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It’s funny how people don’t always take things the way you expect them to.

A grocery shopper recently encountered this very issue after a teenage cashier noticed her package of dill had popped open.

When she told him it wasn’t a big deal, he quietly joked that it wasn’t a “big dill.”

She laughed and repeated the joke back, but that seemed to make him more embarrassed.

So, she spent the rest of the checkout trying to make sure he knew she genuinely thought it was funny.

Read on to see how it all played out.

I thought y’all would enjoy this little exchange I had today with the cashier at the grocery store…

I made a trip to the grocery store earlier today. The cashier was a young guy, maybe about 17 or 18 years old—your typical high school-aged kid who works at the grocery store. No judgment, just setting the scene. I’ll call him “Register Kid” (the bagger was also around the same age, but he wasn’t really involved).

So Register Kid starts scanning my items, and when he gets to the dill—it was one of those little plastic packages with a few sprigs in it, not one of those huge twist-tied bunches of dill—he holds it up to tell/show me that it had opened and some of the dill was sticking out.

I really didn’t care and was like, “It’s fine. It probably popped open in the cart. Not a big deal,” and kind of waved my hand, indicating that he could send it on down the line.

She just wanted to make sure she heard him correctly.

In response, somewhere between scanning the dill and sending it to the bagger, he said, half under his breath, but I think louder than he intended, “It’s not a big dill.”

Which I totally heard, but it took a moment to process in my brain, and then I took another moment to be sure that, yes, he did, in fact, make a pun, which I thought was pretty funny and genuinely made me chuckle, so I said, “Did you just say it’s not really a big dill?”

The poor Register Kid looked so embarrassed and flustered, and he responded with a sheepish and dejected, “Yeah.”

At this point, she felt really bad for putting him on the spot.

I could see his face turning red. Like I said, I really don’t think he intended for anyone to hear him say that, and on top of the baseline social awkwardness that comes with being a teenager, he probably thought that I thought that he was a giant dork, because let’s face it, puns are kind of dorky, but that’s a big part of their charm, IMO.

Anyway, I felt really bad for putting Register Kid on the spot like that, and maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. But I had the distinct feeling that he knew I had heard what he said, so I felt like ignoring it would have been equally as awkward in its own way.

So I thought it would be better to acknowledge it and let him know that I appreciated his pun, rather than standing there in uncomfortable silence, trying to pretend I hadn’t heard what we both knew I heard.

Trying to make things better, she complimented what he said.

So I said, “No, that was good. I liked it! It was funny,” while trying to sound upbeat and sincere and ignore his obvious embarrassment, but it didn’t seem to help.

Honestly, I’m not sure there was anything I could have said that would have made him feel less self-conscious in that moment. I was a teenager once, too—not recently, mind you, but not so long ago that I’ve forgotten what the “I wish I could just crawl into a hole and die right now” feeling feels like.

Then we stood there in silence for a bit while he finished scanning my stuff, and I’m totally thinking that Register Kid was probably saying to himself, “Oh my god, I am such an idiot. It’s not a big dill. I can’t believe I said that out loud,” while I really wanted him to know that I really, honestly did think it was funny.

I wasn’t just saying that to try and make him feel better.

Just for good measure, she told him again how funny it was.

But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to convince him of my sincerity in the short time we had left together.

In the end, once he finished scanning my items, while I was waiting for my card to go through, I said to him, somewhat apologetically, “I really just wanted to let you know that I had heard what you said. And I did think it was funny.”

He seemed to appreciate that.

Wow! What a wholesome interaction.

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit think about it.

The story made this person’s day better.

Here’s some advice for next time.

Well, that’s kinda rude.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an American who is confused about why they can’t use their American dollars at a Canadian grocery store.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with using it again.

That was so nice of her.

Too many times, people don’t care when they embarrass someone or leave them feeling bad.

But not this woman. Her goal was to make him feel better about the whole thing because she genuinely thought it was funny.

Hopefully, once the embarrassment wore off, he realized she really did appreciate the joke.