Retail workers are often expected to stay calm and professional no matter how chaotic things get.

But sometimes, it just gets too hard to keep your cool.

One employee’s patience pushed to the limit when a customer turned a minor mistake into a personal attack — and a hidden camera.

Read on for the full story!

Angry customer tries to record me…nope

This is an old story I remember from my first job as a customer service desk employee at a grocery store.

As a CS person, I dealt with returns, money orders, Western Unions, lottery, bill pays, general customer complaints, etc.

Basically, if someone had an issue, they got sent to my desk.

But one customer in particular will forever live on in infamy.

I will never forget this lady, as this was one of the only times in my 7 years of retail that I actually legit cried and had to walk away.

This lady—we shall call her DUMB LADY (DL)—had put money on some pre-paid cards, but she had put them on the wrong type of cards.

This soon became this associate’s problem.

DL had informed me that their customer service people had told her to come back to the store she purchased them at to fix it. OK, sure. $100 per card. Great.

Now I have to spend 45 minutes on the phone with their customer service—sure, whatever. Well, it was “sure, whatever”… until my line was around the corner.

But things didn’t go smoothly at all.

Then I got disconnected from their customer service on the phone. I was most likely visibly frustrated, as I was the only person at my store’s service desk, and my line was getting longer and I was spending ages on this one thing.

I called my manager and they assured me it would be OK and just told me to do it. (OK, jerks—thanks for the help.)

Here is when it gets reeeeeeeeeally frustrating.

The customer began to get irritated and started lashing out.

DL: “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

Me: “Yes ma’am, I just got disconnected. It will be a moment; I am trying to reach them again. Is it okay if I take the customer behind you that just has lottery tickets? I promise it won’t be too long.”

Wrong. Wrong response.

Turns out, it wasn’t okay in this customer’s eyes.

DL: “Ummmmm yes, I have been here waiting. It is your store’s fault that I bought these cards. No one told me the difference.”

I helped the guy behind her in line anyway with his lottery tickets while still trying to contact the customer service.

Things get more and more chaotic around this associate.

I finally got in contact with a person on the phone while DL kept yelling at me to reiterate her problem—while I’m also trying to hear and explain the issue to the person on the phone who doesn’t speak English very well.

(I’m also very bad at hearing people on the phone.)

The pressure is mounting and about to boil over.

At this point I am ticked—beyond ticked—and beyond upset and annoyed. The line is out the door, this woman is not letting me get a word out to the person on the phone, trying to scream over me into the phone.

I call my manager over.

The customer can’t be pleased no matter what the associate does.

DL looks at me and says:

DL: “You are so rude. Do you even have any competence? Are you this rude to everyone?”

I’m trying not to be visibly upset—though I am at this point. I smile and apologize.

My manager comes over and starts trying to help other customers… and leaves me with this woman.

Then the associate notices something unusual.

Then I look and realize she has her phone slightly angled on the counter… she starts asking me questions again. I then realize she’s trying to record me.

She keeps asking me questions about my job and my attitude.

This DL is literally trying to get me on video getting angry and get me fired. I couldn’t believe it.

The associate decides she needs to start deescalating the situation.

I realized almost immediately what she was doing. I couldn’t even say anything at that point but “uhhhhhhhhhhh,” and I just walked away.

(Yes, I just hung up on the customer service line I was on for her.)

Told another supervisor on the floor that I had to go. Someone else needed to go over there immediately and that I was not going to deal with that.

If I had been irate and cussing at this woman, sure, understandable. I was just another flustered retail employee.

I’ll never comprehend what some people deem as acceptable behavior.

Stepping back is often the most professional response.

What did Reddit think?

“Handling it better” goes both ways here.

The manager doesn’t come out of this situation looking so good either.

Here’s what really should have been said.

This commenter has a tip for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

This employee was wise to step away before a rotten customer could turn her worst day into evidence against her.

The customer wanted chaos, but the employee chose peace.

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.