From RHUer:

Ok, so I've only just come across this site, and my story actually happened last year, 23rd December, I'm working from 4-midnight in the Childrens Wear, Toys and Kid's shoes section.

Bad enough really but then at 8 my manager comes and tells me that a chick for Lingerie hasn't shown up so I have to effectively cover 4 departments by myself and I have only been working there a week! WTF??? Then the goddamn manager leaves, despite the obvious lack of staff.

Already pissed off I am attempting to prepare for the Boxing Day Sales when a manager from a different section comes over and tells me to help an old couple with lingerie because I "must have more experience in this kind of thing than me."

I go over and attempt to help this old couple, who are clearly not with it. For one she wants a new bra, as her current ones are too big, but she has NO idea what size she is wearing now, nor does she have any idea about what size she might want.

I wing it and give her something I think may be right (but as I am not trained in bra fitting I actually have no idea). Finally we finish the transaction after numerous difficulties and they ask me to walk them to where they came in.

Well this should have been my first warning that they were a little senile.

So anyway we have to go down the escalator to get there, I go first and all seems to be going well until I hear screaming above me and the old lady is hanging over the side of the escalator about to fall to the floor below!!!!!!!!

The husband is attempting to pull her over but is struggling so I have to sprint up the escalator to pull her back, essentially saving her life.

We get to the bottom and all I get is "Sorry about that she, has Alzheimers and forgets how to get onto escalators, happens all the time, Bye."

WHY THE FUCK DID HE NOT TELL ME BEFOREHAND SO I COULD BE PREPARED!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!

The best thing of all was that I never should have had to deal with them as I wasn't even supposed to be working in that section!

Needless to say I quit that job the week after.

--RHUer

From Kimmie:

One fitting room nightmare story I will never forget, happened on my first day at a new children's clothing store.

I waited on a 5'3 65 year old woman who insisted that I help her find a bathrobe. No matter how many times I told her it was a CHILDREN'S STORE, she still wanted to purchase a robe.

I grabbed her a few robes and she followed me into the dressing room. I told her my name and went to go ring up another customer.

Two minutes later I hear "Kimmie, Kimmie, over here."

I finished up with my customer and walked over to the fitting rooms. She came out in the children's robe....NOT WEARING ANY PANTS!

Then she proceeded to dance and swirl throughout our store....

With each swirl more of the robe opened up to reveal she was NAKED underneath....

I told her she must get back in her dressing room, but she continued to swirl like a sick swan all over the place. She finally ran out of breath, put her clothes on and walked out like nothing happened.

Fast forward 5 years.

Our store is closing for good. The very last customer comes in and......

It's the old lady lady!!!

I wouldn't have recognized her....BUT...SHE asked to try on ROBES!!!

She went to the fitting room and put one on, but instead of swirling around, she collected her clothing, went to the register and demanded we ring up the robe and let her WEAR IT OUT of the store..

WITH NOTHING UNDERNEATH... :(

Two days days later we were cleaning the store to hand back to the mall and we found her grandma panties and stockings in a pile in the corner.. YIKES.. Hand Sanitizer time!!!! What a creepy Granny!

--Kimmie

From Puppies In Prada

Donation door time! The door wasn't really that bad on this day. I had five people, and they all wanted to donate the maximum amount we could take from a car in a day. Annoying, but tolerable. I called for assistance in processing it and got it. Awesome.

Scotty comes down at five minutes to the end of the hour, when we had a moment of quiet. He's next hour's door shift.

A car pulls in, and an old lady hops out of her car really fast. She sprints to the back of her car, grabs something and puts it by our door. We open the door and find  one of those covered cat litter boxes.

Scotty: "Hey ma'am, I'm sorry, but we can't take litter boxes."

He bends down to pick it up and the top comes RIGHT OFF. There are three inches of used cat sand in the bottom. Holy mother of Thrognar I can SMELL the cat piss.

Old woman: "Well I can't take it with me."

Me: "Well you're going to have to, because we cannot accept this. We don't take in anything that has been exposed to feces or urine."

