I work in a big box department store. Mystery liquids on the floor are just part of life. You find them, you get them cleaned up.

I was on my way to a break when I spotted a short trail of drips of some sort of reddish-pink liquid on the floor. For a larger spill, I would have guarded it and called a coworker over to bring me some paper towels, but for just some drips, I decided to take the ten or fifteen steps in the other direction to grab the towels myself.

As I came back, I saw an elderly lady with a walker about to step on a cluster of drips.

Me: “Excuse me, ma’am, please be careful. There’s something on the floor there, and I don’t want you to slip.”

Customer: “Oh. Thank you. I didn’t see it.”

She looked down at it. Then, she bent down and started smearing one particularly large splatter with her finger. I was a bit alarmed. I had no idea what this stuff was, and some of the chemicals we sell are toxic, or even caustic!

Me: “Ma’am, please don’t do that!”

Then, she tasted it.

Yes. You read that right. She stuck her finger in her mouth to taste a mystery liquid from the floor of a big box store.

Customer: “I don’t know what it is.”

Me: “Uh… I don’t, either… but I’m here to clean it up…”

Customer: “Oh, all right.”

And she continued along her way.

I started working at a video store in the summer of 1994 right after I graduated high school. It was not a national chain or anything like that, so it was a little different from the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos.

Mainly it was because we had an ‘adult room’. This was Utah, so it wasn’t hardcore or anything, basically the same kind of thing you would get on cable. All of our videos had stickers on them with inventory numbers that we would use to check them in and out.

The adult videos were two digits longer than the rest of the videos, so it was always pretty obvious when you were entering them into the system. We would create a separate pile of videos that had to go back to the adult room when we were checking them in because a few of us had no desire to even go in there.

Adult videos were the most expensive. It cost $4 to rent one of those. In contrast, the kids’ movies were $0.25 to rent one. Or you could rent five for a dollar. These weren’t like full-blown Disney releases or anything. It would usually be things like episodes of ‘Blue’s Clues’ type stuff.

In fact (this is important) Disney hadn’t released a lot of their earlier videos yet, but they were about to start doing so in the fall of 1994. Snow White was the first title to be released on VHS in the Disney Masterpiece Collection.

A lady came in and rented four kids’ videos and an adult video. Whatever. I’m not here to judge. I charged her the $5 bucks and she left the store. I had been there long enough that I didn’t even really pay attention to the titles people were renting anymore. I just entered the numbers and verified that what was on the screen was the same as the video and case.

She seemed a little surprised at the price and had to go into her wallet for a couple more dollars.

She came back a couple of hours later, though. She looked like someone had painted her face red! She handed me a video: 

Customer: “I rented it by mistake.”

The title was ‘Snow White’. The inventory code was two digits longer than kids’ videos. Yup… Somebody put it away based on the title and completely ignored the fact it was an adult video. They also ignored the fact that Disney hadn’t even released it on VHS yet, so that should have been a clue. Our fault for assigning the newbies ‘video put away’ duty. 

Customer: “I thought I was getting five kids’ movies. It was weird when you charged me so much, but I thought maybe it was because Snow White was a new release, so it was more. I had some gardening to do, and I just wanted them to be entertained for the afternoon. I popped it in and went outside. I came back in maybe fifteen minutes later, and Snow White was doing terrible things with the seven dwarves!”

I will never forget that lady and I think about her often. I think about the absolute horror she must have experienced when she walked in and saw what was on the screen. I have no idea how old the kids were watching it, but I sure hope they were young enough to be oblivious to what was happening.

It’s a lucky thing she didn’t sue the video store. I’m sure today she would have said something about it on Facebook and had hundreds of people commenting and telling her to sue and she probably would have, but we were a little less influenced back then.

This happened right at the start of the [global health crisis] closures in my area. I run a small swim shop, and with all of the pools being closed and the rules being unclear about what stores were technically “essential” and what weren’t in my area, we thought it was best to close for the time being. I did take advantage of the situation and decided to do a 100% from-scratch inventory. I figured that I had a couple of uninterrupted weeks of working solo in the store and that I might as well use it to make my inventory perfect. 

My store is right next door to a salon. We’re so close that when it’s quiet we can sometimes hear each other through our shared wall. I was a couple of days into flying solo, and I hadn’t seen any other cars in our parking lot and also knew that the salon was closed, as all of the salons in the area were. I figured that I was completely alone in our complex, so I didn’t worry too much about being loud or anything. I entertained myself as I counted stock by rocking out to music at near full volume and watching and listening to videos all day. 

My favorite genre of movie is horror, and during this time I was on a bit of a slasher kick. I came into work, set my laptop up on the front counter so I could see and hear it as I moved around, and turned on a movie with all the screaming female leads running around panicking. Of course, I had the volume up fairly loud so I could hear it around the whole store. 

