It’s quite normal for most people to work up the career ladder as they age. They might have started washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen or stacking shelves in a local grocery store when they were in their teens, but by their forties or fifties those days are long behind them. Now, they’re working in an office, or they’ve got a job as a teacher or a paramedic – maybe they even run their own business.

But those days of your teenage jobs never really leave you, and even decades later they can leave you feeling an understanding or an affinity for the staff doing those jobs that used to fill your time back in the day. This might mean that you leave an extra big tip, since you know how much a waiter goes through, or you’re extra polite to a gas station attendant because you’re well aware of all the impolite customers they’ve probably faced, just on that one day.

The customer in this story, however, was quite different. Sure she’d once worked in a store, but if anything, that made her more bother to the employees who were trying their best to close up for the night.

Read on to find out why.

“But I’ve also worked in a store before”

Some years ago, I was at work at the grocery store, one day before our national day.

I was working the late/closing shift, from 4pm to 11pm – the store closes at 11pm.

Around 10:50pm, a lady with a typical Karen haircut and purple hair colour walked into the store, grabbed a shopping cart, and walked into the opposite end of the store with meat fridges and freezers.

I start the closing routines and didn’t think much of it.

Let’s see what happened when closing time came around.

The time hit 11pm, I’d finished my routines, and the lady was still standing there in the same exact spot.

I went to her to tell her the store was closed, but before I got a single word in she said, “I know, the store is closed, I know you want to go home, I’ve worked in a store before you know.”

I kinda just responded with “mhm? Are you loo-” before she interrupted, “Listen, I’ve worked in a store before! You ALWAYS let the customer finish shopping,” and then started rambling incomprehensibly.

The time hit 23:05 and she FINALLY started moving, but was swerving between the freezers, not grabbing anything.

Uh-oh. Read on to find out how the rest of this woman’s shopping trip was.

On the way to the cash registers, she suddenly took a sharp right turn to look at something. The entire time she was rambling to me about something, I was spacing out and just following her to make sure she left.

Finally, at 23:12, she made it to the register and my colleague scanned her items. Then she realised she’d forgotten something and was about to go grab it, but before she could I said, “I’ll go grab it for you”, which I did.

I returned with the item and my colleague scanned it through.

Then she asked about cigarettes (the store uses an electronic safe that you pay for a ticket you scan, and then the item drops like a vending machine) while tapping the screen in front of the register.

My colleague explained that whatever cigarettes she wanted we were out of. She scoffed and proceeded to look for her wallet in her purse.

But that wasn’t the end of things.

After rummaging for what felt like forever, she found the wallet, paid and packed her stuff in a bag, then headed for the exit. I followed her to lock the door.

She noticed some national day flower bouquets by the exit and was about to stop to look at them, when she probably noticed me rolling my eyes, and she left.

The time was now around 11:23pm, and my colleague still needed to finish counting the till.

The entire time from when I first walked up to the lady and until she left, she was rambling about stores and how she worked in one and “I know how it is” and stuff. Lady, if you know then please leave so I can go home!

The absolute entitlement of this woman.

If she had worked in a store before, she’d know how frustrating it was for employees when customers behave like this.

She’d also know that, in many countries, it’s actually a legal requirement for stores to close to customers at a certain time.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a betting shop employee who is asked the dreaded question “don’t you know who I am?”

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that someone who had worked in a store would know better.

While others thought that justifications like this weren’t actually for the employee at all.

Meanwhile, this Redditor’s former manager had a smart way of handling customers like this.

When you work in a customer facing role, it’s natural that you come across all types of people. Plenty of your customers will be lovely, compassionate folk who respect you and are actually grateful for your time and help. But then there are people like this woman, who clearly think that their time is a lot more important than yours, and that their need to purchase some random item is far more pressing than store policies.

Because the reality is that if this is a store that cares about their employees, they’ll be paid overtime if a customer prevents them from leaving the store by the time they are supposed to work until. And the bottle of milk you ‘need’ to buy is actually going to lose the store money in this respect. And if it’s a store that doesn’t pay overtime? Well that’s even worse, because you are taking away what little free time the employees have. Sure, sometimes this can be a genuine mistake. But with an attitude like this woman’s? It’s clear that she cares about nobody but herself.