(I made a Boxtroll costume for Halloween the year the movie came out. I cobbled two boxes together into a large box with a hole on top for my head to come through, tall enough to rest on my shoulders, and altered a skeleton mask to look like the characters that sits on top of my head. I also print out a Candy Brand label and stick it to the box, deciding that was my Boxtroll name. I have the day off, but I decide to drop in at the store to show it off. I sneak into the office, hear two of my managers talking in one room, and set my box in front of the room, blocking the narrow hallway. I duck inside the box, waiting for them to notice me before I show them my mask. They come out of the room, still talking… and inch their way around the edges of my box, going into another room, without a break in their conversation. I wait, a little dumbfounded, and a minute later one of them comes out of the room, carefully moving around the gigantic box in her way, again without a word. I pop my head up through the top, and she’s across the office with her back to me. I shuffle over to her.)

Me: “…Hello?”

Manager #1: *jumps and spins around* “[My Name]! Where did you come from?”

Me: “I was the giant box in the middle of the hallway…”

Manager #1: “Wait, what?”

Me: “How did you not think that was strange?!”

Manager #1: “Well, there are boxes in here all the time…”

Me: *nearly crying with laughter* “It says ‘[Candy Brand]’ on the box! We don’t even sell [Candy Brand]!”

Manager #2: *comes out of the room* “[My Name]! Where did you come from?”

(Clearly I am a very successful Boxtroll. I also have never, ever let those two forget that time they thought I was a box.)

(I stop at a local department store to pickup up some jeans for my daughter. While I am usually sympathetic to clerks/cashiers promoting their store branch credit cards and customer programs, this clerk was a little overzealous and ultimately cost the store a sale.)

Clerk: “Will you be using [Store] credit card to pay for these?”

Me: “No.”

Clerk: “Do you have a [Store] credit card?”

Me: “Sorry, I don’t.”

Clerk: “Oh, well, it’ll only take a few minutes to sign you up. You’ll save an additional 20% on today’s purchase, and you’ll get weekly coupons—”

Me: “Sorry, not interested. Please just ring my purchases up.”

Clerk: “But, you really need to sign up for this card. Don’t you want to save an additional 20% off today?”

Me: “No. Either ring up my purchases or find someone who can.”

Clerk: “But you’re missing out on an additional 20% off today. What if I could get you your total order for free today? Would that work?”

(There was about $120 in merchandise sitting on the counter.)

Me: “You are not listening to me. I do not want a [Store] credit card.”

Clerk: *beginning to ring up order* “You’d turn down free stuff? You must have bad credit or something. Cause everyone wants to save money? Can I at least have an email address so I can sign you up for our customer rewards program?”

Me: “No. You know what? Just cancel my order.”

(The whole time this exchange was going on, a shift leader was no more than five feet going through the returns rack. I could tell she was listening to the conversation, but she made no attempt to intervene. I went home and then proceeded to order everything I was going to buy in-store online.)

My sister and I were deeply in love with Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 from the first time we saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show, Thanksgiving, 1969. She was six and I was nine.

Fast forward to Christmas, 1971. Our parents give us a portable record player. Our parents had a couple of Jackson 5 records and we played them over and over, ad nauseam.

In August, 1972, Michael Jackson released the album Ben. Oh, we wanted that album so badly; oh, so badly. So we started saving; all of our Sunday school money, all of our candy money, any money we found anywhere went into the Ben Bank. After about two months we had enough for the album. We hounded our mother unmercifully to please take us to the department store so that we could buy the album.

Finally, late on a Sunday, she takes us there, does her shopping, and then she leads us around to where the albums are sold. Now mind you this is a Sunday in the 1970s. All stores close at 5:00 pm and it’s 4:45. My sister is the keeper of the bank, so she is walking in front.

We walk to the counter and politely ask the young lady working there if there is a copy of Michael Jackson’s Ben. She goes and gets it. Oh, my, we are so happy, practically vibrating with excitement. The young lady is smiling, too; she can see we are so happy.

She says that will be $5.45. My sister puts the paper bag that holds all the money we saved for this album on the counter and upends it. Five dollars and fifty cents worth of dimes, nickels, and pennies roll out and we start counting. My mom walks away at that point. After about 10 minutes of us going 1,2,3,4,5, because by that time we have given her all the silver and we are into the 300 pennies that are included, the young lady just starts sweeping it off the counter and throwing them into the register.

My sister and I say, “But we didn’t count it for you.” The young lady says, “That’s okay; I can see that it’s enough.”

That happened 45 years ago and yet I can still see that young lady’s face fall as all those coins rolled across the counter. To the young lady I wish to say, “I’m so so sorry we did that to you. Thank you for being a kind soul to two little girls ten minutes before closing.”

(I’ve recently quit one retail job, for a better one with more hours and more pay thankfully, due to having several problems with the job. One of the major problems was that on weekends multiple coworkers were there to back me up if there was a line, and one coworker in particular ignored the customers. She would just talk to her friends that worked there, making a lot of the other cashiers upset. I’m working with her one Saturday afternoon, when I get a line of seven or eight customers. I call her over.)

Me: “Hey, [Coworker], I have a line here; can you help me out?”

Coworker: *ignores me, continues to talk to friend in nearby sales section*

Me: *to Supervisor* “Hey [Supervisor], can you call over [Coworker] to come help me out here? I just got two more people.”

Supervisor: “You know she won’t. It’s cool. I’ll help you out.”

(After patiently waiting a few minutes, I excuse myself while a customer digs through her purse to find her credit card.)

Me: *to Coworker* “EXCUSE ME! Can you please help me with the line and talk to your friend later? I’ve got ten people in line right now!”

Coworker: “Don’t talk to me like that! I’m your superior, and I will report you to management for being rude to me!”

Me: “You’re kidding, right? You’re not my superior, and you do realize there are security cameras in this store, right?”

Coworker: “Well…”

Me: “You were hired to be a cashier, right? You’re here working today, right? Help me out or just go home!”

Coworker: “Fine, but don’t expect me to help you out like this again!”

Me: “I expect you to help me every time there’s a line!”

(Coworker helped me out, with Supervisor smiling at me when I returned to ring up the rest of the customers in my line. Clearly she heard everything I said. I later went in the back and reported what happened to the manager, so the coworker didn’t try to make me look bad, even though I kind of raised my voice at one point. The manager told me the supervisor talked to them, and I was definitely in the right, and they commended me on properly excusing myself and not just abandoning my line to go and talk to the coworker. The supervisor told me Coworker got a final warning, and that she threw a fit over being yelled at by a coworker. I wasn’t scheduled with her after that, and I started my new job two weeks after. I’ve never been happier!)

I work part time at a department store and there are a lot of new employees that are holiday help who don’t know the rules and ways to do things, so some signs are put up in the fitting rooms and other places with instructions for them.

One customer misinterprets a sign and is incredibly upset. She rips the sign off of the wall and shows it to an associate and starts yelling at her about how racist it is.

The sign said something like “Only use the white children’s hangers for children’s clothing.”

Even after the associate showed the customer that the larger adult size hangers are black and the smaller children’s clothing size hangers are white, the woman was still insisting that it was racism and wanted to speak to the manager, who also explained that it was not racism.

Seriously. Retail.