Some customers forget basic manners when interacting with people in the grocery store.

What would you do if a drunk man and his kid shouted product names at you like you were a vending machine?

Would you stay polite and help?

Or would you give them exactly what they asked for, but make them work for it?

In the following story, one merchandiser finds himself in this very situation and decides to mess with the guy a little.

Here’s what he did.

Coconut water.

During weekends, I work as a merchandiser for extra money.

I just hang out and go from store to store stocking mycompany’ss product and listening to music/podcasts.

People come up fairly often asking me if I know where something is, and I oblige if I know.

Half of the time, when they see my shirt, which is company-branded, they embarrassingly and rapidly say sorry and walk away before I can even respond.

While I was stocking, I looked around often, and I happened to see this man looking down the aisle I’m in, and his body followed like a robot, turning after seeing my uboat( big cart we use).

It was quiet until he was approached by a loud, drunk guy and his son.

I see him charging towards me, followed by what I assume was his son.

I look away as soon as I see him targeting me.

He gets like a foot away from me and yells “coconut water” at my side.

I turn and look at him, smelling the alcohol, and he repeats it louder as I slowly reach up to my ear to pause my music.

His son yells, copying his dad…”COCONUT WATER!”

I just ask what?

And the dad goes “COCONUT WATER!”

Ironically, it is a product I actually stock too, which is rare.

Unfortunately, I found him rude and was not going to direct him 3 feet further down the aisle.

They spent a lot of time looking for one bottle of coconut water.

I sent him across the ENTIRE store. Aisle two.

About 20 minutes later, I see him coming back.

He can’t find it.

So I asked him some questions and described it on one of those inconspicuous bottom shelf corner end caps and sent him to look under the other juice I stock, so it seemed like I knew what I was talking about.

“If it wasn’t there, check the display close by, you can’t miss it.”

I finished up stocking, brought my uboat out back, broke everybody down, and wrapped up.

As I left for my next store, I saw them at the self-checkout with a single coconut water.

It had been over an hour since they first asked me.

Geez! Talk about wasting time!

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit have to say about his story.

Such a classic SpongeBob reference.

This person says he should’ve turned it into a coffee order.

Here’s how this person would’ve handled it.

Great advice.

What a cringey customer.

Wonder how much longer the guy would’ve kept looking before he gave up.

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