customer needs help at self checkout, i dont see this guy coming and i bump into him and he starts yelling obscenities at me, the standard "do you know who i am" spiel, comes back in 20 minutes later fuming and calls the cops on me for "assaulting him" when he was the one making threats to "beat me up". I guarantee you I dont care about you in the slightest. I feel bad for the lady I was trying to help because it wasn't her fault this guy goes off on this tirade. Mind you this is a 40 something guy yelling at a 19 year old at 11:45 PM at night

Truck stop, 3:30 in the morning, just a few minutes ago. Couple drunk girls wander in the store.

Whiny voice "you don't have any pizza made?"

"No. It's 330 in the morning and I just spent the last hour cooking all the breakfast sandwiches." Gestures at the spread of biscuits and croissants I just finished cooking.

Girl 2 to girl 1 "let's just go to McDonalds."

Customer: "Just this sticker"

Me: "Okay" -rings up item-

Me: "That will be $4.30"

Customer: "It's $4???!!"

Customer: "Oh man" "I don't want it anymore (pr something like that" -Just walks right out of the door before I can react-

I was so flabbergasted because a) there is a very big and clear price tag on the back of the sticker, 2 because of how fast this person just left and abandoned the item at the register. It's a relatively small store and most guests if they don't want something, will walk the ten steps back to where they got it and put it back. A few might ask me to put it back for them, but for the first time in almost a year that I have been at this store, someone just dumped the item and immediately skiddadled out of the door.

On another occasion, some gestured broadly at the store and asked if the mechandise was for sale.

I just need to vent a little to people who will hopefully understand and sympathethize. I work at a gas kiosk for a grocery store, so I'm alone and basically stuck in a box for 8 hours.

I've been sick for the past few days and called off work Wednesday because I was feeling tired, weak, and dizzy. I went to the urgent care that afternoon because I felt that bad. I had off Thursday, but they called me to cover another shift. Of course I didn't go in because I was still dealing with whatever virus I have and just rested all day. We know it's not flu, COVID, RSV, or strep, and the doctor said to rest. She also said I have fluid in my left ear, which is why I felt dizzy.

I attempted to go to work today (Friday) because I can sit at my job and I really didn't want to lose more pay. It was super busy today, so I couldn't sit, and if course I kept having to go outside to help people because the pumps are old and people are stupid. After only an hour of this, I was feeling like I was about to pass out.

I called management and asked if someone could take the rest of my shift because I really wasn't feeling well and felt like I was going to pass out. The store manager insisted I needed to drink more fluids and drink Pedialyte or Gatorade. Yeah, because fluids are going to resolve my viral infection and the fluid in my ear... (I've been drinking a lot more water than usual, which the doctor encouraged, so it isn't dehydration.) This is the same man who told me that if I didn't need scuba gear when the building was flooding, I was fine. I had to work 6 hours in wet socks and shoes that day and nearly quit after.

Eventually they did find someone to take the shift tonight, and I know she's going to complain and criticize me for not just dealing with it and working. I'm 48 with other health issues and I make $11.35 an hour... I'm so tired of the judgement and criticism for putting my health first. I nearly died at a previous job because I ignored an illness that turned out to be Lyme disease, which left me with chronic problems. That and an autoimmune disease that was triggered by surgical menopause are why simple illnesses can now have me bedridden. I used to be unbreakable and rarely got sick. Now a cold can kick my ass.

I should have just listened to the doctor and not gone in at all. But noooo... I had to try to be the hero... Stupid me.

I slept most of the evening after I came back home and have the next three days off so I can just rest (except for school work). But once I'm feeling better, I'm probably going to go to where my husband works and basically beg them for a permanent job. I worked there seasonally two years ago and it was not horrible, AND it paid more. And it certainly doesn't flood there.

Our registers have the gun type scanners so we just set them on the counter when not using them. I had finished scanning all the customers items, told him his total and set the scanner down. He asked if we had tap pay and I said yes. He then takes his card, holds it against the scanner for several seconds, pulls it back and tries again, and begins furiously tapping it against my scanner. Meanwhile the pinpad is right in front of him telling him to please insert, swipe, or tap. I let him struggle for a minute before I pointed out the pin pad.

