Unfiltered Story #257241

I work in a food-on-the-go retailer in England. A lot of people believe that we sell hot food, but we don’t; we cook the food then put it out on a counter. This means we don’t charge tax, so the food is cheaper, but sometimes it’s cold. I try to warn people where I can, but this takes the cake.
By law, we are not allowed to say food is hot; we have to say fresh.

On this day we’ve been incredibly busy and whilst we don’t have much, everything we do has come out of the oven in the last five minutes. My co worker is in the process of filling to ovens to cook more stock whilst I serve. It’s worth noting I’ve been at work for 8 hours with two and a half more to go, on day 5 of a 7 day run. I’m exhausted.

Three girls come in, looking to be late teens/early twenties. Immediately I can sense the lead girl, girl #1, has an attitude problem. I paste on the smile. Despite saying please, every time she says it is with the attitude of an 8 year old child forced to apologise.

Girl #1: I want a hot pizza.
Me: We have this margharita slice! It’s just come out of the oven. Do you want to –
Girl #1: I want a fresh one please.
Me: My colleague can put some in for you, that’ll be ten minutes wait though.
Girl #1: I’m not waiting ten minutes. Can you put that one in a bag so I can feel it?
Me, holding my smile: Sure!
I hand her the pizza in a bag; she barely touches it, looking away all the time.
Girl #1: That’s not good enough. I want something hot. Hot, hot, hot, what’s hot hot hot, what’s just come out?
Me: I’m sorry but nothing’s hot hot hot. We don’t sell anything hot, I’m afraid; due to tax reasons, this isn’t a hot counter.
(I rest my hand on a part of the counter so she can see it’s not hot)
As you can see I’m not burning myself. We have food in the oven at the moment, the thing coming out the soonest –
I fumble my words a little and go ‘bleh’, trying to get a hint of a smile,
– The thing due to come out the soonest is the pizza, in ten minutes, or you can have that hot one there!
I’m a little brusque, but I’m still very polite and smiling the whole while. This girl is giving me the dirtiest look I’ve ever received.

Girl #2, quietly: We can go to the other [shop] up the road.
Girl #1: Nah fuck this
She turns to leave. To my utter shock, Girl #2 pipes up at full volume – looking at her friend, not me.
Girl #2: Rude bitch!
Girl #3 turns to look at me, jaw dropped. I’m sure I look just as alarmed, Girl #1 looking back at me as if she thinks it was me that said it. I hold my hands up slightly in surrender, but to my relief, she storms out. The other girls follow her.
I’m still not sure if the ‘rude bitch’ comment was aimed at me or not, but to my relief, the next customer agreed that I wasn’t the rude one in that situation!