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.

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…

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…

Anyone who has worked in the food industry knows that a lot can go wrong with your meal. Between food deliveries, kitchen mishaps, and server errors, it's a miracle that any customer gets food that's uncontaminated by shenaniganry, but the Karen in our next story got the short end of the stick when it came to health and safety guidelines.

When we all graduated high school, we thought that that would be the end to the restroom tyranny, but for the gas station employee in this next story, the obsession with bathroom breaks followed them into the working world.

Mama Bears are the fiercest competitor at the store, collecting goods and gifts for their offspring. However, as they're vying for front-of-the-line positions, fighting for special deals, and demanding that retail employees jump through hoops for the purchases, mothers can quickly transform into Karens.

A server's credibility is a fragile, yet desperately important thing to maintain if you're a restaurant manager. You wouldn't want to scare off the last of the good ones over a feeble hunch… right? Well, that's exactly what one hot-headed manager did in our next story.

These coworkers just couldn't get along with their store's greeter. You'd think that as a greeter, you'd have to have a sparkling personality, or at least be pretty easy-going. Greeters are placed at the front of big chain retail stores to say hello to each shopper who enters. They can point shoppers toward the right sections of the store, and many of them check receipts as customers are exiting the store. A lot of times, these positions are given to older workers. That way they can sit down an…

Have you ever done a deep cleaning of your house and discovered silly oddities and funny trinkets that you imagined were long gone? Crusted with dust and buried in the forlorn corners of our homes, there are hidden treasures from decades past that are revealed when we take a moment to clean up our space. Like the moment you uncrumble a $20 bill in your winter coat, there's no better feeling than finding your own precious valuables squirreled away in the clutter.

These retail workers have a bone to pick with some of their worst customers. Imagine you're a customer at a retail store , about to peruse the clothing section or toy aisle or garden section. But you've got your to-go coffee cup with you, and halfway through your trip, you've drunk all of it. What to do now? If you're like a surprising amount of shoppers, you'll just take the cup and leave it on a random shelf. It might be half-full or totally empty, but either way, these shoppers think their i…

As every retail employee knows, shoppers change their persona when they walk into a store. Nobody knows how or why, but even the most benevolent people can transform into feral Karens as soon as they walk in front of a store cashier, pillaging the aisles like there's no tomorrow.

Following these orders struck this employee as odd, but they did as they were instructed . After all, what the bosses say goes, even if you think it's the silliest thing you've ever heard. Recently, there's been some online discourse about how small shops make enough money to stay in business. The basic premise of people's question is: How does a tiny store with just weekend foot traffic or tourist traffic manage to stay afloat? What if just a few customers come in each day? How does the place…

This employee got stuck working with a supervisor they were particularly not fond of. That happens in life. You can't always work with your work bestie. It makes a huge difference when you have fun coworkers. You both have to be there for an entire six- or eight-hour shift, so you may as well try to make it enjoyable. Some coworkers have a great sense of humor. Others you'll get to know on a deep level and know all of their interesting lore. Having deep conversations while folding shirts togeth…

The only people more confused than these customers were the befuddled employees trying to help them. If you've ever worked in customer service for any amount of time, you already know that some customers just need to rant and vent and get all their anger out. You can offer them solutions to their problems, and that's not good enough for them. Sometimes they'll just reject your ideas outright and demand a manager. As you can read about in one story about a block of cheese, some customers have no…

Managers never want to have to tell an employee they're being let go , but sometimes their hand is forced. If the employee is talking back to customers or caught on camera stealing money out of the till, sometimes the manager will have to fire them for the good of the company. When u/edge231 asked, “Managers of Reddit, what is the stupidest thing an employee did that forced you to fire them?” there were over 15,000 people who chimed in with their craziest stories. Folks, today I learned a fasci…