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If you’re a child at a store with your parents, it’s very important to stay with your parents so you don’t get lost. I can’t imagine anything much scarier for a child or a parent than to be separated and not to know where the other person is.

But what about when you’re an adult? If you were at a store with one of your parents and you got separated, what would you do?

Since most people have cell phones, I’d just call or text to find out where they were, but in this story, one man is in tears. We don’t know his whole story. We don’t know if he’s confused, has a mental disability, or if he’s worried about his dad. All we know is that he’s terribly stressed out about not being able to find his dad.

Keep reading for the whole story from the perspective of a retail worker who regrets getting annoyed with this customer.

“I’m sorry I haven’t seen your Dad”, “Well what do I do now?”

I’d just finished serving a customer and this guy came up to me, pretty normal looking, middle aged, mustache, office worker type.

He started talking, it was more of a ramble, and the only thing I managed to make out was, “I can’t find him”.

I thought, oh he’s after one of the other employees here, so I asked him, “Sorry, who is it you’re looking for?”

He repeats what I now understand to be, “He was meant to be here, grey coat?”. He’s starting to get upset.

OP eventually found out who the man was looking for.

Completely confused at this point and slightly enraged I’m meant to be psychic I again asked him who he was looking for.

To which he replied with tears welling in his eyes and his voice crackling, “My Dad”.

I didn’t really know what to say to this. It was suddenly clear that this quite normal looking bloke was missing a few marbles.

I managed to blurt out something like, “Sorry I don’t think I’ve seen your Dad, it’s quite hard to remember individual people”.

There wasn’t much he could do to help.

He looked like he was about to burst into tears, “Well what do I do now?”, he replied looking visibly distressed.

I immediately felt like a right jerk for getting annoyed at him, but still completely confused as to what I was meant to say to this child like man.

I told him he was welcome to wait in the shop in case he came back, but otherwise I couldn’t help, as by this point there was quite a queue massing that I had to deal with.

The guy turned away looking lost, and I turned my attention to the next customer.

He’s not sure if the man ever found his dad.

This queue lasted a while and during the next 10 minutes I heard him saying the exact same thing to another customer on the shop floor, and her trying to comfort him (and doing a much better job than me).

When i finally got rid of the queue he had gone, so I’m hoping he found his Dad.

But man it just made me feel terrible. For him, and at me for thinking like a jerk.

Not really a funny story, it made me more sad than anything, but it was a strange situation that made me think twice before getting annoyed with customers.

That is really sad. I’m wondering if the mad had a mental disability or if he was confused. Was his dad even there at all, or was the man not thinking straight? It’s hard to know.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this situation.

This person shares a possible reason the man was so confused.

Maybe he was autistic.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about an employee who decided to push back against time micromanagement.

Another person found the story very sad.

I think what makes this story the saddest is that there’s no resolution. We know the man left, but we don’t know if he found his dad. We don’t know if he was confused or if his dad was really there somewhere. We only know enough about the story to feel bad for him and hope everything worked out okay.

This is a good reminder that we shouldn’t be too quick to judge people. We never really know what someone’s going through.