Who knows who will walk through those doors that an employee has to put up with? Also, how are people seriously this dumb? Like it takes a lot of work to act as stupidly as these people did! No updates on if the employees were paid overtime for putting up with such wild nonsense. Content has been edited for clarity.
What Did She Expect
“Okay, so I was at work in an ice cream shop. A lady comes in and orders a vanilla milkshake. She gets this nasty look on her face when I add the milk, but shrugs it off when I ask her about it. So I’m ringing her out, and she pays, and then she goes right to my owner and complains about the service. ‘I’d like to let you know that the ‘boy’ who just served me (I’m 19) was very rude to me.’
‘What did he do ma’am?’
‘He made my milkshake with milk in it, and I’m lactose intolerant. I demand a refund and for him to be fired!’
I’m just sitting here dumbfounded how anyone could be so stupid. Ice cream, by its very nature, has milk.”
Hiding In Plain Sight
“I worked at a party supply store. We caught a woman on camera stealing over $200 in premium merchandise. She was a very regular customer and knew the blind spots, but what she didn’t know was that the store owner could access different camera angles on his laptop, which he did. Once she was done stealing, she came up to my register and bought some stuff and placed an order for balloons. She gave us her first name, last name, email, and phone number. So when the managers realized she had been stealing, we just pulled out her balloon order.
Oh, but it gets better. She ran an elder care business, which we were able to easily find information for online. How was it so easy? Searching her name or phone number? Nope, it was easy because she was walking around our store, stealing hundreds of dollars of our stuff, while wearing a shirt that had her business’s name and address splashed all over the front.”
Descending Into Rage At Any Moment
“A fifty-something-year-old guy, hopped up on some high energy substance I’d rather not guess at, graced our grocery store many years ago. We were running two cashier lanes, both packed, and this guy is in lane 1 shouting loudly to anyone he would lock eyes with, while I try to focus on my customers in lane 2.
This guy is squawking, dancing, asking random questions to people, and making everyone a little nervous. Like it was the kind of energy that could turn instantly to rage with just the wrong stimulus. And at this early point in my tenure at the store, I wasn’t sure if I had the authority to ask him to leave, so I didn’t.
Finally, I hear him behind me, mentioning something about ‘Ol’ Hitler.’
I don’t remember what, since the mention of Hitler was when I actually started paying attention. He asked two customers around him, ‘Are you Jewish? Are you Jewish? What about you?’
I finally looked back and realized he was talking to me now. ‘Not that I know of!’ I answered in an attempt to satiate him. ‘You?’
He laughs needlessly loud and says, ‘I love this guy!’
His cashier said, ‘Sir, your total again is $21.25.’
And, ignoring her, he ran out into the main aisle, twirling and singing some kind of Broadway-style musical number. It ended with him doing a running slide onto his knees, his hands to the sky. I was mortified, and I suspect so were all present.
Finally, another, sober man enters the building. ‘Ron, what the heck?!’
His friend tells him to go out to the truck, and he apologizes profusely and pays the bill. Whoever that wasted guy was, he is definitely still banned.”
A Smelly Surprise
“I worked in retail for a summer. Speaking from experience, here’s a tip: if you can’t keep your pet from peeing or pooping on the floor, then don’t bring them into a store.
Once I was stocking the aisle where the air fresheners are, including the refills for automatic ones. Somebody’s pet took a dump, and instead of telling someone (or just running away like most people do), this man took product off the shelf, used it to scrape the poop off the floor, and then shoved the product under the shelf. There must’ve been some poop left over, because he then took one of those cardboard displays for the product and used that to scrape up the rest. Seriously.
If they’re going to poop on the floor, don’t bring them in. If you ignore this and they do end up pooping on the floor, tell someone. You’re not going to get in trouble. It’ll be a bit awkward, but you’ll be fine.”
On The Hunt For Thieves
“I work as loss prevention for our store, so making sure nothing gets stolen. We noticed on camera that a couple of kids were trying to steal some clothing. We didn’t want the hassle of dealing with minors (we would deal with cops, paperwork, as well as all the kids’ parents). We did our best to ‘burn’ the case. What that entails is following them around the store and letting these kids know we see them, so they’ll just drop their stuff. If they drop the stuff, then it’s much less paperwork for us and more free time, plus no time has to be spent in court.
