Most retail workers experience some bad customers on the daily. From shoplifters to annoying complaints they see it all. The only thing worse than a bad customer though is a bad customer bratty child. In this piece, retail workers share the worst behaved child they've ever experienced. Keep in mind content was edited for clarity.
Exorcism Needed
“I’ve had to listen to a lot of screaming kids while working in a grocery store, but this one incident drove me, and nearly everyone in the store, over the edge.
I believe it was a Saturday morning. We were working like good little retail workers when we heard the faint cries of a child. Over the course of a half an hour, the cries grew louder into screams as the shopper got closer to us. I wasn’t sure if it was a human baby or some sort of escaped zoo animal. It sounded like a fox with smoker’s lung being strangled.
Apparently this wonderful mother had brought in a screaming baby and completely ignored the kid who has been screaming from produce, where they came in, all the way to the other end of the store in the dairy department.
I’d had enough of the kid’s wailing and was reaching for the phone to make a page over the PA: ‘Will the child of Linda Blair please report to the front for an exorcism. Thank you,’ when suddenly, the kid shut up.
I found out later that as a manager was heading over to slap them both, the mother finally turned to the kid and said, ‘If you don’t calm down, you’re not getting out of the cart.’ and the kid shuts up instantly. This witch knew she could shut the kid up by saying this, but chose to drag it out and torture everyone around her this entire time! WHY WOULD SHE DO THIS? Clearly this woman is pure evil, and if I ever see her or her little devil of a child again, I will chase them out of the store with holy water.”
Messy Mayhem
“The holiday aisle was mostly empty and it was just DESTROYED when I walked in. There were a whole bunch of extra people in today for whatever reason, so everyone who wasn’t on a cash register was cleaning and stocking. I took the Easter aisle because I wanted to see what was there. I spent a solid two hours cleaning and running stuff back – a lot of which had nowhere TO go because it was the last item of its type.
Ok, totally good, it was decent and looked presentable. I left to help out at the cash register for half an hour, had some more returns from customers needing three of the same bunny basket to keep the little ones happy and all, and a few more last-one things to find homes for. I go back and do that, straighten up the candy some more as its ransacked.
I’m doing my minimum wage thing, guy comes in with his spawn. They’re looking up and down the meager Easter offerings left. One kid takes off way down to where the summer stuff is trickling in while the other is touching EVERY basket. Dad sort of meanders through looking at stuff and making a few comments. Literally five seconds after they get in the aisle, the little girl has knocked five baskets on the floor. I am standing less than 5ft away. Dad is RIGHT BESIDE HER SAYING NOTHING. Son is messing around with stickers about mid aisle. Son and Daughter go racing behind me as I’m putting more stuff back up and go dodging around these baskets I’m trying to pick up and starts yanking down ALL of the bunny ear headbands. Like a good quarter of all those headbands come down and make it to the floor and the candy shelf below.
And again, I am STANDING RIGHT THERE with my apron and blatantly putting stuff away. And Dad does nothing, says nothing. Kids have no cares. I just literally stood there so dumbfounded. I put the basket down and walked away. I could not believe this blatant piggy behavior happening RIGHT beside me. I went a few aisles over until I saw them move somewhere else before going back to fix it all.
Literally, what? What the actual heck? If I had been feeling a little snappier and quick witted I would have said something. If I hadn’t been coming from about a solid week of moping around and wondering if I had been fired, I would have said something.
Christmas wasn’t even this bad. I swear everyone up here is stir crazy because of the awful winter ending- and they go and take out all that energy being a disaster in my store.”
Karma Bites Back
“I was doing customer service one night when a woman with three kids came up, an older girl, a boy around 8, and an infant in a stroller. The little boy wanted to pay for his toys separately, two WWF action figures, that were $4.99 each. He only had enough money to buy one, in which hearing the news, sat in the middle of the walkway and bawled for 20 minutes.
In the meantime I have other customers who want to check out, my other cashier is on lunch, and the only other person is in the fitting room who can’t leave as my manager is doing interviews. I tell the mother I have to suspend the transaction and take the other people while she gets her son in order. She screams at me for being a bigot. So she gets her son up off the floor and he pays for his one item. However, as I am putting the money in the drawer and getting out the change, I notice both items are gone.
Me: ‘Can I please have the other figure back?’
Mother: ‘Now you’re accusing my son of stealing?’
