From one retail worker to another. My most recent one was a lady who had the arrogance to comment on my weight who then yelled “fatso” at me when I ignored her and walked away.
When I was a barista not too long ago, this older customer with an Israeli flag on his car asked me (androgynous, gender-neutral name) in the drive-thru: “What’s the name on your birth certificate?”
That exact phrasing. Not even “what’s your real name?” or “what’s the name on your ID?” to achieve merely the most basic level of boomer transphobia. He wants to go way back to the hospital I was born at when my mom told the doctor to write this particular combination of letters on my birth certificate because he must know what that combination of letters is; that’s very vital information for him.
I told him that the name on my name tag at work is my birth name (which isn’t true, but who cares? Not like he deserves a true answer anyway). Thankfully, he took it and drove off with his shitty decaf espresso.
Wait… so when you order coffee, you aren’t supposed to ask the barista about their genitals? Also who the fuck drinks decaf espresso?
“I just don’t wanna be awake all night and doc said I should watch my cholesterol.”
I worked at a grocery store for about 5 years in a completely white southern town with an average age of 68 years old. I don’t even know where to start.
Nearly every day I’d hear the n-word get spoken casually. Often it was in the context of something like “why’d this price go up? It’s all that n-word’s fault” (they meant Obama). Why did they think this was ok to say to the 22 year old shelf stocker? We didn’t take orders from Obama himself. “Uhh lemme be clear. Twinkies are going up 30 cents.”
We also repeatedly got requests to see the manager, even if he wasn’t there and maybe I was the acting manager (since sometimes only two people would be working). Just endless complaints about the most minor things. The store’s AC is too cold, the aisles are too narrow, we should take expired coupons, there are too many Latinos working that day. Just endless parade of white goofy ass problems from people who could barely walk. Like literally barely walk, and then they’d get into their cars to drive home at 70 mph. More than once we had customers who’d shit themselves in the bathrooms and leave piles of feces everywhere.
I got so many pamphlets and DVDs too of insane conspiracy theories. I used to have a stack of the Loose Change movie, the one about 9/11 being a hologram or whatever. A bunch of them were very odd Christian evangelical home movies or church movies or something. Like there was one centered entirely around how thirsty people are in hell, a bunch of short vingettes about what led people to go to hell. Including:
-
a woman who goes to college and becomes a liberal
-
a man who wears an earring
-
A woman who gets an abortion
They’re all shown being tortured in hell by demons with pitchforks. It’s nuts. And it’s terrible production quality, like they were filmed in the back room of a church or something.
I had a giant stack of Chick Tracts too, the pamphlets about how Muslims worship the moon and Family Guy makes you gay.
My favorite customer ever though was a lady who came to the register crying. I felt kinda bad so I asked her if she was ok. She said it’s fine, but she was experiencing culture shock. She had just moved for the first time and didn’t understand our culture or how to do anything. “Everything’s so different here” were her words. And so I did feel really sympathetic, thinking she had just made a huge change to her life at an elderly age. So I ask her where she moved from. Turns out she moved 9 miles, from the neighboring town, and within the same county. She didn’t even change zip code.
More than once we had customers who’d shit themselves in the bathrooms and leave piles of feces everywhere.
A lifetime ago, I watched an old man circle the salad bar from my vantage point on the other side of the deli counter and witness a full sized dookie fall out of his church pants and onto the floor. Either this dude had a killer poker face, or he had no idea he just shat himself…
So I ask her where she moved from. Turns out she moved 9 miles, from the neighboring town, and within the same county. She didn’t even change zip code.
To be fair, it’s a huge fucking difference being from a small town and moving to a small town. You go from being almost family with everyone you meet to being an outsider to 95% of people.
That could be, hadn’t considered it. I’ve thought about her for a long time though.
The two towns are very interconnected although now that you say that, little pockets or families tended to stay in one place or another. The place she moved from is a dead lumber mill town that once threw a parade because a Chili’s opened up. She moved to a white flight town made up of former residents of the nearby larger (and more black) city.
She also moved to the white flight town right as the housing market collapsed in 2008/09, where America was starting to build its current, even more predatory real estate system. She could have been talking about that, she could have been talking about the lack of churches in town, or the fact there are traffic lights.
Yo! Those fucking Chick Tracts lol. I remember finding one in a vending machine in DC (like I grabbed my soda and there was a pamphlet in there too). Me and my friends pissed ourselves laughing at that shit. It was all about this dude who ended up in hell, and what caused him to go there. It was legit like one time he looked at a girl’s ass, and another time he told a dirty joke.
Call centers are fun. Had a woman demand to know why she was charged for an x rated movie. Asked he who could have been home at the time. It took her way too long to realize if her husband was the only one home, and the movie was purchased from their bedroom TV… 2+2.
I like the time a lady was screaming about getting scammed by someone who bought a new phone with her account. I noticed a lot of notes about her phone being broken recently. At one point she was yelling to me about when her husband gets back from the store I’ll have to deal with him. That’s when I realized it was Valentine’s day. Ma’am if you’re husband is at the store right now, and a new phone was purchased for your line on Valentine’s day…
She got real quite and just hund up lol
Stocking the dairy section shortly before Christmas and the store is insane, like some aisles body to body. My u-boat tips over twice and I have to clean a bunch of broken dairy stuff (I’m vegan too so not a fan of actually touching dairy stuff). Then a special needs guy comes through the aisle and is telling his caregiver/aide he’s gotta go the restroom but I think she was an immigrant so she either didn’t understand him or she was just ignoring him. A few seconds after he passes by the smell hits and I see poop fall out of his pants. It keeps falling out as he walks down the aisle and around the corner.
I run to my supervisor who tells me to put wet floor cones around the poop so I grab as many cones as I can and set them out while she pages someone to clean it. I was gagging (it smelled really bad) so I went in the back for a minute to pull myself together. Then I go back out to see the supervisor and a coworker trying to ward customers away from the poop and the wall of cones but the customers keep stepping in or rolling through the poop with their carts. Multiple people moved or completely ignored the cones and then went through it despite it being brown poop on a white floor surrounded by yellow cones and was stinking up the whole aisle.
My supervisor tells me to post up in front of the biggest pile to ward off customers while she goes and finds someone to clean it so I stood there over a pile of shit for ten minutes trying to get the most clueless people in the world to stop being mesmerized by the treats for two seconds so they wouldn’t step in the very clearly marked out shit. Like it’s a wonder most customers can even make it to the store without getting hit by a bus or something
I worked in a corner store underneath a housing assistance block. All the customers were either alcoholic, disabled, drug addicted, demented, very elderly, or all of the above.
One guy lifted his top, and showed me his recent heart surgery, which immediately started bleeding once he took the gauze off. I had a lot of instances of them showing me their weird medical ailments, actually. This particular customer was a pathological liar, but reportedly had once murdered a man. He was now approaching dementia, but sometimes attempted to use his dementia to not pay for booze.
The worst, but funniest, was this infamous customer called James. He had inherited a fortune and spoke poshly, but was now a seemingly demented alcoholic. Just hangs around the village charmingly harassing people. Kind of a local myth type character.
One day he comes in and starts calling me common muck and all this other stuff, says he could buy the entire shop, and so on.
Another customer was there, who was friends with all the staff, and also a posh old alcoholic (but still totally functioning outwardly), starts defending the staffs honour. The two old men get into a shouting match. Then it escalates so they’re now both whacking each other with walking sticks. We split them up. James gets banned from the store. As he leaves, he does a big diarrhea shit mostly in his pants but a little bit on the floor.
The boss kindly opted to clean it up for me, given that it was my first few days on the job.
