I work in the seasonal department of a large superstore. We currently have solar-powered lanterns for your lawn on one of the shelves. A customer with her five-year-old son finds one that’s broken and gives it to him.

Customer: *To her son* “Return this at customer service and ask for a refund.”

She doesn’t realize I am standing a foot away, and I am shocked that a mother would use her son to steal like this, so I just say:

Me: “Oh, that’s broken. Let me get that for you.”

I just took the item and started to walk away, staring pointedly at this morally depraved woman.

I work in a grocery store. We have a woman come in with her little toddler in the trolley. One of the items she puts in the trolley is a glass jar of organic peanut butter — the kind that has a big layer of oil on top until you mix it up.

Toddler: “NO! NO PEANUT BUTTER!”

Toddler’s Mum: “It’s not for you, [Toddler]. It’s for Mummy.”

The yelling of “NO PEANUT BUTTER” and “I NO LIKE PEANUT BUTTER” continues as she goes up the aisle. I hear a smashing sound. I walk up the aisle and find the woman at the end of it, staring at a mess of glass, oil, and peanut butter.

Me: “Oh, whoops! I’ll get this cleaned up. Don’t worry about it; it happens.”

The mum gratefully smiles at me and goes back down the aisle. While I’m cleaning up the mess with my coworker, I hear the kid start yelling again.

Toddler: “NO! MUMMY, NO PEANUT BUTTER! I NO LIKE IT!” 

Coworker #1: “She didn’t, did she?”

There’s another huge smashing sound.

I sigh and go off to find the new mess, calling for [Coworker #2] to go grab the other mop and bucket. The mum is once again looking at the mess in dismay. She sees me coming with the wet floor sign and instantly leaves and goes down a different aisle. You’re welcome, I guess? I clean up the new peanut butter mess and am putting the stuff away when I hear ANOTHER smash. When I go out on the floor, my [Coworker #1] is now cleaning up a third jar of peanut butter that’s been smashed all over the floor and looks murderous.

I go find the mum. She is — you guessed it! — IN THE PEANUT BUTTER AISLE GRABBING ANOTHER JAR. Before she can put it in her trolley with her toddler already screaming that he doesn’t like peanut butter, I take it out of her hands.

Me: *Cheerfully* “This will be waiting for you up at the service desk when you’ve finished your other shopping.”

I turn on my heel and walk away before she can do anything but stare dumbly at me again.

We finally get her checked out — putting the peanut butter FAR AWAY from her kid in the bottom of a bag while my coworker distracts him with a sticker — and my manager gives her her total. She blinks in surprise.

Toddler’s Mum: “Why is it so much?! I didn’t think I had that many items…”

She starts looking at the screen.

Toddler’s Mum: “You’ve charged me for four jars of peanut butter but I only have one.”

Manager: “Well, yes, but you let your son smash three more jars around the store. We would have let one slide as an accident, but not three.”

Toddler’s Mum: *Staring at us in shock* “But… he’s just a baby…”

[Coworker #1], his pants covered in peanut oil, cuts in.

Coworker #1: “Yeah, but you aren’t!”

She paid for the peanut butter and huffed off. We haven’t seen her since, but it is a common inside joke amongst us that when someone asks us to do something we don’t want to do, we whine, “But I no LIKE [task]!”

One Saturday night, there was a really bad car accident near our store that took out a power pole, and the power to the area was out for over eight hours.

The generator in the small shopping centre our store was in didn’t come on. The store was out of power that whole time.

We lost every item in the fridge or freezer— deli, dairy, meat, and fresh produce — both in the store and the store room. To make matters worse, we had received a dairy load and a meat load that night and weren’t due for another dairy/freezer delivery for two days and meat for three days.

Our boss spoke to head office, and they managed to get us an extra delivery late on Monday night, but it was going to be limited.

This meant we spent all day Sunday and Monday without ANY cold food.

Most customers were understanding after being told what happened. We had signs but they still asked.

To say that a few were not happy is putting it mildly.

I had one woman stand there and yell abuse at me for almost five minutes whilst I tried to explain that there was nothing I could do. She was pissed that she would have to go to another store now — five minutes away.

I was standing there thinking that I’d love to tell her exactly what to do with her shopping, and a man came up behind me.

Man: “Lady! Do you seriously think they did this on purpose? Do you seriously think they don’t want the sales? Do you seriously think they want idiots like you abusing them? Are you really that stupid?”

He then turned to me.

Man: “Just ignore the stupid b****. I hope the rest of your day is better!”

