What would you do if you were standing in line at a store minding your own business when another customer asked you to open a register?

That would probably sound ridiculous because how can you open a register when you don’t work there?

In today’s story, that’s the situation one woman finds herself in, and the other customer takes a long time to understand the situation.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Gave one a taste of her own medicine.

Twas a couple weeks before Christmas,

and in the back of the store,

every department manager stood

hoping they would not draw the short straw.

None of the employees wanted to go to a certain store in their uniform.

The boss had wanted to do some big displays for our store, which meant one of us had to go down to the nearest crafts and homewares place to pick up the balloons he’d orders and a few other things.

We were drawing straws because no one likes running errands to this place.

It’s basically walking into the lion’s den of Ladies Who Insist You Work There; a large number of the customers are either senior citizens or entitled soccer mums.

Their uniform is similar to ours in that we both wear black pants and steel caps, they never have enough staff on and the queues at the till are long no matter when you go.

You cannot walk in there looking even vaguely like you may work in retail or you’re going to get hassled.

As you can guess by reading this, I draw the short straw.

She made it through the store, successfully dodging shoppers’ questions.

I took off my uniform shirt, picked up my backpack, put in my headphones hoping that this would protect me somewhat, and walked into the store which was already shoulder-to-shoulder.

As usual they only had a couple of tills open with lines snaking around the store.

Great.

I breezed through that store avoiding eye contact with everyone, headphone in but off so I can hear what’s going on.

I’m still having loads of people try to catch my eye and wave me down.

By the time I get what I needed I’ve already had to point to my headphones about 15 times because people are just coming up to me and asking me stuff.

She overheard a conversation in line.

I take my place at the end of the massive queue, I’ve got a big trolley stuff and a huge bunch of helium balloons.

There is a group of about 4 older women behind me complaining about how long the line is.

I notice that one woman is talking louder, raising her voice saying something like “they MUST open another till….whatever happened to customer service…”….etc etc.

She’s occasionally clearing her throat and I get the impression she thinks I’m an employee and wants me to overhear.

I was not wrong.

The customer got her attention.

After a couple more minutes of this and very little movement, there’s a tap on my shoulder.

Lady: “Are you going to open a-”

Me: “I don’t work here.” I shove my headphone back in.

A few more minutes go by and the lady is still whinging.

This customer does not give up easily.

Another shoulder tap.

Lady: “Can’t you just-”

Me: “No.” Headphone back in. I’m hoping my bluntness has gotten through to her.

More whinging, more minutes.

She’s seriously not getting it!

Another tap:

Lady: “The line is just very long and we’re in a hu-”

Me: “So go get on a till then.” I’d really had enough of her nonsense by now.

Lady looks like I just told her Wheel of Fortune reruns are cancelled: “Excuse me? I just want to-”

Me: “Yeah I’m in a hurry too, so why don’t YOU open a till?”

The lady finally understood how ridiculous she was being.

Lady: “….I don’t work here, I’m a cust-”

Me: “Neither do I and I’m a customer too, but apparently that doesn’t matter to you, so on you go! Open a till! We’re waiting!”

The look of shock on the face of her and her friends was incredible.

We kind of stared at each other for a second or two while she registered that I wasn’t kidding around, then I turned back and they went back to their muttering.

I didn’t get another shoulder tap after that. I hope she learned a lesson that day.

Seriously, she deserved that!

She apparently didn’t understand that they were both customers with equal ability to do anything about the line moving faster.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This customer really wasn’t thinking logically at all.

Yes, you have to read it in the correct accent.

This is a really good tactic to use.

This person really enjoyed the way the story ended.

This would be even funnier. Then the customer wouldn’t even be in line anymore!

Some customers are really clueless.

She tried so hard to head it off.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.