From  elsaar, Tales From Retail:

So this happened at work last Christmas.

I work in a family owned jewellers. The store literally had 4 employees at that point - the owner, owner's son, another girl and me. This story happened between the owner and a little 10-12 year old boy around Christmas. For context I'll just say that we were moving premises and tried to get rid of all little bits of stock. So we had loads of colorful beads meant for charm bracelets, and loads of silver chains. We really struggled to sell the beads. The marketing genius that my shop owner is, she just stuck a bead on a chain and sold them around Christmas for £14.99. Mainly kids bought them for parents since they couldn't afford more.

And now the story happened at a busy time about a week before Christmas. I was stood right next to it so I overheard it all. I don't remember exact words but I'll write the point of it. SH - shop owner, LK - little kid.

LK walks in.

SH - "Hello! Are you looking for anything in particular today?"

LK - "Do you have anything for £5?"

SH - "I'm sure we can find you something." She goes off and grabs one of those silver bead necklaces. "You can have this for £5."

LK - "Thank you, it's for my mum."

SH - hands me the cash to take it to the till. I take it to the till and the shop owner is putting the little box in a bag. She then tells me to go back to the till and bring him £1 change.

LK - starts tearing up.

SH - (concerned) "What's wrong?"

LK - "My mum has cancer and I really wanted to get her something nice. Thank you." and he cries even more.

SH - starts crying, waves me back to the till to bring the £5 back to him. Leans over the counter and hugs the little boy and she tears up even more. Then shoves the £5 note back to him. So they just stood hugging there for a while and crying and then the boy said thanks and was on his way. So the kid walked into the shop with £5. Left with £6 and a necklace for his mum.

Came home to tell my boyfriend this story, he cried a little bit. My boss is a bit of a perfectionist pain sometimes but at other times she does things like this.

-- elsaar

From  Amezzeray, Tales From Retail:

So I'm a supervisor in a smallish grocery store. There was only 2 of us on so during a quiet period I took my colleague off for a break and manned the till. This exchange happened as I'm scanning and bagging (M = me. C = customer). This lady, a customer who IS NOT one of our regulars, had 3 small children with her.

M: So how are you today?

C (while trying to stop the kids touch the counter stock): Not my best day today.

M: Oh no! That's a shame.

C: People just won't stop hassling me today. I have 3 kids, my fella is away for work and people just won't stop calling me and knocking on my door and... do tell me if I'm boring you.

M: Never you mind (I hold my arms out) rant away at me!

C: It's just... Do you know what it's like to try and please everyone? To smile until your cheeks hurt? (Voice raising quite a bit now) To be polite to absolute inconsiderate... ignorant ... IDIOTS?!?!?!

I look at her and look down at the till, look up at the shop...

M: Well... (Pointing at the surrounding area)

She bursts into laughter, then after a couple of seconds I can't help but chuckle.

As she's paying:

C: Oh thanks for that! I needed a laugh and you've brightened up my day!

M: Glad to help (big effing grin on my face)

Thought this was a worthy one to use as my first entry onto this sub. Exchanges like this are few and far between in our circle. And it's lovely. It's days like this that make me realize that working in retail isn't that bad (most of the time)

-- Amezzeray

From Lawsomepossom, Tales From Retail:

I used to work at a "bakery" in the mall that mostly sold cookies and cookie-cakes. We only make the cakes by order (although it only has to be 15-30 minutes in advance), and keep all of the completed order forms for about a week in case there are any issues, discrepancies, etc.

One day, I am helping customers as usual, and this nice couple hands me a $50 that they apparently found in front of the cash register. I was pretty stunned that not only a) did someone drop $50, but b) that this couple didn't just snatch it and run.

I took it to the back, and noticed it was triple folded in a strange way; not enough to be done on purpose, but too creased to be from a tri-fold wallet. I remembered one older gentleman who had just payed for a cookie cake about 5 minutes earlier with a card from a money clip, so I went to the completed order box, called the number and got his Wife on the phone (W).

Me: Hi, this is Name from Store, could you ask the gentleman who picked up this cake to come back, we think he left something at the counter.

W: He's still in the mall, I'll go ahead and let him know!

[couple minutes later, gentleman (GM) arrives]

Me: Hello Sir! Have you happened to noticed anything missing?

GM: Well, I got a call from my wife saying I had, so I checked everything, my keys, clip, phone. I'm pretty sure I've lost a $50 bill actually.

I pulled it out of my back pocket, and he is completely dumbfounded.

GM: That's incredible.. You know you didn't have to do that..

Me: [something trying to sound noble, can't quite remember]

He ended up handing me a $10 as a Thank-You, which was my largest tip over the 2 years I spent there. I felt obligated to find the money's rightful owner because of that selfless couple who didn't take it to begin with because I know 100% that I would have snagged it immediately.

--Lawsomepossom

From  rally_parakeet, Tales From Retail:

This happened on Tuesday during my shift at the grocery store. I'm almost always running the express lane, but the schedules were shifted around that day, so I was on a regular register, meaning I had to deal with all the extreme couponers, huge orders, rain checks, and other problems you don't get on express.

