Imagine working at a grocery store as a cashier when there’s a mess at your register that needs to be cleaned up. Would you do what your supervisor says and clean it up before helping any customers, or would you ignore the mess and help the customers first?

The first option seems to be the obviously correct thing to do, but the cashier in this story got in trouble for doing that.

Keep reading to find out why.

When you get wedged between “customer-is-always-right”-customer and your Supervisor. Can’t win either way.

So I work at a groceries store, and I just have come off a quick toilet break.

My supervisor sees me before I can go back to my register, she says, “Hey, your register is completely filthy, beef mince juice stains (leaked from the packaging) have leaked onto the conveyor belt, I want you to clean it up carefully, here’s some disinfectant, and before you serve the next customer, make sure its all clean. Store manager hates dirty registers you will get into trouble if he sees it”.

This is a really strict know-it-all supervisor (admittedly she is nice outside of her job), where if you disobey her at all, she will get mad at you and I didn’t want that.

She started to get to work.

I’m the only register open at this late hour.

Sure enough as soon as I start to get to work to clean (safety hazard, bacteria everywhere in raw mince meat juice), customer with a few items in her trolley rocks up. She asks me “are you serving?”.

I tell her “Theres a safety hazard stain on my register, my supervisor has instructed me to clean it up before I serve the next customer.”

Before I can add, “…but I should be done in a few minutes then I can serve you”, she says, “oh ok so you won’t serve me, I’ll just go to another register”

The customer complained.

She went to the express lane, but when she was there, being served by a different supervisor, she had a complete tirade, and it wasn’t long before the dreaded “I want to speak to the manager.”.

Manager (male) comes down, she lets him have it, he comes to me, pulls me aside, and yep, I get in trouble.

Honestly hate the stupid customers that think our only job is to bend over backwards and serve them – like no, we have other duties too, including among others, cleaning the area, and if all said other duties aren’t done by the end of the night, then you will get nailed for that too.

She could’ve also used self serve for those 4 items, but of course one of those “oh can’t have you standing around doing nothing”.

All she did was follow her supervisor’s directions, and honestly, it sounds like it was a hazard that needed to be cleaned up right away.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This seems to be true.

She should’ve told the manager what the supervisor said.

The boss really didn’t think this through very well.

Another person explains how she could’ve stood up for herself.

Her boss clearly didn’t understand what really happened.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.