I work in a grocery store basically in the middle of nowhere. Being a really short seventeen-year-old girl means that customers think they can get away with a lot more. I hate confrontation, so I usually start crying.

I’ve been told we have a new assistant manager to replace the old one, but I’ve been working nights, so I haven’t met her yet. I am serving a particularly cranky old man when something scans wrong, and he immediately explodes.

I am backed up as far as I can and crying while my usual manager just stares at it happening, like she always does. Out of nowhere, a woman not much taller than me with rainbow-coloured hair and glittery pink boots on, wearing the manager’s shirt, steps in front of the man and starts yelling at him.

New Manager: “Excuse me! How dare you speak to my team like that? She is seventeen years old. Do you feel good about yourself making a teenager cry? Do you have kids? Would you let someone speak to them like that?”

She gave him a very loud but very calm dressing-down in front of EVERYONE. He was beet red and physically cowering by the end of it while she repeatedly asked who raised him.

She eventually told him to pay me and leave the store and not to come back until he was willing to act like a human being.

After he left, she gave me a huge hug and sent me on break. I had literally never met her before, but I definitely decided that day that I would follow her into Hell if it came down to it.

Within a few months, the rest of the team felt the same way. She is the sweetest, funniest, kindest manager in the world and regularly squares up with horrible customers — so much so that word has spread and we barely get any anymore!

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Some of the most fun you can have working retail is working in a pop-up Halloween store, which I discovered in my late teens and early twenties. I also discovered an untapped goldmine of extremely specific sales that skyrocketed my store’s numbers, to the delight of the managers. This discovery came about when I was assisting a woman who had come in with her young daughter looking for a child’s Snow White costume.

Me: “We’re out of stock of that item.”

Customer: “How could we be out?! Can’t you just check the back?”

I declined to answer that we were out because it was barely a week before Halloween and that we didn’t HAVE a “back”, instead tuning her out and looking around for any way to placate her. My gaze fell on the wall of “sexy” costumes, and I got a crazy idea.

Me: *Interrupting* “Ma’am, if you’ll bear with me a moment, I have an idea.”

I grabbed an extra-small “sexy” Snow White costume and brought it over. Understandably, the woman’s eyes bugged out when she saw it.

Customer: “Are you insane?! How could you even think about putting something like that on my daughter?!”

Me: “I get where you’re coming from, but think about the proportions: your daughter’s full height is roughly the same as my torso, which is all this costume is designed to cover. If I’m right, this dress should fit your daughter perfectly.”

The woman looked curious but still suspicious.

Me: “How about you just hold it up in front of her and see how it looks? I can always fold it up again if you’re not interested.”

The woman agreed to this, and I took the dress out of its package. The woman held it up to her daughter, and it was exactly the right length. Surprised, the woman asked if we had a fitting room and I directed her to it.

The dress was a perfect fit, and, honestly, better quality than the children’s costumes we’d had. Delighted, the woman apologized for her agitation and thanked me profusely for my assistance. One of my managers (there were two) rang her up and was very surprised to learn of my creative solution to our lack of children’s costumes.

Once the customer left, the manager immediately came up to me and grabbed my shoulders.

Manager: *Excitedly* “You are a genius!”

I used this strategy to great effect for the remainder of the season, to the point that all but ONE sale of a “sexy” costume went to the parents of a little girl. With the “sexy” costumes coming in at $60 to $70 a pop, both managers ended up fighting over who got me on their team for the night because our numbers were so good!

Living in Japan, you will see that most of the convenience stores have either Vietnamese staff or foreign workers from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, etc. Service jobs are greatly understaffed there, so you will mostly see one Japanese worker and multiple foreign workers at the minimum-wage jobs.

I, an Indian, worked at a [Convenience Store] for three years part-time during university. In my third year there, I was made “leader of the night shift”, which meant running the whole store at night by myself. The night shift is very different from the day shift. Besides serving a large number of customers, you have to sort out the accounts, record and check the inventory, liaise with supply people, do deep cleaning of equipment, stock up, cook, etc.

