Moving stock around is a well-proven sales tactic, designed to gently manipulate shoppers into grabbing more expensive items, even spending more time in the store and making more sales as a result. After all, if you don’t know where the items you usually buy are, your attention is naturally brought to other products, especially promotional items, driving you toward impulse buys that you find while you’re hunting down your favourite salad dressing.

So it goes without saying that sometimes, when we really can’t find what we need, we’re going to have to ask for help. That’s why there’s usually plenty of sales associates on the shop floor, doing other tasks but visible and happy to help customers when needed. And it doesn’t cost a penny to thank them, when they go out of their way to help you – even though, yes, it is their job.

But you knew that, didn’t you? Because if you’re reading this, you’re probably not one of the minority of customers: those who are so entitled that they think they can demand help and it should arrive in an instant; those customers who believe that they occupy a mystical position in the store, to which every staff member should do their bidding.

This kind of entitlement can be dangerous. Because once you’re so deluded as to think that everyone should drop everything to help you and your every whim, you start to become blind to everyone and everything else around you – and it can make you a pretty unpleasant person to be around.

The customer in this story was one of those people. And unfortunately for the pregnant mom who was innocently shopping for her own groceries, no one or nothing was getting in the way of this woman’s quest for bleach.

Read on to find out what happened.

Shopping with my children. I don’t work here.

A few years ago, I went to Walmart with two of my children, heavily pregnant with my third.

I was comparing toilet paper when a lady shoved her cart into my ankles.

I was startled but it didn’t hurt much and I usually assume accidents happen.

I snapped my head in her direction and she angrily shouted “where is your bleach?!”

Yikes! What is this woman’s problem? Let’s see how the mom responded.

I looked down the aisle and pointed that it was down there.

She snapped that I needed to show her and put it in her ******* cart. I was ALL belly but didn’t look like it from behind.

I fully turned around to face her, moving out of the way of my cart with my two children inside, previously sheilded by me and asked her what her problem was.

To say she looked shocked was a hilarious understatement!

But the customer didn’t beg for forgiveness.

I’d like to say she appologised when she realised she jammed her cart into an eight month pregnant woman shopping with two small children but no.

She zoomed around me, grabbed the first bleach she saw and high tailed it out of the aisle.

I was wearing a bright neon green dress. No idea how she thought I was an employee.

Some people really care only about themselves.

The fact that the woman spoke to someone this way in the first place – regardless of whether or not they were an employee – is unacceptable.

But then not even apologising when she realised the truth? What a horrible woman.

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

This woman couldn’t believe the mom didn’t snap.

While others pointed out that the customer had literally assaulted her.

Meanwhile this Redditor wished they could’ve been a fly on the wall.

Let’s make one thing quite clear: regardless of whether a person is a store employee or not, nothing warrants abusing them. This means shouting at them, guilt tripping them, treating them like a servant – and yes, it should go without saying that it’s never okay to ram them with a shopping cart. I mean, what on earth was this woman thinking?

But when you realise your mistake, when you see that the woman in the neon dress you’ve mistaken for an employee is, in fact, just another shopper – and a shopper with a big pregnant belly and two kids in her cart at that – the least you can do is apologise. Apologise and mean it, and then learn your lesson and make sure you never behave so heinously again.

Is humility really too much to ask for?

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.