It is the height of craziness in 2020. We have just come off furlough, but the fitting rooms in our store are still closed. Our customers are not happy, but we are using the fitting rooms to quarantine all the clothes that have been returned, based on medical advice at the time.

Customers start taking it upon themselves to try on clothes in the store aisles. It’s the beginning of a giant mess, but no one can stop them.

I am returning clothes that have completed quarantine to their racks, and I look up and am face to face with a woman’s naked rear end. She is trying on bathing suits in the middle of the store and has pulled down her pants and underwear to put on the bathing suit.

Me: “You can’t do that!”

Customer: “There are no signs!”

I look at her, and then I look at her friends, who are staring at us both.

Me: “Please explain to her why we don’t need signs.”

Then, I walked away.

I guess they explained public indecency to her because, when I came back five minutes later to continue putting stuff away, she and her friends were gone.

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I have been working at a Canadian grocery store chain for about four years. It’s early 2020, so the global health crisis is in full swing with mask mandates, etc.

I’m working in the self-checkout area right by the doors, and I notice a woman in her forties entering with her screaming child. The kid is wearing a sweater that says the name of his school and the year of his graduating class, and I gather that he is around eleven or twelve. Right off the bat, the woman looks pissed, probably because of her goblin child screaming blue murder about how he wants [Fast Food Place], and she waltzes in without a mask.

Me: “Welcome to [Store]! Do you need a mask?”

Woman: “What? No. I just need a few things.”

She tries to shove her way past me, but I place myself between her and the rest of the store.

Me: “Quick trip, eh? Yeah, I get that, but as per [Store] policy, all staff and customers over the age of ten need to be wearing masks in the store.”

Woman: “Well, I don’t have one!”

I point to a stand with hand sanitizer and masks by the door.

Me: “We have some right over there in case people forget. You can get one for yourself and your son.”

Child: “Mooooooommmmmm, I don’t want to wear a maaaaask!”

Woman: “Hush, sweetie. You don’t have to.” *To me* “My son is eight; he doesn’t need one. And besides, I don’t need one, either. I just need to grab a few things. I’ll be out in a few minutes anyway.”

Child: “Hey! I’m not eight!”

The woman glares at her kid, and he keeps whining about how he doesn’t want to wear a mask.

Me: “I understand, ma’am, but it’s store policy, and if you won’t wear a mask, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to shop elsewhere. The door signs clearly state you must wear a mask to shop with us.”

Woman: *Raising her voice* “But I just need a few things! It’s not like I’m going all over the store! I want to speak with your manager!”

Me: *Into my walkie-talkie* “Hey, [Manager], I’ve got a woman at the doors who wants to talk to you.”

Manager: “Be right there. Is it about masks again?”

Me: “Yep.”

Manager: *Sighs* “Keep her at the doors, please.”

Me: “Can do.” *To the woman* “Please wait right here and [Manager] will be right over.”

Woman: “You’d better not keep me waiting. I have a family to feed!”

[Manager] soon shows up and takes over.

Manager: “Good afternoon! How can I help you today?”

Woman: “This child—” *I’m twenty* “—won’t let me in! How am I supposed to feed my family if I can’t even enter the store?!

Manager: “Well, ma’am, you’re welcome to do your shopping here if you put on a mask!” *Notices the “Class Of [Year]” shirt on the kid* “And your son needs one, as well, seeing as he’s over ten.”

Woman: “HE’S EIGHT!”

Child: “NO, I’M NOT, MOM! STOP SAYING THAT!”

Woman: “BE QUIET, [CHILD]! Mommy’s handling this!”

Child: “DON’T YELL AT ME!”

He’s stomping his foot and screaming in her face.

Woman: “Don’t you take that tone with me! Let me deal with these idiots, and then Mommy will get you [Fast Food Place] after!”

The kid shuts up really quickly.

Woman: *To [Manager], smirking* “I can’t wear a mask and neither can my son; we have asthma and won’t be able to breathe.”

Manager: “I’m very sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid the rule goes for everyone; no entry without a mask.”

The woman explodes.

Woman: “I SWEAR TO GOD, WE’LL SUFFOCATE WITH MASKS ON! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL MY CHILD?! I’M GOING TO SUE YOU IF YOU DON’T LET ME IN RIGHT NOW!”

