I told her I didn’t work there. She insisted I in fact did and kept asking me questions. I informed her I was an employee but no longer was so I couldn’t help her. She demands to speak to my manager, I said “what manager?” A former co-worker comes over and tells her that, indeed, I no longer work there and offers to help her but she demands that I help her. I just turn around and go check out, and she’s screaming at me from the aisles as this guy keeps telling her I don’t work there anymore.

Later my buddy who still worked there called and informed me she filed a complaint with management, who again tried to explain I was no longer an employee of their company.

Someone bought a USB hard drive enclosure and demanded a refund because it was R100 ZAR cheaper on Amazon. They literally bought it, opened and used it and then came back the next day. They also mentioned they literally drove from Pretoria and back to the computer shop in Johannesburg where I worked at (like 50 kilometers here and back). Obviously they were less than happy with the “service” and also spending 2-ish hours (and a little over R100 ZAR in petrol) for a refund to save R100 ZAR.

Also when they are in a “sticker shock” because one laptop is R2,500 ZAR and the one next to it is R10,000 ZAR, like they couldn’t fathom that maybe, just maybe I’m obviously going to charge more for a laptop with better specs like a SSD instead of HDD, quad-core i7 instead of an i3, etc.

And of course the times when a customer calls our shop and gets angry because “no we’re not going to drive halfway across South Africa to pick up your 150-kilogram rear projection telly for recycling and we sure ain’t paying”.

A more recent example is here when I was buying groceriers, not an employee and didn’t deal with directly, but some old lady was complaining nonstop that “this is Estonia, speak Estonian and not Russian” while I was going through the cooler. She even had a winter hat on in Estonian colours and patterns. 15 minutes later I go to the register and she’s still going. This was before the war in uKKKraine by the way.

I once got a customer passed off to me by my manager since I’m a super patient person. She explained the situation, but not entirely, so when I thought I had resolved the issue for the customer. They’d would get their replacement reimbursement in 2 days. When I told him that he screamed at me and told me I’m incompetent. Apprantly the issue was that he wanted it the same day… I just walked away becuase if I stayed around I would have said some wild shit to him.

One of my favorites though were Ivy Leaguers who would always mention they went to an Ivy League school as a way of letting me know that they know more than me therefore whatever advice I was giving them was worthless then proceeding to act confused when they realized they didn’t know what they were talking about.

Do they have to buy anything to count as customers?

The of failsons and faildaughters that trashed the store around me, including one of the hoggiest hogs among them shoving an entire sub sandwich from the deli down the crotch of his pants and several others outright pushing entire shelves over while screaming like some sort of Varsity Blues LARP, that probably takes the cake if it counts when none of them bought anything except the limo driver that got a pity bag of chips to sweeten his vague apology.

Yeah yeah I know but it’s pure idealism to expect me to just smile and nod to that and cheerfully become unemployed and homeless and drop out of college by doing nothing, so of course I called the police to at least stop them from destroying my remaining prospects of keeping that job, though none of them were due to get more than an overnight drunk tank visit because, according to the cops themselves, “he’s the son of a city council member” and “she’s the daughter of some tech company ceo.”

I guess the moral of the story is still all things considered there.

Guy was making a return at TJ Maxx. Accused me of “snatching” the item he was taking forever to hand me. Like wtf, you’re in line to return an item and get mad that I take it from you while you’re holding up the line? Dude complained about me, management didn’t give two shits.

Also that’s the only time in my life I’ve heard snatch used as a verb, it was one of those things where I was so confused and caught off guard that I couldn’t even get frustrated with him lmao.

First job I had one screaming down the phone at me to go fetch her papers from our archive and read out some details. So i said I’d need to go ynow… Fetch them as they were in another room and this was a surprise call and she said i couldn’t leave the phone. The phone wasn’t wireless i couldn’t take it with me.

We sat there for a while as she got more and more irate asking me if I’d got them yet but still wouldn’t let me leave. When i eventually was allowed to go I spent all of 5 minutes grabbing the forms and when i came back i could hear the screaming from the across the room. Then begun the questioning of why i took so long and demanded an explanation. Then loads of threats about leaving the company and blah blah and how we need to beg for her money blah blah until my boss asked me to hand over the call to him where he told her to fuck off and slammed the phone down lol.

