Wish You Could “Wipe” This From Your Memory

I’m an overnight worker in a big box store. One night, as I’m watching the front registers, a lady with a cart full of groceries walks up and asks to leave her groceries there while she uses the restrooms. This isn’t out of the ordinary, and I agreed to keep an eye on her things while she was away.

Five minutes go by. Then ten. Then twenty. I start to wonder if she left the store and forgot to grab her cart

A whole thirty minutes later, she walks back up with an unhappy look on her face.

Customer: “I want to talk to the manager.”

Overnight managers are notoriously busy. My store only has one manager, who has to sign for any trucks that show up and manage the stockers, cashiers, and maintenance workers, and he oftentimes also does stocking himself since we’re so short-staffed. I figure I should see if I can handle the problem to spare our poor manager the distraction.

Me: “What seems to be the issue? Maybe I can help out with it.”

Customer: “I was in the bathroom, taking a s***, and suddenly, the lights turned off on me! I couldn’t see! How was I supposed to wipe?!”

That is way more information than I wanted. I’m not sure how I kept a straight face.

Me: “Our lights are on a motion-sensitive automatic timer. They should have turned back on as soon as you moved.”

Customer: “That doesn’t matter! A customer should never have the lights turned off on them!”

Me: “I’m sorry this happened to you. The lights are on an automatic timer that turns off after fifteen minutes of no activity. There’s nothing we can do to change this.”

Customer: “Oh, I know it’s not your fault, but I want to complain to the manager! This should never happen to a customer!”

With the customer watching me, I had to radio for the manager to come to the front and deal with this crazy complaint. I wished that I had some way to warn him about what he was about to walk into.

I had to leave as soon as he showed up, so I never got to see how it resolved, but I can’t help but think that if I was sitting on the toilet for so long that the lights automatically turned off on me, I would’ve been too embarrassed to say anything.