All She Wanted Was Fresh Fries!
“I worked at a fast food place for a while and had this one regular who ALWAYS had something to complain about.
The worst was that no matter what, our fries were NEVER fresh.
Whenever we saw her we’d drop fresh fries just so she wouldn’t complain about them. She’d order, and we’d give her fries directly from the fryer and she’d tell us that they weren’t fresh. Oh come on!
My manager took them from her, walked to the back, and turned around and brought her the exact same container and apologized. The lady said ‘these are perfect,’ and went about her day. She came at least twice a week for the entire 3 and a half years I worked there.”
This Guy Needed Fruit!
“I worked in a supermarket for about a year and a half, I’ve seen some really crazy ones.
The best one, by far, was a man walking up to me and demanding I show him fruit. I asked him what specific kind of fruit, as they are stored in different parts of the store, and he just replied with ‘fruit.’
So I take him to the part of the store where most of the fruit is kept and asked him if that was going to be okay, he then asked me for fruit in bags. I explained that he can put the fruit into the fruit bags to take to the till. He then decides that none of this fruit is the fruit he is looking for.
After what felt like weeks of trying to coax what fruit he was looking for out of him, walking him up and down the fruit and veg aisles, three different managers had to get involved after he started yelling at me because I ‘didn’t know where the fruit was.’ He cussed us all out and walked away.
20 minutes later he comes marching up to me, shoves a bag of raisins in my face, screams ‘FRUIT!’ and walks away.”
Thanks For Having My Back, Mr. Manager
“I worked at the front desk at a grocery store. Some guy came up and asked for a refund.
Me – ‘Sure, just need the receipt and the item.’
Him – ‘Don’t have the item, it was bad. I threw it away.’
Me – ‘Okay. Do you have the receipt?’
Him – ‘Nope, threw that out too. Give me my money back.’
Me – ‘I don’t even know what to return, or even how much to give you.’
Him – ‘It was 3.99. Why are you arguing with me, just give me my money back.’
Me – ‘Seriously, I can’t refund something I don’t have, without a receipt.’
Him – ‘I WANT A MANAGER! MANAGER! MANAGER! MANAGER!’
The manager comes up.
Manager – ‘ What seems to be the problem?’
Him – ‘Your employee here won’t give me my money back!’
I explain the lack of item or receipt.
Manager – ‘Just cash him out four bucks.’
Manager briskly walked away.”
Tossed In Sauce
“I worked in a BBQ place for a while but quit after a month because it was so crappy. A big factor into me leaving was this:
We had a special where instead of paying the $8.99 for a chicken and sausage plate, you could pay $6.99. The only difference was its cutter’s choice, meaning the person cutting the meat chose if you got light or dark meat. It kept us from throwing away the dark meat because everyone wanted white. The sign warned people that if you have a preference; you have to pay for the choice plate. It was clear, we told them at the window as well that they’d likely be getting dark meat.
A man comes through and orders one with a pint of our BBQ sauce. We usually gave 2-3 little cups of sauce because you could cover the meat completely with that, but this guy felt he needed a pint for his single plate of food. At the window, the girl taking his order told him that next up is dark meat, he said he wanted white and she asked if he wanted to switch to the choice plate. She was clear that if he said no, he’d be getting dark meat because we weren’t allowed to cut another piece for a special plate unless the last one was gone. He said he wanted the cheap one. We make his plate, he drives off, and a couple seconds later we hear tired squealing.
He did a freaking doughnut in our parking lot, parked in the center of two spaces, and marched through the door. Before I could even react he threw the pint of sauce onto the counter while screaming about dark meat and calling me awful names. The sauce is kept simmering, so by throwing it he effectively covered me in near boiling, sticky sauce. From my glasses down to my waist, I had splotches. Luckily I was wearing an apron and my glasses kept it away from my eyes. I had red welts and blisters when I rinsed it off after running to the back.
I came back out and he’s smiling, waving around his plate of white meat at me and taunting me. I told him that I didn’t even take his effing order and got sent to be back for swearing.
They tried to make me stay late after yelling at me. I walked out.”
She Wanted To Donate Her…What?!
“I worked at an ice cream shop that had a minor scandal after someone let fly the rumor that we were going to be making our ice cream with ‘natural, woman’s’ milk. Yuck.
Anyway, one night I had a group of moms and their young children come in. One of the women came up to the counter and asked me about the rumor.
‘No, we will not be making ice cream with that kind of milk,’ I told her. ‘It’s just not really feasible.’
‘Well, why not?’ she asks me.
‘A lot of reasons, but primarily because it would require a lot of milk. Cows are much easier to access.’
She looks around at her mom buddies and their squirrelly crotchfruit and says ‘Do you think we could donate our milk?’
I didn’t even know how to respond to that.”
Makes You Want To Just Leave And Never Come Back
“I could go on forever about the insane things people say to me at the grocery 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.”
New Ham
“I was once berated over 10 minutes because of the fat content of ham.
A lady was ADAMANT that ham ‘never had fat when I was a kid’ and wanted to know when they started adding all the fat into HAM. ‘I can’t eat anything anymore!’
She must have said that like fifteen times.
I was like, Lady, they really only taught me how to slice it.”
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.”
Accused Of Attempted Rabbit Murder
“I worked in a local fruit market as a teenager.
One day, I packed this lady’s grocery bag and went to put it in her shopping trolley when she started screaming at me about what a horrible young girl I was and don’t I have any compassion!
