Working in retail means constantly navigating impossible expectations and thankless demands.

So when a shopper asked a grocery employee to dig through pallets of sealed boxes for a single product, the retail worker learned the hard way that logic doesn’t stand a chance against a customer determined to get their way.

Read on for the full story!

I don’t know how some people do this

I’ve worked grocery for a relatively large store in my country, and I honestly don’t know how people have dealt with this for years on end.

A customer came in and asked if I could check the back for a product.

The back area doesn’t really work like the customer think it does.

In our store, we do have a “back” for overstock and receiving products, which are skids of boxes taped up. Overstock is a shelf of boxes as well that I’ve been through more than once from looking in the “back”.

I think my studying as a medical professional and being taught to be fully transparent has hurt me.

So when they told the customer the truth, it ended up coming back to bite them.

I say I can’t go back there and check for you because stock is back there and taped for people to stock them. I cannot go through multiple pallets on top of pallets filled with boxes to look for one product.

Turns out they came back when I was off to complain to the manager, seemingly forgetting the perfectly rational explanation I gave them.

Next time I’ll just pretend to go to the back and check the overstock I’ve already gone through over 50 times that hasn’t changed—because I can’t risk someone having selective hearing again.

There’s few jobs as exhausting as customer service.

What did Reddit think?

This retail employee just stumbled upon a well-known shortcut for other retail workers.

You’ve gotta get those breaks in when you can.

Appearances are everything.

Being honest will get you nowhere fast in customer service.

Pretending ended up being a lot less exhausting than justifying reality to a customer unwilling to listen.

Now they know better to assume that customers care about logic or reason.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.