About ten years ago, I am walking down the food aisle of my place of employment: a pharmacy with a corner store attached.

I see this lady leaning forward into the shelves. She is looking behind soup cans and then behind boxed goods. Having worked retail for many years, I recognize this search pattern: the “I had my keys in my hand and put them down to grab an item” maneuver.

I saunter over and hit her with my prerecorded:

Me: “Can I help you?”

Unexpectedly, she looks up at me and then stands up.

Customer: “Yes! Where are your bags of ice?”

I’m dumbstruck for a moment, but then my brain hops back on track. I walk her over to the freezer and open the glass door that has cruelly hidden the bags of ice beyond it.

She stands there for a second, blank-faced and looking at me, not the freezer. I then glide my hand through space as if she has just won a new car on a game show, gesturing down to the ice bags.

Then, her bulb flickers on.

Customer: “Oh! Thank you! I would have never found them.”

Well… at least she admits it.

I work at a rather popular chain retail store. It is more or less a sort of discount store. We have our own generic brands and cheaper prices than a regular big box retailer.

Only a coworker and I are on registers on a normal, slow night. Two elderly ladies come up with a full cart each. My coworker gets [Lady #2] and I get [Lady #1]. I greet her kindly and ask if she has a rewards card. Then, I start ringing her.

The entire time, this lady is extremely passive-aggressive. She’s slightly rude but not enough to be directly rude back. Overall, she’s just basically tossing her soon-to-be purchases my way onto the counter.

The other lady comes over to her once she’s done and they start chatting. It seems as if they are solely complaining about everything. [Lady #2] asks [Lady #1] if they should get this baby play mat sort of thing. She asks me to check the price, so I do.

Me: “It’s $30.”

Lady #2: “Oh, no. No way. That’s too much for this thing. Never mind, I don’t want it.”

So, I put it in our throwback cart and continue to ring.

$50… $60… $70… $80…

Finally, I finish up, and her total comes out to around $135. I am not the best at counting money; I’m very slow when it comes to counting in general.

I promptly ask her if she’s paying with cash or by card.

Lady #1: “Cash.”

This lady pulls out a WAD of singles. And with a quick glance, she has MORE THAN ONE WAD in her purse. She hands me the wad and a chunk of another wad.

Lady #1: “There’s $135.”

With a look of horror on my face and complete dread in my soul, I began to count.

I have no idea if this lady thought I was just supposed to take it and trust her that it was the correct amount or if she just hoarded one-dollar bills.

As I was counting, she just stood there chatting with [Lady #2], and I could tell there was a vibe of impatience with them. Oh, well.

My coworker came over to help me count, thankfully. She is much faster at counting money than me.

Once we finished, I popped the money into the register and gave her the receipt. They both left with a somewhat annoyed attitude.

At least she had exact change.

Customer: “I got this flat fixed on my son’s bike a couple of weeks ago and now it’s flat again.”

Me: “Okay, so your son probably ran over something.”

Customer: “But he only rides in our neighborhood.”

Me: “Well, that doesn’t mean he can’t get flats.”

I look at the flat tire, and I pull out a thorn in front of the customer and show them.

Me: “Looks like this thorn caused your flat.”

Customer: *Scoffs* “That’s impossible. We live in a gated community; we don’t have thorns.”

Me: “…”

When I was in high school, I worked at a popular warehouse club selling computers on the weekends. I was hired by the store manager via the referral of a friend. I loved computers and they thought I’d make a good salesman, so my job was to stay in the computer department and sell computers — nothing else.

One of the shift managers didn’t like that and started insisting that I needed to go fold clothes for a while — as in, half my d*** shift. I told him that the store manager had instructed me never to leave the technology department, but he insisted. This went on for several weeks.

The store manager showed up one weekend when both the power-tripping shift manager and I were working. The store manager walked up with the shift manager close behind. [Store Manager] slapped a stack of green bar paper down onto a shelf and pointed to some highlighted numbers.

He looked at the shift manager and said:

Store Manager: “Do you see this? This is our average technology sales numbers for the weeks you are on shift. See this number over here? This is our average technology sales numbers for weeks you are not. At this point, it would be more cost-effective for me to simply fire you. What do you think of that solution?”

The guy stammered and stuttered like a toddler caught bullying another kid on the playground. Fortunately, the dude wasn’t fired, but the store manager made it clear that when I was on shift, I was not to leave the technology department unless I was on break or there was a fire in the store. That shift manager never said another word to me.

Usually, customers don’t like to talk to me as I have “resting b**** face,” but today a little old lady walked up and slapped a velour sweatshirt and matching pants on my belt.

Me: “Would you like the hangers?”

Customer: “I saw these on a young girl and she looked like a model. They’ll make me look like a model! You’d look like a model wearing them, too!”

I nodded along and repeated my question, speaking louder and pulling my mask away from my mouth in case it was muffling my voice too much.

Customer: “You just have to buy these and look like a model in them!”

I finally leaned forward to ask a third time if she needed the hangers, and she pulled the clothes off and tossed the hangers down the belt.

I rang them up and balled them into a bag and nodded as she started to wander off without her “model making” sweatsuit.

Yes, I did chase her down to give her the bag.

Related:
Model Behavior