Retail workers, what are your horror stories?

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[unwoundsteak]

I work at as a cashier for a small grocery store, and one day when it was really busy we all heard someone faintly yell "help" in the distance. I'm just a cashier, so I look at my manager to see what's happening, and she was clearly trying to decide whether she heard it or if it was her imagination. anyway, a customer runs up to the front and says "a woman just fell over by the meat coolers and there's blood everywhere!" naturally my manager runs over there and all of us cashiers get told to stay at the front and ring up the customers that are already there. apparently the "blood" was actually red wine since she was holding a wine bottle when she fell, but she had slipped on a grape or something and BROKE HER FUCKING KNEE. We called an ambulance, which was there for a good 45 minutes while they tried to get her off the ground. I never got to see what the person looked like since I was sent to replace the guy vacuuming rugs (coincidentally he had a knee cramp), but I have to assume the lady was really old



edit: I probably should have watched the first 5 seconds of the video to see this was about black friday

[alisonbailey]

Retail workers and people in customer service should be allowed to defend themselves without fear of losing their jobs and support of the company.

[nathanbarnes]

This is actually really fitting timing, considering I just got off work and have a story to tell.

I work retail in a grocery store and was rushing to finish up for the night because we were behind. Anyway, I'm on the front door while a coworker does the final walk to check for customers when a woman enters the porch to ask if we were still open. I check the time: "Sorry, we closed at 10pm, but there's another location nearby that's 24 hours, " and I show her the pager that reads 10:03pm. She tells me that it isn't right, and shows me her phone that says... 10pm.

After some back and forth of me telling her that she's not allowed to enter her complaining, she went past me anyway. She later told my coworkers that "I am not leaving until I find what I'm looking for."

I'll be honest, the audacity and sheer entitlement of this woman really rubbed me the wrong way, but you wanna know what she wanted? A salad. All of that over a stupid salad. But you know what? She never got her stupid salad because we had none left. I'll take that as a win, I guess 😅

[ms.krueger]

I worked In A Walmart. People were fighting over TVs.
Stealing stuff out of peoples carts.
Someone throwing small appliances to people and they hit people in the head.
A police officer got punched, knocked down and trampled.
I was supposed to be on the sales floor to help people.
I went and hid in the bathroom and in the back room! 😳😱
After it was over the store looked like a war zone.

[AshleyShinabarger-rtwj]

I worked at Walmart a decade ago. The card reader went down on all registers on Black Friday. People did not understand that hand keying took longer than swiping and was not guaranteed to work. Some banks auto declined hand keying the card.

[mrboojay]

Hearing these Black Friday stories makes me quite happy my retail days were at Lowe’s, that was pretty chill.

[onionbubs]

My Black Friday story is less about the customers and more about the fact that I had to go in. I worked part time in retail, part time nanny. I still have the nanny job, but now work part time at another store. My nanny job is and has always been Wednesday to Friday. Fridays are the longest days where I'm there for over eight hours. I made the mistake of posting on Facebook how I finally didn't have to work a Black Friday for the first time in years and how excited I was about that. My manager saw (she was new so I didn't know yet how much of a workaholic she is) and got angry, asking why I have that day off when every employee has to work that day. I reminded her that I always had Fridays off and that had been the case since April, since I had to babysit all day. She changed my schedule so I had to come in and work right after babysitting. She was all "it's only for three hours, you'll be fine." She didn't see the issue when I told her I would be working 11 hours, because she's a little crazy and always working 24/7. I couldn't argue because I liked that job. So I very begrudgingly went and the shift ended up being four hours, because she wanted to do a thorough job cleaning up the store after closing. We later found out that she always made us stay late because she was in an unhappy marriage and stalled going home (I don't think it was abusive, they just hated each other). On one hand I felt bad that her marriage had fallen apart, but I also resented her for making it her employees' problem too. I was so pissed that day.

[MeatbagTheMighty]

it is my time to shine!
I worked retail for most of my early adult life. Gamestop, Walmart, & Kroger Specifically!