Manager: “Please don’t raise your voice at me. I’m speaking to you like an adult; I expect the same in return. If you don’t want to wear a mask, then you can shop somewhere else. I hear that [Other Grocery Store] is allowing customers to shop without masks if you’d rather go there.”

Woman: “I’LL SPEAK HOWEVER I WANT! YOU’RE INFRINGING MY RIGHTS AS A CANADIAN CITIZEN TO BREATHE FREELY! I DON’T WANT TO GO TO [OTHER GROCERY STORE]! I’M ALREADY HERE! JUST LET ME DO MY F****** SHOPPING!”

The woman is panting like she just ran a marathon, and her son pulls her down to whisper something in her ear. She smiles like the Grinch after stealing Christmas and nods at her gremlin. He takes off into the store at a run, and we lose sight of him in the aisles. [Manager] sends me after the kid while he calls for security.

I search up and down every aisle in the store and finally find the kid in the frozen food section, all the way at the other end of the store. He’s got his pants around his ankles and is squatting in the middle of the aisle, dropping a massive pile of s*** on the floor. He sees me and grins at me.

I get on the walkie and call [Manager] over, telling him what’s going on. At this point, the woman has reluctantly put on a mask and storms over with [Manager] just as the kid drops the last nugget on his steaming pile. He pulls his pants back up and trots over to his mother.

Woman: “There we go; we found him. Now I can shop in peace.”

Manager: “Absolutely not. You or your son need to clean that up immediately.”

Woman: “H*** no. Get her to do it.” *Points at me* “It’s her job.”

Manager: “No, it’s not. Either you clean that up right now or I’m calling the police.”

Woman: “Fine! Go get me some paper towels.”

Manager: *To me* “Can you go grab the cleaning cart by the cash?”

Me: “Yeah, no problem.”

I get the cart and the woman starts picking up the poop.

Manager: “I hope you understand that once that’s cleaned up, you’ll need to leave. You and your son are banned for life.”

Woman: “What?!”

Manager: “After this awful display from the both of you, you’re not welcome to return.”

Woman: “THAT’S NOT FAIR! I’VE BEEN A LOYAL CUSTOMER HERE FOR YEARS! YOU CAN’T DO THIS!”

And she flings the fistful of poop she’s got at [Manager]’s head. He manages to dodge it, and it splatters on the freezer door behind him.

[Manager] gets on the walkie and asks for someone to lock the doors and call the cops while the woman and her son make a beeline for the exit. Boy, is she pissed when she realizes she is locked in. She’s screaming at everyone, her kid is complaining about the crap still stuck to his backside, and everyone else is staying the f*** away from the crazy lady with s*** on her hands screaming about lawsuits and how she’ll have all the employees fired.

The cops show up not too long after, in masks and gloves, and [Manager] uses a side exit to go out and explain the situation. Three cops enter and head over to where the woman is still screaming like a banshee with her hellspawn in tow.

Officer #1: “Ma’am, you’re going to need to come with us.”

Woman: “Like h*** I am! He’s the one you should be arresting!” *Pointing at [Manager]* “He made me clean up some random kid’s poop!”

Officer #1: “Ma’am, you need to calm down and come outside with us, or we’ll be forced to detain you. You can come peacefully or in handcuffs. It’s your call.”

The woman rushed the officers, probably to start hitting them or something, and [Officer #1] and [Officer #3] grabbed her and pinned her on the floor, with [Officer #2] cuffing her while reciting her rights

The child was scream-crying now, telling the cops to leave his mom alone and trying to pull them off of her. [Officer #1] turned around and grabbed the kid in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground as he was kicking and screaming to be let go, and carried him out to the squad cars in front of the store, all while his mother was screaming about child abuse and unlawful detainment and, “You’d better get your hands off my child right now or I’ll sue you all to high heaven!”

The woman was packed into the back of one car and her son in the other, and [Officer #1] came back to finish up with [Manager] and me, taking our statements and getting a copy of the CCTV footage. The woman was charged with disturbing the peace, aggravated assault for the poo flinging, resisting arrest, and trespassing.

She never came back to our store, and she was banned from all of our locations for life along with her son. [Manager] ended up cleaning the poo, not wanting to make his employees do it.

