You buy it, you break it … wait, that's not right. A lot of stores have the policy of making you purchase an item if you break it. It's often found at antique stores or vintage shops, or other shops that are crammed with fragile items. Some of them make you carry your backpack on the front of your body, or leave your bags up front, to make sure you don't accidentally swipe something off a shelf. Accidents happen, and sometimes things just topple to the ground, making for an irritating purchase…

Some people have never considered that they can go for a shopping trip without bothering the employees. It's never crossed their mind that they could go grocery shopping without telling a teenage employee that the fruit “was better last week." This is the person who whines to a clothing store employee that the fabric seems cheap. Some customers get a thrill out of whining about unimportant, and sometimes unsolvable, first-world problems.

In retail, the number of customers who are convinced they know better than you is endless… Better than you when it comes to the products, better than you in terms of your store's policies, and better than you when it comes to the legalities under which you're trading. Having access to all the information with little understanding has emboldened people into thinking that they're experts after a few Google searches, even on impressively technical subjects. Of course, the rehearsed script often ru…

When your upper management keeps ignoring you, what do you do? That's when you ask for forgiveness, not permission…

Retail workers could tell you a story or two about their most memorable customers . As a cashier, you may serve hundreds of people each day, so when someone throws a huge fit or is especially impolite, it sticks with you. Whether you're working in a clothing store or a popular spot in the mall or a fast food restaurant, you're bound to get some odd customers. Usually, customers ask the same few questions over and over. But there are exceptions. For example, one person shared that they had a cus…

As employees, we're all just tools in the toolbox of our company. For utility purposes, we perform our function at work and then we clock out–it's simple. But as every worker knows, we all have one coworker on the roster who's not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Attitude is important when it comes to the workplace. Still, the workplace itself is largely responsible for your attitude when you're at work. You can't just demand that your workers be happy and have that be the solution to what is an otherwise miserable job. Yet, one of the first things you're taught in retail is that you should always smile and “greet” “guests” as they walk in the door, setting the stage for an enjoyable experience for them during which they're more likely to fork out more…

Dodgy off-book leave policies are something that you just come to expect after a while of working in the restaurant or retail world. From the first time you go to book leave and are met with the strong insinuation that maybe you shouldn't be taking any leave at all, giving you reasons of being too busy or too understaffed to possibly afford to be a “man down," you're going to be feeling that old resigned feeling of knowing that this is going to be that kind of place. The reality is that you're…

No one loves to admit they are at fault when they make a mistake. It's an uncomfortable feeling, and if the mistake costs money, that is even worse. But, as we are all adults, sometimes you have to own up to your mistakes and pay for what you caused. Not this customer though, he absolutely refused to admit to the damage he caused. In this Reddit story, two customers approached a car wash employee and accused the car wash of causing their cars to crash into each other. The employee, who had to d…

Time may be a construct, but it's the same for everybody. We're all bound by the 60 minutes every hour and the 24 hours in a day–and when you're paid by the hour and working on a strict schedule, time becomes law. For the retail employee in our next story, time became more than just a means to collect their paycheck, it became a great way to get payback on a salty micromanager.

One person's odd fixation is making this retail worker uncomfortable. Retail work can be stressful, but it should never be because of your coworkers. The customers are known to be irritating, and some bosses have quotas that they pressure employees to hit. But your coworkers shouldn't ever be the most stressful part of a retail job, or any job for that matter. If they are, it's time to head to the human resources department, and let them handle the fallout. This person, u/asimplenobody27, has b…

A customer was a bit too eager to shop at a new store in town. At some restaurants that are brand new, a “soft launch” will take place for the first few weeks they're open. During the soft launch, servers are being trained, the kitchen staff is learning how to make the food properly, and therefore the service might be a little slower than normal. That's all well and good for the restaurant industry, but there are no soft launches in retail. That didn't stop this woman from trying to break into…

Let's get the record straight on this issue. If a store's closing time is at 7:00 pm, the employees can stop accepting customers no earlier than 6:50 pm. Even if there are annoying customers that come in 15 minutes before you close, and take their sweet time, you have to be loyal to the closing time that is known to the public. You can't just decide to close 30 minutes earlier just because you feel like it. Much like what the employee in this Reddit story did. A customer came into the store wit…

Different workplaces have different ways of ensuring their employees are doing their jobs properly. One of the main aspects of the job that managers usually take note of is when their employees arrive, and when they leave, so there are a few ways a manager can track his employees' working hours. They can use an app that employees would clock in and out from, they can use a physical card and clock at the office, and they can just use the good ol' trusting system in which they trust their employe…

It takes a certain kind of parent to let their kids run amok in a store. We understand that kids can get rowdy; that's inevitable. We also understand that this mother may have tried to calm them down in the past to no avail. That being said, once they start tampering with the store products and once they start actively disrupting other customers, it's time to take control and at least attempt to restore order. Not only did this woman refuse to try, but she ended up offloading her kids onto anot…

Retail is brutal for a number of reasons, but one of the worst is the fact that you get absolutely no respect from the public whom you're servicing. This is clearly evidenced by the audacity and sheer entitlement they feel in being able to bark orders at you and admonish you for “slacking” as if they're your boss. The thing is, when they're at their own job, they probably browse Reddit and spend ample time gossiping with their own coworkers but for some reason, these sorts of customers seem to…