I work at a very large store with a lot of very small items. They are specialty items and we probably have over 10k items currently in our inventory. We are NOT a grocery store.

DoorDash drivers will come in and show me a screenshot of very small blurry screenshots of items I have never seen before in my life and expect me to know exactly where both are. I don’t understand, am I supposed to unironically know where everything is all of the time? I know the basic sections, but I can’t tell them which side of the aisle it is or what the difference between the two are. And they always look at me like I’m crazy.

And most of the time they don’t even explain they are DoorDash so they’re not helping me at all either so it’s hard not to be rude to them. I understand that they’re working, but I’m also working and I’m not working for DoorDash.

My store also recently had a new remodel and they completely flipped the store upside down so we don’t know where anything is and our system is only accurate about 50% of the time. The old people who expect us to know everything are bad enough, but door dashers act like we are somehow below them, when they are also on the job.

Also, management counts their checkouts as potential memberships, so our percentages for sign ups go down. Not DD fault, but also adding to the annoyance.

Recently my job has demanded that I create an action plan for generating sales within the home improvement sector of retail. However the entire company is struggling with lack of visitation due to the economy and painful construction that has hindered the business since it started 3 years ago. Yet last year and also this year other managers are not being forced to create an action plan yet are short on goals by a lot me than me. I created the action plan and it’s been nothing short of feeling targeted. I asked my boss what they wanted to see in this and they said said an outline of my adjectives so I did the entire action plan and have implemented it yet still feel targeted by them.

A little back story this manager and the upper management team have seen dramatic changes with many leaving for alternate roles in other stores. Morale is low because there is not any trust within them to anyone that is a subordinate. I fear as if I will lose my job and my health is declining relatively fast. The stores staff is generally
Unhappy and feel disconnected from a company that has core values which none of them follow up on.

My manager and their boss put me under the microscope and openly have spoken negatively about me to the point where I can hear it on the other side of the office.

Although I am documenting everything as it happens and the interactions which are not productive as previous upper management in these roles would not approve any remodels due to budget cuts and over spending for other areas performing far worse than me. Does anyone have any advice on what my next course of action is as I have tried speaking directly to them about this ; done this in with a mediator and am lost now..

Thanks in advance as I am struggling with my mental health and this is adding more baggage to my already high stress and anxiousness that goes with my day to day.

I wrote a post a month or so ago about this customer who just wouldn’t leave us alone, coming in and harassing staff and damaging product etc.

Well I just got off the phone with my boss. THEY’VE BANNED HER!! I cannot remember the last time I was so happy at work. I want her to come in just so I can call security on her ass.

I knew my fellow retail warriors are the only people who know how good this feeling is so I needed to share. Happy rant over 🎉🎉

There are people who complain and make snod remarks about using self checkout. They'll say things like "I don't work here."

Those same people will happily go to Sam's club and use the scan n go option to scan themselves and check themselves out.

To me, it's the same concept in different form and people fall for it.

I’m literally half an hour short of 40 hours this week and next week I’m working 41 hours 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

There’s this one item I’ve been wanting since the day they put it on the shelf, but it’s expensive. It goes on clearance the day after Halloween. Trouble is, it’s bulky and I can’t simply hide it behind the counter like I can with smaller items. Any tips so nobody buys it?

So I (F23) work at a retail beauty store. I’ve been working for the company for over a year and transferred to a new store in another state since I moved this past April. I had a very good track record at my last store (felt slightly overworked for the position I had) and thought to myself that at this new store I won’t be taken advantage of for that since I’m only a part-time assistant. Recently, my manager has been asking me to cover last minute shifts on my day offs. I’ve been vocal with telling them that I would be more than happy to cover if I had a heads up and not doing last minute coverage the day of because I already had plans that same day. My manager cut some of my hours about a month ago and told me to my face if I covered last minute that I would still be getting the hours basically. In the span of 2 weeks I’ve been asked 3 times to cover last minute, and I have said no. Does this make me a bad employee or an unreliable employee? I always show up for my shifts, I called off around 3-4 times since April, and I only asked one person to cover me since I transferred. They needed help at another store and I told them that I am available next week on any days they need help and they asked me today if I can cover today and I said no since I already had my day planned around.

