Grocery stores are often very busy on the weekend when people have the time to do their shopping.

What would you do if your store was very busy on a Saturday and then a customer came up and complained that there wasn’t enough parking, so she parked in a reserved spot?

That is what happened to the cashier in this story, but then the customer left to finish her shopping.

Lady gets mad about no parking spaces – demands to speak to the manager.

So, I work at a grocery store and the location that I work at is within a very small shopping center that has maybe 50 parking spaces in the upper parking lot and then there’s a downstairs garage with over 100 spaces for people to park (but most people forget that it’s there, because it’s adjacent to our building.)

Grocery stores are busy on the weekends.

It’s a Saturday, around 10am, one of our busiest (if not THE busiest) days of the week.

People everywhere, with their screaming kids, and trolleys loaded with groceries. All 6 checkouts (plus the self serve checkouts) are open and we have no less than 3 to 4 people waiting at each checkout.

What does this lady want?

I’m halfway through scanning items for my customer when a young woman in her early 30s rushes up to me. I look up and smile at her, while still scanning the other customer’s items, and I’m about to ask if she’s okay when she yells in my face:

There’s no parking spaces outside! I had to drive around four times and there’s still no parking spaces!

He is staying very calm throughout this.

I smile and apologize and tell her that it’s extremely busy today, and before I can ask if she’s tried the downstairs parking garage, she interrupts with:

Yes I’ve been downstairs! Why do you think I had to drive around so many times? I had to park in the Click and Collect parking spot. I’m only going to be 5 minutes and I’ve got my two babies with me!

If she is in a hurry, why did she stop to complain?

These “babies”, by the way, were probably five and eight years old and sitting quietly in the trolley while their mother yells at me. (As a side note for those who don’t know: Click and Collect is where a customer orders online, submits it, and then someone from that department fills the order and takes it to the customer’s car. Because we’re only a small store, we have two designated areas in the parking lot for Click and Collect customers to park so that our staff can easily find them when it’s crowded.)

And she is just wasting everyone’s time.

Anyway, I apologize to the lady again and say that it’s very busy today (like, if she looked around she might see the line that I, and every other checkout operator has) and before I can get out another word, she demands to speak to my manager.

So, I finish up serving the customer I’m with and tell the next customer in line that I’ll be right with him, to which he’s totally fine. I walk across to the service desk and ask my co-worker, R, who the manager in charge is today, and then quickly explain the situation. To which R says:

Well, tough. Tell that woman she has to get out of that spot because it isn’t reserved for her.

Why does he need another manager?

I look around and notice the woman has disappeared (probably run off to do her shopping, but I doubt she’s going to be five minutes like she said.) So I go to the speaker phone and call for B, the manager on duty, and then go back to my checkout and continue serving as normal.

Maybe half an hour later (it’s hard to gauge time when it’s insanely busy), B, the manager on duty, comes to me and says that she ran into the woman that I’d been speaking with.

Oh, how lucky.

Or, rather, the woman saw B (because managers wear a different uniform to the rest of us) and basically ran up and accosted her, ranting in B’s face about the lack of available parking spaces for a good few minutes.

Like, what do you want us to do, lady? Tell people to leave so that you can do your shopping?

What does she even expect to be done?

Anyway, B basically told her there was nothing we could do about the situation because Saturday’s are very busy days.

The real icing on the cake to the end of this story? R, who was serving on the service desk, later tells me that during that busy period she had an irate customer come up and complain to her that there were no Click and Collect parking spaces available to her, and why don’t we “make” more?

I would hate working when it was so busy.

Ah, the joys of working on a busy Saturday….

Why do customers like this feel the need to make a bad situation even worse?

Let’s see what the people in the comments below had to say.

They should have towed her car.

People just don’t understand.

This would have shut her up.

People like this expect the impossible.

What did this lady want, exactly?

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.