Anyone who has worked in the customer service industry knows, the customer is NOT always right.

In this story, a grocery store clerk gets revenge on a very annoying customer… without spitting in the food.

The revenge is even more clever, and for the customer, even more annoying.

Let’s check it out.

A customer screamed at me once, so now I eat his favourite food

When I was a university student, I worked in a little supermarket for over a year.

I was 19 at the time, and since UK minimum wages are age-based, I was making very, very little.

Slow and steady wins the race.

We had a really complicated machine for printing and cashing lottery tickets, and any corrections and refunds had to be signed off by the manager who was never around when we needed him.

Cashing one ticket alone took something like 15 steps – it was wild.

So, for the first few weeks, I was quite slow at it in order to avoid making any mistakes.

Impatient customers can be intimidating, especially to the uninitiated.

Well, on my second day there, an old guy turned up and in addition to some food, he wanted a few lottery tickets.

He didn’t seem to appreciate my lack of speed, and leaned in to about 8 inches away from my face to scream “YES!” when I tried to check if the numbers I was about to print off were correct.

In retrospect, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, but I was young and very small, so his screaming and towering over me was enough to make me feel upset and afraid.

Not exactly crying in H Mart, but close.

He looked very pleased with himself for making the young girl earning a few pounds an hour tremble with fear.

I’d already had a bit of retail experience under my belt from a prior job, but that day, I cried in the employee bathrooms for the very first time.

The job was not great, so I was brought to tears by customers a few more times during my time there. But I was broke and a fast learner, so I was always available for overtime.

Sarcasm, much?

I ended up working 45-55 hours a week, and the guy turned out to be a regular, which meant that he had absolutely known I was new. I got to serve him often over the next year or so.

Joy.

I also got the hang of things, and did pretty much everything else there – from training others, keeping the refrigerators’ temperature log, ordering stock, logging and clearing waste (expired items and those with a broken seal), to reducing items which had reached their sell-by date – 25% off at 9am, 50% off at 12pm, and finally 75% off at 4pm.

Well, one benefit was that I learned a few things about the miser who had screamed at me, like how he was nasty to everyone working there (especially the younger ladies), how he was retired and seemingly not very well-off, and how he appeared to keep track of food sell-by dates.

Hot tip about the refrigerated foods.

He would regularly turn up soon after certain meat-based items had been reduced for the final time.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being old or on a budget, but it’s always a bad idea to scream at people just because you’re having a bad day and they’re not allowed to defend themselves.

Especially the ones who handle your food.

The other benefit was that – because I was working there full time – I was the one serving him 99% of the time, which gave me ample opportunities to deliver my petty revenge.

And it was going to be a slow burn – like cooking a frog, as they say.

What did we say about slow and steady?

Being a broke university student, I figured that I could both stick it to him and save myself a bit money, since food price reductions stacked with my employee discount.

He never screamed at me again, but for 10 months, I hid all of his nearly-expired favourites behind the dairy items, and purchased them for myself once he’d left in a huff after finding them gone.

I didn’t even care for sausages all that much, but I regularly ate something called “toad in a hole” out of sheer spite.

Toad-ally spiteful.

The vile git probably managed to buy reduced sausages maybe five times in 10 months.

He got visibly more and more upset over time, because other shoppers had seemingly caught onto his strategy.

I always nodded sympathetically: “Sorry, we’ve sold the last ones. Maybe try again later in the week?”

I actually rather like toad in a hole now, and have it as a special revenge treat. It reminds me of that time I cooked a frog for nearly a year.

Don’t scream at the people who handle your food.

Cooking a frog by eating toad in the hole? That’s some unconventional petty revenge.

What do the comments on Reddit have to say?

This commenter says the employee was almost TOO nice.

Here’s an upvote for toad in the hole.

Another user says the revenge coulda been more direct.

Whereas this person says, great job being stealthy.

And one more comment in the column of, too bad the customer didn’t see it.

Whether or not you like toad in the hole, this revenge was a hole in one.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.