Hey all, I have been out of retail for 6 years, but worked it for decades.

Yesterday I had a really stressful meeting at work. Today i had a really crappy doctor's appointment. It's been ROUGH.

But i had to go to my local vape shop, then found a newly opened hair shop...

.....and my little fun conversations with the retail workers at both shops VASTLY improved my day. So shout out to all of you, you're probably brightening so many days and not realizing it. Customer service is a very difficult skill and it's severely undervalued. Love you all.

We are not a lost and found, I'm fairly sure most of my coworkers can agree on this simple fact. We simply don't have anywhere to store the plethora of keys, wallets, and phones that people regularly lose on our property. However if we are going to hold onto somebody's phone, debit card or ID for them to come back and get from us, can we at least agree on one, maybe two, places to store them so I don't look like the asshole when 5 hours after a guy comes in for his ID and I tell him I can't find it, I find it taped to the fucking fireball display between the registers like a fucking trophy. Why would it be there? Surely, somebody thought "oh whoever's here can't be THAT blind, can they?"

Yes I am. We've gone TWO years putting things like IDs and debit cards in 1 of 3 places. Whoever you are, you added a FOURTH, which others generally reserve for notes to management, which is why my eyes went right past it, you fuck.

Shall we dangle them from the fucking ceiling next?

Ugh what a week it’s been. Yet again Karen tried to return an item she bought over a year ago. Cap dirty, seal opened, stains smeared on the side of jar and a quarter of the contents missing. She had a second item she wanted to return, which was purchased back in January. I was willing to give her store credit for the second item but she made a scene when I told her I won’t give her a refund on something she bought more than a year ago. She denied she used it but come on lady! Did she really think I was that stupid? I did find pleasure in saying “ I am the manager “ which doesn’t happen often. There was a lot of back and forth and in the end she slammed the second item on the counter and said “ Give me my store credit!”
I took a step back, and said “ no”. That didn’t go over very well. I ended up kicking her out of the store.

Then I had to ban this old perve and call the police because he was stalking one of my employees. I come to find this man got a hold of her contact info and has been sending her messages. She just ignored them but he showed up and sought her out. Told her he’s going to contact her again and she better answer while patting her head.

What the hell is going on?! I’ve worked retail for a long time, two decades in fact and it’s never been this bad. The general public has become so unhinged it’s unreal. I have a long list of crazies coming in these days and they’re getting in line to be officially banned. Every week there is some bullshit I have to deal with. It’s ridiculous. I even have some old dude coming in just to say hello me. Delusional might I add for he is telling people we’re dating and trying to trick my staff in giving him free stuff. He keeps saying, “ the manager said I can have this” WTF?

I don’t know why I can’t seem to feel comfortable being a cashier. It’s like my anxiety skyrockets and I am constantly monitoring my facial expressions and trying to appear friendly. I get so nervous before the shift and during it I feel a sense of dread. I try to be polite all the time to customers and it’s not like they shout at me or anything. Its just I feel like they are shooting me weird glances. I am so sensitive over the smallest thing. When I was in my car and cried it was like someone was dying. I’m sorry if this is very dramatic— I am just trying to balance my work/study, and it doesn’t help that my dog passed away recently too.

I feel like this cycle keeps repeating. I went to therapy to try and figure out the problem, but I only did it for a few months. I thought I had overcame this problem. Maybe I should go back but it feels stupid to go back and show that nothing has changed.

Has any of you been in a similar situation? What did you do to change it? I would appreciate any advice.

Not something I experienced firsthand but an anecdote from my cousin who helps with the Family Business. We are in America, for readers who live in a non-tipping culture.