So I was looking ahead to what I figured would be a pretty stressful 5 hour shift. 30 minutes in, I get an elderly lady who has a whole cart full of canned food, soda, and meat (she was getting ready for a cookout) but only had $160 on her EBT card. Start thinking "here we go again" and bracing myself for a bunch of meat go-backs. We get over $160 and I try to help her figure out if she wants me to take other things off, or just take everything else off the belt. At this point the lady behind her offers to pay for her remaining $50 worth of meat. Now this by itself, seeing someone do a nice thing for a fellow customer like that, just about made my day. I ring out the rest of the meat on the conveyor, the old lady expresses her appreciation, even gives the other person a hug for paying for her food, and then leaves.

Then I'm moving onto the nice wonderful customer's large order and thanking her for doing such a nice thing, when she mentions that she remembered talking to me about my upcoming trip to Minnesota about a month ago, and she wondered how it went. Now TBF she is originally from Minnesota (and we live in New York) so that would obviously stick out in her mind, but the fact that she remembered an interaction with a random grocery checker from a month ago just blew me away. And she seemed surprised or even put off when I thanked her again for being so kind... as if this is how she treats everyone. (Holy shit people from Minnesota are soooo fucking nice).

At the end of the sale I used the little up arrow button that feeds extra paper through my receipt printer to create some blank space at the top, and wrote her a note that just said "thank you for brightening my day". No idea if she saw it.

Nice lady from Tuesday afternoon: I know you probably don't read this sub, but thank you again for going out of your way to be nice to random people at the grocery checkout. The world needs more people like you.

There's absolutely nothing fun about working a minimum wage job to try to earn money for college, especially when you know you have no intentions of staying in the retail industry and working your way up to management. Every afternoon I put up with long lines of incredibly rude customers who think I exist to cater to their every desire. These jobs can be soul-crushingly boring almost every day, and when I get to interact with people like you, it's just the boost I need to get through a shift actually feeling like I like my job. Thanks again.

-- rally_parakeet

From  MissPookieOokie, Tales From Retail:

At my store we have little metal model cars on display. There are all kinds of makes and models. As I was checking out a customer his, maybe 4 year old, son wondered over to the display.

K will be kid, d will be dad and me will be me.

Me, "Ok will that be everyth....."

I'm cut off by loud and very contagious laughter. This wasn't just a giggle, this was deep from the belly laughter. Kid runs up holding a bus.

K, "Look dad! Look at this. It's a bus!"

Looks at me and between laughs says

"Why do you sell these? It's a little bus! Why? These are so silly! Who needs a small bus?!"

I couldn't help but start to laugh. He was the cutest and his joy in our little bus was so contagious.

Me, "How do you think ants get to school? They need a bus!"

K, "That's silly!" Still laughing his little heart out.

I then show him the doors open and the stop sign swings out. This only started another round of laughter.

D, "Ok, son put it up now or the ants will be stuck at school."

K, barely able to talk "Ok."

As he's walking away I asked the dad if I could buy it for him. He declined but I insisted. There was no way that little boy was walking out without his bus. They left happily and the boy was giggling all the way out with his new bus. It just made my whole day!

The silly bus:

-- MissPookieOokie

From PoorCashier, Tales From Retail:

It happened not even a week ago.

There rarely are persons speaking English at the register (cashiers as well as customers), since I live in the very east of Germany in the countryside, so here's barely any tourism.

What's more, my store is located ten minutes from the border to the Czech Republic and Poland, it's a crossing of three countries there.

Now to the story: I had a Czech/Polish woman at my register, surprisingly speaking English with me. She was a very sweet, young woman and we small talked a bit. She bought two carts full of items, which is normal, since Polish/Czech like to shop in Germany, due to the items having a higher quality (according to them).

Now, the thing is, there were a lot of customers, since it was one of our busiest times of the day. The woman was very ashamed for her buying so much amd holding up the line, and she was very nervous.

I always tried to keep her calm. She's a good customer for buying so much; she doesn't need to be ashamed; it's alright; she can take her time, since the others can also get in line at another register.

It seemed to help and in the end I helped her with her baging, which we normally don't do in our store. She was very kind so I wanted to give her a good service and make her day a bit better.

After a while, we were done.

Woman: I'm so sorry for holding up the line, I didn't mean to stress you...

Me: It's alright, really :) It's my job after all.

Woman: You did a very good job. You're very outstanding and so smiley and friendly!

I was flattered and it really brought a big smile to my face, which lasted until I clocked out.

After I clocked out two hours later, it turned out that she left a message at the customer service desk for my manager, praising me into heaven, what an outstanding worker I am and how my managers better should aknowledge that.

And what's more, she left some sweets from her shopping for me to take home!

This is probably the sweetest customer I ever had until now and I really appreciate it. Makes me smile until today and I hope every retail worker has a customer like this at least once!

--PoorCashier