Well, I followed these three kids all over the store. At certain points, I was less than two feet from them, making eye contact and outright looking from them to the bags where they hid the merch and back again. They obviously knew I worked for the store. They kept looking back at me and whispering furiously between themselves. At a certain point, it looked like they were debating just running for the nearest door, until they heard my radio go off with my coworker practically shouting through it that he was just outside the door, in case they tried to run
These morons decided to instead leisurely stroll out the door. These total idiots nearly caught themselves a felony charge at the whopping age of fifteen. The only reason that didn’t happen is because the cops brow-beat my manager into splitting the merch total between the three of them. The kids even said that they knew I was an employee, but they decided to take the chance anyway.
Pro-tip for you guys: We don’t feel like dealing with you. You can take the chance if you really want to, but then the cops will get involved and even if it works out for you, every time you step foot into the mall, every store will have their eyes on you from the jump. When you eventually get caught, you’ll just get charged for everything that we can prove you did. And if you took anything from stores in the surrounding towns, you’ll get those charges too.
Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it. But, I get raises based off your terrible decision-making, so thanks for the stats boost.”
Stopping Men Dead In Their Tracks
“The first one happened while working at a home improvement store late one night, I was standing behind a register when this guy walks by, pushing one of those huge rolling tool chests. This one was a really fancy one too, it even had a refrigerator and stereo in it. Anyway, I see him head towards the lawn and garden doors with it, and I think, alright this guy is probably going to that particular register with it. I called the lawn and garden department and told them to keep an eye on this particular guy. Five minutes later, I see him walk back in my area with the tool chest, swinging around to the appliance department and heading for the doors. Ten minutes later, I see my store manager pushing the tool chest back to the tool department, so I asked him what on earth was happening.
Apparently, this guy was completely wasted and thought that he could just walk out of the door with this massive tool chest, and no one would ever notice. He tried three times to exit, but he kept ending up in the gated lawn and garden department. He couldn’t find his way out. The cops were called, and it was the most entertainment the store had at 10 p.m. in a very long time.
The second time, I was working at a retail clothing store. The store was in a mall, and the front of the area had these huge floor to ceiling windows. This happened during the holidays, so the mall was completely packed. These two women came in and told me that they were on vacation from Germany and were just looking around. Okay, that’s fine. The next thing I know, I hear gasping and extremely loud chatter from a ton of people in the front of the store. I look over, and one of the women is fully topless in front of the window, trying on tops from the display rack. I run over and shuffle her to the fitting rooms. I then try desperately to calm down the prudish old lady that was having a panic attack from seeing that woman’s chest. We had a few men hovering outside the front window for a while after that.”
He Was So Close To Getting Away!
“I was in a gas station picking up a soda and snack in the middle of my shift. I drive a marked police vehicle and was in full uniform. Some moron walked in after I was there, then glanced around the store, making sure no employees were nearby. He walked into the aisle I was in, gave me a side-eyed glance, grabbed a bag of combos and stuffed them in his pants, and then he tried to quickly walk out of the store. Lucky for him, the manager didn’t want to bother with charging him with theft, but he did want this man banned from the store. I chewed this guy out for being so stupid, served him with a banning letter, and then I sent him on his way. I was fine with that. Arresting someone for stealing a $2 bag of combos is super petty.
The following week, at the same exact store, this guy shows up the exact same time that I was in there. This time I was standing outside the store, as I had just gotten out of my patrol car and was standing nearby. This time, he deliberately walked nearby and tried to brush past me. That did not end so well for him. There was a trip to jail for assault, trespassing, and theft. It turned out that he had another bag of combos stuffed down his pants.”
“We All Just Stood There With Our Mouths Open In Disbelief”
“In the 80s, I was at a glass store buying some plate glass for a project at work. These two guys were arguing with a store manager who wasn’t letting them take a HUGE mirror (like four feet by six feet) out of the shop, because they didn’t have a truck or anything to carry it. They said they were going to secure it on the roof of their car. The manager was getting upset and was saying that they were endangering everyone on the road. They would have to pay a delivery fee to have it delivered tomorrow. He finally lost his temper and tells them that he’s going to give them their money back, and they need to get out. The manager starts processing their refund, and these two guys just quietly go out to the shop floor, pick up the glass, walk out to their car, and place it on the roof. The manager sees them and starts running out to stop them. They take off, the driver holding the left side of the mirror with his left hand, and the passenger holding the right side with his right hand.
