I’ve worked in a large retail store for nearly a year now, and I’ve been promoted to cashier duties as I have turned seventeen. I am known for giving out my own bought stickers to the kids that come in.

A customer comes up with a kid. I look at the woman’s son bouncing around.

Me: “Hey, kid, you want a sticker?”

His eyes light up.

Boy: “Sticker!”

I hand him a food-themed sticker. The customer grabs her son by the arm.

Customer: “My son has allergies you know. He can’t have peanuts! And look what you gave him!”

I look at the sticker and see it’s a peanut one.

Me: “There’re no actual nuts in it—”

Customer: *Huffs* “If my son dies, I’m suing you for every cent you’ve got!”

She glared at me like I’d spat on her and pranced her way out of the store head held high as her son put the sticker on his face.

At my job, I have two managers: [Smart Manager] and [Jerk Manager]. [Smart Manager] is above [Jerk Manager] and can overrule his decisions at any time, thank all the gods of retail.

I got really sick at work — sick to the point of spending more time kneeling in front of the porcelain throne than actually working.

[Jerk Manager] happened to be the manager on duty. 

Jerk Manager: “No. You can’t leave. We need you to do your job.”

I struggled on for another half-hour. I’ll admit, I’d considered vomiting on [Jerk Manager]’s shoes to help change his mind, but at the time, I was still (perhaps foolishly) holding onto a thread of being a nice person.

[Smart Manager], by pure chance, happened to walk in, even though he was not on duty. He saw the condition I was in.

Smart Manager: “[My Name], go home, and don’t come back until you’ve stopped puking.”

Jerk Manager: “No, we need him to stay and work.”

Smart Manager: “You’re an idiot. He’s completely nonproductive in this state. He needs to get healthy.” *To me* “Now get the h*** out of here before I call you an ambulance. And if dummy here tries to write you up, I’ll write him up instead.”

Jerk Manager: “But—”

Smart Manager: “But nothing! HE… IS… TOO… SICK… TO… WORK.”

I managed to stop vomiting by the next morning.

[Smart Manager] called me that same afternoon to inform me that he had told his boss about [Jerk Manager]’s behavior. Apparently, the big boss man laid into [Jerk Manager] about not letting sick workers go home until they recover. The brunt of the big boss’s argument was that he didn’t want me getting all my coworkers sick because then we’d be REALLY up a creek.

So, no compassion for me, just concerns over being a vector for illness. Sigh. I love working in retail.

To make a long sob story short, I’ve lived most of my life in abusive environments. As a child, I grew up expecting to get hit if anyone moved in my direction, and then I ended up trapped in a relationship that was just more of the same.

Luckily, I managed to get out of my situation. I’m in therapy, I have my own apartment, and I have a job that I like very much. My boss and my coworkers are aware of my background and my PTSD diagnosis and they try to help me out by making sure I don’t have to deal directly with the worst customers.

One day, I’m on the floor folding clothes when a customer walks up to me. I don’t notice him at first, so when I turn around and a large man is standing right behind me, I instinctively jump a little.

Customer: “Haha, made you flinch! There’s no need to be scared of me, kiddo. I’m the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.”

Me: “Sorry, I just didn’t see you there. How can I help you?”

He needs help finding a shirt in the color he wants, and I show him the shirt rack. The entire time I’m helping him, he keeps standing right behind me, making wide gestures close to my face, trying to catch me unaware again. He manages to make me flinch again at least twice and I’m starting to feel the beginning of a panic attack coming on.

He doesn’t seem like the type who’ll get violent for real, but he keeps laughing about how he’s such a nice guy and how funny it is that I’m afraid of him. It doesn’t help that I’m clearly uncomfortable; it just seems to make him enjoy himself more.

My other coworker on the floor this day is my “work-mom”, an older woman who’s taken me under her wing and who I’ve become very close with. When I walk the customer up to the till, I try to get eye contact with her and telepathically yell, “Help me!” Thankfully, she immediately understands the issue and reaches the till ahead of me.

Coworker: “Good day, sir, so glad to see that my associate was able to help you find what you were looking for. I’ll ring you up over here. [My Name], can you go put these away?”

Customer: “Yeah, just run away from me. I’m so scary! Haha!”

He’s still grinning like this is the funniest thing that ever happened to him.

It’s not a big store, so I can still see and hear them, but at least I’m not in his immediate vicinity anymore, so I go to put away some clothes and take a moment to breathe and calm down. When I get back to the till, my coworker is just finishing up the transaction, and the customer turns to me.

Customer: “Hey, just some friendly advice. You really should find another job if you can’t even handle a normal social interaction. Either that or learn to take a joke. Have a good day now!”

He leaves, still with a wide satisfied smile on his face, and I turn to my coworker.

Me: “I know my frame of reference is pretty messed up, but what was normal about that interaction?”

Coworker: “Honey, there was absolutely nothing normal about that interaction.”

 An old guy came into our store after we reopened from the health crisis.

Customer: “Wow! You guys are really on top of things since you reopened! Your boss trained you well.”

Me: “Yeah, she’s great!”

He actually looked shocked.

Customer: “Your boss is a woman?! You let a woman tell you what to do?!”

Me: “Yeah. Our general manager has been a woman for a few years now, and she’s been with the company for like fifteen years. She knows her stuff.”

And he literally shook his head and walked away, muttering:

Customer: “Unbelievable!”

What year was this guy living in?

I work in a really big retail chain. It finally got slow enough to get off my register last night, so I was covering a break standing at the door. The self-checkout host noticed when she helped a lady that the lady had a bunch of items in bags that weren’t on the check-out terminal screen. It’s possible that she had a separate receipt, but she asked me to check it just in case. Of course, I obliged.

Red flag #1: on her way out, the lady she got on her phone. I don’t know why but people assume that if they are looking at their phones, we won’t ask them. I asked her for her receipt, which she showed me.

Red flag #2: she IMMEDIATELY stated:

Customer: “The self-checkout was giving me issues when I tried to ring stuff up.”

She had probably around twenty-five items and the receipt only showed about ten of them. As it’s not my job, and we’re warned against being accusatory, I was nice about the whole thing, and so was she. The receipt was hard to read, so I UPC-matched all her items and separated about fifteen things that were not paid for. She claimed it was an accident. She said she still wanted to buy three of the things, so I took the rest and told the self-check attendant to ring her up on the actual register inside the self-check.

As this was about to happen, an asset protection associate just so happened to come through to buy a soda. I showed him all the stuff I took.

Me: “You’re gonna want to make a report. She just tried to leave with all this.”

He immediately stopped her transaction with the self-check host and told her she needed to either go with him right now or promptly leave the store. Of course, she chose the latter.

It really didn’t look like the stuff would be worth that much, but she had a toy that was like forty dollars, about fifty dollars worth of clothes she didn’t ring up, and a kids’ phone and tablet — the ones that are used for learning simple things. The total on the items came out to over $300.

I try to see the best in everyone, but lady, this wasn’t an “accident”.