r/retailhell

I'm sorry I don't smile 24/7, and don't laugh at the boomer jokes. But even when I am pleasant and professional, I still get called rude and having a bad attitude.

I've never cursed at a customer, shouted at them, or try to make them feel stupid like they do with me. But i still get called rude because I don't smile wide and spend 5 min asking about every detail of their life when there is a line forming behind them

I've had so many I truly don't think I could pick any of them to be the worst, but I had a customer come in a week ago that I still think about.

I work at a grocery store, for context. She came in about 30 minutes before closing and she checked out around 15 minutes after closing. I had the pleasure of checking her out and she asked me where the rotisserie chickens went. (Around 30 minutes before closing we pull the remaining chickens from the hot case and put them in the freezer so they can be shredded and sold later)

I told her we don't have any more today and she said "Well I saw you take them out of the case. Where did you put them?" I told her that those chickens had been in the freezer for like 45 minutes and they'd be cold by now. She INSISTED that I go back in the deli and roast her a brand new chicken.

I told her repeatedly I did not have a food handler's license and I was not at all trained to do such things, not to mention our deli closes down about 2 hours before closing and making a whole new chicken would probably take about an hour.

I've also had people come all the way to the front end and demand that I go back to the meat department and literally butcher meat for them because we did not have any more of the sale meat in stock.

I just love hearing the wild questions that people ask. I cannot understand what is going on inside their minds.

So around 13.00 or 1 pm I walk up to the woman restroom room with my cleaning cart. I knock on the door and say "cleaner is anyone in here?"

I hear "wait a fucking minute, I am on here." From the last stall. I responded with "take your time."

I then start by putting on gloves and wait for this lady (and I use that term loosely) because this 45 year old woman comes out her hair is pulled back and she is wearing yoga pants for her 12 year old daughter. And goes out of the bathroom laughing and says " I am getting you fired for not letting me have my alone time."

I smiled and said "have a very lovely day".

I then proceeded to walk in the bathroom. It smelled like a pig pen. She total shit on the floor and threw it on the pipes behind the toilet and wiped her poop covered hand all over the toilet paper roll which she didn't even use and that when my new manager came running in and she was like this woman just dragged a poop trail to the parking lot. My manager had me clean it, which is my job as a janitor but was very glad to hand me a $25 dollar gift card.

Sorry for the long rant, but this woman is apparently known to the police and she is known for doing this to public restrooms and is a known prostitute(not judging her on that) but yeah if that what she like to do in our bathroom. I am so grossed out

This happened at Ulta Beauty today.

I don’t work there, just a customer making an observation about another customer who doesn’t respect anyone else’s time and creates a headache for the poor worker behind the counter.

There was only one person working and I was next in line. But, the lady in front of me didn’t want a specific item anymore and was trying to return it, or exchange it (I couldn’t hear exactly what she was trying to do), and all I could hear was a back and forth tennis match between the retail worker saying “we can’t exchange it in-store today because we don’t have that item in stock, but what we can do is order it for you online” and the lady going “but can’t you xyz”

I don’t know if the lady was expecting the item she wanted to magically materialize into the store but she sure was set on not getting her exchanged item online.

This went on and on for minutes until another clerk opened her register and by the time I made my transaction and left the store she was still arguing with the first employee.
Who knows how long this went on for?

I don’t know why customers think retail workers have it in their power to change the rules and regulations in place.. maybe it’s because they’ve never worked a day of customer service in their lives?

Anyway, the line behind me is piling up and people are starting to snake their way around the store and I just wanted to tell the lady that she just needs to accept and move on.

Like people are sooo inconsiderate ugh

Even when i'm working i go the extra mile to make sure i'm not smiling or laughing at boomers jokes just to make their day a little worse. All boomers are entitled and they think that we're their slaves.

Idiot comes to the cash till nearby where I am standing in ACO (Assisted Self-Checkouts). Unfortunately, there are NO regular full-service checkouts open due to the lack of adequate staffing. Also there are NO signs anywhere showing or indicating that cash is accepted at ACO. Almost all customers assume it is credit and debit card 💳 payments accepted only…so it is a common ANNOYANCE that the attendants get repeatedly asked “do these things take cash?” And the way the cash tills are set up, the attendant has to take the payment the same way as it’s done at a regular full-service cash till. It’s not the usual setup with the machine taking the money same idea as a vending machine, attendant has to take the money. Anyway, I help this fool after being asked if cash is accepted, and he banters away thinking he is Mr. Hilarious saying “yeah and there’s a special discount for paying cash today, right?”…I ignore that because well…why should that get a reaction??? He pauses and says again…”Right?”…and I glance quickly making sure it was him asking and I simply replied “Nope”. Then he shuffles around in his pockets looking for change and manages to count it out and pay. But wow! Just when I think I have seen and heard just about all the stupidity, morons show up and manage to top it.

