I work in a store. A young girl, about three to five years old (I’m horrible at guessing ages) has lost her parent(s). I find her standing in a corner, scared and crying. I take her to customer service, where we try to get her to talk to us. I have to get one of my Spanish-speaking managers to help out because I’m not sure she speaks English.

We are asking for her name, who she is with, etc. By company rule, we cannot give out her name over the intercom; we have to say we have a lost mommy/daddy. The poor girl won’t talk, though. All we get out of her is “Papi,” so we figure we’re looking for a daddy.

So, the paging begins.

Page: “Attention, shoppers! We have a lost daddy in the store. If it’s you, your child is located at customer service. Please pick the child up quickly.”

Five minutes come and go, and there’s still no sign of the father. We try calling for both mommy and daddy, thinking the girl (who still isn’t talking) wants to go home to “Papi” but is really with mommy.

Still no sign of a parent.

We pass the ten-minute mark and have to call up loss prevention. Somewhere in our company rules, it says that if a child is separated from their parent for over ten minutes, police have to be notified. We’ve never had to call before because parents normally pick up their children ASAP.

Our loss prevention employee says to wait a little bit longer (I’m sure he just doesn’t want to fill out forms, lazy punk) because it’s busy and pretty loud.

All I am thinking is that if these parents don’t realize their child is missing by now, they’ve got issues. But, it could be [Parent #1] thought the child was with [Parent #2] and vice-versa; we’ve had that before.

So… another thirty minutes go by and still no sign of the parent. This poor child is crying her eyes out, and I feel really bad. My manager lets me ring out a lollipop for her to try to calm her down, and we hope it will bribe her to talk to us, but alas, nada.

We’re paging every two to five minutes for this parent. LP finally has to make the call to the police. After all, I am not the store’s babysitter, but since I found her, I feel obligated to stay with her rather than hand her over to a bunch of new strangers.

Police arrive and have us page a few more times. They try to get names from the poor girl, but she isn’t talking. Figures, parents push “Don’t talk to strangers” in their kids’ heads, but they forget to mention “unless you need to tell the police or retail worker your name or our name so you can be reunited with us.”

An hour after finding this girl, the police take her to the police station. My heart nearly breaks for this poor girl. Before she leaves, I bring her a few snacks because I’m not sure how long she will be there and have no idea what kind of food/snacks the station has.

Two hours later, this guy comes strolling up to customer service asking us if we know where his daughter is. His description of his child matches the poor girl right down to her shoelace color. I have the pleasure of telling him she is at the police station.

This guy flips!

Worthless Parent: “Why the f*** did you call the police?!” 

Me: “We paged for over an hour, nearly two hours ago.”

Worthless Parent: “Well, I wasn’t in the store then!”

Me: “Wait… What? Where were you?”

Worthless Parent: “I had business to attend to. What the f*** is it to you?”

Me: “And you left your child here alone?!”

Worthless Parent: “Yeah, so? It’s a public place. I told her to stay in the corner and not talk to anyone! Now where the f*** is my daughter?!”

Me: “Haven’t you heard of kidnappers? Jeez, dude… Like I said, she is at the police station. You will have to go there to pick her up.”

After a few more moments of him ranting about my horrible customer service, I finally snap:

Me: “Sir, you are a worthless, irresponsible parent, and I sincerely hope that the police give your daughter to someone more suitable. Now get out of my store.”

He finally left, shouting a few more choice curse words.

I called the police station after he left and told the officer who was with her what the dad had said. He promised to handle it.

My manager, the LP guy, and I were seething after that. All three of us are parents and couldn’t even comprehend the stupidity of this guy. 

The police officer did come back into the store later, and he wasn’t able to tell me much, just the standard, “Things are being looked into.” But he did thank me for finding the girl and bringing the whole matter to the police, so I am guessing there might be more to it, and I’m praying that the little girl is taken out of her father’s custody.

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.