I am a cashier at a pharmacy chain. A man comes in to the store and immediately asks where to find condoms. It is company policy to walk each customer to the product they are looking for if at all possible. Being a good employee, I walk the man to the “Family Planning” aisle, and show him where to find the condoms.

Rather than leaving our encounter to a minimum, he decides to ask me which condoms I like. Not only am I a woman, but I’m very uncomfortable discussing sex with anyone, especially strangers.

After explaining that I have no preference, and that it’s all up to him, he asks, “Which are the biggest ones? I need the biggest, because I am the biggest.” I am mortified.

I leave him in the aisle by himself, and he chooses a brand for purchase. No more than two minutes after ringing him out, he comes back in to the store, with the package opened, and one condom missing. He slaps the package on the counter and yells, “They’re too tight! I’m returning these, and I need your number… You single?”

I have my manager run the return as I go to the stock room to hide.

I work in a store that sells, among other things, horse supplies. Dealing with horse owners is my least favorite part of the job. They’re snobby, extremely rude, and cheap. They’ll brag about having paid $100K for their truck and trailer, having put up a $200K barn, and having spent $500 for the most gaudy riding outfit money could buy, yet will tear a store employee a new one over the cost of a $5 bag of feed.

Recently a coworker had a particularly nasty experience with a local breeder. She did her best to explain why we couldn’t do a quantity discount, plus an employee discount, plus a sale price from two years ago, and she came away red-faced and shaking. Later on I found her at our information desk. Sitting on the counter was a small plastic figurine of a horse. We sell those, and I figured a customer had left it misplaced somewhere. I asked about it. She didn’t miss a beat:

“I’m thinking of buying it. Apparently, you can treat the rest of the world like s*** if you own one.”

(I’m ringing up a customer, and it proves to be very difficult. There are lots of factors at play, like three discounts I have to apply. She’s doing multiple returns, and we’re also trying to figure out if her store credit card is still active. To top it all off, our registers are old as dirt and can’t handle all of the extra stuff I’m trying to do, so I have to restart the transaction multiple times. I’m pretty good at manipulating our antiquated system, and I’m usually fairly quick on the registers, but all in all, it takes a good ten minutes to process everything for her, and I have to do three separate transactions to make sure everything gets done correctly.)

Customer: “I’m sorry to put you through all of this and take up your time. Thank you so much for your patience.”

Me: *flabbergasted* “Oh, no, thank you! I’m so sorry it’s taking forever and I have to keep starting over. Thank you for waiting all this time!”

(She thanks me multiple times again and leaves. I tell my MOD about how difficult it was and what she said.)

Me: “Literally any other customer would have been yelling at me about eight minutes back, wanting to know why it was taking so long and why I couldn’t do it right the first time. She was fantastic! I’ll help her all day, any day.”

(An older gentleman walks up to the counter when I’m working and starts looking at the cheeses.)

Me: “Hi. What can I get for you today?”

Customer: “Is the Vermont Cheddar the yellow American?”

Me: “No, it’s cheddar.”

(I pull out the yellow American, and place it on the counter for him to see.)

Me: “What are you going to be making?”

Customer: “Well, my list says I need Yellow American… I’m making grilled cheese with it.”

Me: “Well, typically grilled cheese is made with American cheese.”

Customer: “I don’t know. I don’t want to get the wrong thing.”

Me: “I’m sure this is what you’re supposed to get. You said American was on the list?”

Customer: “I don’t know…”

Me: “Well, would you like to try it?”

Customer: “No, just give me the cheddar. I’m sure that’s what she wanted.”

Me: “All right, so, your total today is [total].”

Customer: “Even with the 40%?”

Me: “Um, well, the only thing that you got on sale today was this shirt and it was an additional 50% off the clearance price. We don’t have any shirts in the store today for 40% off.”

Customer: “And the other shirts?”

Me: “Those are full price today.”

Customer: “Why?”

Me: “Um… because they’re not on sale.”

Customer: “Why?”

Me: “They… they just aren’t. They’re selling at the full price. I don’t—”

Customer: “Never mind, I don’t want any of it.”