I am sixteen, working at my first ever job. A middle-aged dude with his son keeps hitting on me and trying to buy me chocolate and get my number.

Me: “Sir, I am sixteen.”

Customer: “Who cares?”

I excused myself and hid in the back until he was gone. Ew!

I’m working at a chocolate shop. A young man has come in and asked me to put together a truffle box for him; it is clear he is buying it for his girlfriend. 

Man: “…I’ll have one of the raspberry, one of the cinnamon, and one of the bittersweet… It’s kind of appropriate for where our relationship is right now.”

I work at a candy and soda shop that carries hundreds of different sodas and almost a thousand different candies. It’s usually a super fun job; I don’t get paid a ton, but the benefits are cool —  candy! — and the customers are just about always nice because of what we sell.

One day, a woman who has been waiting in line a while approaches my counter.

Customer: “Hey, do you have nail clippers?”

Me: “I’m… I’m sorry?”

Customer: “Do you sell nail clippers?”

Me: “Um, no, sorry. This is a candy store.”

Customer: “I know, but you have all this…”

She gestures vaguely to the novelty items on the front counter.

Me: “Sorry. There’s a convenience store right down the block?”

She makes a disappointed sound and walks away.

Me: “I can take the next in line, please!”

Next Customer: “Did she really ask for nail clippers in a candy store?”

When I’m in college, I work as a supervisor of a candy store that’s inside an amusement park. Every summer, one of the most dreaded days is what we call Camp Kid Day. We get lots of camps over the season, but on this day, the park is overrun with hundreds of kids from one particular camp where rich, entitled parents send their rich, entitled kids to be someone else’s problem for half the summer.

My candy shop has a self-serve bulk gummy display with clearly placed “no samples” signs. I am on the floor watching the hordes of camp kids to prevent shoplifting. I see one, about ten, shake a few gummies into his hand from one of the bins and put one in his mouth. Immediately, I point at him.

Me: “Hey, you can’t do that. That’s stealing. Please give me the rest.”

I hold out my hand for the gummies, but the kid doesn’t move.

Me: “Please give me the candy, so I don’t have to call security on you.”

Camp Kid: “Seriously?! It’s just candy!”

Pouting, he finally hands over the pieces, and I think that’s the end of it. After all, he’s not the first or last to try to sneak candy that day. BUT THEN, I see him talking to a camp counselor, who comes over to me.

Camp Counselor: *Condescendingly* “Did you really have to do that to him? It was just a few pieces of candy.”

Me: “I’m afraid I did. The park takes stealing very seriously, and if I’m missing too much weight of gummies at the end of the day, I get in trouble with my boss.”

This was true. I had strict variance rules to manage. The counselor just shook his head at me in disgust and walked off. I wish I’d come up with a snappier comeback about a COUNSELOR encouraging his young, rich charge to steal, but I was so shocked by it that I didn’t process what had happened until it was too late. Seriously, I could almost forgive the kid, but a counselor who was about my own age? He should have known better, and to this day, I still can’t believe this was a conversation I actually had.

I’m out at the mall with a couple of friends. We head into a candy store where we are the only customers, with a single clerk behind the counter. My two friends are huge sugar and chocolate enthusiasts, while I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth.

We are browsing and joking between each other and making selections when I offhandedly comment:

Me: “I don’t know how you guys can stomach all this sugar. Just looking at it gives me diabetes!”

We turn to move on and the clerk is now behind us, looking very stern.

Clerk: “You shouldn’t say that.”

Me: “What?”

Clerk: “You shouldn’t say that sugar gives people diabetes! It’s not true!”

Me: “Sorry, I know that. I was just joking.”

The clerk then starts to work herself into a tirade about diabetes and disinformation, and she makes a remark about how jokes like that are impacting her sales, but I cut her off.

Me: “Look! Type-2 diabetes runs in my family, and some of my closest friends are type-1. I’m well informed about diabetes! Also, he—” *gestures to one friend* “—is very health-conscious, and she—” *gestures to my other friend* “—is in medical school to become a dentist and knows more about the issues with consuming too much sugar than any of us! I was joking with my friends and I’m sorry if I upset you.”

The clerk pulled a face like she was sucking on a lemon and dashed back behind the counter. She said nothing but our totals as we purchased our sweets and left. I get wanting to shut down misinformation, but butting in on people and trying to lecture them is not the way to go about it. Alternatively, if you’re upset about your business not doing as well as you’d like, don’t take it out on your customers!