I don’t think I’ve interacted with anyone worse since. Wish i even remembered the name so i can look up if the old fart is dead yet.

Hard to say there’s been quite a few, 99% of them during the holidays in a rural town, most people are nice, but something about the holidays just breaks them;

one dude just started out by shouting at people on the floor about a sign, then he shouted at me for not being meant to work in retail, he was a manager he knew such things, I’d never work in this town blah blah, since his bullshit coupon didn’t work while I waited for the manager to get up there. Fucking managers never around when shit goes down. Some poor old lady came by and was started by the shouting and made the fatal error of informing our ragey guy he was shouting, they then began to have a comical shouting fest until the manager finally got up there 3 years later. manager just gave him the fucking coupon, per usual, toxic positivity customer always right bullshit but if I just honor it off the bat I get a talking to.

a pair of old bats holiday shopping got upset because their bullshit coupon doesn’t work again, one bat gets huffy and says ‘this is why I went to college’, ofc my job is 100pct toxic positivity based, so I can’t defend myself that it isn’t 1912 where college = job while she glanced at me like I was worse than shit.

a little kid was buying a book and asked me what I was reading (at the time it was some harmless math nerd book like The Self Made Tapestry or One by Pas, not hardcore theory that would start a torch-wielding mob in this town) before I could say anything her mom said not to ask more stupid questions, cashiers don’t read. This was so ridiculous I was like ‘yep lol never read a book in my life’.

old guy shopping pays with cash and fucking throws his change at me after he just threw his clothing at me, when his wife gets shocked by his rudeness he says shit like that’s what cashiers get paid for and if I wanted better treatment I’d have gone to school.

because a return wasn’t going her way, a lady went full outdoor cat and scratched up my hands and face, my coworkers thought it was hilarious.

a lady bought some shit stained thongs to return, each thong was sequentially less soiled. It was disgusting AF and there are never fucking gloves at this job (I need to update my hep series shots now I think of it, thanks Hb), when I acted like I was rightfully touching human waste she got all pissy about it.

another person was one of our regular thieves, would only steal white clothing and smear blood all over it, one day she got the bright idea to return it for store credit, and ofc, still no gloves. She had some finger chewing issue, she’d always come in like 10-15min to close tops and either steal/attempt to return stolen things. Usually she was at least decent all things considered and understanding of how gross it is to handle blood, but something tipped her off that day she was returning a white pair of bloody sneakers and kept snapping at me for being slow and grossed out by the blood that ‘maybe you shouldn’t do retail’. Its not like medical where at least you get gloves so you can boldly touch everything.

some drunk guy came in right near to closing and started calling me and the manager crazy out of nowhere and general insults to mental health with a few slurs thrown in, you could tell the guy was wasted AF. The manager left and I gaslit the guy pretending I had no recollection of what he was telling me since this was a rare occasion I could get away with it. He came in another day and just would fight with every woman he encountered and drop the c word like candy, manager was a woman that day and threatened to ban him. Only time I’ve ever seen it.

lots of stark transphobia and willful misgendering, one where the guy accused me of being a teenage girl when really I am like 10 years older than he was. Also racism, during the holidays it seemed every day someone accused me of ‘being illegal’ and would start speaking in the most cursed broken english or spanish one could imagine. The worst racism was a guy threatening to call his buddy in immigration to raid the store in broken English on both me and my Indian coworker since our store ‘only job no papers’.

we had a regular guy I referred to as ‘old cummy pants’ who would piss and cum all over our expensive suits in the changing rooms for our young women associates to find, since we’re running super skeletal crew with like 3 people in the store tops to get his shock value he had to come up to the front. I arranged his things in his bag so the cum would pretty much ruin everything, when he realized this he stopped his disgusting smile, but there was nothing he could do since if he brought attention they’d know he was ol cummy pants. Checkmate asshole.

people paying bills etc accusing me of taking their bill to line my own pockets and then looking at me all fucked up.