I have your standard Black Friday horror stories! Old ladies getting into literal fist fights over towel sets, limited TV riots, and the usual, "What do you mean you only had a limited stock!? THATS FALSE ADVERTISING! I'LL SUE!!"

However, the story that stands out the most was the woman who intentionally injured me at work!

So, i was working at Walmart then and it was the Holiday season when the Wii first came out. Anyone old enough to remember it, likely still recalls how stupidly impossible the Wii was to get your hands on, especially that first year or so when they came out! The amount of crap we took from folks over Nintendo only sending each store like 4 or 5 units at a time was nuts! We got called all kinds of names and people came up with sooo many crazy conspiracy theories about us hiding them to sell on Ebay, or only selling to friends, or intentionally hiding them for Black Friday, like we heard it all!

One day, i'm doing my usual stuff, talking to a guy about a flat screen TV he wanted. He decides on the size and model he wants and I start to head to the back to check and make sure we still have that one in stock. As i walk away from this guy and make my way to the back end doors (our electronics section was against the back wall by the docks) a giant fat lady in an Amigo, one of those motorized carts, decides the best way to get my attention is to slam into me at full speed.

I was not a big girl at the time and so this knocked me completely off my feet and sent me into the corner of an endcap. I hit it, feel a terrible pain and land on the floor. My shirt ripped at my shoulder and my skin underneath was BURNING! I clap a hand to it and pull it away, and yeah, i'm bleeding pretty badly. I look up at this woman, who just rammed into me and she rolls her freaking eyes at me. She then asks in the thickest accent i have ever heard "Esceuoose me!" she gives me a glare as i'm clearly getting pissed now, then she opens her fat gob and the works "Do Ya'll have any Wii's" dribbles out her mouth like barbecue sauce fleeing for its life from her gaping maw.
I lost it! i yelled "No! No one has any Wii's!"
This fat sack of crap then clicks her tongue at me and puts her cart into reverse grumbling about how rude i am! My manager comes over nad helps pick me up off the floor and sends one of the big guys to get the TV for my customer while i clean myself up and they call maintenance for a blood spill. I have a genetic issue that makes it hard for us to clot, so we bleed a lot easily, and this was a significant wound!
They take care of my customer and call my roomie, who worked as a customer service center rep, and she took me to the band aid station to see if i actually needed stitches. Luckily i didn't nad they butterfly bandaged me up.

When we got back we learned that the woman who rammed me went to front end management and tried to complain about me being rude! I had one of the few good managers in the store named JD and he went to bat for me, and got her banned from the store. he wouldn't have, but he lost it after she tried to get me fired and made sure i wasn't gonna lose my job after having to have a puddle of my blood wiped off his floor. I worked the rest of my shift with a torn shirt and my arm bandaged. Walmart sucked soooo bad!

[nicholasmoore]

The Starbucks story. You cleaned up crap with a co-worker. Why didn't you use cleaning supplies like mops & cloths instead!?!?

[RedditFamilyStories]

Love the way they fighting in the video background, SO CUTEEE !!! 😍😋

[nebulamageplays]

Worked as a cashier at a supermarket. Was cashing out a presumably Hispanic family that barely understood English. They were starting to get upset at me when their WIC card wasn't covering some of their items, like a gallon of milk. I show them and they are NOT having it. So the MOD at the time (really cool guy by the way) went to see what's up. I asked the family if they wanted me to void the milk, making sure to talk slow and clear and enunciating some words to make sure they could understand me. They said yes, and even the MOD heard that. They were FURIOUS and told me to put it back on while all yelling at me. I wanted to curl up and cry, but the MOD told me to step back so he could handle this. After they are finally cashed out and out of the store, I felt like I have survived a war. Thousand yard stare and all. The MOD told me to take a short break. That was the worst transaction I have ever tendered, thankfully. Never seeing that family again would be too soon. Every time WIC doesn't cover something, I get Vietnam flashbacks...

