My store has customer restrooms. Today, there was an issue in the men’s room, requiring a plumber to come and make repairs. The plumber requested that we put up a sign that the restroom was out of service while he worked.

Shortly afterward, an older man found me, the closest employee to the restrooms.

Man: *Angrily* “Does the ‘out of order’ sign mean I’m not allowed to use the restroom?!”

Me: “Yes, the men’s room is closed for repairs.”

Man: *Shouting* “This is sexual discrimination!”

He continued to shout a tirade all the way to the front of the store and to the store manager.

The men’s room was closed for maybe two hours, tops. The kicker was that the guy was totally empty-handed; as near as we could tell, he only came into our store, one in a large shopping center, to use the bathroom and then claim discrimination when he picked the one time it was closed for repairs.

Related:
You’ve Lived A Privileged Life If You Think THIS Is Discrimination

I work as a cashier in a takeout restaurant. A customer comes in and tries to open the door to the occupied one-person bathroom. She comes up to my cash register in a rage.

Customer: “THE BATHROOM IS LOCKED!”

Me: “The bathroom is locked because another customer is using it.”

Customer: “BUT THE SIGN ON THE DOOR SAYS, ‘FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY’!”

Me: “So then a customer is using it.”

Customer: “But I am a customer!”

Me: “We often have more than one customer at a time.”

The customer just stares at me in a rage as her eyes slowly come to terms with this mind-blowing truth that she’s just realized for the first time… as an adult.

Customer: “Well… you… should have fewer customers!”

I’m an overnight worker in a big box store. One night, as I’m watching the front registers, a lady with a cart full of groceries walks up and asks to leave her groceries there while she uses the restrooms. This isn’t out of the ordinary, and I agreed to keep an eye on her things while she was away.

Five minutes go by. Then ten. Then twenty. I start to wonder if she left the store and forgot to grab her cart

A whole thirty minutes later, she walks back up with an unhappy look on her face.

Customer: “I want to talk to the manager.”

Overnight managers are notoriously busy. My store only has one manager, who has to sign for any trucks that show up and manage the stockers, cashiers, and maintenance workers, and he oftentimes also does stocking himself since we’re so short-staffed. I figure I should see if I can handle the problem to spare our poor manager the distraction.

Me: “What seems to be the issue? Maybe I can help out with it.”

Customer: “I was in the bathroom, taking a s***, and suddenly, the lights turned off on me! I couldn’t see! How was I supposed to wipe?!”

That is way more information than I wanted. I’m not sure how I kept a straight face.

Me: “Our lights are on a motion-sensitive automatic timer. They should have turned back on as soon as you moved.”

Customer: “That doesn’t matter! A customer should never have the lights turned off on them!”

Me: “I’m sorry this happened to you. The lights are on an automatic timer that turns off after fifteen minutes of no activity. There’s nothing we can do to change this.”

Customer: “Oh, I know it’s not your fault, but I want to complain to the manager! This should never happen to a customer!”

With the customer watching me, I had to radio for the manager to come to the front and deal with this crazy complaint. I wished that I had some way to warn him about what he was about to walk into.

I had to leave as soon as he showed up, so I never got to see how it resolved, but I can’t help but think that if I was sitting on the toilet for so long that the lights automatically turned off on me, I would’ve been too embarrassed to say anything.

This happened to a coworker and me a few weeks ago at our fast food job. I had finished my shift a while ago and had stayed to eat some food before I headed home. When I was ready to leave, I decided to go to the bathroom first. I got in, and almost immediately, someone else (who I found out later was my coworker) went into the only other stall.

The time between me finishing my food and me finishing up my “big business” was a grand total of three minutes.

Enter the entitled customer. She didn’t wait even a few seconds for a stall to become available. She tried my stall door and then the other when mine didn’t open.

Customer: “Hurry up, girls! Other people have to use the toilet, too!” *Bangs on the doors* “COME ON! HURRY THE F*** UP!”

Me: *Purposefully being loud with the toilet paper dispenser* “Ma’am, I’m almost done! I’ll be out in a minute!”

Customer: “WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU GIRLS DOING IN THERE, DRUGS?! PROBABLY F****** SHOOT’N UP WITH NEEDLES, YA F****** DRUGGIES!”

During her tirade, the other stall had become available, and I was exiting mine when I saw she was getting up in [Coworker]’s face. [Coworker] was just trying to wash her hands and get out of there.

Customer: “You girls took way too long!”

Coworker: “Sorry, ma’am. The stall is available now, though, so please stop yelling at us.”

