The Boss Can’t Help
“One time a lady came into Wal-Mart with a huge floor model console TV, the kind that had no remote, and wanted to return it and get her money back.
She started yelling at me when I told her I wasn’t accepting the return as she had no receipt and the TV was obviously over 15 years old, and she demanded to speak with a manager.
So I paged a manager who told her basically the same thing, she then started demanding to speak with ‘Sam,’
We were like ‘Sam Who?’
‘Sam Walton – Your Boss!’ she screams.
My manager had about enough of this lady’s nonsense and told her, ‘Well ma’am we have a wide selection of shovels in Lawn & Garden, so you can go dig him up!'”
This Guy Paid A Steep Price For His Stupidity
“I’m actually a former police officer, but this is great. I get a call to Lowe’s for a guy trying to run out with a shopping cart full of power tools. I’m not too excited because they usually get away and Lowe’s Loss Prevention is pretty useless and nonexistent because they can’t stop anybody, won’t prosecute, and the corporation usually just writes off the loss.
Anyways, this guy loads up like $2500 in Dewalt tools and sprints out across the parking lot to his buddy waiting at the end in a vehicle. Loss Prevention pretty much just says, ‘Hey, Stop!’ and does nothing.
Well, he happens to do this about the same time a bunch of burly construction workers are walking into the store and one guy with his family who happens to be a college football weight training coach. This idiot sprints around the construction workers and heads out across the parking lot. The football Coach, who probably runs a 4.4 Forty, sprints and snaps this guy in half like a red-shirt freshman quarterback meeting a veteran D-Back. The loser is hopped up on speed so he tries to take a few pop-shots at the football coach right as all the construction workers get there.
These guys proceeded to give this loser the most thorough whooping he’s ever gotten in his entire life. When I got there, he looked like he’d been rolling around in a cement mixer full of rocks. I arrive at a crowd of people standing around the loser who’s hunched over on the ground.
‘What happened to him?’ I asked
‘He… fell.’ about 20 people who had gathered told me in unison.
‘Ooooookay!’ I said and arrested the loser, took him to jail and that was that. Loss Prevention later told me what really happened, but we both thought it was pretty hilarious, as that guy had stolen about $10k in merchandise over the last several months.
Remember kids, if you’re gonna do something stupid, make sure you got a clear exit.
Oh yeah! As soon as loser’s buddy saw him getting stomped, he booked it out of that parking lot.”
She Wanted Cleaner Dirt?
“I worked at Walmart. A woman came in to return a bag of soil because ‘the bag was dirty.’
She was dead serious.”
Her Time Was More Important Than His Life
“When I was a cashier at a general store, I had a woman get mad at me for not checking her out immediately while I was helping a man who had collapsed to the floor, having a heart attack.
I was on the phone with 911 and was kneeling next to him as he struggled to breathe while the woman stood at the counter, watched me for a minute, then started banging her fist on the counter. When I turned my head to look at her, she let out this exasperated sigh and just goes ‘Um, I’m in a hurry!’ I mean, she could see what was going on, we were in plain view of the register that she was standing at, not more than five feet away, and that it was a serious situation, but she didn’t give one single darn.
I just gave her an ‘are you kidding me?!’ look, and turned my attention back to the man and the 911 operator on the phone. Every few seconds, she’d bang her fists on the counter and go ‘Can you just check me out, please?!’ So, I turned around at one point and told her what was happening. I told her ‘This man is having what I think is a heart attack, and I’m on the phone with 911.’ And she goes ‘Well, can’t you just check me out real quick?’ and then informed me that she has to meet someone for lunch in a few minutes. I just shook my head and continued taking orders from the 911 operator. She did this the entire 10 minutes it took for the ambulance to get there, she just kept banging her fist on the counter to try and get my attention. It used to infuriate me whenever customers would bang on the counter to get my attention, it was one of my pet peeves, but I was double-ticked that she was doing it during that situation.
When the paramedics finally got there and got the man on a stretcher, I went back up to the register, and she cursed me out because she had to wait ’10 minutes!’ to be checked out.
I’m not sure what kind of self-absorbed little world she lives in, but I was furious at her behavior. That was one of the most selfish things I’ve ever seen.”
She Thought She Could Escape This Way?
“I worked in an Old Navy for quite a few years. We weren’t particularly known for our thorough loss prevention, so some people had gotten quite comfortable openly stealing in front of employees.
Eventually, loss prevention turned over to new management and kicked into overdrive. They had squads of people who would team up in stores to attempt to catch a few people so the word would spread and we’d see fewer shoplifters.
They were running this operation at a store in a low-income area when suddenly a caucasian lady in her mid-50s came in and started shoving random things in her purse with little regard to her surroundings with shoes and tops hanging halfway out of her purse. When she tried to leave, loss prevention stopped her at the door and informed her that they had notified the police and she needed to remain there until they arrived. She immediately said ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ and as they tried to tell her that wasn’t an option she started screaming ‘I’M POOPING!’ and just let it go.
