When you work in the customer pickup area of a large store, things can get really busy, and it is pretty common to be understaffed.

What would you do if a customer got tired of waiting in line, so he barged into the employees-only area and started threatening everyone with violence?

That is what happened to the team in this story, so they quickly got his order together just to get him to leave. They assumed he was buying something really important, but it turned out to be just a pound of ground beef.

It is hard to believe that some people overreact like this and take their anger out on the front-line employees. Read the full story below and see if you think it was handled appropriately.

“You’re gonna give me my bag NOW”

I work at a large warehouse-style store, specifically in the curbside pickup department.

I’m sure this job can be exhausting.

Customers place their order on their app, select a pickup window, and we load it all into their car.

It’s a very fast, high-stress, labor-intensive position and we (like everyone else) don’t always have enough staff to keep the flow within the company’s parameters for how long it takes an order to be taken to a customer after they arrive.

I’m sure the customers get annoyed when it takes this long.

We aim for 5 minutes, but when 10+ people all arrive at once and we have 2 employees doing it all, we can sometimes get up to 30 minutes wait time.

It’s annoying, we hate making people wait, but we work as fast as we can.

The customers should know that it isn’t the fault of the front-line workers. If they want to complain, they should complain to management about understaffing.

Sometimes people get pissed waiting for so long, and I understand.

I always apologize and thank people for their patience, and 8 times out of 10 they’re cool. This dude was Not.

Dealing with upset customers is never fun.

I had just finished my 30 min break, walked back through the store and entered the curbside area. There was this random, very large, very angry man standing in the center of the area.

Now… you can only get into this area through the corner I entered from, which is usually taped off and surrounded by employees, and the exit door we use to go out to the parking lot, which is off the side of the building and auto-locks with RFID tag entry.

Threatening an employee should never be tolerated.

This man had followed an employee up to the door, grabbed the door before it shut, let himself in the back, and was now trying to hold the entire curbside team hostage.

He was hollerin “give me my bag NOW, I’m gonna beat ALL y’all ***!”.

The employees are handling the situation calmly.

There were about 7 of us who had accumulated throughout the ordeal, and one coworker had taken the lead and was trying to de-escalate the situation.

He was speaking calmly, saying things like “I’m sorry for your wait sir, we have a procedure we must follow. We are doing our best, it’s incredibly busy. You need to go back outside right now. You can’t be in here. Please just leave.”

Managers should have stepped in by now.

And as expected this man was Not Having That. He kept insisting we were going to give in IMMEDIATELY or he was going to attack us.

No team leads or supervisors jumped in to help. We have no security.

Freaking out like this is not the way to speed things up.

So, the one coworker tried a different approach. He asked the man for his name and said we would prioritize his order, but he HAD to LEAVE.

Turns out, homie was quite literally the next guy in our queue for his order, and his tantrum had added about 5 minutes to the wait time of every single one of the 12 people out there, including himself.

Honestly, they should call the cops.

My coworker told him that, “sir your order is next up right here, just go to your car and we’ve got it.”.

Eventually, we get him out the door most of the way. He sticks his hand in the door opening to prevent it from locking, so he can stay right there where we have to exit and enter, still threatening violence.

If he was in that much of a hurry, he should have gone to the store and picked his things up himself.

A different coworker retrieves his order and walks it over to him… because again, we had no help from higher-ups and no security.

What else were we supposed to do? Guy rips the bag out of his hands, says some stuff, and leaves.

What could have been so important.

Turns out his big important order… from the warehouse store where you buy in bulk… was one. Single. Pound. Of generic ground beef.

That was the whole order. That was what was so important that he was threatening to beat and kill minimum wage employees over it.

If the police were involved, I’m sure they revoked his membership.

The police were called and a manager took statements… three hours after it happened.

Idk what action was or wasn’t taken in the end, but customers need a paid membership to shop here so I hope at the very least that membership was revoked. They’ve revoked them for less.

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Why is it that some people just can’t seem to control their emotions? Sure, it is inconvenient to have to wait in a long line, but sometimes that is just part of life. Get over it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a thrift store employee who refused to play “guess the price” without seeing the item in question.

Read on to see what the people in the comments had to say about it.

The issue should be escalated to upper management, so it doesn’t happen again.

This person works for a warehouse company too.

Yeah, get him out of there immediately.

Bad managers make a hard job much worse.

Calling 911 immediately is the right move. They can let management know later.

This type of behavior should never be tolerated, even for a second. It is unacceptable that the managers didn’t step in right from the beginning, but at least they eventually called the cops.

I have to hope that once they did get involved, they did the right thing and banned this irrational customer from the store going forward. No employees should have to deal with someone like that.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a barista whose keen eye uncovered a customer scheme for free coffee.