I work at a place that is mostly known for its pharmacy but also has a decent selection of beauty products alongside regular groceries. I work part-time as a cashier, and I am quite bored one day as I have finished all the chores for the day and am counting the minutes until quitting. We barely have a customer all day.

Finally, this guy comes up buying a few cheap items. The total comes to $10.78.

Customer: “I’m paying in cash.”

Me: “Okay, that’s fine.”

I go over to the cash screen and wait for him to dig out his money. This guy looks to be around twenty-six, which is important since my store is usually frequented by seniors getting their prescriptions filled, and I swear some are faster than this dude.

He gets done counting his change and hands me a huge pile of change.

Customer: *Confidently* “That’s seventy-eight cents!”

Me: *Groaning jokingly* “You’re going to make me do math this early in the morning?

He chuckles a bit.

Customer: *Super smug* “Well, you know, math isn’t so hard if you just try. I love math.”

This whole time he has a smug look on his face as if he was used to being the “math geek” in the room or something. I honestly have no idea. I count the change while he speaks. Then, I count it again. Three times.

Me: “Uh, sir, this is sixty-eight cents.”

He sheepishly hands me another dime.

Me: “You know, math isn’t so hard if you just try.”

He got super embarrassed, took his stuff without another word, and left.

I work at a fairly big chain grocery store. I manage the whole front end from carts, to cashiers, to customer service. We have an off-duty police officer at our store most of the time.

I am talking to the police officer when one of my cashiers, who runs the self-checkout, comes up to me with a receipt and a rather angry guy trailing along behind him. My cashier is trying to explain the situation to me, and the customer keeps butting in trying to tell his side. My cashier gets frustrated.

Cashier: “Sir, please let me explain the situation.”

The customer shuts up and walks away a little.

Cashier: “I realized as the customer was walking out the door that he didn’t scan his ground beef. I followed him to his car and asked him to come in and pay for the ground beef. I clearly saw two packages of it. He agreed to come in and pay, and then he put the rest of the groceries in his car. When he came back in, he only brought in one package, so I just rang it up twice and he paid. Then, he started saying I had overcharged him as he only had one package of ground beef.”

We’re not supposed to follow customers to make them pay for things, but okay.

I talk to the guy in a pleasant customer service voice. He keeps getting louder throughout the conversation.

Customer: “Your cashier is accusing me of stealing!”

Me: “Did you have one or two packages of ground beef?”

Customer: “One!”

Me: “My cashier said he saw two.”

Police Officer: “The easiest solution is for you to go out to the guy’s car, verify if he has a second ground beef, and then go from there.”

Customer: “You can’t check my car! Just refund me my money, and I won’t come back!”

Me: “Okay. I can only refund the package that you brought back, though.”

Customer: “Okay.”

While I am in the process of doing the return, the customer keeps talking super loudly.

Customer: “Your cashier embarrassed me! It was totally inappropriate.”

The customer says this multiple times. My cashier tries to argue. I tell him, in front of the customer:

Me: “Don’t worry about it. His being loud and yelling is embarrassing him more than anything either of us has done to him.”

The customer shut up. I finished his return and politely wished him a pleasant day.

About ten years ago, I worked at a car dealership. The attached service garage was small, and I was the only licensed mechanic. I would occasionally have issues with male customers; they would second guess my diagnoses, watch me while I worked on their cars from the bay door, double-check my work in the parking lot, etc.

I didn’t deal with customers directly and would often get my apprentice to pull cars in and out of the shop for me.

This morning, we were busy. The lot jockey and apprentice were occupied helping wash cars for delivery and driving to a customer’s house.

The service advisor left a work order and keys at the parts counter, and I went out the front through service to get the car. It was in for a service campaign, which was an update done with a scan tool. It takes about ten minutes.

The customer was planning on waiting and was sitting in service. When he saw me with his keys in my hand, he immediately stood up, alarmed. I was hustling, so I walked right by him and out the door. I missed the following conversation, according to the service advisor (also female).

Customer: “Who is that chick? Is she going to be working on my car? I don’t want her working on my car.”

Advisor: “The other tech is out at the moment, so it’s going to be quite a wait until someone else can look at your car.”

Customer: “That’s fine. I’ll wait for a guy. I don’t want that chick touching my car.”