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I used to close at my bookstore every Saturday. It was mostly the same team each week, and we also saw a lot of the same customers. One Saturday, someone said over our radios that there was a horrible mess in the men’s room, and it needed to be cleaned. We had a cleaning crew, but they only came in the mornings and this couldn’t wait.

Turns out someone had smeared feces all over the walls. Our manager at the time couldn’t subject anyone else to this, so he got some gloves and cleaning supplies and took care of it himself.

Then, a couple of weeks later, it happened again. Once again, [Manager] cleaned it up.

Then, it happened again the next week. It was always on a Saturday night and always feces on the walls of the men’s room. This was obviously something more than someone just mentally unwell.

So, [Manager] repositioned one of our cameras so we could see anyone that walked down the hallway of the restrooms. And he started checking the restrooms at regular intervals to pinpoint when it happened. Finally, after a couple more incidents, he saw the same person, and on the last night, he saw that this person was the only one to go into the men’s room in the time frame when the mess was made.

[Manager] confronted the man (who was sitting with his wife in our cafe) and told him that he knew what he was doing and that he was banned. The wife was confused about the whole thing, so my manager had to tell her the truth. To say she was shocked was an understatement. But the truth came out from the man, too.

His reasoning for doing this?

The week or so before the first incident, the man parked his car in our fire lane while he and his wife went across the street for dinner. My manager saw this and waited for them to come back to tell them not to do that again. It wasn’t even a heated exchange, just a simple request.

Smearing feces on the walls week after week was this man’s revenge in some way.

I am clinically diagnosed with ADHD, but I hate taking my Adderall, so I often substitute ungodly amounts of caffeine for my pills.

I’m ordering coffee for my fellow workers on my shift in my office: one smoothie for the receptionist, one green tea latte for a coworker, one dirty chai for another coworker, and a monstrosity with twelve espresso shots for me.

It’s a busy day. The line to the door stretches out the door. I ordered ahead online, though.

The foyer is tightly packed, but I wait patiently for the office’s caffeine load. Shortly, as often happens when I’m feeling crowded and overheated, I start having to pee.

I leave and go to the bathroom. When I return, I see my drinks in another woman’s hands. She has two kids with her. I walk over to her.

Me: “Ma’am, I think you might have grabbed the wrong drinks. See, that’s my name on the side.”

Woman: “I don’t care.”

Me: “But… my name’s on them.”

Woman: “You didn’t want them as much as I wanted them, or else you would have taken them before I got to them.”

Me: “I was in the bathroom!”

Woman: “Thus, you didn’t want them.”

Me: “But those are my drinks.”

Woman: “They’re mine now.” *To one of her kids* “Here, have a mocha.”

And she hands my omega-caffeine drink to one of her kids.

Me: “But that drink—”

Woman: “I don’t care! I have three kids. One of them is waiting in the car for me! It’s ninety degrees outside! I can’t wait in a long line like this!”

The little kid starts chugging my drink. The baristas are too busy to take notice of all this. The line is still really quite long.

Me: “Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you went to get a coffee!”

Woman: “How dare you?! You don’t know what it’s like parenting three children! I deserve these drinks more than a childless b**** like you!”

Kid: “Mommy…”

Woman: “Shh! Can’t you see I’m talking with this lady?”

Kid: “Mommy, this mocha tastes funny.”

The woman rounds on me.

Woman: “What did you put in your drink?! Are you trying to poison my child?!”

The kid passes it to her other kid, and the other kid starts drinking my mocha.

Kid: “See? Tastes funny.”

Other Kid: “Well, I like it.”

Me: “Look. I have ADHD and—”

Woman: “I don’t give a s*** if you’re the Queen of England. What are you trying to poison my child with?!”

Me: “I wasn’t trying to—”

Woman: “Shut up when I’m talking to you, r****d.”

At this point, I am too frustrated, and I do something very stupid. I start screaming as loud as I can, and I grab the green tea latte, which is very staining, and throw it onto the other woman.

While she stands there dripping and shocked, I grab the other two drinks from the platter and throw them in the direction of the waste bin, one after the other. I don’t know if they actually go in or if I miss. Then, I turn and flee into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

I start shaking and crying. I am a moron. Images of being arrested for assault start dancing through my head.

Someone starts pounding on the door of the bathroom. It’s the woman with the kids, and she is shouting incoherently and slamming at the door. The door frame starts splintering a little with the force of the slams.