Old woman: "I CAN'T TAKE IT WITH ME, SO YOU'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO ACCEPT IT!"

My god she's telling us we have to take something we can't take like she's a scolding mother to a stubborn child. HELL NO lady!

Me: "No. No we're not."

I pick up the cat litter box and put it right back into the back of her car.

Me: "YOU brought it here, so YOU are going to find another place for it. We will not accept this."

Old woman is old woman angry now.

Old woman: "What if I dumped the cat sand out of it first!? Will you take it then?"

Me: "No ma'am, it will have still been exposed to cat feces."

And also, she's the kind of person who will just walk to the edge of our parking lot and just upend it there... I can see it in her eyes. Nope. Nope. Nope. Just... Nope.

She looks furious, but both Scotty and I are standing in the doorway watching her. There's no way for her to just dump it and run without us interfering.

After she drives off...

Me: "...We're 'just going to HAVE to take it'? Okay, I know she's a woman but... the BALLS on that lady, man..."

Scotty: "I'm REALLY going to have to step up on getting work done on my doomsday device...."

What's that you say? Did I wash my hands a thousand times after picking that thing up?

Why, yes!

Yes I did!

--Puppies In Prada

From u/stephaniecharbonneau  Tales From Retail:

I work in a tanning salon, for the latter half of the summer we've been closed on Sundays cause its just been way too slow. We've had a "closed on Sundays until further notice" sign on the door the whole time as well as changed the hours sign to say Sunday-closed. I had an older couple come in, and right after I greet them with my smiling face I can see the anger.. "We came here yesterday and you were closed! Theres nothing that says CLOSED either." "Yes sir, we are closed on Sundays!". "Well I just wanna know what we can get for our lost time!".

At this point I am thinking that somehow he thinks he lost tanning minutes off his account somehow like thinking they expired or something?- so I'm like "Oh you didn't lose anything you still have X minutes on your account!".

"Excuse me? You don't think that the time we WASTED, to come here to get tanned, which is WHAT YOU OFFER? ISNT IT? Is worth ANYTHING? We just want to be reimbursed for our time."

why why why are people like this lol

--u/stephaniecharbonneau

From u/TheNovelleFive Tales From Retail:

I help out in this yarn store, it’s my first time there since the manager was replaced. (I’m not an employee, I’m the owner’s daughter who help out, so the manager seems to think I’m less experienced than I am. I actually own a different yarn company.)

Customer walks in, OL, for old lady, with a friend. (F). Manager= M

OL: I’m looking for a recipe I saw on the internet. It was for X yarn.

M: it was their own recipe?

OL: yes with the logo. But I want to use a different yarn.

(Our store actually don’t have X yarn and it says in their copyright policy that they are only to be used to promote THEIR yarn. But I’m not about to bring that up. All their recipes are free on their website.)

So M opens their website.

OL: I didn’t use THAT website! A different one!

Me: if it was their recipe it’s in their archives.

OL: but I used a different website.

M: well what website did you use?

I’m a bit shocked she’s actually about to let others wait while she searches the internet for whatever blog or pinterest post she saw. But whatever. I go see if F needs help. She’s really weird, says no and walks to a different room. (Big store in an old house.) Go back to main room where all customers are. Manager still haven’t found anything.

Me: if you just tell me what weight it was for and a couple keywords I can find it in their archives.

OL: sweetie let the adult do her job, this is a complicated craft. Such a shame they don’t have needlework class for girls anymore, young people know nothing about it now.

Whatever, I help other customers but there’s no way for them to pay before OL is done. I keep my eyes on the friend too, who is searching through some really fancy designer yarn. She’s holding about 120€ worth of yarn.

OL: there! That is the site I used!

She points to the google logo.

M: oh that’s a good website!

They put the keywords in, click the top result, it takes them to the official website I told them to use.

OL: there it is! See old people aren’t as useless as you think.

I then see F starting to walk fast towards the exit.

Me: excuse me, you need to pay for that!

She runs.

