I’m behind some lady in line who is buying, among other things, one of those bulk packages of individual bottled water. Because it’s fairly heavy, the checkout girl comes around with the handheld scanner to grab the barcode off the package.

This woman flips out.

Customer: “Don’t you put that thing anywhere near me!”

Cashier: *Confused.* “Ma’am?”

Customer: “I did not give you permission to shoot them lasers through my water!”

Cashier: “Ma’am, I need to scan the barcode to charge you for the water.”

Customer: “Type it in!”

The cashier shrugs (she seems used to behavior like this, sadly) and looks at the barcode.

Cashier: *Out loud.* “Four, One…”

She walks back around to her register and types in four and one (I assume). She then comes back around to the lane and looks at the barcode on the water again.

Cashier: *Out loud.* “Nine, Four…”

Repeat the walk back to her register.

Customer: “You can’t remember more than two numbers at a time?!”

Cashier: *Holds up the handheld scanner.* “No, because of all the brain damage caused by being so close to the lasers all day.”

The cashier did that journey eight more times to type in that long-a** barcode. I was next in line, but I didn’t mind, as seeing that woman turn redder with anger on each journey was very entertaining. When it was (finally) my turn, I told the cashier I love it when retail workers have no more f***s to give.

Related:
Behold The Field In Which I Grow My F***s. Lay Thine Eyes Upon It And Thou Shalt See That It Is Barren, Part 5
Behold The Field In Which I Grow My F***s. Lay Thine Eyes Upon It And Thou Shalt See That It Is Barren, Part 4
Behold The Field In Which I Grow My F***s. Lay Thine Eyes Upon It And Thou Shalt See That It Is Barren, Part 3
Behold The Field In Which I Grow My F***s. Lay Thine Eyes Upon It And Thou Shalt See That It Is Barren, Part 2
Behold The Field In Which I Grow My F***s. Lay Thine Eyes Upon It And Thou Shalt See That It Is Barren

CONTENT WARNING: Slight injury detail.

I was running a gas station all alone. It was Easter Sunday, and I was supposed to be with my family, but the girl who was supposed to relieve me just didn’t show up.

She would periodically no-call no-show with no consequence, but this time she called me and told me she was ‘hungover’ and would ‘get there when she got there.’

I called my manager, but there was no answer because it’s Easter Sunday. 

I called the assistant manager, same thing.

I’m supposed to be on my way home to change into my Easter Sunday clothes and heading home to be with my family, but I’m still at this s***ty gas station because someone is hungover.

I was so mad someone bought a pack of cigarettes, and I went to grab them from the open carton, and the corner of the cardboard just VANISHED inside of my thumb, and I started sprouting blood out of my thumb.

Panicked, I wrapped it in several paper towels and quickly looked in our first aid kit for bandages. We had about five of them piled on top of each other.

Opened the first one, no bandages. Second one, nothing. Third one, nothing. Fourth one, I finally found a decent bandage, opened it up, and wrapped my thumb. Got back to work because there was a line.

I heard an alarm going off in the back room. I ran back there and realized we were out of gas, and I had to shut off all the pumps because, legally, you can’t let the gas tanks get to a certain level and still sell gas.

I shut the pumps off, which you can imagine pleased everyone who was stopping off the interstate to get gas before getting back on. Plus, we were still slammed with people wanting to buy cigarettes, cigarillos, and everything else we offered. 

Also, I had to pee for the last two hours and couldn’t leave the counter, or really at all, because I was the only one there in this giant store.

Suddenly, a customer informs me that the drink machine is broken. Our gas station chain basically sells itself on its eighty-five-cent drinks; it’s almost all that most people come in for. I slap a giant ‘out of order’ sign on the machine and go back to work. 

A lady comes in and demands:

Customer: “Why won’t the gas pumps work?!”

Me: “Because we’re out of gas, ma’am.”

Customer: “What do you mean you’re out of gas?! You’re a gas station! This is ridiculous!”

Me: “Well, we’re out of gas, ma’am. It’s been a long weekend, and the truck isn’t here.”

Customer: “Then why isn’t there a sign on every single one of those pumps that says you’re out of gas?!”

Me: “Because I’m working all alone and I have a line, ma’am!”

Customer: “Millions of people work alone every day! You should be used to it by now!”

I f****** snapped. I lost it. There had been a lot of BS at this job leading up to this day. I was sitting there when I was supposed to be in front of my family eating my metric weight in honey ham and mashed potatoes, with my thumb wrapped up in bloody paper towels and a blood-soaked bandage.

We had no gas; we had no drinks. People were still filing in to take a chunk out of me every five minutes because of it. I couldn’t fix anything. No one would pick up the phone to help me.

I screamed:

Me: “BECAUSE I’M F****** BUSY YOU STUPID F****** C***!”

The only time in my life I’d ever used the ‘C’ word.