Advisor: *Politely* “Understood.”

The advisor comes to let me know, and I pull the car out and put the work order and keys back on the counter, nonplussed.

Half an hour passes. The apprentice is still away, and I am happily working on something else, bringing other cars in and out.

The customer is now watching each and every person who comes through the door.

The high school co-op student comes in to get something signed. The customer’s keys are still sitting on the desk. It’s been about an hour now.

Customer: “Hey, why hasn’t my car gone in yet? Can’t you get this guy to do it?”

Advisor: “No, sorry. He’s just a co-op student, so he is not allowed to drive the cars due to liability and insurance concerns.”

Customer: “Just get someone else to bring the car in and he can do the work. This was supposed to take ten minutes.”

Advisor: “Sorry, sir. He’s just a high school student doing his co-op; he’s not approved to perform warranty work. Only licensed techs and apprentices can do the recall.”

The car jockey returns. The advisor hands the car jockey a different set of keys, and he brings yet another car into the shop for me. The customer is becoming incensed.

Customer: “I’ve been sitting here for over an hour, and I’ve watched five cars go in before mine. My appointment was at 8:00 am. This is getting ridiculous! I literally don’t care who does the work; it just has to be a guy!”

The service advisor starts listing off the names of the men who work in the dealership and then saying why they can’t perform the recall.

Advisor: “Well, there’s [Car Jockey], but he’s just the car jockey. He doesn’t know how to work on cars. Then, there’s [Employee #1], but he’s about seventeen; I wouldn’t want him doing the recall, personally. I guess we could ask [Employee #2], but [Employee #2] is the parts guy; he doesn’t know how to use the scan tool. The detailers are men, but they know nothing about cars…”

The customer is fuming at this point and demands to talk to the service manager.

The manager comes out of his office and guides the customer into the garage. He’s pretty old school; he lights up a cigarette standing at the end of my bay and points at me.

Manager: “That’s my best technician. Those guys take orders from her. You can either wait for her to finish what she’s working on, and then you can ask if she’s still willing to do your work, or you can take your car somewhere else.”

The guy was pretty shaken up at this point, and he took his car and left, two hours after he’d first arrived. I don’t think we ever saw him again, which was not much of a loss, all things considered.

Years ago, I worked as a cocktail bartender and waiter. A group of suits came in and sat down and I went to take their order. I got a bad vibe from them from the get-go. After I finished the order and went to leave, this sleazy guy in his thirties said, loud enough for everyone to hear:

Customer: “Walk away slowly, baby, so we can watch!”

I smiled at him and started to do an over-dramatic slow-motion back away, keeping eye contact with him and smiling the whole time.

I told the other waiters about it, and everyone started doing these slow-motion walks whenever they walked past their table. The best one was a busboy who deliberately dropped something next to their table and then did a very slow and sexy pick-up, like the “bend and snap” from “Legally Blonde”.

The group left pretty quickly.

I work at a Danish plus-size clothing store with “XL” in the name. As the name proclaims, this store is only for XL people — sizes XL to 5XL). I am a 2XL, so I consider myself fat.

This thin old lady comes in and complains that she can’t fit in the clothes, and I explain the brand.

Me: “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to look somewhere else. Have a nice day.”

She goes away for a minute and then comes back.

Lady: “You are probably going to be mad when I say this…”

I think, “Then don’t say it.”

Lady: “…but I don’t understand how people can let themselves get so big.”

Me: “Well, there are many reasons why someone may be fat, and most people hate it. It’s often because of mental health, because of money issues, or because they sit down too much at their job.”

Lady: “I have always been small, and even when I was a child, people always commented on how small I was. And I’m very vain, so I like to take care of my look. Don’t you want to do that?”

Did she just call me ugly and brag at the same time?

Me: “Fat people can be beautiful, too.”

Lady: “In the war, there were no fat people. We didn’t need plus-size stores back then. But in Germany, fat people cost society so much today!”

I internally facepalm.

Me: “Is there anything I can help you with?”

Lady: “No, no. Thank you. I just wanted to talk.”

She walked away, oblivious to my anger.

You can have your own opinion, but don’t come into a clothing store that specializes in making large women look beautiful and feel confident to fat-shame the employee.