I work in a grocery store, decorating cakes in the bakery. A lady brings in a picture of a baptismal cake covered in fondant.

Customer: “I’d like you to make this for me, please.”

Me: “Ma’am, we only work with buttercream and whipped cream here. We don’t have fondant.”

Customer: “You can just use buttercream, then.”

Me: “I can do that, ma’am, but I can’t make buttercream look like the fondant in this picture.”

Customer: “I have faith in you that you can make it look the same!”

I tell her over and over that I can’t make it look the same, but she just keeps saying that she has faith in me.

I work on the cake, and I do a great job on it. When the lady comes to pick it up, I hide in the back while my coworker gives it to her.

Customer: *Disappointed* “Hmm… It doesn’t look like the picture!”

This is my father’s story. He’s the kind of man who always checks his receipts after a purchase before leaving the store. If he finds an error, he tells the cashier. He does this even when it means he is supposed to pay more than he did. This causes the employees who have been around for a while at our local grocery store to be very trusting of him.

He takes some studies later in life. He studies on the subway on his way home, and then he stops by the grocery store to shop. While he is there, he notices one of the newer employees keeping an eye on him, but he doesn’t give it much thought. As he goes to pay, however, the new employee comes up.

New Employee: “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Dad: “I am? Did I drop something?”

New Employee: “No! I mean, aren’t you going to pay for what you have in your backpack?”

Dad: *Confused* “My backpack? I don’t have any groceries in my backpack.”

Cashier: “[New Employee], it’s fine.”

New Employee: “No, I saw you put something in your backpack! You need to pay for it.”

Dad: “I didn’t put anything in my backpack.”

New Employee: “Yes, you did! I saw it!”

Cashier: “[New Employee], it is fine. He didn’t put anything in his backpack; he said so. That will be [total].”

New Employee: “No, he did! I didn’t see what it was, but it was about this big.” *Shows with her hands* “Open up your backpack so I can take it out.”

Dad: “No. I am not letting you mess around in my bag. I keep my expensive college books in there! Some of them have very fragile pages.”

Then, it dawns on him: the book he read on the subway. He had forgotten to get it back into the backpack, so he did it while he was in the store.

Dad: “Oh! Do you mean this?”

He opens the backpack and shows her the book. It’s the correct size.

New Employee: “Yes! Oh…”

The cashier repeats the total and he pays. As he goes to pack, he also checks the receipt.

While he does so, he overhears the cashier and the new employee talking. The new employee says the cashier should trust her, and the cashier then explains exactly what he is doing right now with the receipt and how he has come back to pay more when they’ve made errors. 

My dad confirms there are no errors today.

Dad: “Thank you, and I’m sorry for confusing you. It is a good thing to prevent theft. Have a nice evening!”

A customer comes to the customer service desk, looking distraught. I am with my manager.

Customer: “I demand that you fire your security guard immediately!”

Me: “What happened, ma’am?”

Customer: “Your security guard is a bigot! He wouldn’t let me bring my child into the store! I had to leave her outside with my husband!”

Me: “I’m sure that’s not what happened, ma’am. We don’t discriminate against anyone shopping with us.”

Customer: “That’s what happened! You need to fire him!”

My manager steps in, knowing this is not the kind of thing you can resolve at the customer service desk.

Manager: “Ma’am, let’s go speak to the guard and we can figure out what’s going on here.”

Customer: “You better! My child will be traumatized for years because of this!”

They both head off toward the entrance and I continue my duties. A few minutes later, the manager comes back, shaking his head.

Manager: “She neglected to mention that her child is a cat.”

I worked at a large retail chain in the grocery section. We KNEW who had authentic support dogs and who had emotional support animals with no training.

We had a lady who kept coming in with her Bichon Frisé and claiming it was a support dog. We suspected it wasn’t.

One day, our store manager caught them in the middle of a grocery aisle. The dog was pooping and peeing on the floor. The lady just walked away without cleaning it up.

