Cereal bowl(ing)
“I worked in grocery as a stocker. We had just finished a cereal display near the front of the store compiled of about 100 boxes. In comes an older lady, around 60s, driving one of the electric carts. She's looking dead on at the display and promptly rams into the thing. Boxes go everywhere and she starts apologizing over and over and explains that she's legally blind. A customer that was nearby and saw everything asked her how she drove here if she was blind. She responded by quickly turning around and leaving the store.” —Reddit user u/Give_Me_A_Sign (Don't miss these 29 things your grocer won't tell you.)
Fraud alert
“[A customer] reaches into his wallet to hand me the most pathetic attempt at a forged bill I've ever seen. He scanned a 100, printed the front on one piece of paper, printed the back on another piece, and stapled them together. Stapled. The edges weren't even cut properly as you could see white along the border. I just looked at the guy and said ‘seriously?’ He made up some story of someone slipping it into his wallet by accident and walked off.” —Reddit user u/Explosive_Ewok
Free bird
“A bird got into the store and [pooped] all over everything and ruined thousands and thousands of dollars of merchandise over the course of a month. Eventually, they hired someone to remove it, and closed the store for 30 minutes.” —Reddit user u/negativeonhand, assistant sales manager
Monkey business
“There's a family who always shows up with their pet monkey.” —Reddit user u/wallyworldbeeyatch
Not-so-friendly faces
“Opened up the semi-trailer full of pet food to be greeted by five raccoons staring me down. I'm a full-grown man, but that was intimidating.” —Reddit user u/brian20999 (These 29 hilarious work cartoons will help you make it through the week.)
Funky smell
“One day, a woman stole a bottle of perfume and took it to the bathroom. She poured it out into her own container and then proceeded to fill the container with her own [urine]. She then took the bottle up to returns and tried to return it. To this day I have no idea why my manager gave her the refund.” —Reddit user u/bunchofdingalings
One way to estimate
“A lady needed some material, and didn’t know how many yards, so she said, ‘Can you help me wrap myself in this?’ So there I am, wrapping the lady in the material, she was spinning a little bit while I was walking around her holding the material. And then unwrapping her too. She ended up buying the whole thing.” —Reddit user u/green_bees (For more confessions, read these secrets Macy's employees wish you knew.)
New kind of service animal
“I had two teens walk in wearing huge iguanas. I asked them if they were Service Animals. (They didn't know what that was.) Asked them if the iguanas provided a service for them. One kid said, ‘well, I think it makes me more attractive.’ … I had to tell him the reptiles had to leave.” —Reddit user u/gadget_galFL
Not laughing
“During one of my shifts, a customer came up behind me and started tickling me. I definitely wasn't expecting that.” —former Walmart employee (For more cringe-worthy stories, read these 21 pet peeves of Starbucks baristas.)
Reptile friend
“We had a customer that came in regularly with a snake, a garden snake maybe. Word hit management after about a week, yes a week, and I overheard them saying when the next time he comes in, they need to know so they could talk to him about it. Apparently, the snake wasn't a service animal, which they could be. I can't say I've seen the guy since.” —Reddit user u/LigerXT5 (Don't miss these 11 money-saving secrets Target employees won't tell you.)
Caught red-handed
“My mom was a manager at Walmart ... She told me about this woman who was trying to steal a prepaid phone. When she got caught by security she used the knife she was attempting to open the plastic packaging with to cut the security dude after cutting herself... She then went on to scream at him that she has AIDS and now he's going to have it for trying to stop her.” —Reddit user u/lilytargaryen
Too much information
“We had someone pee on one of our stock carts in the middle of the aisle. Someone put it in the back and wrote ‘don't use, peed on by customer.’ I had the picture of it on my phone for years.” —Reddit user u/Pete_the_rawdog