I am the only person running my department. Every day I have a humanly impossible amount of tasks to complete by myself. I am always very friendly with customers and happy to help. I don't, however, always ask every single one of the hundreds of customers that come through how they are doing because I have a lot on my plate and sometimes it annoys customers if I'm always asking if they need help. I'm the kind of person that likes to get in and get out and feel rushed if everyone is asking me how I'm doing, so I smile and say hello but don't rush them.

This lady walks in my department and I'm about 20 feet away from her. I do pass her to go get another box, but she's in my peripherals, not even facing me, and seems to be doing fine.

She turns around and starts laying into me. She's like, "I think it's fucking INSANE that you haven't even asked if I need help when it's OBVIOUS that I'm struggling to find what I'm looking for"

I just tried to kill her with kindness and smile and say, "yes, ma'am, what can I help you find?"

She puts her hand in my face and screams, "BYE"

I say, "ma'am, I have no problem helping anyone who asks for assistance"

She says, "I SAID BYE"

Then she storms off. I think she told my manager, but I'm not sure yet.

I'm extremely sensitive and it made me tear up. I'm not really cut out for customer interactions and am going through a lot on my personal life, so I kinda just fell apart. But I sucked it up. Why are people so entitled and hateful?

I came in for my morning shift today and immediately overheard screaming and yelling coming from the back of the store. I usually stay far away from loud drama, so I turned around before I even got close and went to grab a morning snack.

Fast forward about 30 minutes, I head back to start working and the noise is STILL going, somehow even louder. At this point, I had to walk over there to get where I needed to go. I see probably 3 head managers, a few associates, a few team leads, and an elderly woman in a riding cart just screaming and going OFF on everybody. I couldn’t even tell if she was complaining about something or yelling directly at them, probably both because her volume was on 100.
Apparently, she had been there since we opened TWO HOURS earlier and had not stopped the foolishness once.

So I’m walking by minding my business and this woman points at me and yells across the store, “I mean people like HER! She don’t know what real work is! Real work is being on your hands and knees in the cotton fields picking cotton for the white man!”
Ma’am. 😭

This was an elderly Black woman SCREAMING this completely bizarre statement about me, or at least using me as her example, across the store at 7 AM. Like girl, WHAT is happening right now?!

We sell clothes for kids, and customer brought a standard wool undershirt to the cash register. We have these same ones every fall, with some minor changes depending on what the higher ups think. She said she received it as a gift and needed to exchange it for a size bigger. No problem.

She didn't have a receipt. She said the person who gifted it didn't include a gift receipt. I ask if the person who gifted it to her might have registered the purchase under a membership, and she said no. I tell her I'm sorry but I need some proof of purchase, and offer all the alternatives we have.

She stands there for a second, then leans over the register like we're being conspiratorial. Then she says "what if I told you... That I bought this last year? So it's way past the return window." She's smiling.

I said "then you can't return it anyway" and she laughs and says "damn, he just grows so fast I thought I'd pull a fast one. Oh well, worth the try, right?"

And the whole time I'm like why do you think we are buddies. You're trying to fuck me over and you're acting like a friend caught you trying to set up a surprise party for them. What you're doing is fucking wrong, dude, why are you smiling and laughing about it. Be ashamed. Have the decency to be ashamed at least.

This was in a videogame / PC hardware shop in the UK in the 2000s.

We hired this young Brazilian guy. He'd only been in the country a couple of months. He had just enough English to do the job, with a strong accent. But he'd worked retail and knew games.

But we had no idea until after we'd hired him that he was incredibly blunt, downright rude in fact, with customers. Every customer that wasn't making a straightforward purchase was fair game.

I remember on his first day, a customer asking where something was:

"Is over there". He said, vaguely waving towards one corner of the shop.

"Um, whereabouts?"

"On the fucking shelf! Stupid!" Luckily they laughed that off. But they still couldn't find it.

"I can't see it."

"IS THERE!!" Pointing angrily at it.

"I still can't see it."