The store manager finally banned her after that.

During the utterly unprecedented snowfall that hit Texas like a semi-truck going the wrong way down a busy highway, there was a day I had to walk to a supermarket because my car just plain refused to start. As it was very, VERY cold, I was wearing layers: a sweatshirt, a hoodie, a beanie, a snood (which is basically a fitted mask from nose to neck), and flannel pajama pants under my jeans.

On top of my hoodie was an old military jacket that I bought from a thrift store which didn’t provide a lot of cover, but layers are layers, and it was cold.

I also happened to have the bottoms of my jeans tucked into the tops of my work boots to keep the two feet of snow I had to trudge through out of my pants. These boots — to play devil’s advocate — could be mistaken for military boots at a distance, even though they’re not.

When I was just about to walk into the supermarket that some woman I’d never seen before (and never saw again) sprinted up to me and almost literally shoved her phone in my face, clearly recording.

Stranger: “Hey! You can’t wear that!”

Me: *Blinks* “…Huh?”

Stranger: *Points at my jacket* “Take that off! It’s stolen valor!”

I looked down at myself and blinked again.

Me: “…It’s a jacket.”

Stranger: “You’re trying to get a discount! Just buy your groceries like everyone else!”

I realized she was recording me, like the “Stolen Valor Revealed” videos on YouTube. I decided, perhaps naively, to try and explain the misunderstanding.

Me: “Oh, no, you’re mistaken. I’m not trying to get a military discount—”

She interrupted me and poked me in the chest to indicate my jacket.

Stranger: “Why else would you wear that, then?!”

It took me a few seconds to look around at the TWO FEET of snow that had gotten dumped on Texas almost overnight and then back at her.

Me: “‘Cause it’s cold.”

She blinked, took a moment herself to look around, and then blinked again. I could almost hear the gears clicking in her head as they stalled out after being given simple logic. At that point, I figured that, while she was distracted, I was just going to get inside the supermarket before my hands turned blue. And that way, I would have witnesses around me in case she escalated matters.

As it happened, I didn’t see the lady again until I was heading for the registers, and she was “hidden” behind a display, evidently thinking she was being sneaky, with her phone up again, ready to call me out. So, I preempted it.

Me: *To the cashier* “Just for the record, this jacket isn’t to mark me military; it’s just because it’s cold.”

The cashier looked a bit confused, as though I didn’t even need to say that, before nodding politely.

Cashier: “Um, okay, sir. Do you have a loyalty card?”

The transaction went without a hitch; I paid with my card, and I very specifically did NOT get any kind of discount. The woman who’d approached me wasn’t there anymore, and I figured she’d given up and found someone else to bother.

That was until I made my way to the front door. Ms. Stolen Valor was standing next to it with the very confused-looking manager in tow. I let out a sigh and held my receipt out to him before she could throw around any accusations.

Me: “Here’s my receipt. She’s claiming stolen valor, right?”

The manager also sighed, already looking like it had been a long day, took my receipt, gave it a quick pass with his eyes, and then handed it back to me.

Manager: “You’re fine, sir. Was she bothering you before?”

Me: “Yeah, she ambushed me outside, and she tried to sneak a video at the registers, but I basically ignored her. Am I free to go?”

The strange woman was going red in the face and was possibly two seconds from stomping her feet.

Manager: “Unless you want to file a harassment charge, sure.”

Me: “That won’t be necessary; it’s too cold. Sorry to leave you with her.”

Manager: *Chuckles mirthlessly* “I’ll live, I hope.”

I nodded politely to the manager and then passed right by the accusing woman. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see she was seething, clearly upset that she didn’t get a million-view callout video or whatever, but I just plain did not care. The manager, however, did keep her with him so she didn’t follow me down the street, and I can only imagine — and hope — that she at least got a reprimand for her antics.

I guess at the end of the day, I didn’t steal any valor, but I did get my time wasted.