There should be more customers like him.

My first official job was bagging groceries at a local grocery store. The management was bad, the hours were okay, and the pay was minimum wage; I suppose it was just your typical job for most high school kids.

A lot of the staff for cashiers and baggers were high school kids. We were given the bottom-of-the-totem-pole jobs — running carts, bagging, and cleaning — and if you were sixteen or older, you got to do cashier work, too.

We were overused and underpaid, and some of the teenage staff took advantage of their knowledge of the store for some five-finger discounts. I can’t say I was helpful on either end because I never spoke up against those that did it, but I never helped them, either. This behavior went on for the last eight to ten months or so that I worked there.

I, along with a handful of other high schoolers, ended up quitting and going on to different jobs at the same time.

About a month after I quit, I stopped into [Grocery Store] to pick up some candy. As I was walking through, I passed my friend who had worked there but quit when I did. He (sixteen years old) was there with his younger brother (thirteen) and sister (fifteen). I headed back toward the candy aisle, browsed for a bit, picked out some stuff, and just kind of wandered for a few minutes and said hi to a couple of folks I used to work with.

I made my way to the front of the store, and I saw my friend and his siblings off to the side, near the front office. My friend was nearly in tears and was freaking out, and his siblings were crying. I walked over to him quickly.

Me: “What happened?!”

Friend: “[Floor Manager] caught us stealing. Now the store is trying to decide what they want to do about it.”

I didn’t stay to see the outcome, but I would later hear from him about it.

My friend was one of the high schoolers who would steal things, and since he did it so much and never got caught while he worked there, he decided to show his brother and sister how to do it. I guess his cockiness got the best of him because he got caught and was now facing consequences.

In the end, his parents were called to the store. My friend had to pay for everything they tried to steal that day, and then he and his siblings were banned from the store forever. Cops would not be involved as long as they don’t come back to the store.

He was also grounded for three months, and his parents forced him to donate his free time to their church, where he had to do janitorial work under the supervision of the pastor and the head janitor. So, when he wasn’t at school or his current job, he was at the church donating his time.

The other day I wanted a pizza. My favourite pizza place is in a supermarket nearby — one of those in-store shops. There’s the pizza shop on the right that sells only pizza and nothing else besides some refreshments. On the left, there’s a grill-type shop that sells everything from hotdogs to chicken breast to potato salad and everything in between, but it doesn’t serve pizza at all. Then, between the two shops, there is the common seating area, consisting of two tables and a long table along the wall, where you can sit down and eat if you don’t want the food to go.

I grab my pizza, and I see no free seat nearby. Then, I spot someone leaving the first chair by the grill shop on the long table, so I sit there and start digging into my pizza. I’ve barely eaten a slice when a woman walks up to the grill shop.

Cashier: “How can I help you?”

Customer: “I want a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese.”

Cashier: “I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t serve pizza here. If you want one…”

Customer: *Interrupting* “What do you mean, you don’t have pizza? This person here—” *points at me* “—is eating one!”

Cashier: “He got it from the place next door.”

Customer: “Okay, so go and make me one, too!”

Cashier: “I can’t; I don’t work there. You’ll have to go to—”

Customer: “What do you mean, you don’t work here? This is a restaurant. You work here. Give me a pizza!”

Cashier: “Ma’am, I’m trying to tell you we are two separate establishments. We don’t have pizza; they do.”

Customer: “Then why is he eating pizza here?” *Points to me again and then addresses me* “Hey, why are you sitting here?”

Me: “There were no other free seats.”

Customer: “It doesn’t matter. If you ordered from the other side, you have to sit there!”

Me: “It’s a common area; you can sit wherever you want no matter where you ordered.”

So, this lady thought the two shops were just one restaurant, but for some reason, there were two separate seating areas. Sure, that seems logical.

Hearing the commotion, a security guard comes over.

Security: “What’s going on here, ma’am? Why are you yelling?”

Customer: “This worker refuses to serve me and continues to say he doesn’t work here!”

Security: “Is this true?”

Cashier: “Okay, ma’am, I’ll serve you. What did you want again?”

Customer: “Ugh! I already told you, I want a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese!”

The cashier looks at the guard and gestures toward the lady.

Security: “Ma’am, the pizza place is right over there.”

Customer: “I know. He needs to go over there and serve me…”

They went round and round about this for a while.

In the end, the lady left, huffing and puffing and swearing she’d never come back!

The cashier actually apologised to me for the inconvenience, but I said he didn’t have to. Pizza and a show!