22 Ex-Retail Workers On Their Most Iconic Moments Of Fucking Around On The Job

A while back, my colleague Ben wrote this brilliant story in defense of night fill supermarket retail workers and their right to fuck around on the job.

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I wholeheartedly agree with his take – that night fill sucks, working in retail sucks, and the only light is doing mildly dumb shit with your colleagues. Like most Aussies I spent a lot of formative years working in retail of some form, and fucking around in the process.

A lot of my great party stories are from these days – waxing my legs in the storeroom of a clothing shop, hiding products I wanted to buy in sales so they would get reduced to like, $1, and so on. I figured other people I knew would have equally great tales to tell, and I was not wrong. So I rounded up the gold for ya and it is SOLID, folks.

The first time I ate edibles was when I was around 15, and working at Hoyts Broadway. I ate them many hours before a summer holiday shift, thinking I’d be fine, but anybody that’s eaten edibles would know that I was in way over my head (literally). Horribly stoned on the bus, I was proper wigging that I’d be having to serve customers all night while keeping a straight face, which at that point was near impossible. I walked behind the counter, started to prepare my till, when the manager came out and exclaimed “we need somebody to dress up in the giant Frozone costume and dance around the foyer with the kids.” Of course I obliged, and within moments had transformed into the cutest little raspberry slurpee you’d ever laid eyes on. I danced and giggled my way around that packed foyer with a heap of adoring children, had an excellent time fucking with all the local eshays, and nobody was the wiser. Jack

One time we tried to tape someone to the door like in that one movie. It did not work and we had to put an order into the office for more tape. Nobody asked why, but they knew.Leah

I once drew a dick on the butchers paper in the Woolworths deli and buried it so that someone else would wrap up a customer’s ham and present them with said dick on their ham.Brendan

When I worked the menswear department at David Jones over Christmas, we’d do our nightly sweep of clothes that had fallen onto the floor or that were putbacks, and instead of wheeling them out in the trolley we’d try to wear as many layers of them as humanly possible in order to do it all in one trip – except we’d have so many layers on that we’d struggle to manoeuvre around the aisles.Steph

When I worked at as a travel agent, my work mate and I would pretend we had money and could book our own holidays. We would set each other a fake budget for the trip and then surprise each other with the fake itinerary. Full booked in on the system, and then delete it cause were pov. On my last day, I had a really bad experience with a group of boys, I booked their big Europe trip. They were the absolute worst. I obviously couldn’t do anything drastic. I changed the ‘ring leader’ of the groups seats for all his flights (next to a baby where possible) so he wasn’t with his mates, he got bland meals for all his flights too.Georgia

When I worked in a video store on Sunday nights we’d regularly order a large pizza and then just have it open on the counter to snack on as we served customers.Mel

One time my manager at the time rocks up to the back dock area in a deadset mobility scooter – to this day, I don’t know where she obtained it but I opted not to question it. It was around 9pm on a Tuesday, so it was super quiet. I was pretty new at the time and like 14 years old so I didn’t question anything. She asked me to go and source six milk crates from the back dock area, and stack them in a pyramid across the walkway in the kitchen area. Once that was done, she rotated the security cameras via computer so it created what was essentially a blind spot. Then, after making sure there were no customers or cars in drive thru, she hoons around the corner on the mobility scooter and crashes into the pyramid, with the aim of knocking all of them over. Mission accomplished btw. – Jackson

I used to work at Lowes, which was a fuck around as it is, but I always used to offer to take the cardboard to the skip bins so i could take the longest possible route and just generally walk around the shopping centre with a trolley full of cardboard. When I finally got to the bins, I’d put one piece of cardboard into the bin at a time.Matt

One time at Kmart I was playing around on my phone in the toilet for so long instead of working that they made an announcement on the loudspeaker asking where I was for the whole store to hear.Holley

When i worked at my local bakery in high school, we would create and decorate monstrous things from the freshly baked shortbread men.Georgia

I worked at Baker’s Delight as a teenager, and all the custard and bacon products had to be binned, while the other bread went to food banks. Because we knew the custard stuff went in the bin, we’d just eat it all instead – I always had a full custard log on the go just out of sight of the front counter, and when the store was empty I’d just rip the guts out of it and inhale the thing.Mel

When I worked at Brumby’s (the poor man’s Baker’s Delight) we were allowed to take whatever was left home at the end of the night…so obviously we hid all the good stuff at the back of the cabinets so customers wouldn’t buy them. – Lola

When I worked at Civic Video on the late Friday Night / Saturday shifts we would play cricket down the long aisles. We also put on the latest movie releases on the TVs so we could watch them instead of playing the promo loops. – Whitney

When I worked at Country Road in the mens department, we would get very bored & serve customers with accents and pretend it was totally normal. My fave was the southern belle.Lisa

At Dan Murphys, one time there was a recall on some premixed cans because they were “exploding”, so we took them into the warehouse and threw them at the walls to see what the “explosions” would be like.Adrian

When I worked at JD Sports, we would randomly take shoes off the display wall and start throwing them to another staff member to see how many they could catch before dropping them all.Ante

I worked at Boost Juice and we’d amuse ourselves by taping as many straws together as we could to make one giant straw. – Vanna

I used to work at Bunnings late at night, and we used to race each other on the fork lifts down the aisles.Mel

When I worked at Baker’s Delight, I got fired for eating the testers I was meant to be handing out to passers by. – Kate

When I was about 15 and working at McDonald’s and I was on drive thru with my mate, so we were in the windows up the back of the shop. We were finishing our shift at 8:30 and heading to a house party so I had my sister drop a carton of cruisers at the back of Maccies and then in between cars, I went and grabbed it and dragged it into the staff change room. His it under some chairs for the rest of the shift and then left through the back when I finished with my carton in a woolies trolley. – Sam

I worked at Luna Park Sydney during NYE. It is by far the worst shift you can get (until your double time and a half pay check hits). The entire place is full of drunk clubbers trying to get onto the rides. Oh and it’s a twelve hour shift where you’re expected to be “theme park happy” the whole way through. It sucks. BUT the best bit is that, during the fireworks, we shut off all the rides. And since everyone is either watching the fireworks or watching the DJs at the concert hall, no-one can tell us off when we climb on top of the rides to get, arguably, the best views of the Sydney fireworks humanly possible. I mean, yeah, we could have fallen off an died, but it was worth it. – Brian

Once I went to work ridiculously hungover. While I wasn’t paying attention, people managed to steal like $700 worth of clothing, and when the managers watched the footage back they just saw me dancing around in circles by myself as they did it. Still managed to keep my job somehow. – Jenna

I worked in a cinema, and one time 3 guys were meant to be cleaning an absolutely trashed room before a sold out session could start. The manager went to check on them and the mess was totally untouched and they were standing around watching porn on a phone. – Connor

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