Building a good rapport with customers is important when you work in a customer-facing role, especially one where you’ll be seeing the same characters frequently.

The cashier in this story had done exactly that – to the extent that they were beloved by their regulars.

But this recognisability made things more difficult at times, especially when they ran into their customers in public when off the clock.

Because while most customers would be completely chill, one most certainly was not.

Read on to find out what happened.

I wasn’t working

I used to work as a cashier at a supermarket in my hometown. The place has a good amount of regulars and they were generally friendly.

I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently I was a favorite due to the fact that I tried to be a friendly and polite as possible while dying inside.

One day, two or three years ago, I was at the mall with my best friend. The mall was far away from my place of work ,and I was not representing the supermarket in any way.

While in a store (I think it was a clothes store or something like that) a customer saw me and recognized me from the supermarket (she was a regular). She came over to me and started to make conversation.

Let’s see how the conversation went.

I don’t remember what was said at all but apparently I said more than one curse word.

The woman left, I had a great day with my friend, and I didn’t think anything of it.

I went to work the next day and started work as usual.

When it was close to closing time, and the store was dead, my colleague and I started to make conversation.

Read on to find out what was said.

My colleague said, “So, you went to the mall the other day?” and I replied, “Yeah, How did you know?”

They told me, “A customer came in late the other day and demanded to talk to the manager. When they came out they started complaining about you swearing at them and being unprofessional.”

It turned out the manager had asked when this happened as I didn’t work that day, and the customer said it was at the mall. The manager, looking like they were trying to hold back laughter, told them that when I’m not at work I can act like anyone else and have no obligation to be polite when not in uniform, on the clock and on store grounds.

The customer was annoyed and left, and he manager then started laughing their *** off.

I was dying of laughter at this point. The customer either never came back to the store or never came through my line again.

As if the customer expected them to basically be in work mode all the time.

That’s basically saying that no one can have a life outside of work that isn’t entirely befitting of their professional persona.

What a strange customer.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person agreed that the customer must’ve been quite an odd person.

While others spoke of the benefits of a low profile.

And this Redditor praised the manager’s approach.

It’s great that the manager didn’t pander to the woman’s unrealistic expectations.

After all, the staff are allowed to have a life of their own. They’re only representing the company when on company premises.

How absurd.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who was on break when she was physically dragged back to the register by a customer.