my favorite is the magical belief lady, one day I came back from break to hear her accusing the manager of being a shape shifter, having rung up all her items once as a woman and then as a man and was charging her twice, the manager was like ‘wtf’ but just showed her the screen showing no, this wasn’t the case. another time she tried that shit on me and kept asking me where ‘that woman went’ before going full medieval shape changer nonsense, I shut her down right there with that turn me into a newt horseshit and was like you can look at the receipt and I’ll do a return after, also if I could shapeshift it’d be into a dragon (so I can fly away) not mere humans. she pulls that shit every time a guy tries to ring her up.

then the latest (non holiday) I just remember was some lady who went behind the registers since we had returns to be processed, and she got mad she got told she couldn’t be back there and has been trying to get me trouble with the store/managers for weeks over it. Managers just laugh since that’s retail 101, you never go behind the registers.

I want out of retail, I honestly wish there were another job I could get out here, I feel 1000% hopeless, especially with the holidays again approaching

I know front of house foodservice isn’t technically retail, but it really stuck with me when I was on yhe last hour of putting over 30 hours into 3 days and was slow to find a button on a register. This father with his wife and kids was like, “pushing a button is the hardest part of my job, too.” It’s been like 6 years and I still remember it. I should have knocked this grown man’s vanilla dirty chai out of his hands and called him a child in front of his kids.

But instead I just complained that I was running constant doubles.

It wasn’t me but my first job ever was a working at a grocery store. I was a bag-boy in high school and all my fellow bag-boyz were high-school aged kids. One of us had some visible mental disabilities (I don’t know what the correct “PC” word is, not being a jerk but I know it may not be the correct term). For storytelling purposes I’ll name him Ronald. Ronald was a sweetheart, very kind, great overall dude but was not very fast at any of his bag-boy tasks. The important thing is he always put your egg, bread, and soft items on top, your cold stuff on the bottom, and chemical in their separate bag.

Anyways, one day on cart duty with I was grabbing grocery carts from the designated areas that good and upright people placed as well and the places that godless uncivilized mutants would prop up on the curb or just leave in parking spots. Ronald was also on cart duty, the parking lot was rather large so they’d have two of us out there. Somehow, he bumped a cart into someone’s aggressively mediocre sedan.

Before Ronald had a chance to apologize this dude just exploded at him. I heard this guy screaming across the pretty busy parking lot in a suburban shopping center. I didn’t realize what happening I just heard someone screaming, I look up to see this big person swinging his arms around and barking at kid in a safety vest. I go over there to see what happened and cart left a mark on the car, but one of those marks that if you just take your shirt and rub it, the mark magically disappears. Before I could actually disappear the mark I noticed that Ronald was crying and this dude was calling Ronald a bunch of names for crying.

I still think how much of a failure you are as man to lack the self-control to not explode at random bag-boy at your grocery store. This was core memory for me, because its what I measure “Manly™®©” behavior against in the negative sense. No man EVER should treat a teenager like that, and worse yet question that teenagers “manhood™®©” for crying when some big scary dude is yelling at him. I don’t know how, but I think it planted the seed that made me realize all that “macho” shit is wack. No man would ever treat someone like that. I bring up the “man” stuff because this dude was obviously the fit and active, had the skull tattoos, that sort of thing. If this happened in 2024 he’d be the type of guy who listens to podcasts called “The Modern Spartan” or “Shit happens, Don’t be removed - A Stoicism Podcast” with a large blue lives matter forearm tattoo.

I, being a fat round boy at the time, stepped in and told Ronald to go inside and get the manager. The big dumb angry man continued screaming and followed Ronald as he walked toward the store. I should have walked with him to go get the manager, and I feel like I let the homie down by not doing so. I wiped off the mark on the car and went back to the store, and I heard the guy barking the moment the electric double doors slide open.

I don’t recall how it ended with the guy and the manager talking. I know that Ronald just played his Nintendo DS in the dairy cooler (the non-smokers “smoke break” place) after whatever happened and he was pretty upset.

It really sucked that happened to him and it sucks that people treat poorly so quickly. I don’t know how the cart bumped the car, but there is no universe in all the omniverses where you should blow up at a worker for doing minimal cosmetic damage to your car. I hate how people treat people.