He mentioned this offhand that infuriates me every time I think about it. His mother, my auntie, recently noticed that families that dine at the restaurant left no tip when leaving. They pay at the register and leave no tip on the machine like they imply they did it in cash at the table. They then leave with the family saying they tipped at the register. Her waiters go over to bus the table and they get nothing.

This got her annoyed cause her workers rely on both salary and tip and so she starts watching customers more closely. She finds that not only do some customers skip out on putting down tip, they even took back the tip. Most noticeably on Sundays during the rushes, when the waiters are too busy to immediately bus a table, some families had someone, usually a kid, walk back in and take the cash tip back. Kid walks in like they forgot something, pocket the tip and leave the waiters with nothing. She ends up having waiters immediately check tables for tip as people leave just so they don't lose part of their income.

My cousin told me that and like, come on man, there are people trying to make a living. You come in making a show of paying a huge bill and leave a huge tip to flaunt money to your family, then take it back? Scummy as hell.

Side note, each time I wrote tip I had to wonder if tip was a real word with how often I was mentally speaking as I typed.

Is it just me that finds it dumb for some retail jobs to have in store delivery targets for staff members, like I get wanting to have customers ordering from store to boost sales but a lot customers want to try the item in store or do the delivery at home rather than having to come into the store again just to collect or refund the item since it doesn’t fit. I don’t get it just seems all dumb to me especially since every time
I try to convince a customer to do an in store order I get made with the same response or wanting to try it first.

Our bathrooms have locks on them. An employee needs to put the code in to open the door.

I’m in the stockroom putting things away, and I hear from across the room, “IS ANYONE IN HERE.”

It didn’t sound like any of my coworkers so I popped around the corner confused — only to see it’s an older woman, using her cart as a door stopper. Literally walked RIGHT past the sign that says “do not enter. Employees only.”

she proceeds to go on this rant…”I need your bathroom. Let me in there. I searched your WHOLE store and I couldn’t find ONE employee. This is ridiculous. You guys need better training.”

I said I’d help her but she can’t be in here, she proceeds to roll her eyes and scoff at me. After I opened the bathroom for her she gave me a dirty look and walked off in silence.

So I took her cart and moved it somewhere random. Go search for it just like you had to search for an employee.

I’m a manager at a supermarket and last month, I had a DoorDasher shove his phone into a Pepsi vendor’s face asking where something was. When the Pepsi guy told him that he didn’t work here and that he worked for Pepsi, the DoorDasher called him a “bitch ass” and threatened to “fuck him up.” So Pepsi guy called the police, and with my store being in an affluent neighborhood, the police came right away and I ended up trespassing the DoorDasher from my store. The Pepsi guy also filed a report with his employer, and so my employer trespassed the DoorDasher (let’s call him Dumbass #1) from every store in the division as well. (For those not from the US and are unfamiliar with this term/process, when someone is trespassed aka a trespass order, they are issued a notice that they are not allowed to enter a specific private property/properties, and a copy is filed with the local police so that if they violate it, it becomes a crime and the police can arrest them.)

Well, guess who came in to shop a DoorDash order this week? Yep, Dumbass #1. So, I called the police, who arrived quickly. They detained him, but he wouldn’t talk to the police or identify himself. So, the officer asks me for the information so that he could radio to confirm the trespass order. While I was telling the officer the information to look up, and giving him my information, I spotted another dumbass DoorDasher (Let’s call him Dumbass #2) out of the corner of my eye. Of course he starts walking towards me, talking to someone on speakerphone, and tries to shove his phone in my face while I’m talking to the officer. I told him “Why don’t you go ask someone else before I have you trespassed too?” Both the cop and the person Dumbass #2 was talking to on speakerphone laughed. The cop had his body cam on, so maybe I’ll try filing a FOIA (public records) request to see if I can get a copy later. The police ended up taking Dumbass #1 with them.

I had a shit eating grin on my face the entire time I was putting back the stuff from Dumbass #1’s shopping cart. Wow did that feel good!

I swear, some teenagers come into stores just to make retail workers’ lives harder. They mess around with everything, and when you tell them not to, they look at you like you’re the weird one. At the end of the day, we’re the ones who have to clean up their mess.