It turns out she had her pet rabbit sitting in the bottom of the trolley (wrapped in a fur coat no less). I was ‘trying to crush it to death’ by being nice and loading up her groceries for her.
I ended up crying while the next lady in line consoled me.”
Her Time Was More Important Than His Life
“When I was a cashier at a small grocery 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.”
Stalker Alert!
“A guy came in who I have never encountered in my life. I served him and all was well.
3 hours after my shift, a notification pops up on my phone. This guy had found my Instagram and my Snapchat and added me. What’s creepy is the only thing he knew about me was my first name. That was it. Also, I only recently moved to the area and knew nobody here.
It creeped me out for sure. Plus he was with me the entire time and then left. Had no contact with any of my coworkers. That’s what creeped me out the most.”
The Candy Store Isn’t All That Sweet
“I worked at a smaller candy store where we only had one worker per shift. One day, during our downtown’s music fest, a man walks in with his wife.
I’m standing there, frantically helping all of the other customers, when a man walks in and goes, ‘Do you have a bathroom?’
Now, we did have a bathroom, but it wasn’t open to the public (it wasn’t up to code, I think) so I politely say, ‘No, I’m sorry. But I know that the pizza place down the street does!’
And this man blows. His. Stack.
He makes his wife put down the candy she was going to buy and starts yelling, ‘YEAH WELL WHERE DO YOU GO THEN?! That’s freaking ridiculous!’ And then he starts like…backing out of the store, yelling at me, and all of the other customers are staring at him and then at me, and once the man left, they just stared at me, waiting for me to cry or something.
I didn’t, but I did say, ‘Okay, have a nice day!’ as soon as the guy left, and got some giggles from the other people in the store.
To clarify, people expected me to cry or seem shaken because I live in a pretty ‘traditional’/’conservative’ town, where petite little ‘pixies’ working in candy stores aren’t ‘strong’ enough to get yelled at, wrongfully.
Oh! And a bonus, an old man came in and we ended up chatting about things while I was bagging up some candy for him. He ended up asking me what I was going to school for, and I told him theater. This man’s demeanor changed instantly and he starts telling me how I’m never going to get a job in theater and that I’m going to need to find a rich man to marry.
I have so many stupid stories from working there. People are dumb.”
Fearing For Her Safety
“I worked at a grocery store in high school and college.
In the summer, I also had a full-time factory job, so I would work the graveyard shift at the grocery store on the weekends because I was already on a third shift schedule.
So I’m all alone one night, and this strung out couple comes in with bags full of junk. They say they want to return it all. It’s 2 am and the service desk is closed, so I can’t refund anything.
The guy starts screaming at me and getting in my face (he’s over 6 feet, strung out, and likely over 200 pounds and I’m a 5-foot girl that is 120 pounds soaking wet). The woman is also shrieking and pounding her fist on the register. I’m certain they need the money for their addiction due to withdrawal as they are acting really crazy. I tried to call back to grocery, but they must have gone out on a smoke break, so I was all alone. I couldn’t give them money out of the register (that is theft and I would be fired), but I feared for my safety. I had just gotten paid that day so I gave them money out of my wallet so they would leave me alone.
The next morning when the service desk opened, it turns out the stuff they tried to return was half used or stuff we didn’t even sell. I had to eat the cost of it because my manager was a jerk.
Freaking junkies…”
Always Angling For A Free Meal
“I worked at a restaurant a few years ago and one night, a very large couple came in with an elderly woman in a wheelchair who didn’t seem to be coherent at all.
I was in the South, but am from the Midwest, so I greeted them with a ‘Hi guys!’
The man immediately informed me that there were women present and I was in for a treat. They ordered sweet teas, and when I brought them, the man complained that the Sweet-n-Low packets were caked up, like they had gotten wet. I politely got him new packets from dry storage, even though I knew he was full of it. It was a sign though.
Their food comes, and of course, his steak isn’t done right, so he sends it back and asks for hot sauce. This was not a great steakhouse, but a steakhouse with decent steaks nonetheless, and we only had 2 kinds of hot sauce. The man asks me, ‘you ever been to Vegas? They got dozens of hot sauces there!’
I apologize and go about my work until they’re ready to pay. I come out of the kitchen to see the man talking to a manager. They motion me over and the man proceeds to tell me that he was just talking to my manager about how I could have provided better service to them (it was about 2 pm and they were the only customers in the place, I couldn’t have ignored them if I tried). Then he left me less than a $2 tip on over a $60 meal and got a discount because of his complaining. I broke down in tears after they left and that same stupid manager tried to comfort me by saying that some customers were just like that.
The same people tried to come in the next week and sit in my section. I refused to serve them and explained the situation to a different head manager. He personally cooked their food, did most of the serving, and they still tried to get their meal free. He banned them and I only lasted 3 months as a waitress.”
Nothing But Spam, Lots And Lots Of Spam
“I work overnight stock at Walmart. One night, I’m 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.”
Covered In Blood
“I worked at Starbucks. A man came in, his hands and money covered in blood. I looked questioningly at the blood, then swallowed my fear and disgust, and made the man a cup of coffee.
He then went to my manager, said I had ‘treated him poorly,’ and demanded a coupon for a free drink next time. I was reprimanded by the manager for ‘making the customer feel uncomfortable.’
One of my coworkers went outside and saw a deer hanging out of the man’s truck.”
