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…

If there's one person you don't want to mess with, it's an EMT who has just finished their shift… EMTs are some of the hardest working individuals with a job that necessitates sleep deprivation, self-sacrifice, and trauma that reaches far, far above their pay grade. Even a shift for them that is “not bad” would be enough to send the rest of us looking for another line of work. While they're some of the nicest people, every EMT I've ever known personally gets through their job by being partially…

It's a funny thing, really, leaving a job. One day, a huge part of your life is handling the trials and tribulations of your role, the emotional turmoil of navigating the uniquely terrible sociopolitical drama of your workplace, and the stress of your capricious boss's unpredictable reactions; the next, none of it matters anymore—you're never stepping foot back there again. Of course, the trauma and lasting burnout may take some time to rebound from, but ten years down the track, the very worst…

It's kinda sorta hard to dress too casually for a job you don't have. For one thing, it's not your job, and, for another—well, it's not your job. As long as you're wearing a shirt and shoes, you can pretty much go anywhere you'd like… Although those signs usually fail to mention any requirement for pants, so that one's up to you.

Supermarkets are already a relatively overwhelming experience for most of us, akin to navigating a labyrinth that's been starkly lit by harsh-white fluorescent lighting while a string of the most infuriatingly mundane acoustic covers of songs that were popular ten years ago play omnipresently throughout.

Karens have the uncanny ability to identify, single out, and berate people who work customer service jobs, accosting them with wanton fury regardless of whether or not they even happen to be working at that time—or are even employed by that place at all.

Being mistaken for a worker by a fellow customer is an embarrassing experience for all involved—they're embarrassed that they made a mistake, and you're embarrassed for having to rebuff a complete stranger when you were simply minding your own business with some mid-shopping dissociation. Usually, at this point, you'd both abashedly go your own way and pretend that each other doesn't exist like good strangers do when you eventually cross paths again in the store. This goes sideways when the mis…

People in petty positions of power have the uncanny propensity to overestimate the scope and reach of that power—almost as if they imagine their position as an assistant manager of a box store to hold as much power as the appointed leader of the Istari. Actually, that analogy works quite well… since Saruman also had a tendency to overestimate his power over others. “You have no power here.” Managers love a good schedule, and they also like complaining about that schedule and blaming the schedul…

A Karen calls an arts and crafts store and demands a pizza… No, this isn't a punchline for a joke—but everyone who has worked in restaurants or retail wishes that it was. These workers have seen their fair share of wild demands and demanding wild persons—and it only takes one screaming customer meltdown in the lobby of your establishment to make you reconsider your entire line of work. But at least in person, most people have the good graces to behave politely, but phone conversations and email…

It's easy to get lost in a fantasy about putting an entitled person in their place—though the perfect response usually doesn't come to you in the moment, but rather when you're in the shower sometime later. There, in a dream daze fueled by hot-running water, your wits are sharpened to a knife's edge, and the resulting clarity brings forth the cutting remark you wish you'd thought of earlier. Seldom do you get the chance to live this fantasy out and take your adversary to task—but this guy claim…

It turns out we might not be very good at doing a job that isn't actually ours, and that shouldn't come as much of a surprise, except to people like this Karen who refuse to listen to you when you tell them that you don't actually work there. Sure, we've all probably mistaken a complete stranger for an employee of the establishment we're patronizing, but continuing to insist that they must work there and are doing their job poorly after being corrected is downright insane. This college student…

It should be understood, at this point, that straying into a store with a uniform consisting solely of a specifically colored shirt—whilst wearing that same color of shirt—is a risky move. It should also be understood that even wearing a similar color shirt is likely to attract every Karen and disgruntled manager within a 100-meter radius. If you choose to do this, you do so at your own peril, but at least you can write a story about it later to share online. This guy happened to stray into a l…

Getting fired from a job where you didn't work is a bit like losing a race you weren't entered into in the first place; it's really hard to be upset about it when you didn't even know you had something at stake. This customer shared their story of witnessing another fellow customer ending up on the wrong end of a stray Karen's fury when they visited a “Wall of Marts” during a trip to the United States. They share their surprise at realizing that the people they had read about in “People of Wall…

It's often said that we should seek to better the world by helping those around us, but what if those people needing help are demanding help and being incredibly rude about it? Better to let the world burn if that's how it's going to be. There's no shortage of entitled people who have a 6th sense for the goodwill of others and look to latch onto that goodwill-doer like a leech and absorb all of the goodwill that is to be had. This student was helping a retired teacher from their school when the…

There are a lot of challenging things about working retail, but by far, the most challenging is dealing with entitled customers. It never ceases to amaze, the types of people you encounter when working these jobs. The very idea of receiving the most base levels of “service” gets some people foaming at the mouth as they rabidly seek to wield the most assuredly strained semblance of power. This lust is blinding, and soon they turn to

It really is a shame that our society has turned into one where helping others is associated with being in a lower class. The number of stories where someone is rudely addressed by another customer and assumed to be a worker just because they went out of their way to help or be pleasant to someone is astounding. In each of these scenarios, even the most basic acknowledgment that the person working is a human being immediately marks them as a recipient of rude demands. This story, shared by Redd…