The insult wasn’t great. What made it, however, was the group of four guys that were standing in line that looked at each other and gave a guffaw, “Oh, s***!” like I’d just hit her with the best diss they’d heard that recess on the school ground.

The woman flushed as I came around the corner, and she left out of the front door. I turned to the line and said:

Me: “I’m going to take a p***. If any of you want to steal anything f****** go for it!”

I vanished into the bathroom. 

One quiet five-minute nervous breakdown later, I came out of the bathroom, and everyone was still standing there in line. Everyone was even really nice to me, to be honest. I think they all knew, despite my use of one of the vilest words ever and halfway yelling at them, I had had a real breakdown there.

Everyone politely paid for their items, things eventually quieted down, and the girl who was going to replace me showed up two and a half hours late, and I got to go to Easter Sunday, and at least enjoy leftovers.

I quit a month later.

This gentleman at a table with his wife and kid asks:

Customer: “What kinds of iced tea do you have?”

Me: “We only have black, unsweetened, iced tea.”

Customer: “Great, I’ll take a raspberry iced tea.”

Me: “Sorry, we only have plain, unsweetened iced tea.”

Customer: “Okay, well, I’ll have an unsweet tea, and my wife will have a sweet tea.”

I’m a bit annoyed at this point, but I’ve dealt with worse, so I tell him:

Me: “Sir, we only have plain, unsweetened tea.”

Customer: “Okay, so I’ll take a half and half.”

Arnold Palmers are pretty popular at my restaurant (iced tea and lemonade, also known as the half and half), so I think that’s what he must mean.

Me: “Half tea and half lemonade?”

He breathes the biggest sigh in the world because I’m clearly the most incompetent person on the planet.

Customer: “No, a half-sweet tea and a half-unsweet tea.”

Me: “Sir, we only have plain—”

Customer: *Cuts me off.* “—Fine, I’ll have a half “plain” tea and a “plain” sweet tea, and I’ll just mix them together myself!”

He was short and sarcastic when he said it. 

At this point, it wasn’t just the condescension; I was upset at the lack of actual active listening skills, and I did kind of just snap:

Me: “Sir. We do not have sweet tea. Our tea is not sweet; it has no flavor, it is just plain… black… tea.”

He looked at me like I just told him the restaurant he was in didn’t carry food. He snapped at me:

Customer: “What do you mean you don’t have sweet tea?!”

It took everything in me just to say politely:

Me: “We don’t have sweet tea. We don’t have any flavors. Just tea that is not sweet. It is plain tea. It is black tea.”

I am basically just dumbing down the same sentence I’d been saying for the past five-ten minutes.

He went on to be a nightmare for the rest of the forty-five minutes they were there.

I work as a server in a Middle-Eastern restaurant. I’m starting a late shift, and my manager is already laying into a diner who has gotten on his nerves. The diner is a guy, mid-twenties, and seems to be on a date.

Manager: “No, sir, for the eleventh time, we will not make that. It was your choice to slide away the menu I gave you so that you could try to order whatever the most recent hipster TikTok cuisine is. I can’t believe I am standing here, explaining to a grown-a** man that our kitchen is limited to what it has in stock and the menu, the one that you ignored, is generally a pretty good indicator of what we can actually make, you f****** moron.”

I thought that must be it; the manager has to be done. But no…

Manager: “Also, while you’re sitting there with your mouth open like a goldfish, let me remind you that this is a Middle Eastern restaurant. No, we don’t have tikka masala, and no, Iraqi cuisine is not “basically just like Indian food”. Read the f****** menu.”

My manager got an earful from the owner for that, but since he was a great manager, the owner knew he couldn’t come down too hard on him, especially after being told that the customer had asked for variations of Indian food eleven times and hadn’t opened the menu once before the manager had finally snapped.

I’m in the middle of taking the orders from a table of four:

Customer: “I want [meal with relish].”

Me: “Sir, you told me you’re allergic to pickles, yes?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “That dish comes with relish.”

Customer: “…Yes?”

Me: “Relish has pickles in it.”

Customer: *Suddenly angry.* “No it doesn’t! I’ve had it before and I never saw pickles! You’re here to take my order, not tell me what I can’t eat!”

Me: “Sir, I am not telling what you can’t eat, I am just letting you know that relish has pickles—”

Customer: “—No it doesn’t! Stop being stupid!”

Call me stupid, make me snap:

Me: “Let’s play a game. You take out your phone, google ‘relish recipe’ and read it to me.”

The customer glares at me, but takes his phone out (which surprises me) and seems to look up what I asked him to. He reads for a second, then loses some wind from his sails, though remains angry.

Customer: “Well, it doesn’t count when it’s all chopped up!”

Later that night, my manager pulled me aside:

Manager: “I heard what you said. Normally that would be a big no-no, but the guy deserved it. Also…” *Huge smile.* “…I relished the thought of seeing his reaction.”

Me: *Huge groan.*