Customer: “THIS IS A PUBLIC BATHROOM! NOT A PLACE FOR DRUGGIES LIKE YOU TWO TO HANG OUT! OTHER PEOPLE HAD TO USE THE TOILET!”

Coworker: “It’s not like this is the only bathroom around…”

Customer: “And where are these other bathrooms? I only see two stalls!”

Coworker: *Calmly* “If you had to go desperately, the men’s room has a stall and toilet, or there’s a public restroom at the gas station right next door.”

Customer: “I am a woman, and I am eating here, so I will use this restroom! You f****** methheads should not have been in there so long while I was waiting!”

Me: “Lady, I had been in there at most two minutes before you came in and she—” *points to my coworker* “—came in after me! If you have to go so bad, why don’t you go use one of the two stalls that are now available instead of wrongfully accusing us of taking drugs?”

My coworker and I leave and I go report what happened to our female manager.

Me: *Voice cracking from anxiety* “I just wanted to let you know, [Coworker] and I were just in the bathroom, and this lady came in, and apparently, we took too long so she accused us of taking drugs. [Coworker] told her where more bathrooms were, and I told her we had gotten in there right before she did, but she didn’t like that, so I think she’s gonna come out yelling.”

Sure enough, the moment I get done saying that, the customer comes out holding up two fingers.

Customer: “SEE?! TWO MINUTES! THAT’S ALL IT F****** TAKES! TWO MINUTES!”

My very petite but feisty manager speaks up.

Manager: “Excuse me?! I didn’t realize there was a specific time limit on how long someone was allowed to be in a public bathroom! You’re being ridiculous!”

Customer: “They were in there for more than the two minutes it should have taken them! They must have been doing drugs and that is unacceptable!”

Manager: “No! What is unacceptable is accusing my employees of taking drugs just because they didn’t conform to your stupid bathroom beliefs! Please leave!”

Customer: “I WANNA SPEAK TO THE MANAGER!”

My manager tugs at her shirt, which is obviously very different than mine.

Manager: “You see this shirt?! I am a manager, and I’ve asked you to leave! Now get out!“

Customer: “WELL, YOU’RE FAT AND UGLY!” *Storms out*

I’m really glad that our managers look out for us and have our backs against crazy people like that!

Related:
Two Too Much, Part 2
Two Too Much

This takes place in an ice rink, where I regularly skate for team practices and lessons. As my practices are in the afternoons, I often go to other places before practice, which means I don’t have time to go to the bathroom before getting to the ice rink.

I usually put my skates on before I go to the bathroom because I want to make sure that I am not late onto the ice for pre-skate and on-ice warmups; we have a limited amount of ice time and we must cram as much into our allotted times as possible.

As long as I have been skating, I have always found it unwieldy and awkward to walk on the ground with skates on, as they aren’t meant for that task and because of the extra three or so inches my ice skates give me and how careful I have to be not to damage my blades. I often find it easier to go into the disability-accessible stall, as there is a handrail I can hold onto to steady myself and extra space so I don’t bang my skates on anything.

One day, as I am doing my business in the accessible stall, a woman in a wheelchair comes into the bathroom and starts waving her hand under the stall door and banging on it. My initial reaction is that she is checking to see if it is occupied, so I politely call out that I am in there.

Woman: “Hey! Who is in there? I need to use this stall!”

Me: “Sorry, it’s occupied! I’ll be out in two minutes.”

Woman: “You need to get out! This stall is for disabled people only!”

Me: *Exiting the stall* “Hi, so sorry. It’s open now.”

Woman: *Getting angrier and angrier* “What are you doing?! I said this stall is for wheelchair use only! You have no right to use this stall!”

Me: *Backing away to wash my hands* “So sorry, ma’am. There are not a lot of disabled people here, usually.”

Woman: “How could you do this to me?! This is discrimination! I’ll have you kicked out! Normal people can’t use those stalls!”

[Teammate] enters the bathroom.

Teammate: “Hey, [My Name], it’s time to go. [Coach] wants us right now.”

Woman: *Practically steaming at the ears* “I will call the cops! This is a personal attack! You g**d*** ice skaters! Always so rude and disrespectful! I will see to it that this place gets shut down!”

Teammate: “Lady, I suggest you get on with your business. Clearly, you must have to s*** really badly if you’re making this much of a fuss. Do you have someone here to change that diaper of yours?”

In the end, the woman kept screeching about injustice and how she’d have the place shut down.

[Teammate] and I just went along with our day. I was a bit shaken up, but there was no harm done.