Fast forward to a couple of years later. I am in the Japanese corporate world. I get an apartment in Azabujyuban, a posh, high-income district in Tokyo, famous for being populated by white ex-pats. It’s two in the morning, and I go to the nearby [Convenience Store].

It is a big store, and it’s full of irritated, drunk salarymen and rich brats. The only employee there (Japanese) is confused, panicking, and overworked. The supply truck guy is yelling. Salarymen are yelling. It’s mayhem.

The employee eyes me and yells:

Employee: “Hey, what took you so long?! Come and help me a bit.”

I almost lose my temper, but then I smile and think, “Let’s do this! Tomorrow’s Saturday, anyway.”

I first meet up with the annoyed supply guys. They have to bring their trucks to every store in Tokyo, so staying at one store for more than a couple of minutes will disrupt the whole schedule. I have the supply checked, dial in the records, get the Hanko from the usual place, stamp it, and finish the procedure.

Next, I call a taxi for some passed-out people and escort them to a safer place. Then, I take up a register, and in the next ten minutes, all the customers are served and the store is empty.

The employee gives a huge sigh of relief, closes his eyes, and gets on his knees. I quietly go to stock the ice cream supply in the cold cases. After a bit of a rest, my dude calls out:

Employee: “Thank you for the efficient help! By the way, you’re not wearing your [Convenience Store] jacket. Could you wear it, please? Otherwise, it would be super unprofessional.”

Me: “I don’t have a jacket. I don’t even work here.”

Employee: “What? Didn’t my manager send you as a replacement?”

Me: “Nope, I live in an apartment a block away and came here to shop. I used to work in a [Convenience Store] many years ago, so I’m familiar with the procedures.”

The employee was very, very embarrassed and said sorry and thank you in around twenty different phrases of polite Japanese.

Me: “Chill, man. I am gonna come here often so Yoroshiku ne.” (I am in your care.)

I felt good overall in the aftermath, and this reminded me that, as a senior guy in corporate headquarters, I must always be mindful of the mental and physical health of the people on the frontlines. They are the ones who represent the big company to the world and do the actual work.

We had a regular customer who was just unbelievably rude. Every time, she found something wrong. She was always threatening us with whatever she could think of to get her own way. We used to dread every time we saw her queuing.

One day, [Regular] started in on one of our other customers — an older lady with a walking stick — because she was taking a little while with her issue. [Regular] started b****ing behind [Old Lady]’s back.

Regular: “I have places to be! Just hurry the h*** up!”

[Old Lady] looked up at my colleague and said, in the sweetest voice:

Old Lady: “Excuse me, dear.”

Then, she turned to [Regular].

Old Lady: “My dear, I will give you a second to rethink what you’re doing and adjust your attitude before I take my stick and shove it somewhere on your person where the sun doesn’t shine.”

My coworker and I couldn’t stop laughing. [Regular] went beetroot red and rushed away, but to make it even better, she seemed to trip over her own feet and went sprawling across the floor. No one offered any assistance in helping her up.

Our office rents space in a mall. One morning, we come into work to see a sign on our door saying, “I noticed a bumblebee got into your office. Please give the bee some sugar water and let the bee out,” signed [Employee] at [Store].

We take the challenge, scour the office, and eventually find the bee in question. We catch it in an upside-down water cooler cup with a business card underneath to trap it in. We tape it shut, and I am volunteered to leave the office on this beautiful day to find some flowers to release the bee next to.

It is a short walk to some flowers, and I let the bee go. Then, I return to the mall and go to [Store].

Me: “Is there a [Employee] here?”

Employee: “That’s me. Why?”

She seems afraid. Maybe I need to work on my tone of voice?

Me: “I just wanted to let you know that we found the bee and followed your instructions. Have a nice day!”

I then turned around and left, but I heard her making happy-sounding noises behind me as I left.