They made it about seventy-five feet until they hit a slight dip where the parking lot meets the public road. The mirror flexes and instantly shatters into a thousand pieces. The two idiots take off, leaving glass all over the road. We all just stood there with our mouths open in disbelief.”
He Had It Coming
“My husband used to work at a store that sold CDs and other various electronic type of items. He had a mom and her kid come in one day. The mom goes off to look at stuff and the kid wanders over to the CDs. He stuffs about ten CD cases in his armpit and tucks his arm tight to his side. When they go to leave, my husband reaches out to shake the kid’s hand. He doesn’t want to, and the mom is like, ‘Don’t be rude. Shake his hand!’
Every single one of the CDs fall out and my husband scoops them up. The mom took her kid outside and blistered his ears for him, at the loudest possible volume. This kid was so dumb, he kind of deserved it.
“Driving Like A Complete Lunatic”
“Longtime retail worker here.
One time I missed witnessing this by just a few hours. This guy took an item in a blister pack into a restroom and sliced a major vein attempting to cut the item out of the package. There was enough blood that paramedics had to be called and stretcher the guy out.
The spookiest encounter for me at least happened while waiting to punch back in after lunch. I made an innocent jest at the expense of a co-worker also waiting to clock in. Another co-worker, who was not particularly social and had a reputation for being a bit odd, but nothing serious, followed me back out to the floor and demanded I repeat what I’d said, and he warned me to watch myself. It spooked me enough that I had to talk to HR about it. Not too surprised when he was canned for cussing out a manager a few months later.
In the parking lot, I was driving toward my usual parking space well away from the entrance. I was nearly t-boned by a guy doing that stupid thing where you drive perpendicular to the lanes. I made the mistake of flipping him the bird (I was off the clock, mind you) and he followed me into the store and demanded to speak to my manager. He flat-out denied he was driving like a complete lunatic, but luckily my boss was cool about it and let it go.”
Frustrating Furniture Customers
“I worked at this furniture store, and we had a policy where smaller items could be shipped to the store for pick up, which would save the customer a delivery fee, but the customer had to bring a proper vehicle to pick it up. This couple comes inside saying that they have an order to pick up. They say they have a receipt, but they don’t get anything out of their pocket. After about ten weirdly awkward moments of silence, I say, ‘Can I have it?’
The couple replied, ‘I don’t see how that’s relevant, let me talk to the manager!’
The manager was right there, since I was fairly new, and he eventually got the receipt from the couple, they paid their remaining balance, and I got their item for them. These people had a tiny car, which was packed up like they were going on a month-long road trip. THe couple complained about us not telling them that the box would be that large (even though the packaging dimensions were listed online). The couple left what turned out to be a twin-sized bunk bed with us. They never returned for their fully paid-for bed, so we just sold it again.
Afterwards, they left us a one-star review of the store, and they acted like we were the villains for not giving them their item until they gave us the receipt. We all had a very good laugh about it after we saw it online.”
What Rotten Luck!
“I worked at a sporting goods store in the hunting and fishing section, but I often had to assist in the camping section with the propane grills. This guy had bought a boxed-up grill, and I was told to go help this guy load his grill into his car. So I’m waiting here with the grill, expecting someone to pull up in a huge truck or SUV or something. Nope. He pulls up in the tiniest little car. I look at the massive grill package and back to this guy, just super perplexed. We tried to hoist this guy’s grill into the car, but it obviously won’t fit. The guy starts getting upset that I’m not God and cannot bend the laws of physics to fit into his small car. Around this time, I look at my watch and notice that it’s thankfully time to clock out. I called my manager and decided to let him deal with this guy.
Another time, there was a lady that claimed she was a law enforcement agent. She brought in a weapon that she claimed to have bought at our store. She said that the weapon kept jamming, and that we should do something about it. Turns out that she had purchased the weapon from some friend who had bought it from our store, but not this particular location. The lady was super upset while lecturing us that we shouldn’t sell weapons that we haven’t personally tested. Looks like we can’t help with that.”
