An Instacart shopper who looks like she hasn’t showered in weeks, smelling like she was just baptized in an ashtray and just s*** her pants, walks up to me:

Instacart Shopper: “I need help.”

She pulls out her phone and shows me a photograph of parsley. I looked closely to find it was parsley in our bulk department. We keep our bulk spices in glass jars, and you put however much you need in a plastic bag. I show her and start to walk away.

Instacart Shopper: “WAIT! DON’T GO ANYWHERE. I NEED YOU!”

Me: “What do you need?”

Instacart Shopper: “I have two orders going at once, and I don’t know where any of the items are on either one.”

Me: “Umm?”

Instacart Shopper: “How do I get the parsley?”

Me: “You put however much you need in the bag.”

Instacart Shopper: “My customer wants 0.6 oz, but I don’t know how to convert these ounces to pounds on my phone.”

Me: “You don’t have to. Just put 0.6 oz in a bag.”

Instacart Shopper: *Messing with her phone frantically.* “I think my phone is broken! It’s not letting me convert ounces to pounds.”

Me: “I don’t know what you mean.”

Instacart Shopper: “I think I’ll just take the whole jar.”

Me: “You can’t take the jar. Just put it in the bag.”

Instacart Shopper: “I don’t know how. I need to convert to lbs.”

Me: “Just eyeball it.”

Instacart Shopper: “HAHAHAHA EYEBALL IT? REALLY?! I’ll just take the whole jar.”

Me: “You can’t have the jar. It belongs to us. If you need a scale, you can use the scales in Produce to weigh out 0.6 oz.”

Instacart Shopper: “Really? I have to go to produce!?”

I start to walk away.

Instacart Shopper: “NO! I STILL HAVE A WHOLE BUNCH MORE QUESTIONS!”

Me: “What do you need?”

Instacart Shopper: “Since you are SO busy, I’ll find someone else.”

Me: “Look, I’ll be around once you figure out your predicament.”

I work for about another twenty minutes when the Instacart shopper comes back up to my boss and me.

Instacart Shopper: “Where is this item?” *Shows me a crab boil.*

Me: “It’s in meat and seafood, underneath the giant meat and seafood sign opposite to us.”

Instacart Shopper: “But it says that it’s in grocery spices. Why does it say that?”

Me: *About to lose my s***.* “It’s a grocery item, but it’s next to the seafood because it pairs with seafood.”

Boss: “You know what, I’ll go get it for you.”

My boss comes back with the item.

Instacart Shopper: “So this is your department’s item, yet you keep it in the meat department?”

Boss: “It doesn’t matter.”

Instacart Shopper: “I have a lot of questions. I need help.”

Boss: “I can answer two more questions for you, but that is it.”

Customer: “How about four?”

Boss: “Fine.”

They walk away. I am so flabbergasted that thirty-ish minutes of my time were wasted on this.

I’m at the supermarket self-checkout, paying for my food. There’s some sort of commotion. I don’t mean to overhear, but it’s so loud I can’t not hear. A customer is laying into the self-checkout assistant for ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, and none of it makes any sense. 

There’s a problem about the assistant not doing her scanning for her (hey, this is a SELF-checkout), and when assistant does, she’s standing too close and probably doing that to steal her information (how is she meant to scan your groceries if she’s two metres from the machine; she’s only standing as close as she needs to reach the groceries), etc., etc. 

All of it is at truly ear-splitting volume. I don’t mean loud, I mean I didn’t know a human who’s not an opera singer can be that loud.

Me: *Finally, to the customer.* “Oh, do shut up, she’s doing nothing wrong!”

Customer: “IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!”

Me: “I wish it wasn’t, but you’re making my ears hurt, and I’m all the way on the other side. It’s you making it everyone’s business.”

I went to finish my groceries, as she really was hurting my ears. As the customer leaves, I say to the self-checkout assistant:

Me: “Are you okay? Do you want me to tell your manager? You did nothing wrong? Does this sort of lunacy happen often?”

Self Checkout Assistant: *Dejectedly.* “It didn’t use to.” *Finns are not a loud people.* “But since I converted and started wearing the scarf, all the time.”

I just now notice she’s wearing a headscarf, not very different from one I might myself wear if it were a hot summer day, although, granted, not inside a store, but nothing one’d notice when just getting one’s groceries.

So not just dealing with a bigot, but an incredibly loud one.

The call center where I work has a leaderboard for how quickly a customer starts insisting that they “know better” than the tech support guy trying to help them. There are codes for the call recordings of each entry, and the top five are kept in a specially labelled archive where we can easily find them. 

When I got hired, the current #1 slot was already occupied by the worker who had to deal with this guy:

Worker: “Hi, my name is—”

Customer: “—F****** finally! My computer’s not working!”

Worker: “Can you describe—”

Customer: “—Shut the f*** up! I know what I’m doing!”

Worker: *Audibly unable to stop himself.* “Okay, why did you even call tech support if you’re not going to listen to tech support?”

Customer: “F*** you!” *Hangs up.*

I hope I never beat that record.

A customer walks up to the customer service desk with a sheet of paper.

Customer: “I have a list of changes I want you to make around here. I shall read them out to you, and you will write them down so I can ensure you’ve understood every one.”

Me: “Uh, if you like, you can email Corporate, and they—”

Customer: “No, you will be talking to Corporate. You will tell them what I want, and I expect every instruction to be followed.”

Me: “Ma’am, I work here on the weekends because I’m still in High School. I don’t have authority on when I can take my lunch, so I’m not going to be very effective in talking to Corporate.”

Customer: “I know that! I’m not an idiot! Obviously, you’ll pass these on to your manager, and they’ll be the one to talk to your corporate office. Now, change one, I expect the male and female restroom positions to be swapped. It takes too long to get to mine from the entrance, and that’s sexist. Two…”

She made me write down all eighteen changes she was expecting to be “done over the weekend”. I should have stopped her, but I was morbidly curious as to how each item on the list was more unhinged than the next.

My manager did type up the list, but not to send to corporate, but instead to print out and hand out among the staff for comedy value.

I’m walking the store and see two young boys trashing a display endcap. They’re literally pulling items from hooks and tossing them to the ground.

Me: “Hey! Stop that!”

From out of nowhere, a wild mother appears.

Mom: “You don’t talk to my kids like that!”

Me: “That’s right, it should be you, but you’re not. Your kids are throwing items around.”

Mom: “It’s your job to clean things up! They’re just kids!”

Me: “That would fly if it were accidental damage. This is intentional damage, and you’re encouraging it. The kids behave and stay with you, or you all leave right now.”

Mom: “Woooow. I didn’t know [Store] hates children.”

Me: “No, just bad parents.”

If you could have heard her gasp… She took her two boys and stormed out of the store with them, but not before encouraging them both to knock over another display on the way out.