Me: ‘If he took both action figures, yes ma’am I am. He only paid for one.’
Mother: ‘Jimmy, give back the other one, the mean lady won’t let you have it.’
Me: thinking what the eff lady!
The child throws the figure at me then goes running outside the door.
I should note that our store is in the middle of a town center where there are other stores and lots of traffic.
This child is now running in and out of traffic.
He almost got hit twice.
Me: ‘Ma’am your child almost got hit.’
Mother: ‘He will be fine!’
Me: ‘Please go get your son.’
Mother: ‘You telling me how to raise my children?’
Me: ‘NO! I am simply telling you that your son could get very hurt.’
Mother: ‘And it would be your fault for accusing him of stealing, you c**t!’
Me: ‘If you say so!’
Mother: ‘The customer is always right, I pay your wages! I am never coming back again.’
Me: ‘Ok, have a nice day!’ (transaction done).
The other customers in line applauded me for handling the situation with dignity. I apologized for the wait several times. A minute later we hear a crash.
The son that was playing in the middle of the street was hit by a car.
Good thing the car was only going 15 miles an hour at the most, so all he got was a few scratches and bruises, no serious damages.
My manager has appeared at this point and I explain what is going on.
The whole thing was caught on security camera (not the accident) so she believed me.
The woman then proceeds to yell at the driver that the reason he was playing in traffic was because I accused her son of stealing…right…”
Odd Parenting Style
“I think that there has been a trend in the last couple of decades toward the absolutely ridiculous in terms of what is child abuse and what is good parenting. However, I did recently bear witness to what I would call incredibly horrible parenting.
A woman and her son, he being a mere 3 or 4 years of age, were in my store shopping. The boy had somehow acquired a flashlight, which the mother did not want him to have. She had taken hold of the flashlight and was telling him to give it to her, but he emphatically said ‘NO!’
I ask of you, the common blogger, whether you have exercised your reproductive capabilities or not, what you would do in the mother’s place? Would you decide that this was not a battle that you wanted to fight and let the child keep the precious flashlight? Would you be the witch and rip the flashlight from the child’s hand, risking a raging temper tantrum? Would you apply a firm slap to the back side and then take the flashlight, still possibly inducing the much loved public crying and yelling?
While I would be willing to bet that most of you would choose one of those options or some derivative thereof, this mother did none of the above.
She bit him.She actually took hold of his arm, raised it to her face, and bit his wrist.
She then asked the child ‘Did that hurt?’
‘NO I WANT MY FLASHLIGHT!!!’
What do you think she did next? That’s right, she bit him again. And then took the flashlight from him, inducing the much anticipated screaming and crying that sounds so delightful when coming from someone else’s child. Being that it was not my place to tell this woman how to raise her child, and that I’m sure it wouldn’t have changed her parenting methods one iota, all I could do was watch her walk away. Would that I could intervene, raise this child for my own, and maybe mess him up anyway, I’m pretty sure that I would never have bit him.
I don’t remember, at least once I got to be school age, being spanked. I was a good kid anyway (and modest too). But I sure never got bitten.
I hope that this mother remembers that she bit her child – twice – when he gets big enough to beat the life out of her and raid her purse for money.”
No Christmas Spirit There
“In one recent shift, I was greeting, a slow and ball-breaking task. I’m a fairly good (fake) people person though, so I just smile and wave. This man comes strolling in with an Old Navy bag in one hand and I immediately realize I’m in trouble. His bag has our Christmas design on it.
Rude Man: Yeah I need to exchange these, they don’t fit.
Me: Ok, no problem, do you have a receipt?
Rude Man: Yeah, I got them for Christmas and they’re too small. hands me receipt. Date? Dec. 23
Me: Ok sir, well unfortunately our return policy only covers 90 days, so we won’t be able to exchange this for you, IT’S BEEN FOUR MONTHS.
Rude Man: But….I just want to exchange them, not return them!
Me: Yes, well that falls under the return policy.
Rude Man: WHAT?! So what am I supposed to do, just throw them away?!?
Me: No, no don’t do that! If you really can’t wear them or don’t know anyone you can give them to, you could always donate them.
Rude Man: Yeah right, like I’m gonna do that.
That sound you hear at this point is me punching him in the genitals in my mind. What a prick
He then starts screaming about how he’s a regular customer, and he’s spent tons of money at our store and he’ll never come back and EFF THIS PLACE! Que storming out.