Karen On The Warpath
“I was at a Walgreen’s near my workplace, and I’m glad I got into the line at the end of this particular event. Apparently, one particular shopper didn’t understand the concept of carts, or lines. She went down one aisle, picked up all the products she was able to carry, took them to the register, and had the clerk start ringing them up.
But she wasn’t finished shopping. She went down to the next aisle and picked up another armload of products to buy, and she brought them up to the clerk for another set of ring-ups.
Lather, rinse, repeat for (I counted) at least five different rounds, holding up the entire line while she did her shopping in phases. And she went full-on Karen if anybody tried to bypass her. This included me with my two products. I was late back to work from my lunch break that day.”
Beet Red And Steaming Mad
“Not a store, per se, but this was in a hotel lobby where I was running the front desk. For the setting, it’s raining out. Pretty hard. There is a wet floor sign located about four to five feet in front of the lobby door, for obvious reasons. A guy comes in through the front door to check in, is looking at his phone, and walks right into the sign, knocking it over. For some reason, this causes him to fly into an angry rage. He starts ranting that the sign was ‘negligently placed’ and DEMANDS that I move the sign to a different area. He is screaming that he refuses to leave the lobby until I ‘do my job’ and move the sign because it is a safety hazard and could have caused him harm.
I walk out of the office and move the sign a few feet away from where it currently was, just to appease this loser so he will finally allow me the grace of checking his holiness into the hotel. He checks in, goes into the interior of the hotel to his room and then comes back down about twenty minutes later back from the interior and heading out the main lobby door. On his way to the door, he slips on the wet floor and just looses his mind all together. He literally starts screaming about the ‘numerous safety hazards’ of our hotel property and how he may just have to contact his lawyer now ‘in case anything is broken’.
He is telling me repeatedly that I am going to get fired for someone getting injured on my shift, and he demands to know why there wasn’t anything warning him of the fact the floor is wet and dangerous. As if the fact that it was pouring rain at the moment would not itself be an indicator that the tile may be wet. Without even hesitating, I inform him that the ‘negligently placed’ sign he just knocked over and demanded that I relocate is the ‘wet floor’ sign, designed to warn him of that very issue.
He didn’t say another word. Just got beet red in the face and furiously stormed out of the lobby.”
What A Bizarre Response!
.jpg){kind=link}
“I used to work at a three-story big box retail store. Some new kid was working on stocking shelves on the upper level. His hand slipped opening a box, and he cut himself really badly with his box cutter. Fine, accidents happen. There are a few things one might do to remedy this situation. Perhaps, he could have used his store-issued walkie-talkie to call another employee for help. Or maybe he could use one of the many cardboard boxes he had to contain the blood while he went for help. Maybe even use one of the dozens of conveniently placed and clearly labeled first-aid kits. Nope, unfortunately his solution to the gaping hand wound was to walk across the entire upper story to the escalator and take it down to the second story.
Then, inexplicably, instead of getting on the escalator to the bottom floor, which was right there at the foot of the escalator, he just got off. He crossed the entire second floor to take the elevator down. Naturally the elevators were in the exact opposite end of his true destination, the store entrance. So he crosses an entire floor for the third time, leaving a trail of blood across the entire store. Then he just left the store, never saying a word to anybody.
Store policy was that no spills can be left unattended until they are cleaned up, but only a small fraction of the staff were trained to handle bio spills. Also, nobody ever planned on a store-wide spill of this magnitude. We had to shut down all registers except the self checkout and have all the cashiers, back-room, managers, security, basically everybody in the store that wasn’t at lunch, make a human chain spaced throughout the store to block off as much as they could. The store manager had to wait outside and prevent more people from entering (this was a busy weekend day too). Then the small number of people who were allowed to clean up the blood started working their way through the entire store, cleaning up an upsettingly high volume of this kid’s blood.
Bizarrely, he came back to work the next day, on a shift he wasn’t even scheduled for, wearing a giant wad of gauze and tape on his hand, and tried to act like nothing had happened. He got fired, and the entire store was required to train for biohazard cleaning on their following shift.”