I am the author of this story, and I felt like sharing one of the many other stories from my time working for a certain blue-and-yellow-branded bookie. By the time this story happened, I’d been moved to a new location where the manager actually treated people like people, and I was doing much better mentally.

Like most betting shops, our main entrance was in full view of the shop counter and had signs in massive lettering explaining how to open it: either push or pull. Ours you had to pull, and 99% of customers could figure this out. Then, there was this guy.

He walked up to the door and tried to push it open with his shoulder. The door didn’t move.

He looked at the door, confused. He tried pushing again. The door still didn’t move.

The guy looked even more confused and tried pushing the door more forcefully. It still didn’t move.

Then, the guy saw me behind the counter and gestured toward the door handle, looking baffled. I mimed pulling open a door.

And he tried pushing the door AGAIN!

My manager was on the shop floor at the time and saw the incredibly confused customer.

Manager: *Miming pulling open a door* “You need to pull it.”

The guy tried pushing YET AGAIN.

A regular customer had been observing the whole fiasco — a rather soft-spoken and kind elderly gentleman who never raises his voice for anything — until today.

Regular Customer: “PULL THE F****** HANDLE!”

At that point, my manager gave up and opened the door for the baffled customer whilst trying to stifle laughter.

Related:
Screaming Managers May Make You Scream, Too

I worked for a betting shop in the UK for around five years. For two of those years, I was stuck with one of the absolute worst people for a manager. She was a power-tripping, egotistical bully who believed she knew best in any situation just because she had worked in the industry for more than a decade. Here are but a few of the terrible things she did.

She didn’t fully train me on how to use the shop systems and got irrationally angry when I asked for help on something she hadn’t trained me on. (I had to teach myself 75% of the job.)

She blamed any and all cash discrepancies in the shop on anyone besides herself because her till could never be wrong.

She refused to postpone her breaks and help out when the shop entered busy periods, yet she expected everyone else to drop everything to help her.

She abandoned me to work a nine-hour shift (12:30 pm to 9:30 pm) by myself as punishment for some minor infraction.

She would expect the shop to be perfect 100% of the time and would repeatedly scream at any employee, including me, over the tiniest mistake. The till was £0.50 short? Screaming. One small area of the shop was dirty? Screaming. We were unable to get the right marketing information out due to a high volume of customers? Screaming. We were unable to do something the instant she asked for it regardless of whether we were helping a customer? Screaming.

That last one caused my mental health to completely tank. I had to take three weeks of sick leave and be moved to another shop closer to where I lived in order to continue working. Some people have told me I should have just grown a spine and stood up for myself, but when this is happening daily, and I had very little confidence due to it being my first-ever job, that gets pretty hard to do.

The silver lining is that this manager was eventually suspended due to a not-so-significant amount of money — at least £250 — disappearing while she was on shift, leading to her leaving the company. Whether she was fired or quit I don’t know; I was with a much better manager who actually cared about her staff at the time. But she was left with a permanent black mark on her record.

My mum is the area manager of a chain of betting shops. She travels around them all making sure nothing shady is going on and everything is running smoothly. One day, we receive a panicked call from her.

“Yeah, this is going to sound nuts but can you come to get me? Someone is in the shop with a gun threatening to steal.”

At hearing this, we all freak out. For reference: guns have been illegal in Scotland for many years unless you have a specialised license. So, we make the 20-minute drive there only to find a police car and someone in an oversized onesie being escorted out screaming that he has no idea why he is being taken in.

Confused, we walk in to find out what happened. We find my mum and two other employees struggling to contain their laughter. After a few minutes, we manage to get it out. Someone came in wearing a balaclava and all black, and carrying a loaded gun. When the panic button was pressed, he ran… only to turn up a measly ten minutes later after changing clothes and ask to make a bet. By that point, the police arrived and he was escorted out immediately.

(I’m female and work in a betting office or bookies. Customers can get aggressive but I’m well used to it and they don’t intimidate me. I’m on my own as my coworker is out on lunch and there are two customers in line. A regular walks past the customers and slams a betting docket on the counter.)

Regular: “That’s going off.” *meaning the race is about to start*

Me: “There’s a queue.”

Regular: “I don’t care; that’s about to go off.”

Me: “And there’s still a queue.”

Regular: “B****, take the f****** bet before the race starts.”

Me: “No. The race times and odds have been posted since 9:00 am this morning. It’s now 5:00 pm. You had plenty of time to put your bet on. Get in the queue.”

Regular: “You don’t want to f****** mess with me. Take the f****** bet.”

Me: “No.”

Regular: “I will mess you up. Take the f****** bet or you will regret it.”

Me: *picking up the betting slip* “Are you really threatening me over a £2 bet at 2/1 odds? The most you could have won is £6. F*** off, and next time, get your bet in earlier. Also, the race is finished and your horse didn’t win, so you saved £2.”

Regular: “You’re going to regret this, you dumb b****.”

(He storms out and I continue on with my shift. It’s not the first time I’ve been threatened and I have a giggle about it with the remaining customers. At closing my time, just as I’m about to leave, my coworker comes in from the back room where the security cameras are.)

Coworker: “Uh [My Name], did you have a run-in with [Regular] earlier?”

Me: “Yeah! He tried to skip the queue with a tiny bet right before a race started. I told him to get in the queue and he threatened me. How did you know?”

Coworker: “Because he’s in the alley beside the building with a baseball bat.”

(My coworker ended up locking us in the shop while we called the police. The regular was arrested and barred from the shop for life. All that over a £2 bet that he wouldn’t have won anyway!)

(It is toward the end of my shift, so I go out to empty the gaming machines to put the money through the tills. As I take the box containing the money, a regular customer comes over and starts a conversation. It should be noted that I have red hair.)

Customer: *jokingly* “Are you stealing all the money again?”

Me: “I wish it was mine to keep! Sadly, it’s on its way to the tills.”

Customer: “Oh, good. People are probably a bit suspicious of you.”

Me: “Why’s that?”

Customer: “You know how it is. Everyone knows that people who steal tend to be gingers or—“ *leans closer and whispers* “—black people.”

Me: *speechless*