A couple days later I was working my butt off in the fitting rooms, running back and forth cleaning up people’s messes (you ever feel like your doing other people’s laundry? Ugh, I do.), and just generally busting my BACK. A woman comes in with her two children, about age 6 (fraternal twins), we set up a fitting room for each child, and the nightmare begins.
These kids are literally THROWING CLOTHING over the tops of the doors, to the point where shorts were getting caught and I had to use that little hook thing that I think is my Gandalf staff to get them down. There was screaming and children slamming and locking doors, and Mom yelling……my head just reeled.
I thought I was watching the Twilight Zone. Kind of like a train wreck, you can’t stop staring…..to which the mom just kept saying ‘I’m sorry, I have really bad kids’.
REALLY LADY? REALLY? WHOSE FAULT IS THAT!? My mother would have beat me like a redheaded stepchild right there in the middle of the store if I acted like such a little beast. It was like a horror film that wouldn’t end.”
April Fools Gone Wrong
“April 1st. April fools day. Today I didn’t like this day.
I’m manning the customer services desk, when my coworker comes in from his smoke break and his face is wet and is annoyed. I asked him what happen and apparently a kid squirted water in his face and yelled ‘April fools!’ The kid ran into our store falling his mom.
I told my coworker to go tell the manager and figure something out. It wasn’t long till a regular came over to me telling me about a kid squirting people, being a brat overall and the mom not doing anything. My regular told me she talked to the mother, but all the mom had to say ‘He’s just having fun. Its April fools day.’
I told the regular wait for second while I got the manager. I got the manager and found some more annoyed people all complaining about the kid. So My manager goes to find the mom and kid, and tell them to leave.
I saw the Mom and kid leaving annoyed, saying ‘Its April fools day, he was just joking. Do you not have a sense of humor!’ My manager didn’t really answer and told them just to leave. They did say the old ‘I’m never shopping here again!’ Which we were completely fine with.”
How Many Warnings Does It Take?
“I work at a Hallmark, and I was manning the registers one day when a customer came in with her twin devil children. The little demons were about five years old, and they very clearly did not want to be shopping with mom at ‘the boring store.’ She was looking for a birthday card, and the first thing I heard her say to her little brats was ‘Don’t touch anything.’
Five minutes later (honestly, I’m surprised it took them that long), Devil child #1 starts pulling cards off the runs. Mom doesn’t even look up when she says, ‘If you don’t behave, we’re going home.’
Naturally, this incites Devil Child #2 into joining his brother in taking cards down.
Mom’s reply?
‘If you don’t behave, then we’re going home.’
It’s like you could see the little hamster wheels turning in their heads over this revelation. They could do whatever they wanted, and Mom was just going to tell them to behave.
The devils went to town.
They took all the lollipops out of the display and threw them on the floor. They pulled stuffed animals off the shelves. They took two of the singing balloons and started whacking each other with them, having a sword fight. They turned on our entire display of Halloween singing trees (40 mangled round robin versions of (The Addams Family). And through it all, Mom just kept telling them, ‘If you don’t behave, then we’re going to leave.’
My coworker and I were so busy with other customers that we could only run the occasional interference, rescuing things from destruction in the nick of time. Meanwhile, completely oblivious Mom is browsing for 45 minutes, not even paying attention to her demon children. Finally, she finds just the perfect card, pays for it, and leaves, without so much as an apology for her brats’ behavior. Although, considering the way she ignored them, I was wondering if that was good behavior on their part.
Which begs the question, what’s their bad behavior like?”
Ma’am Thats A Safety Precaution
“I work in the garden center of a home improvement store. Yesterday, close to closing time, a mid-30s lady came in with three kids around ages 3-6, looking for some soil. Her children were running around rambunctiously, knocking things over, and I had had enough, so I approached the woman. The conversation went as follows:
Me: Would you mind rounding up your kids please? They’ve knocked over some merchandise.
Lady: They are behaving just fine.
Me: proceeds to show her a flower pot one of her children had knocked off of a shelf (fortunately not broken)
Lady: I’m sorry about that. I will talk to my daughter.
The woman asked her daughter to stop running around and knocking things over. She did for a few minutes as the woman was asking some questions to another associate. Soon, however, one of her other kids started running around again. We have temporary barricades we must set up to block off aisles where associates are using forklifts and reach trucks. The child climbed over the barricade, so I asked him nicely to move from that area because it is unsafe for customers. The woman saw this and literally ran over to me, enraged.
