He Just Wanted To Go Home After His Late Shift — But A Rude Customer Wouldn’t Finish Shopping And Leave
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Even if you do genuinely love your job, some days can just seem to drag. Time goes so slowly, and you find yourself counting down the minutes until you can leave.
Because even when you have a genuine passion for what you do, those last hours of work – especially at the end of a long week – can feel painstaking. Because you just want to go home, and all that is standing in the way of that is those last few hours, or minutes, of the workday.
But at least if you work a regular 9-5 job, you know when you can go home. But in other industries, including retail and hospitality, while you have a set working pattern, it’s not unusual for those folk working the late shift to be held back even longer because paying customers aren’t done yet.
And that was exactly what happened to the grocery store worker in this story, who just wanted to go home.
Read on to find out more.
“But I’ve also worked in a store before”
Some years ago, I was at work at the grocery store and it was one day before our national day.
I was working late/closing shift (4pm to 11pm). The store closes at 11pm.
Around 10:50pm, a lady with a typical Karen haircut and purple hair color walks into the store and grabs a shopping cart, and walks into the opposite end of the store with meat fridges and freezers.
I start the closing routines and don’t think much of it. The time hits 11, I’ve finished my routines and the lady is still standing there in the same exact spot.
Let’s see how this employee dealt with this customer.
I go to her to tell her the store is closed, but before I get a single word in she says, “I know, the store is closed, I know you want to go home, I’ve worked in a store before you know.”
I just responded with “mhm? Are you loo-”
But she interrupted, “listen, I’ve worked in a store before! You ALWAYS let the customer finish shopping” and then she started rambling incoherently.
The time hits 23:05, and she FINALLY starts moving, but was swerving between the freezers, not grabbing anything. On the way to the cash registers, she suddenly takes a sharp right turn to look at something. The entire time she is rambling to me about something, I was spacing out and just following her to make sure she leaves.
But even when she got to the cash register, the drama wasn’t over.
Finally, at 23:12, she makes it to the register and my colleague scans her items.
Then she realizes she forgot something and is about to go grab it, but before she does I say “I’ll go grab it for you”, which I did.
I return with the item and my colleague scans it through. Then she asks about cigarettes (the store uses an electronic safe that you pay for a ticket you scan and then the item drops like a vending machine), while tapping the screen in front of the register.
My colleague explains that whatever cigarettes she wanted we were out of. She scoffs and proceeds to look for her wallet in her purse.
Read on to find out what happened next.
After rummaging for what felt like forever, she finds the wallet, pays and packs her stuff in a bag and heads for the exit. I follow her to lock the door.
She notices some national day flower bouquets by the exit and is about to stop to look at them, when she probably noticed me rolling my eyes, and she left.
The time was now around 11:23, and my colleague still needed to finish counting the till.
The entire time from when I first walked up to the lady and until she left, she was rambling about stores and how she worked in one and “I know how it is” and stuff. Lady, if you know then please leave so I can go home!
Yikes, talk about a selfish customer.
Genuinely, if she had worked in a store before, she’d know very well how terrible her etiquette was.
In fact, she was lucky to have even been allowed in the store in the first place.
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Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.
This person agreed that the store should take measures to prevent this.
While others thought that she was just making excuses for her terrible behaviour.
Meanwhile, this Redditor couldn’t understand her behaviour at all.
Genuinely, if you have ever worked in a store during the closing shift, you know exactly how annoying it is when someone has the audacity to pull something like this.
Because all you want is to go home, and there is this person who won’t leave, and they’re being super slow. It’s incredibly frustrating and exhausting for these employees who have likely been at work for the best part of the day, and all they want to do is go home to sleep. But nope, you’re there holding them up because you have no haste at all.
It’s terrible manners, and admitting that she has worked in a store before – if that is even true – makes things even worse.
Because when someone has been in your position, you might expect solidarity, not to have your time taken for granted like this. Goodness knows what time these employees even got to leave, since they had to finish their closing procedures after the final customer had left. Honestly, the audacity to pull something like this!
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