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

I am on checkout in a variety store. I’m a woman. Every week or so, a customer comes through my checkout. I am chirpily polite to him, as I am required to be, and I’m also friendly because I recognise him and acknowledge him as a fellow human being.

A few months into my employment, I leave to walk home after the store has closed, well after sunset, and this customer approaches me. I recognise him and greet him — fellow human being and all.

Me: “G’day, [Customer], how are you?”

Customer: “Good. Can I buy you a drink?”

Me: “No, thank you. I need to get home.”

Customer: “Can I get your number? I would love to catch up away from your store.”

Me: “Sorry, no.”

Customer: “We get on really well. I want you to know me better.”

Me: “I don’t think my husband would agree.”

Secret: I am not married.

Customer: “You are married? You led me on, you b****! You made it pretty clear you liked me.”

Me: “I am sorry, but I am not interested.”

I fled back into the store, called a cab, and snuck out the back door to my parents’ house, where I lived.

I saw the customer once or twice at the tills, but he never approached me as a friend again.

This is not a dramatic story; it’s just something that happens all the time to women who are required to be friendly as part of their job.

A lady comes in to cancel an item off her order since the delay is several months. I cancel it for her.

Customer: “Does this mean I lose my discount?”

At my store, we calculate discounts by taking the total amount of the discount and distributing it among all items.

Me: “No. You still get your discount on the other item. Canceling the one won’t affect the other.”

Except that wasn’t the question she was asking. This customer thought that we should give her the discount she received on the canceled item and apply it to the other one. No. Absolutely not. First, the second item was $70.00 (originally $130) and the discount for both items was $100.00 total, so she had already gotten it heavily discounted.

When I explained this, you would have thought I had cussed at her.

Customer: “You are robbing me of my money! You should give me the added discount since the delay was your fault!”

I said no again. She took her things, told me to keep the canceled item on the order since she didn’t want to lose her discount, and yelled that I was robbing her.

Yes… I am robbing you of $50.00 you didn’t pay. To top it off, she had gotten something else entirely free for the delay weeks prior.

I am a delivery driver/merchandiser. One day, as I was stocking magazines on an eighteen-foot rack, I kept smelling something rank but not really strong. I kept searching over and under all along the rack.

After about twenty minutes of looking, up under the rear of the top rack, I found a chuck roast that had a sell-by date that was two weeks prior. It was essentially gray, almost black, and hadn’t leaked.

Someone had to get on all fours and twist into an odd angle and then place it in a nook in the rear of the top rack.