Who knows who will walk through those doors that an employee has to put up with? Also, how are people seriously this dumb? Like it takes a lot of work to act as stupidly as these people did! No updates on if the employees were paid overtime for putting up with such wild nonsense. Content has been edited for clarity.
She Did It In Plain Sight
“I worked at a party supply store. We caught a woman on camera stealing over $200 in premium merchandise. She was a very regular customer and knew the blind spots, but what she didn’t know was that the store owner could access different camera angles on his laptop, which he did. Once she was done stealing, she came up to my register and bought some stuff and placed an order for balloons. She gave us her first name, last name, email, and phone number. So when the managers realized she had been stealing, we just pulled out her balloon order.
Oh, but it gets better. She ran an elder care business, which we were able to easily find information for online. How was it so easy? Searching her name or phone number? Nope, it was easy because she was walking around our store, stealing hundreds of dollars of our stuff, while wearing a shirt that had her business’s name and address splashed all over the front.”
A Smelly Surprise
“I worked in retail for a summer. Speaking from experience, here’s a tip: if you can’t keep your pet from peeing or pooping on the floor, then don’t bring them into a store.
Once I was stocking the aisle where the air fresheners are, including the refills for automatic ones. Somebody’s pet took a dump, and instead of telling someone (or just running away like most people do), this man took product off the shelf, used it to scrape the poop off the floor, and then shoved the product under the shelf. There must’ve been some poop left over, because he then took one of those cardboard displays for the product and used that to scrape up the rest. Seriously.
If they’re going to poop on the floor, don’t bring them in. If you ignore this and they do end up pooping on the floor, tell someone. You’re not going to get in trouble. It’ll be a bit awkward, but you’ll be fine.”
On The Hunt For Thieves
“I work as loss prevention for our store, so making sure nothing gets stolen. We noticed on camera that a couple of kids were trying to steal some clothing. We didn’t want the hassle of dealing with minors (we would deal with cops, paperwork, as well as all the kids’ parents). We did our best to ‘burn’ the case. What that entails is following them around the store and letting these kids know we see them, so they’d just drop their stuff. If they drop the stuff, then it’s much less paperwork for us and more free time, plus no time has to be spent in court.
Well, I followed these three kids all over the store. At certain points, I was less than two feet from them, making eye contact and outright looking from them to the bags where they hid the merch and back again. They obviously knew I worked for the store. They kept looking back at me and whispering furiously between themselves. At a certain point, it looked like they were debating just running for the nearest door, until they heard my radio go off with my coworker practically shouting through it that he was just outside the door, in case they tried to run.
These morons decided to instead leisurely stroll out the door. These total idiots nearly caught themselves a felony charge at the whopping age of fifteen. The only reason that didn’t happen was because the cops brow-beat my manager into splitting the merch total between the three of them. The kids even said they knew I was an employee, but they decided to take the chance anyway.
Pro-tip for you guys: We don’t feel like dealing with you. You can take the chance if you really want to, but then the cops will get involved and even if it works out for you, every time you step foot into the mall, every store will have their eyes on you from the jump. When you eventually get caught, you’ll just get charged for everything that we can prove you did. And if you took anything from stores in the surrounding towns, you’ll get those charges too.
Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it. But, I get raises based off your terrible decision-making, so thanks for the stats boost.”
Stopping Men Dead In Their Tracks
“The first one happened while working at a home improvement store late one night, I was standing behind a register when this guy walked by, pushing one of those huge rolling tool chests. This one was a really fancy one too, it even had a refrigerator and stereo in it. Anyway, I saw him head towards the lawn and garden doors with it.
I thought, ‘Alright this guy is probably going to that particular register with it.’
I called the lawn and garden department and told them to keep an eye on this particular guy. Five minutes later, I saw him walk back in my area with the tool chest, swinging around to the appliance department and heading for the doors. Ten minutes later, I saw my store manager pushing the tool chest back to the tool department, so I asked him what on earth was happening.
Apparently, this guy was completely wasted and thought that he could just walk out of the door with this massive tool chest, and no one would ever notice. He tried three times to exit, but he kept ending up in the gated lawn and garden department. He couldn’t find his way out. The cops were called, and it was the most entertainment the store had at 10 p.m. in a very long time.
The second time, I was working at a retail clothing store. The store was in a mall, and the front of the area had these huge floor to ceiling windows. This happened during the holidays, so the mall was completely packed. These two women came in and told me that they were on vacation from Germany and were just looking around. Okay, that’s fine. The next thing I know, I heard gasping and extremely loud chatter from a ton of people in the front of the store. I looked over, and one of the women was fully topless in front of the window, trying on tops from the display rack. I ran over and shuffle her to the fitting rooms. I then tried desperately to calm down the prudish old lady that was having a panic attack from seeing that woman’s chest. We had a few men hovering outside the front window for a while after that.”
