This is when UK supermarkets have started to charge for plastic bags.

Customer: “I don’t want to pay 5p for one of your flimsy plastic bags that will just break before I get home anyway!”

Me: “We do have our ‘bags for life’ for 30p, which are very sturdy!”

Customer: “Bag for life? What rubbish! How does the bag know how long I’m going to live?”

Me: “If the bag breaks, you can bring it in for a free replacement as many times as you want. That’s what we mean by ‘for life’. You can have the bag forever.”

Customer: “Well, what if I don’t want to live that long?”

Me: “Then… I don’t know what to tell you, sir, but I hope you have a nice day!”

Customer: “Why are you so cheerful?! You work in this dump of a place. You want to live forever working in a place like this?”

Me: “Only up until very, very recently, sir.”

I work in a grocery store. While in the self-checkout, a bottle of white wine slips out of a customer’s hand and shatters on the floor.

One person grabs the broom and dustpan to sweep up the glass, another directs traffic, and I run to a back room to grab a mop and bucket. Since I’m in a hurry and rarely have to clean up anything like this, I forget to grab a wet floor sign.

There’s another employee at the next register over, but he’s off-duty and just trying to buy some cat treats, so no one expects him to jump in. He notices the missing wet floor sign and offers to grab one. I tell him he can if he’s comfortable, and off he goes.

When he comes back, he brings a wet floor sign AND a roll of paper towels, so he can better dry the floor once I’ve mopped all I can.

Me: “Thanks again for helping clean up.”

Coworker: “No problem! That’s what being a team player is all about, right?”

I wasn’t sure whether to give him a high-five for being so helpful or lecture him for working off the clock.

I work in a grocery store. I am usually stationed in the self-checkout area since I like it while most employees hate it. Most other employees are five to twenty years older than me.

As I’m running around the self-checkout, one of my coworkers, a woman in her thirties or forties a full head taller than me, grabs me by my upper arms and SQUEEZES. The way she’s grabbed me, she’s staring me straight in the face.

After a brief moment of shock and panic, I ask:

Me: “What on earth are you doing?”

Coworker: “It was either you or the customer.”

I make her let me go and continue working. A second later, she walks up behind me while I’m with a customer and lightly slaps my shoulder. I turn around to tell her off.

Me: “Do not touch me. If you grab me again, then at some point I’m going to end up hurting you.”

Coworker: “All right, all right…”

I still can’t believe I had to tell a grown woman that it was inappropriate to grab her twenty-year-old coworker with zero warning. Keep your hands to yourself!

Related:
Someone Missed Personal Space Day In Kindergarten

It is a busy day, around noon. A mom is grocery shopping at our store with her maybe fourteen-year-old daughter, who is mentally disabled. They’re frequent customers at our store.

[Mom] puts their groceries on the conveyor belt, takes a piece of candy from the display, and puts it on the counter.

Mom: *To [Daughter]* “You can have that because you have been so good at helping me do the shopping!”

There is a bit of a queue with a few people behind them. One particular man seems very impatient, tapping his feet and looking at his watch every few seconds.

[Daughter] gets so happy that she starts bouncing up and down and yelling really loudly — she does that from time to time. [Mom] and I just look at each other and smile.

[Mom] calms [Daughter] down, all while everybody in the queue is talking to each other and minding their own business, but not [Impatient Guy]. He tries to sneak in a rather loud comment to some strangers about the girl, saying something like:

Impatient Guy: “I can’t believe that a mom has raised her daughter to behave like that at that age. It’s just amazing that a mother can give up on her child that way.”

In the blink of an eye, the entire queue (and I) turned toward him and glared at him, and this scene remained locked for a good five seconds until [Mom] and [Daughter] took their groceries and left. They honestly looked a bit sad.

I have never in my life seen such a look of regret as that man’s as he came up to me and paid for his groceries, picked them up, and walked out of the store with his tail between his legs.

He came shopping while I was at work a few times after that, and every single time, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow when he came to pay, his expression and demeanor revealing that he remembered the incident just as clearly as I did.

My fiancée suffers from a somewhat rare neurological condition called Parenthesia Neurologica, which is connected to traumatic nerve damage caused by not one but two car accidents. One aspect of Parenthesia Neurologica is that she has mobility issues and finds it difficult and extremely painful to walk more than short distances. However, like many people with a disability, her disability is not easily seen or noticed unless she is attempting to walk. As a result, we occasionally run into what I call “The Disability Police”.

The most common occurrence is when I am driving the car with [Fiancée] in the front passenger seat, park the car in a marked disabled parking spot (with the disabled parking tag hanging from the car’s rearview mirror), and get out of the car. They see me easily walking around the car to open the door for her and start screaming, “You’re not disabled! You can’t park in that disabled person parking spot!”

Particularly when we go grocery shopping, we go to supermarkets that have powered scooters so that she can ride and drive around the store while shopping. On a recent visit to our local supermarket, I did what I usually do: I parked the car, went into the store, found a scooter with a fully charged battery, got on it, and drove it out to our car so that [Fiancée] wouldn’t have to walk from the parking lot into the store and get the cart herself.

Normally, this is not an issue, but this time, some self-appointed “Disability Police Person” saw me walk into the store and start driving the scooter out to the parking lot. She started chasing after me, screaming.

Woman: “You’re not disabled! I saw you walk into the store without any problem! Thief! Thief! I’m going to call the police!”

Knowing how things are in our little Cape Cod, Massachusetts town, I just decided to park the scooter next to our car and told [Fiancée] to stay in the car.

A police car pulled up, and Miss Disability Policewoman started telling the officer that I was not disabled and had taken one of the scooters for disabled people and was attempting to steal it. The officer came over to our car.

Officer: “Hi, [My Name].” *Looks into the car* “Hi, [Fiancée]. By the way, [Fiancée], thanks for the cookies you baked and brought over to the police station last week. We really loved them.”

Miss Disability Policewoman’s mouth dropped open, and when the police officer helped [Fiancée] out of the car and onto the scooter, it looked like the woman wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and hide.

The police officer then turned to her and addressed her in a voice a parent might use on a misbehaving, bratty child.

Officer: “Miss, I suggest you go somewhere else, mind your own business, and stop harassing my friends.”

She scurried off, got in her car, and left.

[Fiancée] loves to bake and cook, and she drops off cookies and brownies at the local police station and firehouse. She doesn’t consider it a bribe but considers it just being a good neighbor and realizes that our local police and firemen don’t get paid a big salary or get properly appreciated.