I was the night janitor and minor stocker for a health food store at sixteen. I once had to scrub a bathroom that had human waste on the wall, the toilet seat, the back of the toilet, and the floor. It was the only bathroom they had, and it sat for a day before I came in. With a whole aisle of gut-cleansing items and supplements being sold there, I wasn’t surprised. I made a concoction with all the natural cleaners they had and used it to spray the bathroom down. It stripped the wax from the floor.

I did, however, refuse to clean up an office they trashed as a welcome-back joke on someone. I closed the door and refused because it was done purposely by the staff. There were cigarette ashes, empty beer cans, and empty bottles everywhere, and there were pictures of all the employees’ butts squashed on a copier taped to the walls. Again, I was sixteen.

Now, those are both funny stories I tell my teens when they don’t like having to do something.

I am checking out a mother and her young child.

Child: *To the mother.* “Mommy, I need to go doodoo.”

Mother: “Can you hold it?”

Child: “No, mommy!”

Mother: “Go find a corner.”

At this, I suddenly stop scanning and make direct eye contact with the mother. The child happily skips over to a corner of the aisle and starts casually urinating right there.

Mother: “What? You guys are paid to clean up spills, right?”

I worked as a cashier. Customers would often come up and set their kids on the belt.

Customer: “Ready to go for a ride, [Kid]?”

I would immediately stop the belt.

Me: “You need to remove your child before I can continue.”

Then, I’d let the belt run to me and clean it before moving on.

Let them get insulted. NO ONE WANTS YOUR KIDS’ BUTTS ON THE BELT WITH THEIR FOOD!

In the early 2000s, I was a delivery driver at a locally-owned pharmacy. Most of our customers had been with us for years or even decades and never gave us any problems.

However, there was this one guy who seemed to thrive on being a jerk. He repeatedly refused to pay the $2.00 delivery fee and often called the store to complain that they had gotten his prescription wrong (which they never did).

The one time he actually came to the store, he asked to use the bathroom. He couldn’t get in there because the doorway was too narrow, so instead, he peed from the doorway in the general direction of the toilet. His aim was less than perfect.

Finally, the owner of the pharmacy wrote this guy a letter to the effect of:

Owner: “It is obvious that nothing we do will ever satisfy you. As such, we have decided to no longer accept your business. You are not to contact us again under any circumstances.

And because he knew how much crap I had taken from that guy, the owner made sure I got a copy of the letter.

I worked at a gas station during the health crisis, when it was a law that we either clean and disinfect after anyone used our bathroom, or we had to deny access. Since, most of the time, there was only one staff member around and the toilet was around the outside of the building, we just couldn’t go clean up. We were in the city, so there were alternatives close by. So, we closed our bathrooms.

One customer took that personally and got loud, but left in the end.

Ten minutes later, another customer walked in.

Customer: “I saw the strangest thing just now. An angry man took down his pants and s*** right on your lawn!”