Lady: What were you saying to my son?!
Me: He climbed over the barricade into the aisle where I was driving a reach truck. I just told him it was a safety issue and asked him to get out of the aisle.
Lady: Do NOT speak to my son that way! He wasn’t hurting anything.
Me: Part of my job is to keep customers safe and it is store policy that only associates can be in aisles that are blocked off.
Lady: This is ridiculous. Someone will hear about this!
She left and probably went to the service desk to tattle on me. I’ve not heard anything from any managers about it, but I hope they don’t get the wrong idea from her.”
Display Down
“Someone left their unsupervised brat running loose and permitted them to climb my slippers display. Thank God it’s only four feet tall, so that when it broke under the little devil’s weight, it didn’t result in any harm to the child. Of course, I can only GUESS that last part, because apparently it happened, and the mother and child immediately fled the area.
No one saw it happen, just discovered the aftermath.
That gray floor is concrete. Trust me, if the child had actually been hurt, there would have been a lot of screaming and bleeding. But since the only damage is the shelving giving way, we can only guess the cowardly mother grabbed her child and hightailed it out of the store.
Sadly, no cameras were trained on the area, and since no one caught the act, we’re out the shelving. Missy had Steve retrieve some stored X-Mas shelving for me, so I could put the Jr’s and Slippers on display again.
People, for God’s sake, pay attention to what your brats are doing!”
Judgemental and Rude
“I worked at small retail store called cozy, that was owned and run by an old Korean couple. I loved working there, my boss was awesome and treated me like her daughter.
As I said, it was a small store, you couldn’t really pass other people between racks without running into one. We obviously had gotten complaints about this before, but not enough to really change it considering how little business we got (besides weekends). Well on this particular day, our store was slightly busier than usual, but still manageable. A young mother with two girls comes in, we will call her Distracted Mom.
Now let me just start off by saying, I adore when kids come into the store. I love to play with them and give them stickers. I’ve always gotten along well with children. Well these two were running all over the store, and playing with our very expensive mannequin. I very politely ask them not to do so, and go back to my station. Meanwhile, Distracted Mom isn’t paying attention except for giving me a dirty look for walking up to her kids.
Ten minutes go by, and her kids are still running round, running into people, knocking things over. Once again I ask them to stop. To which she gives me a look that was straight from Hades, and goes back to shopping.
Well her kids still don’t stop, and the eldest was beginning to tug on the younger dress, causing her to fall backwards while running. Anyone who has been shopping, know that retail stores aren’t child proof. There are way too many fixtures to get hurt on, so I hurry over and say
‘Hey girls, I’m sorry but I can’t have you running around like that. You could get hurt! Could you go stay by your mommy?’
They quickly run to mom, who suddenly looks over and charges at me. I have some social anxiety, especially with confrontation, so I’m usually a sweetheart to avoid problems.
Mom: ‘I will NOT shop here with someone as judgemental and rude as you! You know the owner is actually really nice!’
Me: ‘I’m so sorry ma’am, I just don’t want them to end up hurt on one of our fixtures. I apologize if I upset you’
Mom: ‘Well why don’t you have kids, then you will actually understand Children! Don’t tell my kids what to do ever!’ She storms out of the store, kids chasing after.’
Little did she know, that my husband and I had been trying for 3 years, with no success.”
Valuable Cards Ruined
“Today was the final day at a large retail store where I work as a cashier. For the past couple weeks we have been trying to clear out our inventory as much as possible, so shelves were getting disassembled and moved around quite a bit.
This afternoon, a little kid and his parents came up to the register to buy some clothes and a few toys. One of these toys was a really grimy pack of playing cards. I picked them up and see that it was an unopened pack of Pokemon cards from 1999, Generation 1, with a Venusaur on the cover. Since these cards were probably forgotten under a shelf somewhere for twenty years, they did not scan correctly, so I called my supervisor over. She keyed something in and they ended up costing 12 cents, because everything was 95% off.
I realized that they might have something special here. I said to the father ‘these are pretty collectible and might be worth something.’ He just smiled, waved me away, and handed them to his kid, who to my horror ripped the package open and started manhandling the cards, folding them and tearing pieces off.
My only consolation is that they had some water damage and were discolored, so maybe they weren’t worth that much.”