It’s almost a rite of passage for everyone to have a period of working retail – whether it was your first job as a teenager, working part-time to fund your pricey dreams, or you working your way up to the management echelons. Some people even like the people-meeting, challenging nature of retail! To those people I say, why do you enjoy melting your brain in this way? Weird flex but OK.
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Every workplace will see you interact with people who grind your gears, be it those you simply don’t get along with right through to those who LITERALLY ARE PSYCHOPATHS. But retail is a special place for this. Because you not only have to work alongside people you might not get along with, you also have the added bonus of people who come into the store. Customers. They are a special breed of terrible human.
Yes yes, I know we are ALL customers, essentially. But there’s something about retail stores that can change a simply difficult human being into a monster. Maybe it’s about disrespect, maybe it’s a combo of disrespect and frustration – whatever the case, people can do batshit things during interactions with retail staff.
We asked a bunch of folks who either work in retail now, or used to in the past for their absolute worst horror stories. You will not be disappointed.
When I worked in the underwear section of a department store, I saw some SHIT. I mean literally – not only did someone once take a dump in a fitting room and cover it carefully with a white t-shirt, once we could smell something in the re-hanging room. We kept hanging up bras and underwear until we got to a black g-string – absolutely covered in shit. Someone had taken a dump IN the thong, then left it on top of the tried-on pile. – Mel
There was a rumour at a department store I used to work at that someone had returned a dress, and the person who bought it after the return gave it back after they developed a bad rash. Apparently it came out that the first person had dressed a corpse in the dress for a funeral, then returned it. – Lisa
I was once helping a little old lady pick out a new TV while at the tail end of a very long split shift, and she casually mentioned that she’d “just lost her husband” and my brain was so fried that I thought she meant literally lost in the store so I laughed and said “I’m sure he’ll turn up somewhere.” – Cam
When I worked at a surf shop a child pissed by the register during the busy Christmas period. It’s mum didn’t do anything about it either. Yes I called it an “it”. – Chantelle
I worked in a store that stocked a bunch of different women’s brands. A customer wanted to return something, so she showed me the receipt and he item of clothing she had brought in was clearly not the same as what the receipt described. It said it was a leopard print shirt, but the one she returned wasn’t leopard print. It turned out she had actually cut off the brand label and sewed it onto this other, older shirt (it was pretty dodgy sewing TBH). I told my manager and we had to tell her she couldn’t return it because it wasn’t the item of clothing. She was livid. – Queenie
When I was working for a local women’s designer in Vancouver, we had a real focus on styling the customer. I’d often end up in the change room to help customers when they had nothing but their undies on, which was fine usually – but one day, this man and woman turned up. The guy was wearing a lot of leather and those steampunk goggles and the woman was wearing a leather bondage-type bra and undies. As it turned out, they’d jumped on a plane from Seattle for a kinky sex conference so last minute they didn’t have time to dress or pack. They loved the clothes they were trying on so much they left to get their third (female) friend and then the three of them headed into the same small change room to try on outfits we’d helped them pick.They got completely naked and were all over each other without even closing the curtain properly. And yes, they wanted help. And yes, the guy kept winking at my (female) coworker and I. I still don’t know if he was trying to recruit us into their sex party or not. They were actually really friendly and I appreciate their body and sexual confidence but um, can I please not be so involved? – Kassia
“Once when working for a brand’s warehouse sale, I found a pair of white booty shorts left in the corner of the change room, used as a sanitary pad.” – Tatum
In the first two weeks of our store being 24 hours we had two absolutely shitfaced dudes in suits come in at 5:45 just before the night shift ended. We found one of them curled up in a display cage of dog beds fast asleep. The three of us that worked the overnights just decided to leave him for the day crew to deal with. – Joe
I was working at a major department store in customer service, which meant I manned the gift wrap counter and also helped customers with enquiries and worked on the switchboard answering phones. One day it was around Christmas and the gift wrap counter was very hectic. A male customer, maybe in his 50s, came past and wanted to leave a small gift to be wrapped. I said there was about a half an hour wait, since it was a couple of days before Christmas and we were getting slammed. He said “30 min? I don’t have 30 min.” I said as I busily wrapped another gift: “I’m sorry but that’s the wait time, there are heaps of people in front of you”. I gestured to the enormous pile of presents behind me as I said it. He asked if I couldn’t just do it quickly since it was so small, and being the self-righteous prick that I am, I said “No, there’s a system here and you will have to wait”. I was wrapping the whole time and didn’t look up as I said it. He said “I think you are very rude, you haven’t even bothered to give me eye contact”. I sighed, theatrically stopped wrapping, threw the scissors down, looked up at him and said loudly “IT’S A HALF HOUR WAIT”. He took his present and stormed off. A little while later I was covering the lunch break on the switchboard and a man called through asking for the manager of Customer Service. I said “I can put you through, but can I just ask what this is in reference to?” The man said: “Well I just had a very disappointing experience at the gift wrap counter with a very rude young lady named Josephine…” I cut him off and said “Sorry sir but I think you are complaining about me. I better just put you through?” I was trying not to laugh and he just kept talking? He’s like “Oh, well, she — you — said there was a long wait, was very rude, she, er, you, didn’t give me eye contact…” I had to cut him off again and again as he tried to put in this formal complaint about Rude Josephine and say “Mate, I don’t think complaining to ME about ME is going to be very productive for you. Let me put you through to my boss.” I put him through to an extension that wasn’t in use, that I knew would ring out and never heard from him again. – Josie
