Teenagers working part-time jobs already deal with enough pressure without grown adults turning small inconveniences into personal attacks.

This 17-year-old convenience store employee was recently asked where to find rice porridge in the store. But when he was unable to help, the interaction quickly spiraled from annoyance into outright cruelty.

Rather than finding another employee to ask, this customer started verbally attacking the teen and questioning why he even worked there in the first place.

Eventually, the nonstop insults pushed the teenager to tears right there in the store.

Read on to see how a classmate reacted after walking into the middle of the confrontation.

AITA for crying in front of a customer?

I (17M) work at a convenience store as part of my high school program, which means two days every other week. The store is rather big, and I’m not familiar with it, as I’m not from town, and the items are always moved each week.

I was unloading tea and coffee today when a man came up to me. He looked really irritated, so I braced myself for a potentially rude customer.

He asked about rice porridge, and said that he’s been walking around all day and can’t find it (which is unlikely since we were only open for like an hour). Because I don’t work in that section, I told him that I was sorry, but I don’t know.

Immediately, the guy got really upset.

Customers are usually pretty chill with this answer and go ask someone else or try to find the item themselves.

Not this guy, though.

He started berating me about how I should know because I work there, I should go with him and help him find it, etc. But I can’t leave my post, so I told him that, and about how I’m not even from this town, so I only know where stuff from my section is, which he completely disregarded.

He was trying his hardest to hide how upset he really was.

I’m a pretty sensitive person, and I was already trying not to tear up as I stood there while the guy insulted me to my face.

Suddenly, he started asking questions about why I chose to work here if I can’t even help people, and how I look weak, short, and scrawny for a guy my age (my height is 165cm, and I admit I am pretty weak).

I said I had no other choice when choosing schools, and he said, “Everyone has a choice.”

At this point, it seemed like the guy gave up.

Except, no, I didn’t. I had to drop out of my old highschool and switch because of mental health problems.

He finally gave up, said that I’m useless, and started browsing the shelves of tea. I faced away from him and tried really hard not to cry.

One of my classmates (we’ll call him Liam) walked by and I guess he saw how I was shaking, and he asked me if I was okay.

The rude guy chimed in with, “No, he’s an ******* and useless as ****. Doesn’t even know where rice is.”

Then, he lost it.

That did it for me and I started crying. Liam asked the guy what was he thinking calling a kid names like that and the customer just scoffed and said that I cry like a girl.

Liam took me to the break room and told our teacher what happened, so she let him stay with me until I calmed down and then sent me home.

Liam and the rest of my classmates have my back, but my teacher said I should’ve tried harder to help the guy, and I should’ve held it in because crying in front of a customer is rude. I don’t really know if she’s right or not.

AITA?

Wow! That guy obviously doesn’t know when to quit.

Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit think about how the guy treated him.

So true! No one wants to cry in public.

This person is right. The guy didn’t deserve help.

It’s so rude!

These are all really good questions.

This whole situation sounds like a great big mess! But not because of the teenager.

He didn’t yell at the customer or behave rudely, he simply admitted he didn’t know where the product could be found and explained that he only worked in one section of the store.

Rather than just being a reasonable adult, this guy chose to humiliate a kid and make him cry.

And the as for the teacher, expecting teenagers to accept that kind of treatment without reaction feels far more unreasonable than what actually happened here.

Bravo for the teen and shame on those adults!

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.