Working at a supermarket may not appear thrilling at first glance, but the customers who walk through those doors often bring the most unbelievable moments. Cashiers share their most outrageous encounters with customers. Content has been edited for clarity.
Does That Guy Have Any Clothes on?
“I worked at a shop as a cashier. One day, a man came in and he looked a little bit weird. He was wearing overalls with no shirt on. He was there to buy a packet of cigarettes. While I was ringin up his purchase, he kept telling me: ‘I know what you’ve done.’
That was rather creepy. In the end, he took his cigarettes, he paid and he left. It was great to be rid of him, except I wasn’t.
Later on that same day I was standing at the fridge with my back to the shop entrance. I was packing away the pies for the day. Somebody came into the shop and immediately after that you could hear the security guard, who also doubled as the merchandiser and packer, run away. Something was obviously wrong so I turned to see what was going on. The guy from earlier was back, but this time he was butt naked.
He went in behind the counter and tried to take the cash register. Yes, you heard right, he tried to take the whole cash register and take off with it.
I went in behind the counter as well, and got him to put the cash register down. Then I motioned him to come from the counter. He wasn’t violent, he wasn’t armed either. He was just naked so it wasn’t like he could be hiding a knife or anything, but I was ready for anything at that point. I took him to the door and told him to go. He left without objecting or making a scene. I felt a bit bad about making him walk out of the shop naked, but he came naked out of his own free will, and I didn’t feel like keeping him around, so it was the only option.
I was pretty calm about the whole thing, but the store was connected to a petrol station, and the petrol attendants panicked when they saw the guy walk into the shop. They pressed the alarm button and the armed response showed up about 20 minutes later. The patrolman gave me a hard time for being so calm about the whole thing, but I thought he was being a bit of an idiot.
The following day, I was called in by management. They asked me about the incident and showed me CCTV footage of what happened the previous night after we locked the shop and left. After we locked up and left, the guy came back, he was naked again.
This man came back and tried to walk through our locked door. He walked into it hard and repeatedly, staggering backwards with the force of hitting it. Eventually, the police came and picked him up. They threw him in the back of their police van and off they went.
The following day the guy came back. This time, thankfully, he was fully clothed. The police obviously let him go. He was very apologetic about what had happened and explained that he was going through a lot of stress. During the incident of the previous day he had blacked out and he could only remember bits of what had happened. He explained that his wife was divorcing him, and that he wasn’t dealing with it very well. I suppose stress was making him crack. After we chatted for a bit, he left and all seemed well.
Later, I got some more facts together and it turned that the “I know what you’ve done” thing was all connected to the fact that this guy blacked out and then believed that he was God.
Sometimes life pushes you too far. So don’t get too judgy towards people that you don’t know. You don’t know there story and you don’t know what they are going through.
That has by far been my weirdest experience in a food store.”
Clean Up On The Baby Aisle
“While I was working at a supermarket, I saw this woman, who was a known shoplifter, come into the store. I let the manager know and he had someone follow her around as usual.
Apparently, she’d up’d her game since the last time she was in, and about ten minutes later, there was a giant crash, and when I went to check, the baby food display had been knocked over and several hundred of those horrible little glass bottles of Gerber baby food were rolling around the floor, many of which had shattered.
I ran to get supplies to cordon off the area and start cleanup, and as I came out of the back I saw this woman waddling towards the door. Setting the picture a little more clearly, she was seriously overweight, so ‘sprightly’ wasn’t exactly an accurate descriptor on the best day, but she’d moved from that slightly pained gait of the chronically obese to something qualitatively different.
I kept an eye on her as I turned to the giant mess, and as I turned back once I’d dropped off the supplies, heard a wet heavy ‘schlump thunk’ sound.
Looking at her, I saw a very large frozen turkey between her feet, wrapped in her panties.
As I headed toward her, she stepped out of her panties and started moving much faster towards the door, and once out the door jumped into a running car. Alas, the driver managed to back out hitting the car of an arriving customer, and stalled. The manager got up in the driver’s face preventing any further attempts at leaving.
When the sheriff arrived, the story came out. She’d used the diversion to slip a frozen turkey up her loose-fitting flowing dress into her underwear, whereupon she cradled it like she would a very late term pregnancy and made her way to the door. She hadn’t counted on it being increasingly slippery as it thawed from the heat, and she lost control – and with it, her underwear.
The sheriff took her and her sons in for mischief and vandalism for the baby food they destroyed, and the panty-clad turkey as evidence.
Pretty sure that’s got to be right on up there on the weird scale, even for a small town in Texas.”
Bulk Bin Problem
“Back in 1988, I worked at a grocery store in Richmond, VA. We had a section of bulk snacks, e.g. trail mix, chocolate covered pretzels, etc. While I was sweeping the aisles, I watched an unattended child ‘grazing’ from the bins and then he spit something he didn’t like back into the bin! I immediately notified my manager, but the only thing he did was throw out the whole bin, which was about $30 worth of product. I even pointed out the kid, who was back with his mother, but the manager wouldn’t confront her about it even though I had personally witnessed it. This is why I will NEVER buy anything from a bulk bin.”
