Working at a grocery store may not be a lot of fun, but part of the job is remaining friendly with the customers and ensuring you work in a safe way.

What would you do if you were at a grocery store and an employee nearly knocked you over while pushing a large cart through the aisle?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so he hid until he could lock the wheel on the cart without being seen. When the worker pushed the cart again, it tipped over and spilled things everywhere. He later learned that this incident may have been what set things in motion to get the guy fired.

If the employee had just acted with care, none of this would have happened. Read through the full story below and see if you think this customer handled things properly.

Almost knock me over? Inadvertently get fired

Ok, so, to begin, I should state that when I go into a store of any type, I am respectful and friendly to the workers, especially because of the crappy positions that they are put, and know their pain.

Employees should never treat customers poorly.

But every now and then, you run across that one employee who is just a jerk. In general, you don’t know what someone is going through, and it is understandable when someone who works a bad job is not happy with you complaining to them about chips and soda that have been moved.

Yet there are some people who just are mean to everyone around them, and some of them end up in these positions.

Let’s see what happened to this person.

For anonymity, AE = Annoying Employee, F = my friend

With this cleared up, let me begin.

To set the scene, I find myself in an American supermarket that I frequent. It’s a partially crowded day there, with the produce section bustling in everywhere but the organic section and the wall of garden variety bulk snacks.

Grocery store pickups are very convenient.

I make my way down the less crowded organic area of the store, browsing and looking for nothing in particular. Now the store in question had recently introduced a mobile shopper system, I don’t know the exact name, but basically, an employee gets saddled with a big cart with individualized containers.

These employees basically do the shopping for customers to come pick their groceries. Anywho, I’m walking along and minding my own business in the mostly empty aisle, when I hear a loud ‘EXCUSE ME’ from behind.

Someone could get hurt.

Enter AE who is hauling one of the mobile shopper carts, mowing me down from the back end faster then a horse stampede. I literally have to jump out of the way to avoid having my feet crushed under the clattering, vulcanized ABS wheels.

I laugh at first, thinking he might be playing with me somehow, but looking in his direction, I find he has not bothered to look back or indicate this was a joke at all.

What is he going to do?

But instead pulls the cart down the aisle, forcing other innocent bystanders to move out of his wake like a wave breaking at the bow of a blue clad, skin head battleship with a diamond stud earrings. “Excuse *me* I say with emphasis, but to no avail.

After he is out of sight, I decide it is time for some payback for me and the souls shoved aside by the speedy foot crusher. So, waiting for him to return, I take my sweet time moving up and down the produce aisles, looking at every fruit and vegetable, but in my normally empty head I was formulating a devious plan.

He has a plan.

For you see, when I was a kid, I was a little jerk who would unlock the wheels of rolling displays and push them around for something to do as my parents shopped.

I knew the wheels on this industrial cart were likely no different, so I moved discreetly to the floral section to watch and wait for my moment to pounce.

The worker won’t be expecting this.

The petty revenge gods were with me that day I suppose, because AE returned and parked the cart in front of the blueberries, just adjacent to me, as I stalked the mass of grey metal from the lilies.

In my rare moment of testosterone and guile, I locked the brake on the bottom, outward facing side of the cart. I then retreated to the depths of the floral section, just out of sight.

What a waste of food.

When AE returned, he went to push the cart as hard as he could, which of course veered off to the right, for which he over corrected and rammed the blueberries.

These promptly fell all over the floor and the customers who’s products he was collecting. He gave a angry growl and started the task of picking up the fallen berries, and I left in what I hoped was a non-obvious fashion.

There was more to come.

As I left, I saw someone who was presumably a manager due to their vest and button down shirt come walking up to the scene, clearly not happy, and I thought that was the end of the story as I would know it. I would, however, learn more a little later.

Now, I met a fellow automotive enthusiast (F) who worked at the store, and over the course of the next few weeks, I would see him working in that store and stop to chat about cars and engines.

Good riddance.

Later, I helped him change the shocks on his ford, and during this casual conversation I bought up AE and if F had met him. As of recent, I had not been seeing AE at all, and F confirmed that he had been fired.

He was apparently general jerk and was let go for being careless and reckless. Now, I don’t know that my little move there was what caused him to be fired directly, but I defiantly set the wheels in motion if anything.

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In short, you don’t have to be bubbly and friendly all the time, especially if your heart isn’t in it, but don’t be a agressive to other people.

He was likely going to be fired eventually, but it seems that her little revenge pushed things forward.

Read through what the people in the comments have to say about this story below.

He did the right thing.

It makes the story even better.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who gets fired, then ends up with extra cash due to a loophole in the termination letter.

This commenter is funny.

The employee was putting people in danger of getting hurt, so he deserved to be fired. When you’re pushing one of those large carts around, you really have to be extra careful.

It is unfortunate that so much produce was wasted, but it all worked out in the end.