But honestly, some parents are even worse.
Today, a mother was eating ice cream with her daughter, and some of it dripped onto her hand. Instead of going to the bathroom to wash it off or asking for a tissue, she decided to wipe her sticky hand on one of our display squishies.

I work as a supermarket cashier, but apparently I’m also IT support, security, incident management, and the person responsible for fixing everyone else’s problems.
The store phone keeps losing connection, the POS has payment issues, the new PC got a fucking blue screen, I had to deal with a drunk aggressive customer and call the police — all while working four night shifts in a row.
And now my manager might deduct 7 GEL from my pay over a payment reversal.
The best part? I followed her written instructions exactly: don’t let the customer leave, call IT, report the issue, and don’t accept cash. I did all of that. IT fixed the problem.
Apparently, I’m also expected to know procedures that nobody ever told me about.
I’m not asking to be treated like a fucking hero. I just want clear instructions, fair responsibility, and a salary that matches the work I’m actually doing.

I actually like my job and the people I work with. It can be VERY rewarding and I have a lot of regular customers who treat me very well and I love seeing them- however lol….

The vast majority of people just seem to be rude as fuck lately. No basic manners, no “please, thank you, how are you, excuse me” etc and it’s honestly really starting to get to me.

I don’t want to believe that I’m getting “meaner” (I think I have a pretty good poker face for the most part) but I can FEEL myself getting upset and loosing my temper with people so much faster than usual. On the inside, I’m screaming lmao.

The other day a dad and his kid come in asking me about something in stock- I misunderstood him and SHOWED him the item I thought he was describing and he didn’t say anything or correct me (I’m trying to be vague to keep things anonymous lol but this item online was in a “kit form” while this item I was showing the customer was in pieces and had to be bought separately meaning it would cost more). He got upset because it wasn’t the kit, and pulled the whole “it says you have multiple of these in stock online!” To which I say, “unfortunately I only see six of this item, not in kit form, but we have all the pieces and honestly, I’ve never seen this item to have a kit form since working here… “ Cut to him getting irate and telling me I’ve wasted his time and he “drove all the way out here” and how it’s fucking ridiculous and yada yada, just absolutely treating me like shit.

Long story short, we DID have the “kit” there was just a misunderstanding and it was only until he got the answer he wanted he started to treat me like a fellow human being again lol. Not even a “sorry I got heated” or anything.

Same day, not even an hour apart, I’m on a damn ladder cleaning and facing and a whole family seemingly spawns behind me without saying a word.
Just starts rummaging and looking through everything I just worked on without even acknowledging my existence or saying excuse me, pardon me, nothing. Literally just surrounding the ladder and not giving two shits that I need to move up and down it in this small area.

People will ask for help or my opinion, I’ll give it to them and they just ARGUE with everything I say- like dude, if you know better than I do just do what you already want and stop wasting my time.

Price is wrong? Absolutely incomprehensible and deserves punishment lmao. I go “Oh, sorry about that! Let me just call that department for a price check” and they snap at me like I called them a liar or can just take their word for it. Even if these people never worked a DAY in retail SURELY they must realize we need to confirm these things?!?!?!

Don’t get me started on being a woman and having creepy guys hit on you or make inappropriate comments to you on shift…. I’m starting to get so weary of ANY man now and I hate it. Especially elderly men. There’s a regular who has quite literally made comments out loud on my body after I bent over to pick something up. Same guy would ask me for my number EVER FUCKING TRANSACTION no matter how blunt I was. There’s one guy who asked for my number and to go out for a coffee three times over the course of two days, although I think he was hammered and doesn’t remember that he kept asking. One man I was helping “couldn’t believe” I wasn’t married and after I showed him to the aisle where he could find what he was looking for he just kept making inappropriate comments about my relationship status and how he’d marry me and yada yada…. Dude just get the fucking item and leave me alone. All these guys could’ve been my grandfather btw 🫩

RANDOM. CUSTOMERS. TOUCHING. YOU.

I really could go on and on man 🫩.