They walked her to the bathroom since it’s a single room without windows and she has no chance to escape. They figured this would be an opportunity for her to clean herself up, and this was mostly for the police, so they wouldn’t have to soak the car in bleach afterwards. After the police arrived they realized she had been in the room for a while and wouldn’t respond or unlock the door. Management opened the door with a key and found the woman covered in her own feces, which she has also rubbed all over the walls, ceiling, and floor.
People are nuts.”
Makes Me Want To Just Leave And Never Come Back
“I could go on forever about the insane things people say to me at the store where I work.
I asked a woman once how her weekend went. She replied with:
‘Well, I have to take care of my mother and my mother-in-law full time because they’re on hospice and I can’t work because I have spinal meningitis and the pain is too bad. This weekend I had to drive my sister to three different hospitals to see specialists for her cerebral palsy and visit my uncle who has eye cancer.’
Now, here it’s important to note that this woman was buying nothing but sixteen gallons of distilled water.
‘That’s why I’m buying this water. I use it to make a tea that cures cancer. I can see you have freckles so you’re going to get skin cancer someday. Let me write down the recipe for you. It really works my uncle was supposed to die a year ago but hasn’t because I make him this tea.’
Another time I had an old man use pennies as a segue into a rant about how Canada was going to collapse because of refugees and socialism and we should behead all Muslims and burn down the Middle East.
Once I had a man tell me that I was only happy and smiling because I wasn’t old enough to realize that life is nothing but pain and suffering and waiting to die.
Oh, and then Cancer Tea Lady came back and told me she had adopted an eleven-year-old dog with fifteen puppies that would have been put down without her because it had cancer but she had cured it with her tea and was not suffering taking care of the fifteen puppies.
She then came back again buying ten trays of chicken that she claimed she couldn’t touch because she was allergic to all meat and it would make her skin rot.”
This Woman Wanted To Ruin Everything
“I work at Macy’s in the women’s shoe department.
Our customer base mainly buys clearance items and rarely spends more than $40. Every day I watch as customer after customer asks if they can use coupons, get an extra % off of the price or any discount possible.
Now, one customer took the cake over every other one. She came to me and asked for the mate to 18 clearance shoes. As I work off commission and this was a pretty large sale, I basically ran around the stockroom to gather these shoes. I brought them all out neatly stacked in their boxes and rang them up at the register for her and her total came to $236. This is where everything went south. She asked if she could use her 20% off coupon. Now normally, heck yeah you can use that coupon, but on this day, we were having a sale. All clearance shoes were marked down 80% and were roughly $10-20 per pair. So coupons were prohibited. She then SCREAMED at me until I called my manager. Like, she was calling me every name in the book, telling me I’m an effing idiot, that I shouldn’t be allowed to work there because I must be slow, everything!
My manager finally came and when she explained that coupons weren’t allowed for this particular sale, the woman bought all 18 pairs, for $236, but made someone else ring it up so I wouldn’t make the commission on the sale. Little did she know the other salesperson rang it up using my ID number. Dumb witch.”
This Guy Is Just Crazy
“I worked at a Target and have literally a thousand stories, but the one that sticks out to me was one I wasn’t actually present for.
A gentleman walked in one day with a blender, sat down in our Starbucks, and proceeded to make himself a smoothie. I can’t emphasize enough that this is retail, this is hardly the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us. The floor leader on duty asks him if he needs anything or if he is looking for anything. The man smiles and says ‘no, thank you,’ very politely.
When he’s finished, he takes the blender, goes into the bathroom, and proceeds to pour the smoothie onto his head and begin to shave. In a Target bathroom, which admittedly, are already a little akin to the Twilight Zone.
A male employee was sent in to ask what exactly he was doing, and apparently, the man replied with ‘What? It’s not like I’m doing anything illegal? What’re you going to do, call the cops?’
Yes, apparently. I guess several other male employees were called up to guard the door before anyone else could get in before police arrived. I don’t know exactly what happened to the guy, but I’m glad he’s getting use out of his blender.”
The Mysterious “Collagen”
“I worked at a store as a pharmacy tech, and it was very slow. People would often come up to me and ask if I knew where non-pharmacy stuff was, and I always just pointed them towards customer service.
One day this VERY old woman (had to be 85+) with a strong Southern accent comes up to the counter.
‘Hello ma’am, how can I help you today?’
‘Where’s the collagen?’
I think, ‘ah, a skin care product perhaps? Maybe the health section?’ So I walk out to the aisles and start looking with her while I say, ‘Collagen, well… I don’t think we carry pure collagen… are you looking for a skincare product or supplement?’ She just stares at me, looks up and down the aisle, at all the lotions, then back at me.
