Yahoo Lifestyle People Who Have Worked In Retail Are Sharing Their Wildest "You Really Can't Make This Up" Story
If you've ever worked in a retail job, you've probably seen some interesting things. But some stories are even stranger than fiction. Redditor Professional_Song419 asked, "Redditors who worked in retail, what are your 'you can't make this up' stories?" Here's what people said.
1."My sister worked at a crafts store for her first job out of high school. One day, there was a bird in the store. No one could catch it. It would always fly away and perch in a high place in the store out of reach. It was in there for a couple of days when it finally got too weak to fly very high anymore. My sister finally was able to approach it and offered it water. While it was drinking out of a bottlecap, my sister grabbed it and put it in a small cardboard box so it could rest and regain its strength for release. She put the box in the break room and wrote on it, 'DO NOT OPEN! BIRD INSIDE!'..."
"...Later that day, they were in the break room, and one of her coworkers walked in and opened the box, releasing the bird again. My sister asked her why she had opened the box, and she replied that she thought it was a prank or something. Thankfully, the bird was only confined to the break room, and my sister caught it again and immediately released it outside, and it flew away. 'DO NOT OPEN! BIRD INSIDE!' became a meme among her friends and coworkers. Emails were sent around with 'DO NOT OPEN' attachments that were just goofy bird pictures. People placed boxes with the words 'Do not open' around the office, containing stuffed bird toys or bird figurines. She left that job some months later but she certainly left an impact!"
2."I worked at a liquor store. We had a guy come in who was so drunk when he got there that he fell out of his lifted truck and bashed his face open on the curb. A customer came running in and said there was someone bleeding in the parking lot, so my manager and I went out to check. He was absolutely hammered, I have no clue how he successfully drove there. Anyways, after getting blood all over me and my manager, he told us he wanted to sleep it off in his car. It was noon on a Saturday and it was 95°F outside. He got arrested."
3."We had an employee whose daughter died. We sent her flowers, gave her time off, told her to return when she was ready. She then came back a few weeks later, working shortened hours with a 'support friend' by her side. She soon got fired for letting the 'support friend' use the services for free. A couple of months later, she came in as a customer. Her daughter (who she claimed had died) was sitting in the car playing on an iPad."
4."At Target we have a 'code yellow' for missing kids. When it happens, the whole team drops what they are doing and we all help. Usually, the child is found within minutes. In one case, on a slow night, the missing boy (ten years old), could not be found. The parent was frantic and getting more frantic. 'Would he have gone to the car on his own?' I asked. This question got me screamed at. 'He would never. He’s been kidnapped, and you're not taking things seriously,' the parent said. Turns out, he had gone out to the car on his own."
5."I was working retail at a Sam Goody record store many years ago and training a young girl at the cash register. She was very quiet and shy. It was her first job ever and she was very very nervous..."
"...An older gentleman came up to the counter with a cassette tape that he was very excited about purchasing. Apparently, he had been looking for it for quite some time and had finally found it at our store. In his excitement, as he spoke, his dentures popped out of his mouth, bounced across the counter, and hit this young trainee right in the waist.
She let out a screech, threw her hands in the air, and jumped backward about five feet. The old gentleman yelled, 'Aww, thit!' He reached across the counter, grabbed his dentures, and popped them right back in. The whole event took about three seconds. It was hilarious ....but this young girl was just shaking like a leaf and in disbelief at what had just happened to her."
6."I once accidentally locked a pregnant woman in the store to take my break. I was working alone in the store in the mall, and we were just in a rush. Everyone cleared out, and I locked the gate to take my dinner break. When I returned 15 minutes later, a security guard was trying to figure out how to get her out. Apparently, she was in the fitting rooms, and I didn't realize it. She was so mad, naturally, and let me know she would complain to corporate. I called my manager after she left to own up to my mistake before she heard from the customer. Later, the customer called me after she calmed down and told me she wasn't going to tell on me and asked me to be more careful next time. The manager let me go the next day due to my own admission."
7."I was a Manager of a Toys 'R' US Electronics section, and I have so many crazy stories. One stands out: At the end of the night, I'd have to print out the Console Count, which was comprised of how many we had at the start of the day, how many were sold, and how many were left. The list had video game consoles, tablets, iPads/iPods, and cameras..."
"I would do my count, call over the storefront manager to double check; then the SFM would unlock the Electronic Closet to finish the count. The Closet had at least 2 Security Cameras, and you had to be watched while there as well. We were HEMORRHAGING Nintendo 3DS and Apple Products. My counts would look like, 'Day started with 37 Nintendo 3DS. Zero sold today. 22 Remaining,' but the only people with the key to the electronics closet were the SFM and store manager. It turns out that the store manager would turn off the cameras, sneak into the closet, and stuff his jacket. Watched him get escorted out by the Police and never saw him again."
