In stores that run on thin staffing, even a short absence can feel like a gamble.

One worker briefly stepped away to use the bathroom only to return to a pair of customers practically chomping at the bit to cause an unnecessary headache.

Read on for the full story!

“I could have taken off with your entire store”

I work at a small family-owned import shop, which means there’s only ever one employee there at a time.

This causes some annoying barriers for the employee on staff.

We run with a skeleton crew, and there’s honestly not enough business for us to ever need more than one employee at a time.

This means that if I need to use the bathroom, I have to leave the store unattended for the 1 minute and 30 seconds it takes me to go in the back bathroom and relieve myself.

So this shift, he was lucky when two customers had the absolute worst timing.

Today, I get a pair of women who came in, of course, during the minute and a half I’m in the bathroom.

They couldn’t have been in the store any longer than 45 seconds.

Regardless, these customers weren’t understanding of his brief absence.

I come out, give them the ol’ retail greeting, and one of them says in a super thick Long Island accent, “We coulda taken off with your entire sto’h!”

He offers an explanation, but the customer is already onto their next complaint.

So I explain I’m here by myself all day, and being a human in a flesh prison, I occasionally have to attend to my bodily functions, and I apologize.

It’s not like I can hold it for another 6 hours until the end of my shift, okay?

She starts barking commands at me, asking me if certain garments will fit a 3-year-old.

But that wasn’t all.

To top it all off, she and her cohort start telling me there’s no sales tax. They said they went somewhere else and were told it’s a “tax free day.”

Uh, no. Last time I checked, we get one tax-free weekend in this state, and it’s right before school starts, so it only applies to school supplies and clothes for school. That’ll be an extra 9.5% to the state, thanks.

Why are people like this?

Retail employees are busy enough without all the pointless hypotheticals.

What did Reddit think?

Leave it to a customer to make things harder than they needed to be.

Leave with the entire store? This commenter would like to see a bold customer try.

It’s always nice when the worst case scenario doesn’t actually happen.

It takes a smooth criminal to actually pull something like this off.

After all that noise, nothing really changed — normal taxes still applied, clothes stayed the same size, and the employee’s bathroom break was still as necessary as ever.

Sometimes you just have to laugh at how dramatic customers can be over nothing.

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.