My wife is the assistant front end department manager for a grocery chain. She doesn’t drive, and her store is less than two miles from our home in a rural community. Everyone in town knows her and loves her; she’s a complete sweetheart to everyone she meets. By extension, I am well-known in the store by the employees and am genuine friends with several of them. As a result, it is common to see me talking to the associates on a regular basis. Their uniforms are usually jeans or khakis with a white shirt that has the company logo. Managers wear a green or black polo embroidered with the logo.

I work from home as an IT administrator. My usual attire is usually very similar; I like to wear colored cargo pants and either a T-shirt or collared button-down shirt, mostly blue or black. I am often mistaken for store management due to my frequency in the store, talking to associates, the way I dress, and my knack for customer service. I normally just bring the person to the nearest actual manager and apologize for the mixup.

One day, however, there came a cretin creepin’ — a glibly galivanting sort. That day, I was wearing green cargo pants and a blue T-shirt. There really wasn’t a good excuse that day, but the question was nevertheless posed by the man on the mobility scooter.

Man: “Can you tell me where [item] is?”

Obviously, I could. I knew this store really well at that point, as I love to cook and I knew where to find all the best stuff. However, I politely informed him that the grocery manager was only one aisle over, stocking the freezer.

Then came the very odd interaction that made that day stand out. The man accused me of lying to him… and then proceeded to ask me to buy his groceries for him.

Now, I’m sure you, my dear reader, are at this very moment forming an assumption that I have left a detail, some morsel out somewhere. I assure you I have not. His exact statement, to the very best of my fresh memory, was:

Man: “I don’t think that’s true. I know you work here. And if you work here, you have to help me. I can’t afford my groceries, and I was hoping you could buy them for me.”

The very thought sent me reeling around. That’s when I laid eyes on him. I knew him. Well, I knew him in the same way he knew me; I’d seen him around the store. Specifically, I’d seen him in the pictures my wife took of him… to get him banned. This man was infamous in the community for faking injuries, disabilities, illnesses — the works. He refuses to work, instead asking anyone and everyone to buy things for him. He was kicked out of the pizzeria across the lot for it. He’s been banned from two different pharmacies over it.

I looked in his basket. It was full of junk — miscellaneous items of dubious quality. I curled up my lip and narrowed my eyes at him.

Me: “So, you went and filled your cart with [stuff] you can’t afford to harp on anyone in a twenty-yard radius with a sob story?”

He got offended, and with some back-and-forth, he suddenly took it upon himself to take my advice. He miraculously stood up and off his mobility scooter and walked as pretty as you please over to the next aisle, raising the grocery manager.

Some yelling and profanity later, the manager stepped around the corner, took one look at me, and sighed deeply. Upon being told I didn’t work there, the man departed rather swiftly, leaving the clearly crammed-full mobility scooter there in the middle of the aisle. Interesting that embarrassment miraculously healed his ability to walk.

CONTENT WARNING: Injury

I am working on Black Friday in the clothes department at a big grocery store in a small town. For two straight hours before the sale begins, people hover over the pallets. The alarm goes off and the swarm just goes insane.

There are two women in particular on opposite sides, tossing clothes back and forth to each other. I don’t know what their system is because half the stuff they are just catching and tossing aside.

A little teenager — a petite, tiny girl — intercepts a pair of jeans being tossed and the women just go f****** insane. They elbow her in the face — instant blood. The little girl is so shocked she just stands there shaking and crying. The women act like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I pull the girl out of the crowd and start to walk her to get her cleaned up when the sheriff appears out of nowhere. (I recognize him; it’s a small town.)

It turns out the teenager is his kid, and the women are arrested on the spot.

When the girl came back for more shopping, she told me that the women had to post bail and pay full price for their s***ty jeans.

A customer comes through with a basket full of groceries. We chat as I scan and bag them. We get to the end, and it comes to $32.40.

Me: “That’ll be $32.40. Cash or card?”

Customer: “I’m going to give you $50.00.”

Me: “Okay.” *Holds out my hand*

Customer: “Can I have my change?”

Me: “As soon as you pay me, you can.”

Customer: “No, I’ve been short-changed too many times. I need my change before I give you any cash.”

Me: “I need you to give me the cash before I can open the till to get your change.”

At this point, I still have not actually seen the $50.00.

Customer: “You don’t even know how much change I need, do you?”

The customer grabs the bag of groceries off the counter. I suspect where this is going, and I open the intercom to the office.

Me: “When you give me $50.00, then you will receive $17.60 in change.”

Customer: “If you know how much it is, you can give me the change first.”

My boss always shows up quickly when money is involved.

Boss: “I’m sorry, you need to pay first.”

Customer: “Fine, I’ll just put it on my card.”

Me: “…”

Related:
Criminal Or Stupid? We May Never Know.

Several recent stories reminded me of a tough point in my life. I’m lucky enough to have never been so broke as to be unable to eat. After Mom passed away, though, the family scattered, my then-fiancé lost his job around the same time, and the majority of my inheritance went toward helping pay off some bad debt — “class action lawsuit” levels of “bad” — but that was years later. We were definitely broke enough that the cabinets and fridge only had store-brand bare essentials like instant ramen, peanut butter, bread, etc. It wasn’t the healthiest way to eat, but between [Fiancé] being out of work and me earning JUST enough to not qualify for benefits, it was better than literally nothing; it also helped me kick my soda addiction.

One day, I saw that [Supermarket] was having a big pre-Thanksgiving sale. I knew there was no way we could do a proper dinner, but many of the things on sale were shelf-stable, and a few things like premade stuffing mix and fresh veggies that would normally be out of budget for the quality, so a lot of our meager saving was going into a big bulk purchase. We went, we stocked up as best we could, and we checked out.

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

Me: “No.”

This was around when store cards were starting to be tied directly to sales rather than just reward programs, so I was used to not having my own. But then…

Fiancé: “Oh, actually, you have all of your Mom’s store cards now.”

Numbly taking out the big key ring I had actually forgotten was in my pocket, I flipped through until I found the right one. It eventually got scanned in — it was old and falling apart — I swiped my card, and our massive receipt started printing. At the bottom of it, the cashier circled something in pink highlighter. Still in my fog, I didn’t notice it, but [Fiancé] did.

Once we headed out to the car (the only part of my inheritance that wasn’t cash), I started loading everything into the trunk while [Fiancé] looked over the receipt to make sure all the sales were taken off correctly. He got to the bottom, and all I heard was, “OH, MY GOD!” before he broke down sobbing. Thinking we had gotten double-charged or something, I snatched the receipt from him, and he pointed to the big pink circle.

There was over $150 in rewards to be claimed. It turns out the store had a cash-back program, and my mom had just never bothered to go to the customer service desk to redeem the rewards.

It probably looked weird to some folks seeing two guys in the front seats of a sedan, hugging each other and crying their eyes out — being the early 2000s and certain forms of acceptance building slowly in our area — but after all the grief, stress, and general anxiety of the prior months, even the smallest bit of relief made us both explode like burst dams. It took almost ten minutes to calm down to where we could drive home safely and put our big pile of food away.

Then, the next day, when we cashed out the rewards and got three $50 store gift cards, the waterworks started all over again. It was the first year we could properly afford a little Thanksgiving meal of our own, though thankfully our finances improved over the next year.

We just found it funny that, in our toughest time, my mother’s thoughtlessness actually ended up saving us!

I am working Thanksgiving morning. A customer comes running in and starts talking to me in a demanding tone:

Customer: “Do you sell thawed turkey?!”

Me: “We don’t, sir.”

Customer: “Well you should! My family is coming in a couple hours, and I don’t have time to defrost it!”