Earlier this year, I was in a pharmacy that was having a sale on makeup, with all the sale items together on one table. I had an armful of products and was searching through the rest for particular colours, moving things around, putting some things back when I found something I liked better, etc.

A woman who was part of a middle-aged couple came into my aisle and stood a few displays away behind me, complaining to her partner about the pharmacy and how she couldn’t find something.

I was focused on what I was doing so I wasn’t really listening to their conversation; my brain just registered some kind of sarcastic white noise that was getting increasingly louder and more passive-aggressive.

Her partner was quietly trying to hush her as she continued to exaggeratedly sigh and moan to him.

Woman: “This pharmacy’s employees are terrible. Gah, I need helllp!”

From the time she’d walked into the aisle, she had just stood there and never attempted to go find an employee or whatever it was she was after.

Finally, she very loudly and exasperatedly bellowed:

Woman: “Does she even work here?!”

I was startled by the outburst and turned around to look at her, finding her looking shocked and turning red because that was the exact moment when she realised that, no, I didn’t work there and wasn’t some employee ignoring her, and also the moment when I realised that the whole two minutes or so of sighing and nasty comments were actually aimed at me.

Flustered, she grabbed her partner’s arm and marched past me without making eye contact, still complaining about the pharmacy and its “terrible service,” though now in the erratic tone of someone trying to convince themselves they hadn’t just done something embarrassing.

I was dressed in all black (not anything like the employee uniform, but not out of the realm of possibility that I could work there) and I can understand how she might have thought I was restocking or sorting the sale table, but what a way to go about it instead of just asking, “Excuse me, do you work here?”

It is two days before leaving my job as a retail cashier at a well-known clothing store during the Christmas rush.

Customer: “Hi. I want to return this watch my dad got for my daughter. It’s kinda ugly. Not her style.”

Me: “Sure thing. You have the receipt?”

Customer: *Hands me the receipt* “Yes, but I don’t have the card it was paid with.”

Me: “That’s all right; the receipt and watch are all I need.” *Proceeds with the return transaction* “All right, you’re all set!”

Customer: “Well?”

Me: “Well, what?”

Customer: “I told you I don’t have the card. Where’s my cash?”

Me: “Ma’am, you didn’t say you want cash. And even if you had, I can’t refund a card purchase with cash. There’s not even an option in the system for me to do that.”

Customer: “Unbelievable! This is what’s wrong with your generation. You’re so rude and entitled.”

Me: “Your generation raised mine. Have a nice day.”

The customer looked startled, huffed, and principle-waddled out.

Wales had just introduced a compulsory minimum 5p charge for plastic bags in shops. England followed soon after but had not at this point. My shop, in Wales, charged 5p for single-use bags and 10p for “bags for life”, the stronger ones, and it all went to a children’s charity.

I had a very English-sounding woman come in to buy some stuff — not unusual, it was a pretty seaside town with a decent university — and when I mentioned the bag charge, she got really agitated.

Customer: “I shouldn’t have to pay!”

Me: “It’s the law, ma’am.”

Customer: “It’s not the law; it’s Welsh law.”

Pretty sure being from a different country within a union doesn’t make you exempt from the law of the country you’re in.

I had someone buy chainsaws and then return them, claiming they just stopped working. This happened four times before the manager said she wasn’t allowed to buy chainsaws anymore since she keeps breaking them and getting refunded.

After the last return, the employee who dealt with her actually said:

Employee: “Let me see what’s wrong with it.”

And he checked. It was out of gas. She never filled them with gas. She just returned them and claimed they stopped for no reason.

I was working the fitting room check-in at a big box store. The policy was for us to count the customer’s clothing items and then give the customer a plastic number thing so we could identify the numbers of items in and out.

A woman came up with a lot of clothes. I reached for the clothes to start counting and the customer literally punched me!

It turned out that she had hundreds of dollars of merchandise she was planning on stealing hidden between the layers of clothing.

Related:

On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 27
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 26
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 25
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 24
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 23