I go to the manager, tells her that F just walked off with 120€ worth of yarn. I get absolutely no reaction, she keeps chitchatting with OL for five minutes, mention how useless young people are a couple times. Manager insults my tattoo. The recipe is printed out and OL leaves with it and buys nothing. This took about 30 minutes. A lot of people were willing to shop for those 30 minutes, but left since they had to wait for OL. We lost 120€ plus any money those other customers would have paid.

TLDR: new manager lets customer belittle me, spends 30 minutes googling for something we don’t sell, ignores a fairly large theft.

--u/TheNovelleFive

From u/MissAcedia Tales From Retail:

So this was originally a comment on another post about the first time I caught this woman stealing but YESTERDAY SHE CAME BACK AND TRIED IT AGAIN because [insert quote about "insanity" here].

So for some background: I work at a spa and one of our clients is this old lady that has been coming to one of the owners for her nails since the dawn of time. She's at least in her 70s and is a royal pain in the ass because she ALWAYS comes in at least 30 mins late... we literally have to tell her her appointment is at 3:30 when it's actually 4. The owner has let her get away with it for so long that she just does it regularly now. We don't usually care because it only wastes the owner's time. Then after her last appointment I caught her stealing a bottle of hair product right off the display counter in front of me. She had already paid for her service, waited until my coworker and I got busy at the desk, then walked it over to our sitting area where her purse was, put it in and zipped it up. In shock I confronted her where she tried to play dumb then insisted she just wasn't paying attention and was going to ask how much it was. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I told both the owners. The one thinks she's just senile and the other who does her services does not. I thought in horror how she usually spends a good 20 minutes puttering around our retail area after every appointment and wonder how much stuff she has made off with. The owner decided to just watch her going forward so I alerted the front desk to watch her like a hawk.

FF to yesterday which was her first appointment since the one where I caught the client (C) stealing. After her appointment she started her typical tour of the retail area to look and touch and open everything and anything with a small open-topped bag on her arm. We were busy at the desk so I asked my coworker (S) to "tidy the retail shelves" with a quick whispered explanation as to why. S grabbed a rag and proceeded to clean shelves while shadowing C like it was specifically what we were paying her for. She proceeded to customer service the SHIT out of C, volunteering information on each of the products, answering C's hundreds of questions, etc. I kid you not this woman "shopped" for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. Poor S was worn out from her questions but the retail area has never looked cleaner. C sighed and told us at the desk "I can't shop today but I did look, bye!" She ALMOST got to the front door but got distracted by our display of expensive leather purses. S looked like she had just gotten back the trenches only to be barked at to get back out there and proceeded to start "dusting" the desk next to the purses. C must have taken down every single purse, looked at the price tag (several hundred dollars each) and put them back. I looked away for a second to answer a question from another coworker and heard S squeak: "C! You have one of our purses!" I whipped my head around and there's C with one foot out the door with one of the smaller purses tucked under her arm. I came around the desk to take it from her and put it back and she puts her hand on my arm and goes "you MUST watch me my dear, my memory is not so good!" Yeah ok then.

I start showing her the sale bags when I happen to look in her bag and see a brand new travel makeup brush... the exact brand we carry. I know we have some of these in kits... kits she was looking in. I tell her I'm just going to see if we have any more sale purses in the back (so she doesn't leave) and I rush over to the makeup kits and sure enough one is missing a travel brush. I came back over with the kit in hand and tell her "C, you have one of our travel brushes in your bag." She proceeds to put on a very shitty "oh what do you mean??!" show as I pull out the brush. She then says by far the dumbest excuse for stealing I've ever heard:

C: Oh it must have fallen in my bag when I opened the kit.

OH OK THAT SOUNDS COMPLETELY PLAUSIBLE /s It would have sounded 2% less bullshitty if she hadn't then wandered over to another set of travel brushes and said "oh I need some of those but I can't afford it right now." Like do you expect me to go "oh ok then steal it from us, totally ok!!"

"I'm old" isn't an excuse, keep your sticky fingers to yourself.

--u/MissAcedia