One Christmas we got a call warning us that two absolute feral teens were coming to the store; they’d made trouble at a different supermarket and were on a mission, and their uncle was frantically trying to catch up with them and prevent them from hurting anyone. We clocked them going in and they were very obviously trying to steal stuff, so we got the big-bodied blokes in the store to cut them off and confront them. One of them *immediately* sold the other one out, and thus began what is, to this day, the single largest 1-on-1 brawl I’ve ever seen in my life. These two went at it hammer and tongs. It took 6 full grown men to drag these two maybe 14-year-old girls out of the store and detain them. We frantically called police and they sent one cop in one car after twenty minutes. He gets out of the car, takes one look at the two still trying to murder each other, goes white in the face and immediately calls for backup. This was maybe 2006 and people were filming it on their shitty first-gen camera phones, which goes some way to describe how wild the scene was. – Cam
When I was working at a phone store, a bloke angrily walked in holding a box for the phone he bought the previous day. He starts straight-up yelling, “I WAS MEANT TO GET A PEN WITH THIS PHONE, GIVE ME MY PEN NOW”. I had no idea what the guy was talking about, nor did the phone he bought come with a stylus. He continues: “THE BOX SAYS IT COMES WITH A PEN!” I take a look at the box and I see nothing about a pen anywhere. “Sorry mate,” I said, “can you point me to where it mentions the pen?” He snatches the box from me and points to the side of it, which has a picture of the phone on its side. So I literally had to explain to old mate that it wasn’t a picture of a pen, it was a profile shot of the phone he had just bought. I’ve never seen a man turn redder in my life. – Matt
A few years back I worked at an adult store. So many interactions stick in my mind but the one I’ll never forget is a customer who probably would’ve been in his late 50s that came into the store with his daughter (I checked, it wasn’t just a Daddy kink). While this girl was browsing lingerie and standing no less than three metres from us, her father was fondling one of the whips and regaling us with stories about his sex life with the girl’s mother – including an incredibly vivid description of which chocolate bars are best for insertion. Word to the wise, apparently Crunchies are abrasive. – Steph
In my early 20s I worked for a major high street retail chain – and on a Sunday morning a young woman returned a black jersey dress, which we later realised came complete with a cum stain on the inside. – Sophie
When I worked in a bookstore, we had a big and very elaborate window display behind the counter, and one day, a little girl snuck in there and dropped a big steaming turd, on full view to everyone in the shopping centre. – Alasdair
When I worked in a department store this lady and her friend came into her section with a baby, prompted to ask if I could MIND THE BABY for a sec while they got a different size shirt, they fucked off for at least 40 minutes while I was panicking with a BABY I DIDN’T ASK FOR. And the worst bit was they gave no explanation why they left the baby with me when they came back, they just had coffees. – Emily
When I started working in a women’s fashion store, within 5 minutes I no joke encountered 3 shits and a dirty tampon in change rooms. – Alice
I work at a homewares store, and we regularly find poop in play tents and wardrobes, and used nappies under beds. – Blessi
When I worked at a bread shop, we had customers demand we put the baguettes through the slicing machine HORIZONTALLY. That’s me putting my 15-year-old fingers 10cm away from fast-moving saws. If we said we couldn’t they’d kick up a fuss, so often we just did because we were scared teenagers – until our manager posted a sign indicating we were legally not allowed to anymore. Guess someone somewhere lost a finger? – Holly
I’ve had a women yell at me over the Christmas period because the carols on the loudspeaker weren’t “Christmassy” enough.. HOW MUCH CHRISTMAS CHEER CAN ONE GIVE?!?! – Georgia
I used to work at a jeans shop when I was younger, and once a girl took a whole heap of jeans into the change room to try on, then returned ALL of them period stained. I could understand one pair – accidents happen y’know – but all of them?? Why do you hate me? – Sabrina
When I was working at a menswear store, a bloke picked up a hat off a rack and straight up walked out with it. It wasn’t an expensive item by any means and I reckon my boss should have just left it, but he decided to follow old mate through the entire shopping centre screaming “GIVE ME BACK THAT HAT, YOU STOLE IT” while the bloke very slowly and casually walked out of the shops wearing it. – Matt
My first job was working in a pet store, which people think sounds amazing but was actually the worst. It was my job to arrive two hours before the store opened and clean out all the pens where the puppies and kittens were kept — those look cute, but after 12 hours overnight they’re covered in shit and piss and you have to sit in a glass cage and CLEAN IT ALL OFF. Anyway one of the last jobs just before the store opened was to take the blanket off the cage where the parakeets sat. So one day I did that, and one of the birds was lying on the bottom of the cage, dead as a goddamn doornail. Little 16-year-old me had no idea what to do, so I went to my manager to be like “um, there’s a problem”, but she brushed me off. I guess she thought it was a nothing problem and was busy being chaotic with the store about to open. Anyway, I took the literal trolley of rubbish (cleaning piss-soaked pens, remember?) down to the bins like I always did, and when I got back I got yelled at because I’d left a dead bird on the stand where anyone could see it. The moral of the story is: don’t work in a pet store. – Alex