I hear a scuffling outside and the slamming stops. There is more shouting and yelling. I am too scared to go out. Things quiet down.

Eventually, there is a more polite knock at the door.

Voice: “Ma’am, could you please come out of the restroom and provide your side of the story?”

I open the door a crack. It is the police. The lobby has been cleared, and the woman who stole the office coffee order is sitting against a wall in cuffs. Her two kids are nowhere to be seen.

Me: “Uh… first off, she said she had a third child in the car. It’s ninety degrees outside. Can you check the car for her child?”

Police: “Yes, we’ve handled it.”

Me: “Okay, well…”

I repeated the story. They wound up charging me with misdemeanor assault. The woman was banned from that coffee shop, and the officers told me that the woman would be charged with child endangerment, assault (she’d apparently attacked employees who’d tried to get her to stop slamming on the bathroom door), damage to property, assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, and theft.

I got a free replacement for the office’s coffee.

When I explained why I was late getting back to work, my coworkers were very understanding and let me take the rest of the day off.

I later wound up vacating the charges by pleading guilty, but it won’t show up on my record if I don’t get into trouble again for two years. (I don’t really understand how it works. I’m not a lawyer. This is just how it was explained to me.)

I don’t know what happened to the woman after that.

I’m just a customer and an onlooker for this story, which took place in a big box store. I was with my young son and my husband, who was in the market for a new TV. Hubby wasn’t ready to buy yet but was getting prices and sizes for the future.

While Hubby was doing his talking thing with the employee, there was another family about five feet down from us looking at a smaller TV. With them was an eight- or nine-year-old boy who was throwing around a baseball. He was throwing it at the wall and catching it. They were at the end of the row of TVs, just where there was about a foot of extra wall left over. His parents, of course, weren’t doing anything to stop him.

The employee was a younger girl, no bigger than me — and I stand at a whole five feet tall. She excused herself from our group and went up to the family.

Employee: “I’m sorry, could you please have your son stop throwing the ball? We don’t want anything to break.”

The mother was having none of it and yelled.

Mother: “Mind your own business! [Son] is doing nothing wrong!”

Employee: “Ma’am, he could break a TV, and you would be held responsible and have to pay for the damage.”

Mother: “Bulls***! That’s illegal! Get the f*** out of my face before I have you fired for harassing me and my family.”

The employee looked very stunned. [Son] just laughed and threw the ball some more. Just as the employee turned around to go call her manager, the boy threw the ball too hard, missed it, and nailed the employee right in the head. It wasn’t enough to knock her out, but she did have a stunned, dizzy look to her.

I rushed over to help the poor girl out. Hubby went over and grabbed the ball out of the boy’s hand, and the mother started yelling that he was trying to steal her son’s items.

My son ran to the electronics desk, yelling:

My Son: “SOMEONE’S BEEN HURT!”

I was able to see him from where the employee was now sitting on the ground and there was, as luck would have it, another employee there talking to his manager.

The mother was screaming her head off about Hubby “stealing their belongings.” She also started demanding discounts because she was “being harassed and bullied.”

Her husband was no better and demanded Hubby be booted from the store for “laying his hands on his precious son, who did nothing wrong, whatsoever.”

Of course, Hubby didn’t actually touch the boy, at all, just grabbed the ball that the boy barely had a grip on.

And the kid… he was laughing his butt off for nailing some poor girl in the head.

However, we were able to get the truth to the manager, and the family was escorted away — hopefully, to talk to someone intimidating with a badge.

The girl employee kept saying she was fine, just a little shocked, but she had a nice-sized bump on her head and had been dizzy for a short while. She kept thanking me for helping her. The manager called an ambulance for her after hearing how she had needed to find the floor after being clobbered.

We didn’t hear the verdict since my kiddo was complaining about being hungry and wanting lunch. We decided to come back later to buy a TV since he liked the TV we saw and was within his budget.

My Son: *On our way out* “Is that why I can’t bring toys into the store?”

I explained that that was part of the reason, though it was also out of concern of it getting lost, stolen, or mistaken for a store’s product. I told him that even if he did bring in a toy, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let him throw it around. My kid looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded wisely.

My Son: “That makes sense.”

I live in hope that the poor employee didn’t get a concussion out of this life lesson.