He came out from behind the counter, marched up to the game they wanted, plucked it off the shelf, and practically rubbed it in their face. "Is here! You blind or something?"

Our hearts would stop every time he spoke to a customer like that, (especially if they hadn't earned such treatment), but he came good when we had a really difficult or rude customer, because he'd give them a taste of their own medicine, with interest. He spoke to them like we wished we had the guts to, so we kinda lived vicariously through him, and it was thrilling.

The funniest thing about it was, he'd told us that he was born "on the edge of the rainforest". So every time we had to apologise to a customer for his attitude (and we often did), we'd use that. For anyone who's seen (classic British sitcom) Fawlty Towers, a bit like Basil apologising for Manuel by explaining "He's from Barcelona".

We'd say "Sorry about him, he's from the edge of the rainforest." Amusingly, that'd often be enough to placate them, or perhaps confuse them enough that they'd forget about it. 😅

But his attitude got worse. He'd get ruder and ruder as the frustration of the job grew over time. We started just saying "Sorry about him, he was born IN the rainforest." and then "...He was born in the rainforest, he's not used to civilised society".

By the end of his time, it was "Sorry about him, he was born in the RAINFOREST CANOPY. He's not used to human contact." 🤣

We never told upper management about his ways because we found the whole thing so funny. He left of his own accord eventually.

Had an old lady ask to help her take something down from a top shelf. I'm very tall (6'7) and after I get her the item she says "you are very tall, not to worry you, but my husband says tall people don't live very long" then made her way to the tills. Not sure why she felt the need to say that but here we are. Has anyone else had back handed compliments like that?

I’m just sick of the double standards that are present in life, but specifically in retail because that is where I spend most of my days.

I’m annoyed that my boss automatically assigned the labels of “unwelcoming” and “unfriendly” because I speak to customers in my normal voice, but my male coworker who knows absolutely nothing and always makes mistakes is “great!”

I even do the sing songy higher pitched welcoming “Helloooo~!” Or “Awesome! Have a great day~!”

But when a customer talks to me about a product or is just chatting, I speak to them in my regular female voice. The owner has seen me answer questions, find solutions and have a perfectly friendly and positive chat with customers and has still corrected me or told my manager that I need to be friendlier. Meanwhile he has seen my coworker who doesn’t know any answers, asks me about every single question even if it is ridiculously simple like “Do you guys sell water proof leashes” and he is standing right in front of the leashes and a bit section of them are waterproof. He talks in his regular lower dude voice and the owner thinks he is awesome and great and super friendly, which he IS super friendly, but it’s just so glaringly obvious that the only thing that makes my boss think that I’m less friendly than him is that I am a girl and I’m not all sing songy high pitched smiling ear
-to-ear.

If my male coworkers are perfectly friendly not altering their voice and fake smiling, I am perfectly friendly too, not having extra pieces between my legs doesn’t automatically make my default self “unfriendly”.

Edited to add:

The customers aren’t the ones complaining either! I’ve obviously experienced people make comments about being in a bad mood or whatever, but that is super few and far between. I feel sorry for everyone I see post on here where that is a daily occurrence!!!

I’m a store manager on £40k a year and tended to be left alone from higher ups how ever it’s just one thing after another moving the goal posts constantly distribution is st sending in eggs with maggots mouldy fruit and veg which I got told off for when my waste figures go high company don’t give a single f**k about any of us and as a store manager have no power what so ever this is just the start of it could list so many things but what do I do as a store manager in retail what job do I apply for as I really want out of retail!
HELP!

It's 6am I should be sleeping. I can't.

I work in a toxic work environment.

I've worked for this company for over 20 years.

I had to deal with a toxic co worker for the past two years. I brought it up to management and nothing has happened. Complaints fallen on death ears. Being blocked in my career path by a nasty string of corporate politics.

Now facing the possibility of repercussions. Weighing my options. GOD I'm an idiot for staying too long in this damn job so long! The customers! The lack of support of management! 55 years old I don't know what the fuck to do!

I feel myself pulling away from my friends

Seriously. At a small store, with fewer than 10 employees, why is the one person who is constantly picking arguments with staff, being defensive, accusing supervisors of bullying, perpetually late and without their work "kit" on them, takes home or abandons handheld scanners, not complying with OSHA regs, and unable to keep the work area clean NOT FIRED? Why??

WHY!? Why do they allow good, dependable, reliable, experienced shift leads to quit out of frustration that nothing ever gets done to correct it or discipline the offender?