To those who don't know what a WIC program is, they are basically like foodstamps, but cover specific items in specific quantities. So it's a government thing.

[littleblackcar]

I worked at an amusement park when I was in high school. We had two slightly different gift shops that were next to each other but had a doorway through from one to the other, so you could be in one of them but not be visible to the staff in the other. A lady came in near closing and was looking at stuff alternately in both shops. At some point I hadn't seen her in awhile and wasn't sure she was still there, but I noticed her car keys were on the counter in front of my register. However, we had been officially closed for awhile and if she had left without them she wouldn't have been able to get back into the park. I was just holding them up and asking my coworker if she was still there when she came through the door from the other shop and accused me of spying on her because she was (a different race than I am). There was no way to respond to that beyond, "I was afraid you'd left without your keys, " which she grabbed out of my hand before marching out, accusing us all of all kinds of things. No, lady--you left your car keys on a random counter in a public place and I was afraid you wouldn't be able to get home, but OK. That was one of those jobs that teaches you why you want to get some kind of post-high school education so you don't have to do that kind of work for the rest of your life.

[dirtbag]

Worked at wendy's and guy came in around 8pm. Started ordering his food like normal. While his head was slit wide open bleeding everywhere.

[DrgnLdyLizzie]

I worked Black Friday twice. Never again. Management had been up our asses about overtime, but asked me and a couple of others to stay an extra two hours. I said, as long as it's on my check, fine. I was there THREE hours passed when I was supposed to go home (2am), cold because I worked in the garden center, and stuck at work because my entire family was asleep. I couldn't call a cab (Uber wasn't a thing yet) because I had no money, and NONE of my coworkers were headed my way. Pretty sure one of my bosses paid for a cab, but I honestly don't remember. Was so tired by the time I got home.

[heather]

UnderSparked? Your voice is different…

[lcoq]

I worked one Walmart black Friday in Western NY (like an hour outside Rochester and Buffalo, almost directly between them). I'm clarifying the area to let you know that at that time of year, it's fucking freezing- snow is blowing, it's wet and cold. I ended up driving to my parents house, which was between my job and my house so that my momma could take me to work and I wouldn't have to fight for parking. Every employee was scheduled that day and our two 15 min breaks were reduced to one and our hour lunches to 30 mins. I was a cashier and my front end manager shoved me in a hoodie, a rain poncho, and a high viz vest and sent me outside to be a human traffic cone until we opened. Then I was on register. We had every single lane open, even those we never used; the sale stuff went in the first hour and a half; and then we had some trickling lines for another hour. By 2.5 hours of us being open, the chaos was gone; the sales stuff was sold out; customers were basically gone; and the store was a mess. I ended up spending a large portion of my time doing re-shops (putting away the items people change their minds on/shove in the wrong places). It was chaotic to begin with but I was shocked at how subdued it was after that. My best friend worked at another nearby Walmart a couple years after I moved away and she got pinned against a bin of DVDs after having to hold customers back from a sales display wrapped in plastic that she was finally allowed to cut open just a couple mins before nearly being trampled and getting pinned.

[Taylr_]

Watching this after calling out of work due to a mental breakdown after a 2 week LOA to caregive, and ONE day back at work hits a lil different.
Kinda comforting to hear ppl recount their horror stories, and how things got better.

[olakpasa]

Great video.
Btw I love the lego indiana gameplay in the background, brought back some nice childhood memories

[LegoTFGuy]

Had a funny moment one Black Friday working at Walmart- we had set an empty display box aside in one of the isles and were using it as a trash bin. At one point a lady went out of her way to go around and up the opposite side of the isle to peer into the box, then left. I imagine she saw the box and thought us greedy employees were trying to hide product, only to see it full of trash and awkwardly shuffle away.

[Sunsetdreamer]

When i worked retail, my department wasnt included in the bladk friday deals. The amount of people who insisted/yelled at me wanting to be rung through was insane. I finally told one gentleman that i dont get paid enough to stand here, taking your barriage of insults.