He Was So Close To Getting Away!
“I was in a gas station picking up a soda and snack in the middle of my shift. I drive a marked police vehicle and was in full uniform. Some moron walked in after I was there, then glanced around the store, making sure no employees were nearby. He walked into the aisle I was in, gave me a side-eyed glance, grabbed a bag of combos and stuffed them in his pants, and then he tried to quickly walk out of the store. Lucky for him, the manager didn’t want to bother with charging him with theft, but he did want this man banned from the store. I chewed this guy out for being so stupid, served him with a banning letter, and then I sent him on his way. I was fine with that. Arresting someone for stealing a $2 bag of combos is super petty.
The following week, at the same exact store, this guy showed up the exact same time that I was in there. This time I was standing outside the store, as I had just gotten out of my patrol car and was standing nearby. This time, he deliberately walked nearby and tried to brush past me. That did not end so well for him. There was a trip to jail for assault, trespassing, and theft. It turned out that he had another bag of combos stuffed down his pants.”
‘We All Just Stood There With Our Mouths Open In Disbelief’
“In the 80s, I was at a glass store buying some plate glass for a project at work. These two guys were arguing with a store manager who wasn’t letting them take a HUGE mirror (like four feet by six feet) out of the shop, because they didn’t have a truck or anything to carry it. They said they were going to secure it on the roof of their car. The manager was getting upset and was saying they were endangering everyone on the road. They would have to pay a delivery fee to have it delivered tomorrow. He finally lost his temper and told them that he was going to give them their money back, and they needed to get out. The manager started processing their refund, and these two guys just quietly went out to the shop floor, picked up the glass, walked out to their car, and placed it on the roof. The manager saw them and started running out to stop them. They took off with the driver holding the left side of the mirror with his left hand, and the passenger holding the right side with his right hand.
They made it about seventy-five feet until they hit a slight dip where the parking lot met the public road. The mirror flexed and instantly shattered into a thousand pieces. The two idiots took off, leaving glass all over the road. We all just stood there with our mouths open in disbelief.”
He Had It Coming
“My husband used to work at a store that sold CDs and other various electronic type of items. He had a mom and her kid come in one day. The mom went off to look at stuff and the kid wandered over to the CDs. He stuffed about ten CD cases in his armpit and tucked his arm tight to his side. When they went to leave, my husband reacheed out to shake the kid’s hand. He didn’t want to, and the mom was like, ‘Don’t be rude. Shake his hand!’
Every single one of the CDs fell out and my husband scooped them up. The mom took her kid outside and blistered his ears for him, at the loudest possible volume. This kid was so dumb, he kind of deserved it.”
“Driving Like A Complete Lunatic”
“Longtime retail worker here.
One time I missed witnessing this by just a few hours. This guy took an item in a blister pack into a restroom and sliced a major vein attempting to cut the item out of the package. There was enough blood that paramedics had to be called and stretcher the guy out.
The spookiest encounter for me at least happened while waiting to punch back in after lunch. I made an innocent jest at the expense of a co-worker also waiting to clock in. Another co-worker, who was not particularly social and had a reputation for being a bit odd, but nothing serious, followed me back out to the floor and demanded I repeat what I’d said, and he warned me to watch myself. It spooked me enough that I had to talk to HR about it. Not too surprised when he was canned for cussing out a manager a few months later.
In the parking lot, I was driving toward my usual parking space well away from the entrance. I was nearly t-boned by a guy doing that stupid thing where you drive perpendicular to the lanes. I made the mistake of flipping him the bird (I was off the clock, mind you) and he followed me into the store and demanded to speak to my manager. He flat-out denied he was driving like a complete lunatic, but luckily my boss was cool about it and let it go.”
Frustrating Furniture Customers
“I worked at this furniture store, and we had a policy where smaller items could be shipped to the store for pick up, which would save the customer a delivery fee, but the customer had to bring a proper vehicle to pick it up. This couple came inside saying that they had an order to pick up. They said they had a receipt, but they didn’t get anything out of their pocket. After about ten weirdly awkward moments of silence, I said, ‘Can I have it?’
The couple replied, ‘I don’t see how that’s relevant. Let me talk to the manager!’
The manager was right there, since I was fairly new, and he eventually got the receipt from the couple, they paid their remaining balance, and I got their item for them. These people had a tiny car, which was packed up like they were going on a month-long road trip. The couple complained about us not telling them that the box would be that large (even though the packaging dimensions were listed online). The couple left what turned out to be a twin-sized bunk bed with us. They never returned for their fully paid-for bed, so we just sold it again.
Afterwards, they left us a one-star review of the store, and they acted like we were the villains for not giving them their item until they gave us the receipt. We all had a very good laugh about it after we saw it online.”