I left the movie playing when I went into the backroom for a moment, out of sight of our front windows, just as one of the big Scream Queen close-up moments happened. I heard the scream, and then not long after, I heard a panicked pounding on the front door that was so forceful I thought someone might end up breaking it down. 

It turned out that one of the stylists from next door had gone in with her husband to grab some supplies to do her own hair at home. She saw my car and saw me when she was walking in. Then, she heard the bloody murder screams of the actress in my movie and thought they were coming from me and that I was being attacked, so she sent her husband to save me. When he didn’t see me through the front window, he started to pound on the door. 

We laugh about the situation now. But I have to say, I sure do feel a lot safer working at my store, especially closing solo at night, knowing my neighbors have my back.

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My parents were from Georgia and Florida respectively, and though I have never lived in the south, I did end up with a very mild southern accent, including the tendency to use words like “darling” and “honey” when talking to people. This includes at work, talking to my customers. Usually, it’s not a problem, though I have had some people ask me not to do it after the first time because it makes them uncomfortable or whatever, and that’s fine; I understand and don’t mind the adjustment.

This woman, apparently, was a slightly different story. I was helping her with a money order, and everything had gone perfectly normally — until the end, when I wished her a good day

Me: “All right, have a good day, darling.”

Her entire demeanor changed and she just glared at me.

Customer: “My name is [Customer], not ‘darling’. I do not appreciate those kinds of euphemisms. Is that clear?”

Now, I have no problem adjusting, but her sudden anger took me off guard, and the “Is this clear?” with a very condescending attitude irritated me. It took me a second to respond, so she felt the need to repeat herself.

Customer: “Is that clear?”

Me: “Yes, I’m sorry, ma’am.”

She just continued to glower at me.

Customer: “I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to use those phrases, and I will not be treated like that. Is that clear?”

I was already annoyed with this woman for a simple thing that I would have been happy to fix if she hadn’t gotten on her high horse, and I had already apologized, so I just kind of blinked at her.

Customer: “I said… is. That. Clear?”

Me: “Of course, miss. I’m sorry.”

She just stormed off, with a final comment that she was going to complain to my store manager about me.

I caught my manager later and let her know.

Me: “Hey, you might get a complaint because, apparently, one of my customers took great offense that I accidentally called her ‘darling’.”

My manager just snorted and shook her head.

Manager: “Are you serious?” 

I understand some people don’t care for it, especially since I live nowhere near the south so it’s uncommon to hear, but that reaction seemed a bit extreme. I have no problem adjusting, but don’t treat me like a child and lecture me because of a dialect phrase. I wonder how that woman would fare anywhere farther south where most people speak like this.

I had to make a stop at the grocery store one night to grab three things that I’d forgotten to get during my usual weekly shopping trip. I was in a bit of a hurry, so I grabbed my basket, powerwalked to each item, and then powerwalked straight toward the registers.

As I was heading to the registers, I walked past an older man who was just shuffling along. He was moving in the general direction of the registers, but at a snail’s pace, so I moved past him and made my way up to the self-checkout area.

All six stations were occupied, so I settled my basket on my hip to wait. I pulled out my phone, scrolled through some of my notifications, and then, roughly forty seconds or so after I walked up, a station opened up.

At that same moment, the old man I passed finally made it over to the self-checkout area. He was still around ten feet away from me as I started to walk forward when he piped up.

Old Guy: “Oh, yeah, think you deserve to go first just cause you cut off an old man, huh?”

I paused and very briefly considered turning around to try and justify myself by pointing out how he was nowhere near the lines and how I wasn’t going to just stand behind him as he shuffled through the store on the off chance he was heading toward the registers. But, I realized that there was no way that trying to argue with someone throwing a tantrum over the fact that he was slower than everyone else in the store was going to turn out positively for me, so I resumed walking forward.

Old Guy: “Right! No shame for cutting off an old man; just keep walking. No shame!”

I put my basket down, pulled out and scanned each of my items, and then stuck my card in for payment. Elapsed time, maybe half a minute. In that time, two other people had finished and exited behind me, but the old man continued to stand at the entrance and shout at me about “no shame”. I wasn’t really paying attention to what he said, so that’s the only bit that stuck in my memory.

I finished paying, collected my things, and headed toward the exit, with the guy still shouting after me. I did glance back as I was setting my basket back with the rest near the front, and I got to see a lady cut around the old man, who was still standing at the entrance to the self-checkouts shouting. He turned to start shouting at her, ignoring the employee who was apparently trying to direct him to one of the open registers.

To the old guy, I am sincerely sorry your body and mind are failing you, but I am not willing to act like it is my fault that is happening to you.