Stories From Behind the Counter, Tales from the Workplace

One of my favorite things about Wednesdays is the big deposit I make at the end of the day.

One of the other things is the coming together of customers/friends and the exchange of our workplace stories. It seems like I always have a tale to tell about a wacky customer and I'm thankful that Croatoa and Seanyx are willing to listen.

But lest you think I do all the talking, I'll have it known that Seanyx and Croatoa both also work in retail and have their own stories to tell.

I have started this thread in the hopes that they will share those stories here and also for anyone else who works with customers, for interesting characters or in unique circumstances. Share, vent, whatever you want to call it!

Some of you have already heard this, but I wanted to make a "proper" post for this thread so I'm repeating it here.

My first customer this morning was a guy named Cory. Cory works for Orkin and is in his fancy Orkin Army uniform when he comes in on Wednesdays. This morning Cory wanted to warn me that in the back of my building some bees are building a little hive, It's pretty high up, on the peak of the roof overhang. Cory wanted me to know that bees really like cinder blocks (which the building is made of) and that "just last week" he was in Burlington (Iowa, not Vermont) helping out in a bee infestation at a K-Mart. Seems as if the bees had gotten into the cinder-blocks and started building a hive in the hollow spaces in the blocks.

According to Cory, this hive was over 7 feet tall and a "state expert" had to be brought in to assist and oversee the operation. Said Cory, with wide eyes, "It's really creepy to see a bee hive taller than you are!!!"

Questions I was left with after Cory's story (but did not ask):
How does one become a "state expert" on bees?
Why do your Orkin shirts have those dumb epaulets?
What is Orkin Army boot camp like?

MWA HA HA HA HA

One of my favorite stories is a little vulgar (imagine that) and is from working in a grocery store, maybe the 2nd or 3rd year I did. I worked in the back room and helping around on the sales floor, and from time to time, when it got really busy, I would go help the cashiers and the service desk. One of these times, it was amazingly busy, must have been around the holidays, and I was helping a lady pack up her groceries. We had these boxes, "Econo-boxes" that were cardboard tubs with nice handles and were great for packing stuff in instead of using sacks all the time.

She must have been about 85 years old, and the sweetest, nicest thing you have ever seen, just the little ol' granma stereotype to the tee. And the little old ladies loved chatting with me, so I would talk them up and put on the charm (it is hidden, but it is there).

Well, she must have picked up some produce, as it often got sprayed down with water (both to keep it fresh and to add to the weight), because there was a puddle of water in the box as I was packing the stuff up for her. And this sweet little ol's lady said the following to me(paraphrased):

"Would you look at how wet my box is, it looks like someone was licking it"

I had to put her groceries down and just walk away as quick as I could, tears streaming down my face, biting my lip, up the stairs to our break room, where I laid down upon the floor and laughed for a solid 2-3 minutes. Everyone kept asking me what was so funny and I couldn't breathe, let alone speak to answer them.

I felt terrible just running out on her and the cashier, but I couldn't help it, but luckily someone else replaced me in my absence immediately. And everytime I saw her in the store after that for a few years, I would just start cracking up.

Not such a bad experience . . .but most of those for me involve "well, then he took a swing at me"

As mentioned before I work at a major retailer as an overnightmanager, but I have been working there for 10 years and worked many positions . My first 2 positions were in loss prevention(not what we called it) . The cool thing about LP at the time was we didn't technically work for individual stores like the rest of the employees we worked for the district so we had a store we spent the most of our time at but would also work at other stores for support. Also another thing is if you were in another store and something went down it wasn't discouraged to make an apprehension and just fill out your time card for the time spent on it.

Now that I have set that up. I was shopping at another store and as was usual for us at the time we would usually stop by the office see who was working and just shoot the breeze for a few minutes. So while I'm there talking to the guy on duty he tells me that he is watching someone who was a known thief, and also a check forger.
The only problem is he was the only one working that day and the guy knew who he was and he was having a hard time following him and getting enough on him to apprehend him , and would I help out for a few minutes. So I agreed , and asked who I was looking for he said the crossdresser over in the womens department and I coudln't miss him/her. Now this person was known amongst all of us but I had never seen he/she before so didn't know what to expect. So I go to look and while I'm out on the floor I see someone bent over looking at bras couldn't get a good look but this person looked big and took a shot so I waited for them to get up . To my absolute horror they did . 6'4", hairy ass legs , almost full grown goatee, in a skirt v-neck, and the worst fake boobs ever. I almost threw up when I saw them. I begin to follow this disaster around for awhile the whole time I'm in contact with the guy working via a walkie talkie every time I'm talking to him he is laughing. This dude is getting bra and panties, makeup, feminine hair and body products. The word around town was that he was a fighter when you tried to apprehend him so to be honest I didn't really want to get the guy which normally wasn't an issue. Luckily the guy got spooked when he saw my buddy getting in position outside the doors to back me up and so he dropped the stuff a few minutes later and left. That was probably the most nervous I ever was working that job.

We *KNEW* we could count on both of you for some great stories.

John- I totally didn't see that one coming at all. Fan-freakin-tastic!

