From Cart Commander:

At work we had a very pervy crusty, who liked to get in the ladies personal space. Well they did that to me only I had to fart really bad. So I let one out that made them stagger back for a moment with watering eyes. Undeterred they got back in my personal space. So in return I let it rip till they had a cloud of stink, envelop them. Then I retreated to bulk foods, old lady one comes up and shoves some axe body spray in his hands. She yells, young man I was going to give this to my grandson, but you need it more than he does. Before he can do anything her friend scuttles up and this is the exchange. 

Old lady two. Young man you need a shower, that is disgusting. 

--Cart Commander

  Ah, The Dollar store. A boon for those on a budget, or if you just need something on the cheap like a household cleaning item or mylar balloon for a kid’s party. Unfortunately it is its own vortex much like the  mac daddy, Walmart. The strange and stranger are attracted to the place by invisible rays.   

On a quiet , manager-less Tuesday morning I was at the checkout when a formidable woman  of height and girth with a large tattoo on her neck “I’m A Country Girl” and wearing a ripped  Kenny Chesney concert tee, sauntered up to ask a question: “ Where the Kotex be at ?”

I told her that the personal hygiene products were two aisles over at the back of the store.  About ten minutes later she comes back with five boxes of pads , the new kind that fit your shape  and monthly need.  

She slapped the boxes on the counter and began to open each one. I remained silent because as I said earlier she was” formidable”.  As she rooted around in each box , my mind was racing about the outcome.

The woman selected a pad, pulled the waistband of her stretch pants open and ….ah…placed…ummm…inserted….errr….launched the pad into place and then did a little shimmy, made a face and removed it….this dance of the toreadors was done an additional four times with her placing the pad that didn’t meet her specifications on the counter.

I looked on open mouthed , frozen in place.  

Finally  she found a satisfying  fit  or whatever you might call it and proudly proclaimed to me that it  was fine …”…coz it done covered the taint!”

”Taint”?...I had never heard of the word. She saw my puzzlement and explained that “It ain’t yer front end and it ain’t yer poop shute, it’s yer taint the space in da middle”.  Mz. Taint happily tossed a dime on the counter and said “

Jest needed the one , I usually gets ‘em from the vendy machine in the bar across the streets toilet, but they ain’t open yet .”

I came out of my trance and  prodded the discarded pads along with the open boxes into a garbage bag and reached for a spray bottle of Clorox bleach for the counter and my eyes.

--Basement Rat

From sempiternal_cow, Tales From Retail:

Last night, we must have had an “idiots eat free” sale on.

This old man called me princess. It made me cringe but eh, what are you going to do, right?

So later on I bring his meal out and announce it and he says “yes yes, here. Yes, bring it to daddy.”

I could have vomited right there all over him and his dinner. I death stared him the rest of the night.

--sempiternal_cow

From desireeray, TalesFromRetail

I used to work at an extremely large music retail store. Black Friday was something I looked forward to in between bouts of freaking the shit out. We had spent the entire day and partial night before preparing for it, and were pretty much exhausted before the day even started.

Our terminals crashed that morning, so we all got off to a bad start. When our terminals crashed we had to "Brown Bag," which means we had to take OLD methods of taking payment. We would write out your receipt on carbon paper and hope we had been calculating everything correctly on a calculator. This was seriously terrifying.

We had lines of people at our terminals, fighting over cheap speakers and keyboards, wanting the last ukelele, etc. etc. All the while I have to write out the customer's receipt, double check serial numbers, call in credit cards over the phone, etc. This made me want to just walk out and never look at a $79 keyboard again.

Luckily, at noon, our computers are back up. YES YES YES! Soccer moms are no longer wanting to slaughter me because I didn't get little Jimmy's guitar rung out fast enough. High fives all around, etc.

So. The day was all ready stressful. Way more stressful than usual. It was about noon, we were all stoked that our computers were back up AND we were in a kind of lull because all of the hardcore Black Friday shoppers started out so early. (lame for our commission!) It was busy, but not Black Friday busy. Anyways.