8."I worked at Best Buy. A lady came in with a 10% off coupon and asked me how much it'll get her off on an $80 antenna. I explained she would save $8, to which she was surprised. She angrily picked the $50 one. While ringing her up, she asked why the antenna is $45. I explained how 10% off works. She replied, 'I thought you said $8.'"
9."I worked in customer service at well-known superstore. A few times I had moments of just complete brain shutting down shock at some of the shit people tried to pull. This was the most memorable: I was returning from a break, so I’d typically go through all the clothing areas to avoid customers. I went around a corner and bumped into a lady in the shoe aisle with an armful of boxes. I helped her pick up the boxes she dropped and went back to the service counter..."
"...About three minutes later, that same woman walked up, put the boxes on the counter, and said she’d like to return them. I stopped and stared at her. I told her I just saw her bring them directly from the floor to the register. She repeated she wanted to return them. I didn’t get paid enough to argue, so I keyed in the code for a manager, made the return for her (like $200 on a gift card), and off she went. The manager and loss prevention got her before she made it out the door.
Another time, two guys came in to pick up a Moneygram. He showed a California license, so I asked what he was doing all the way in Iowa. He told me he was on the run from the law. I just laughed and dismissed it as a joke. 20 minutes later, a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts cuts to the front of the line, puts a badge down and tells me he’s a U.S. Marshall. I told him I thought the guy was joking about being on the run, and the Marshall says, 'he actually told you that!?' Anyway, they pulled me to go speak with the store manager so he could let her know they would be arresting the guy as soon as he left the store. I ask if I can watch, and the Marshall says sure, why not? And the store manager tells me to get my ass back to work. I didn’t get to see it go down."
10."Two ladies were doing a bold shoplifting spree. The city police were at every store exit, waiting for them to leave the premises. The strore security was tracking them as they shopped throughout the store. We were told to leave them totally alone if they came into our area..."
"...Sure enough, here they came into my area. One woman was pushing a stroller with a little boy in it. The other one was pushing of those old-fashioned baby carriages (like from the 1920s) with a blanket thrown over it. They shopped all three floors of our store, filling up the carriage, any room in the stroller, and filling girdles under their clothes, getting physically larger the more time they spent in the store. They finally attempted to return to their car with $5000+ worth of merchandise and were stopped by police. Rumor has it they even had 16 pairs of earrings stuffed into their underpants. The baby covered by a blanket in the stroller was revealed to be a plastic baby doll."
11."I used to work in an Apple Store and I got an appointment with someone who has forgotten some passwords and needed help with their account. Simple enough. I met with the guy, and he didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary. He handed me a notebook full of smudged red ink and said it was his notebook of passwords. I’m looking at it, and all the writing is smudged and illegible. I asked him casually why it’s all smudged, and he responds with, 'oh yeah, I wrote it with my blood.' 'I’m sorry…?' 'All the writing is with my blood.'"
12."Worked at a pet store and a dude brought in a dead fish and demanded that I, a 17 year old kid, tell him how his fish died. If that wasn’t funny enough, a bystander rescued me by asking, 'Don’t you have a fish autopsy kit?' It was funny enough to get the dead fish dude to leave me alone."
13."I worked at a Ross clothing store in high school. I smelled something foul at closing time and started tracking it down. Someone had taken a giant dump in the middle of the long pants rack. I told my boss, who asked me to clean it up. I told him that I was a minor and it was against the rules of my work permit. I had no idea if it was against the rules, but he believed me and left a note for the cleaning crew to clean it up."
14."A customer once refused to buy granola from me because I’m not vegan. The granola was vegan, but I, a salesperson who had nothing to do with making it, was not. The customer said it was against their morals."
15."I was working at a sports bar/restaurant and there was a little office party going on. The boss ended up biting an employee's earlobe off. We found the earlobe outside the next day, earring still in it, and gave it to the police."
16."I work as an optician, and quite recently, I had a client come in for a check-up at the optometrist’s for sight. His eyesight was about -3.50 and -8.00 (those who wear glasses know that this is bad news). He shrugged and said, 'Ah! I've been working as a truck driver with this vision and I see great!' The man didn't wear glasses. My colleagues and I considered asking for his work schedule to know which days we shouldn’t leave the house…"
17."I worked at PetSmart in high school, and a lady came through my register with a bunch of fish. Being an aquarium-loving nerdy teenager, I started asking her about the fish and why she chose this type, what your setup was, etc. She said she had to replace her entire tank because her teenage son had a party over the weekend, and the boys ended up doing tequila shots and chasing them by swallowing fish from her tank whole."
Do you have something to add? Tell us your most memorable/hilarious/disturbing/shocking story about working in retail. Add it to the comments or in this anonymous form.
