We used to have a male customer who rode his bike to the store in the summer. He would wear a spandex outfit, and it was obvious he didn’t shower.

Me: “Your total is [amount].”

He starts to reach down the front of his sweaty spandex bicycle shorts for the money.

Me: “No. I am refusing this sale.”

Customer: “Why?”

Me: “I’m not touching that money with a ten-foot pole.”

He was already gross, as in he also hit on the female employees. That was too much!

Related:
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 14
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 13
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 12
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 11
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 10

My sister once filled a vase with candy corn and stuck some fake sunflowers in it, and Mom used it year after unknown year as a table centerpiece…

…until one fateful day when a friend of Dad’s stopped by and sampled some while they were drinking coffee.

He later admitted that they noticed they were off, but as he ate more than the first few, presumably they were nothing worse than what he ate on active duty in the Army!

CONTENT WARNING: Injury

I work at the breakfast buffet at a fancy hotel. I work the juicing station, and I am cutting some oranges in half to be juiced. My hands slip and I cut my finger. Straight away, there is blood all over the orange and my workstation.

I am about to step away to clean the wound and inform a coworker that I am going to disinfect my workstation when a guest speaks over to me, completely seriously: 

Guest: “Oh, is that how you make blood oranges?”

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I used to work for a store that had an overly lenient return policy. There was no time limit, and even if you didn’t have the receipt, you’d get credit for the price your item was currently selling for. We had to take items back in any condition. The store also had a zero-tolerance policy on complaints, so that kept a lot of people on edge, worried they’d lose their jobs over anything a customer said.

One of my responsibilities as a supervisor was to process damages once a week. These could be returns, clothes that came in faulty, things people stained, etc. This required scanning them and throwing them away for inventory purposes.

I came in on my day to process damages. Our assistant manager came up to me and apologized.

I was confused and opened the first bag I was going to process. I nearly immediately threw up. Eventually, I did throw up because the smell was so bad.

It turned out, according to the assistant manager, a woman came in to do a return. Her reason for return? “I left it in my car for a week and then left it in my kitchen for a week, so I guess I don’t need it.”

Why’d I throw up? These clothes had maggots all over them. The stench was horrible. I have no idea how they got like that, and I wish that was the one time someone refused a return.

I refused to process that bag and threw it out.

CONTENT WARNING: Blood

Twice a year, I donate blood with a special procedure called double red blood cell (DRBC) donating. Instead of just hooking my arm vein to a collection bag and letting pressure fill it, a machine withdraws a pint, centrifuges the red cells out, and then pumps the plasma portion back in. It does this twice per donation session, hence the “double” in the procedure. This is favored for blood donors of type O-negative.

I go in for my most recent donation. The phlebologist has a little trouble getting the needle into a vein on my right arm, so she has a supervisor come over and get the needle in correctly. She starts the DRBC machine, directing me to grip a rubber ball every few seconds to keep the blood flowing well.

After about four minutes, the machine starts making a gentle alarm beep. Since the procedure usually takes a half-hour, this is unusual. The phlebologist and her supervisor come over and try to clear the error that the machine has. He tries adjusting the needle in my arm, but that doesn’t stop the error beeps.

They then open the cabinet of the machine and recoil. Apparently, one of the centrifuge tubes has a leak, and for the last few minutes, my blood has just been spraying all over the interior of their machine. They quickly shut down the machine, apologizing that they have to stop the donation and that they can’t restart me elsewhere, because they’re not sure how much has been taken from me.

As I’m prepping to leave, other staff come over and look in the machine and recoil. I guess they’re squeamish if the blood isn’t in the nice clean collection bags.