Spicolli - So, you were totally bummed you didn't get to frisk her?

Well luckily for me I did get the pleasure of the "accidental" brush bys which almost made up for it.

We need a throw-up smiley, but I guess spicolli can have this one instead -

I was thinking the same thing after I posted.

One of my favorites is the customer who was looking for a piece of peg board, for what reason who knows. He comes in asks me if we have any peg board that he can have he'll give me ten dollars for it. So I go downstairs and find this old piece that is going in the trash and bring it to the guy, ask him if this will work for him, and he palms me the money like this is some shady drug deal and leaves. I would have given it to him for free but he offered money so why not? So weird.

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that I did not make it clear that, yes, I did keep that money. I pocketed that money like a shady drug dealer.

I work at a drug store with a postal sub-station. The store was fairly busy last Wednesday evening, both cashiers were busy with customers. We ran out of Delivery Confirmation forms at the sub-station so I called the grocery store across the street to find out if they had any that we could get from them. While I was on hold I noticed a young man, who may or may not have been of age, standing by the liquor which was in full view from where I was standing. As I watched him he seemed nervous and stood in the same spot staring for what seemed to be a long time. Maybe he was gathering up the courage to go through with what he knew was a stupid idea. I saw him reach up, grab a bottle of Admiral Nelson, test the security cap on top of the bottle, make eye contact with me, and head toward the the store's aisles. He then made a "swift" cut at the edge of the registers and started to head for the door. Never having taken my eyes off of him I set the phone down and follow him out the door. He must have sensed me coming up behind him because he turned his head, saw me and started to bolt. I reached out, grabbed his shirt collar, yanked, heard the shirt tear, the kid goes down. I tell him to drop it, he says "I dropped it, I dropped it", I push him up against the door and tell him we need to go back into the store and he ducks my arm and runs out side. It had been raining so the pavement outside was still wet. The guy runs out the door slips and falls arms out to the side and hits the pavement. Hilarious! I then shout at him never to come back here again, and he flips me off as he runs away. I don't know what he was thinking. Did he think that because I was on the phone that I wasn't paying attention? Did he think he was being sneaky? What the hell? But seriously when he fell I could hardly keep from laughing.

I so wish everyone could have seen you act out this scene...and what I would give to see the security footage of you grabbing him!

Also, did he not realize you made EYE CONTACT with him? Durh!

I'm currently trying to be wrangled into a conversation by a girl (megan) who thinks that Zenoscopes's Wonderland series is a DIRECT SEQUEL from the Alice in Wonderland movie.

"Well, they make Alice a lot older in this book"
"I guess everyone just lost their minds after the movie"
"So is the Beyond Wonderland tales after the movie?"

If you don't know Zenoscope's books they are basically "bad girl" versions of Grimm's fairy tales and stuff like that, a little sexed up, a little weird. Their mai series is called Grimms Fairy Tales and they also dolots of specials about specific characters. Well, Megan thinks that it's all tied together, these books, the original Alice cartoon and the new Alice movie. I said "I think the new one is supposed to be a little more scary and creepy" and she said "WHAT DO YOU MEAN CREEPY?!??!?!" And she brought up an old issue of Grimms Fairy Tales, open to an ad for their Cheshire Cat special and said "I THINK THEY ARE MAKING A CHESIRE CAT MOVIE!!!!!" I had to explain that the date was from June of 2008 so I think it's just for a comic book special they were doing, not a movie.

I made the mistake of calling the 'Queen of Hearts' the 'Red Queen' and after I corrected myself she kept on saying "BUT WHO IS THE RED QUEEN!?!?!" and I had to say "I meant the Queen of Hearts" and she would say "THE RED QUEEN AND THE QUEEN of HEARTS ARE THE SAME PERSON!?!??!?"

I'm pretty sure Megan is one of those people that would be willing to help out a Nigerian prince.

Her and her brother are very much alike, they like to start conversations with me as if I'm already in their head and know what they are talking about.

One day, brother Jason went on for a good 10 minutes about how the music from the Terminator Salvation show sounded like it was taken directly from the Terminator movie. And just when you think he's done talking about it he says "IT'S LIKE THEY TOOK THE MUSIC RIGHT FROM THE MOVIE!"

During the Wonderland conversation Jason was browsing our trade paperback spinner rack and had such a difficult time figuring out how to put the books back that he let a whole pile of them fall over, cracking and breaking 2 shelves on their way down.

By the way, they both speak very loudly with crackling voices, hence the all caps.

Also, they like to crouch while looking at books and will sometimes take up a whole aisle.

Awesome I have another one you just reminded me of but it is very long , and don't have time right now. A little tease it involves a couple and there young daughter messing things up, and an employee finally flipping out on them.

This is not so much a story as it's one of my fave questions I've been asked while at work. I work at a local comic shop once a week and really get a kick out of helping people find what they are looking for. As I'm sure you all know, you get asked some crazy stuff at a comic shop, but this one made me stand and stare at the person, just unable to answer for for a handful of minutes due to the vagueness and scope of books that could fall into the catergory:

"Do you have any comic books about time travel?"

... after a moment of silence I said ... "Timecop?"