A girl from my former church has managed to recruit a whole bunch of people from there to a popular multi-level marketing scheme. As a result, I keep getting pitched on social media by people that she has recruited. I am polite when telling them no.

However, after a long day at work, I arrive home to find yet ANOTHER social media invite to a “networking” event in my inbox. I leave a comment on the post asking them to take me off whatever list I’ve ended up on, because I’m not interested in MLMs, please and thank you. I don’t name anyone and I try to be polite, but firm. A few minutes later, I get a private message from the original “upline,” the girl from my former church.

Girl: “I saw your post. Who invited you?”

Me: “[Girl #2].”

Girl: “Sorry if you were offended by the invite, but you could’ve been nicer. [Girl #2] is new. You didn’t have to embarrass her.”

Me: “I didn’t name anyone until you asked me. I just want all of you to stop contacting me.”

Girl: “You go to [My Old Church], right? How about you be a good rep and show some love instead of being a discourager?”

Me: “I switched churches over a year ago. Please leave me alone.”

Girl: “Well, that’s not surprising!”

Me: “You want to talk about being a good rep of [Old Church]? You’re not great at it, either. Bye.”

She was still typing when I blocked her.

I used to work as a stocker at a fairly large grocery store that had numerous smaller versions of said store. Funny enough, I was always looked to as a manager/supervisor by everyone, including those who have been there far longer than I have.

While I was in the backroom sorting merchandise in their sections, one of the senior coworkers comes storming into the back absolutely fuming. I should note that she has been working for the company for several years and is largely considered one of the nicest people ever, but so many people mistake her size and demeanor and push her around. I, on the other hand, am far larger and I use this to my advantage to help with all of the heavier freight.

Coworker: “Hey, you got a second? I need your size for something.”

Me: “Sure, what’s up?”

My coworker explains that a customer started calling her a b**** and demanded to know where a product was located. When she attempted to help the man, he got even more hostile and “demanded to take him to a man who would know where s*** really is.”

Because I highly respect her, my demeanor instantly changed from jolly to a giant on a warpath. I had her show me where the customer was at and to go ahead and tell him that she got someone. I stood at the end of the aisle where he couldn’t see and was trying to get into my “manager” frame of mind.

Coworker: “I got my manager and he’ll be here to assist you shortly.”

Customer: “WHERE THE H*** IS HE THEN?! It’s s*** like this is why you women are so f****** useless!”

At this point, I had enough and came around the corner like a bull out of a chute and beelined for the customer.

Me: *As dark and as intense as I could make my voice.* “WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

The customer turns around and sees a mountain in front of him and knew that mistakes were made. He stumbles over his words, but can’t get them out.

Me: “You have one of two options: You either apologize to her RIGHT NOW and I might let you keep shopping here, or I will literally chase you out. Make your choice.”

The customer absolutely freaked out and bolted for the door. There’s usually an officer present and I reported the customer to him and told him that if that customer ever came back that he was to be turned away immediately. The officer was on super good terms with the coworker and was visibly upset by what happened and so he said that he would chase him off if I pointed him out.

I’ve been a cashier for over two years now, so I’ve seen all kinds of weird, funny, and borderline insane things happen while working.

Today was super slow until I helped my last customer. He was an elderly gentleman just buying a few small items. I greeted him, scanned his items, and then told him his total. As I waited to see what his method of payment would be, he started unbuckling and unzipping his pants.

I was shocked, so I quickly looked away because what the heck? Then, he quickly started apologizing.

Customer: “No, no, I’m not trying to be indecent or anything! I’m just wearing two pairs of pants and my wallet is inside!”

I slowly started to look back and saw that he was, in fact, wearing a second pair of pants under the first and digging for his wallet. I just laughed awkwardly and he paid and started to leave.

Me: “Have a great night!”

Customer: “All right.”

He responded in the most serious way as if accepting my words as a command.

The strange part was that the top layer of pants didn’t seem to be painting pants or anything like that; they were just normal slacks from what I could tell. Overall, he was an interesting customer compared to the rest of that night. It cracked me up and I think I’ll remember this one for quite a while.

I work in one of several shops in a roughly fifty-mile radius that buys, sells, and trades trading card games — think: Pokemon, YuGiOh, Magic: the Gathering, that kind of stuff, and almost all of it in single cards. We buy collections of cards rather frequently, and it’s not unusual that people will stop by without their cards just to gauge how we work and how things happen.

A guy comes in one evening. He seems nice enough. He tells me he was sent by another store of our acquaintance because they couldn’t afford to buy his collection. This gets flagged in my brain as a jackpot: good cards that we can then sell? Yes, please! 

I give him the email of my manager to schedule an appointment because it’s a very large collection of cards. He’s happy, I’m happy, and I send him on his merry way. 

I’m not there when he returns, but from what I hear from my other coworkers, he comes back with a LOT of boxes, large and small, and a couple of bins. Again, this is not unusual; collections of this size come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve had people come in with plastic bags of rubber-banded cards. You name it, we’ve probably seen it.

My manager tells one of my coworkers to grab a particular box; that’s where the “good” cards are. We know what cards these are, and they’re GOOD.

My coworker grabs said box… and said box is empty. 

Uh-oh. 

Cue the manager and several coworkers frantically going through the entire collection trying to find at least two cards. I’m told this takes upwards of six hours, and I believe it. They go through the collection. They go through it twice, thrice, several more times. The cards are nowhere to be found. 

We contact the guy and tell him the cards are gone.

Guy: *Nicely* “Shoot, I didn’t check the cards after I took them from the other shop. They are there, in the other shop; that’s how they knew it was a massive collection and they couldn’t afford it.”

We contacted the other shop. They didn’t have the cards, either, they claimed. Cue the other store frantically looking. 

Please note: the guy did NOT blame my store in ANY CAPACITY, AT ALL. He didn’t even seem that fazed, to be honest. These were EXTREMELY valuable products, so what was happening here? 

I came in for my shift the other day to get the lowdown on exactly what happened to those cards, and discovered a few things:

• An employee from the other store was let go. We were not told why.
• The other store cut the guy a check for the value of the missing cards.
• A regular at our store told us that the employee who had been let go had worked at that other store for some time…
• …and there were cameras filming what happened.
• There is now a court case.

I don’t know any other details, but it turns out that it wasn’t just those two cards, it was a grand total of forty cards missing. Where those cards went, who could say, but all I know for sure is that our store cut the guy our own check — for the cards he actually gave us. 

The guy was fine, was chill, and went along his merry way… and our store managed to dodge a massive bullet we didn’t even know was there.

A while ago, I was working the register and heard screaming at the other end of the store. I ran over to see what was happening. Two of our female Loss Prevention officers had stopped a shoplifter at the exit and she was screaming bloody murder at them. By this time, all the customers and employees had crowded to watch the show.

One LP officer reached out toward the shoplifter like she was going to try to grab the stolen merchandise back. Then, the shoplifter suddenly jumped up and tackled the LP officer to the ground. As the second LP officer stepped in to try to break up the fight on the ground, the two officers both started screaming in pain and the shoplifter ran out.

The rest of the employees and customers were freaking out, as the LP officers were screaming:

Officers: “I can’t see! I can’t see! Help! It burns!”

We thought we had witnessed an acid attack; it was awful.

Paramedics were called, and when the officers returned to work, we found out the shoplifter had sprayed mace in their faces.

She was only stealing $30 worth of clothes. That definitely goes down as one of the craziest days at work ever.