This creepy looking dude walks in our store and immediately stands out amongst the rest of our shoppers. He is wearing a long black trench coat, and a hat that was reminiscent of the hamburglar. Yes, the hamburgler. No bandit mask, but straight up trench coat that could have easily been confused for a cape, weird hat, and extremely fucking weird, just like the hamburglar would probably be in real life. This dude was creepy looking. He smelled bad, and caught everyone's attention by the insane look in his eyes. Like straight up, families were stopping to stare at this dude, moms were pushing their children behind them, he was weird. Okay, I'm exaggerating just a little, but really he had a VERY terrifying look in his eyes. Everyone was super uncomfortable. There was definitely something really off about this dude, he definitely hadn't slept in a while, and looked like he was on drugs.

It was policy at our store to ask people to take off their backpacks and leave them at the front door. If they wouldn't, we'd tell them we had to check them at the end of their shopping trip. Well, dude did NOT respond well to being asked to take off his backpack. He IMMEDIATELY starts cursing, and giving the front door guy an earful of absolute crazy talk. He started dropping the N bomb, right as a mom walks in with her son.

A manager was standing nearby and had all ready been watching the situation since the crazy guy had entered our store. My manager politely asked the guy to not curse in our store, because there were families about. He was being way too cool to this guy.

The crazy man just starts spewing out a storm of nonsense, and is straight up YELLING the N word now, talking about the devil, jesus, gibson guitars, and all sorts of gibberish. If anyone wasn't watching this guy before, everyone has turned around and is watching now. Some, including myself, are debating between tears or laughter.

Since this man had walked in the store, he was chewing on something the entire time he was talking, and he was spitting it all over the place because he was yelling so much. THEN to amplify the weirdness of this situation, we find out what the shit this dude was eating.

He pulls out a bag of RAW MEAT (hamburger meat, just so you know) and just straight up starts eating it --in front of EVERYONE-- Blood is running down his mouth, and it is literally one of the most scary things I've ever seen. Luckily, this has escalated so much that every big guy in my store is officially getting ready to hulk up on this guy and push him outside.

The cops have been called at this point, and my large coworkers have gotten crazy dude out of the building. My manager even took it upon himself to throw his stupid backpack out the door.

He's now SCREAMING, and throwing meat on the sidewalk outside, and spitting it everywhere. TOTAL chaos. Everyone is just kind of staring at him in bewilderment. He's officially not in the store so he's not our problem. I think half of the staff, if not a little more are just posted up outside, arms crossed, just ready for this guy to make a wrong move. However, he runs off in a crazy hamburglar-like manner after he realizes the cops are coming, and of course the cops pull up about fifteen minutes after he's gone.

When they finally got to the store, they knew exactly who he was, and had numerous complaints about him. They even knew the dude on first name basis, poor police officers.

It ended up fine, just shook a few people up, but I was seriously freaked out for a couple days after that. It was so off putting. He was yelling broken up pieces of proverbs, stuff about satan, screaming about guitars, and dropping the n bomb all at the same time.

I felt like this was too surreal and I was probably cursed or something. Just my fucking luck, cursed by a crazy methed out hamburglar at a guitar store. Not even a sweet gypsy.

Thankfully I wasn't cursed, AND he never showed up again. We all called him the meat man after that, and he was the butt of our jokes for a very long time afterward. Every Black Friday afterward, we always joked and took solace in the fact that it could probably never get worse than the meatman or the broken terminals.

--desireeray

From h_p_bitchcraft, AskReddit

One older guy came in asking about photography and whether we had a "specific image" of a rock he saw 300 miles away. I responded in that, no we didn't and that he should probably go take the photo himself. He goes, "I can't. I'm writing a book and I need this image for its cover."

He looked at me, wanting, wishing me to ask what his book was about.

I got a weird vibe and instantly regretted asking "What's your book about?"

He says, "Possession."

I'm like "Okay, cool man, I like a good scare."

He's like "No, no, no. Possession is where an older man controls and orders a young woman like you to be his slave. Would it be a topic you'd consider learning?"

I can't remember how I ended the conversation, but for about 6 or 7 months he'd keep trying to talk to me and ask weird questions. He stopped when he realised I wasn't as young as I looked, or easily influenced.

He is so creepy.

--h_p_bitchcraft

Hello everyone! I'm a long time lurker and first-time poster. I've worked in retail for a couple months now (techincally my first job. The real first job is another horror story for another time!) in the shoe department of a big, well-known department store. I have two weird instances I'll share today