August 22, 2026 at 2:35 pm

A Toy Store Employee Started Having an Asthma Attack While Helping Her—But the Customer Assumed Rudeness and Filed a Complaint to Corporate

by Heather Hall

Displays inside of a toy store

Pexels/Reddit

It’s amazing how quickly someone can make another person’s health problem all about themselves.

One toy store employee learned that while working in a hot, humid store with terrible airflow.

As she helped an already irritated customer, she felt an asthma attack starting and struggled to catch her breath.

Well, the customer mistook that for an annoyed sigh and immediately started accusing her of being rude.

Then, when the employee sat down because her breathing was getting worse, the woman got even angrier.

Read on to see how the manager handled this whole situation.

“An asthma attack is a personal attack on the customer”

At this time, I was working at your favorite, now-defunct toy store.

The store I worked in was very old, with no air conditioning, and the airflow was terrible. This specific day was very humid and hot (New England summers are HUMID), and I had been having issues with my asthma on and off.

I had been working at the electronics desk, grabbing video games and just working as a general checkout. I grabbed some games from the lockup for a customer and headed back to my checkout desk.

When she got back, there were a few people in line.

Two people were already waiting in line. I did my usual spiel, apologizing for the wait, etc.

The customer is visibly agitated already, so I can tell this will be fun. She’s pulling a bunch of stuff out of her cart, saying she no longer wants it. That’s cool. At least she didn’t shove it on a shelf somewhere.

As I’m turning around to place her item she doesn’t want on the counter, I can feel an asthma attack coming. I do that thing when you feel like you can’t breathe, so you try to inhale really hard. She assumed I was sighing at her for not wanting her items (for real, don’t care, I’m not closing, not my problem).

Suddenly, the woman began yelling.

This began the biggest freakout of the day.

This woman starts yelling at me for being rude, saying it’s my job to take her things she doesn’t want and to be polite.

As she’s yelling, I’m now starting to stress out, making my asthma worse. As she’s still yelling at me, I sit down. That was apparently the wrong move. She decides that it’s the final straw and says, “I’m not buying any of this. You need to learn how to treat customers!”

Luckily, her manager was more than understanding.

She did call corporate. I was talked to by my manager about it and explained the whole thing (she knew about my asthma), which was on video.

My manager actually apologized for the customer, saying, “I never knew an asthma attack was a personal attack on a customer.”

I will never forget that line or that manager. She was amazing.

Yikes! Imagine being so self-centered that you think someone’s medical condition is all about you.

Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit think about this whole thing.

According to this comment, the toy store was the worst place they worked.

Asthma 3 A Toy Store Employee Started Having an Asthma Attack While Helping Her—But the Customer Assumed Rudeness and Filed a Complaint to Corporate

Here’s someone with asthma.

Asthma 2 A Toy Store Employee Started Having an Asthma Attack While Helping Her—But the Customer Assumed Rudeness and Filed a Complaint to Corporate

Yet another reader who knows what it’s like to have asthma.

Asthma 1 A Toy Store Employee Started Having an Asthma Attack While Helping Her—But the Customer Assumed Rudeness and Filed a Complaint to Corporate

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier and manager who came together to help a truck driver from another country.

It’s because some people are self-centered.

Asthma A Toy Store Employee Started Having an Asthma Attack While Helping Her—But the Customer Assumed Rudeness and Filed a Complaint to Corporate

That customer took the whole thing way too personally.

The employee was having an asthma attack, yet somehow the woman convinced herself she was being rude.

From there, she just kept making the situation worse and ended up making a fool of herself, really.

At least the manager understood exactly what went down and had her employee’s back.

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Heather Hall | Contributing Writer, Life & Drama

Heather Hall is a contributing writer for TwistedSifter specializing in internet culture, workplace conflict, and viral customer service stories. With over a decade of editorial experience in digital publishing, Heather excels at curating trending online discussions and providing insightful commentary on the daily dramas that capture the internet's attention.

Since beginning her career in 2011, she has developed deep expertise in SEO-driven digital content, having written for a wide array of publications covering lifestyle, business, and travel. At TwistedSifter, Heather focuses on synthesizing complex social media threads into engaging, highly readable narratives that highlight the human element of viral news.

When she isn’t analyzing the latest internet discourse, Heather is a dedicated mother of three sons who takes family gaming nights entirely too seriously—whether she is dominating in Mario Kart, exploring The Legend of Zelda, or jumping into Roblox.

Connect with Heather on Facebook and LinkedIn.