‘Collagen. Where’s the collagen?’ She repeats.
At this point, I’m getting quite frustrated. I’m rummaging through these shelves of creams and lotions and coming up with nothing. So I walk over to the pharmacists and consult with him. He recommends sending her to customer service, but I decide to push through. Keep in mind, it’s been about 10 minutes.
I walk back over to her, and start scouring the vitamin/supplement section, and finally locate some kind of powdered collagen.
‘Aha, here we go!’ I announce as I hand her the bottle.
She looks at the bottle, then at me and says:
‘Where’s the collagen? I’m makin’ soup!’
Freaking COLLEGE INN broth.”
Lots Of Stupid People
“Here are a few that I’d couldn’t believe.
-Cashiering in a grocery store. A customer walks up the lane next to me and unloads their cart by handing things to me over the divider. She didn’t notice anything amiss until she needed to pay.
-I walked past a family picking out ice cream and they looked up and told me they had left a leaky case of soda on the floor several aisles back. They must have dropped it then realized it was leaking. There was soda everywhere and they just left it in the middle of the floor and went on shopping.
-I handed a woman a pen to write her check with. She turned it over five times. Pressed on the cap like it was a click pen. Unscrewed the body so the inkwell almost fell off. She finally handed it back asking how it worked. I silently pulled off the cap and handed it back. She said, ‘well huh that’s different.’
-I watched a customer at self-checkout spend five minutes trying to scan an item. He then yelled at me that the machine is broken. I walked over and press ‘start.’ Voila, I fixed it.”
How Were They Not Arrested?
“I used to work at Walmart, and one day some people came in saying they wanted to purchase a TV. I knew these people to be rather shady (they would come several times a week and try to ‘return’ cans of food for cash that were not purchased at our store, likely taken from the local food pantry. They asked to borrow one of the big flatbed carts from the service desk where I worked. I asked if they would like me to page someone to electronics to help, and they hastily said no and booked it out of the service desk area.
A few minutes go by and I see them rush out the door, TV, cart and all. No spider wrap, no alarm, no door greeter to check receipts. My supervisor just shook her head and said there was nothing we could do. About a week later, who do you suppose shows up. The people with their TV, saying it didn’t work and wanted to return it… and they ‘lost the receipt.’
Our asset protection manager rarely actually bothered to pull camera footage so people got away with stuff like this all the time. Plus during this incident, we also had no door greeter at the time because apparently, this was a ‘cost-saving measure’. Because no one actually witnessed them walk out of the store without paying, there was nothing to prove, even though both a coworker and I were 99.9% sure, given these customers’ shady history.”
What Is Wrong With People?
“So I used to work in H&M located on 5th ave in NYC, so as you can imagine we would get idiots from all over the world. One day I hear over our radio a frantic call for the porter to come to the ladies fitting room. Turns out a woman decided to take a dump in the fitting room, and use some shirts to wipe herself.
The real are you serious moment was that she continued shopping through the store casually.”
He Wanted All The Spam
“I work overnight stock at Walmart. One night, I’m over stocking the Spam section, and this big guy walks up. Big big. I’m talking 300-400 pounds big. I continue minding my own business, putting things on the shelves, and he speaks.
‘Excuse me, sir. I am so, so sorry that you have to see this.’ And then he just… pauses. Confused and concerned on equal levels, I stand up and turn around to look at him, wondering what, exactly, he plans on doing. After staring at me for about a good twenty seconds (no exaggeration) he reaches over and grabs a ton of Spam. More containers of Spam than I ever thought anybody should ever need in their lifetime, let alone one shopping trip.
With his cart fully loaded with Spam, he turns around and walks away, leaving a huge empty spot on the shelves that I’d been filling up. I manage to get out a quick, ‘Have a nice day’ before he escaped around the corner. It was… certainly an experience.”
This Guy Goes Straight To Total Freakout
“I used to work at a grocery store as a bagger. This guy said he wanted his milk in a bag, and he has a lot of stuff. When I finally got around to the milk, I wanted to confirm that’s what he said. It just slipped my mind. So I asked again if he wants the milk in a bag
He proceeded to yell so loud that the next two lanes got quiet and they were all staring at what was going on, ‘Are you freaking stupid? Do you have hearing problems? Where is your manager? They should fire you for being so stupid. I already said I wanted it in the bag.’
Of course, the jerkoff manager was working that day, so he didn’t say a word, even though he watched it go down. At least I had the sympathy of the checkers from the other two lanes.”
Not Exactly The Heist Of The Century
“A guy walks in to Tractor Supply, steals bolt cutters off of the shelf. Then walks to the side door and cuts the lock where two of his buddies have been placing items near the door. They pile everything in this tiny car and just drive off. They were caught later that day for trying to steal from another store in the same plaza.”