Walking into a store right after closing is awkward enough without the whole thing turning into a shouting match.

One woman ran into that after stopping by a Joann store during its final days of liquidation.

When the automatic doors didn’t open, she pushed them apart like two other customers had already done and assumed something was wrong with the mechanism.

But once inside, an employee told her the store had already closed and pointed out a small sign with the holiday hours.

She started to leave, but the employee kept talking in a way she felt was condescending, and eventually she snapped.

Read on to see what happened next.

AITA for yelling at and flipping off a store employee who got nasty with me after I walked into the store a minute after it closed without realizing it was closing?

Just a few hours ago today, I went to check out the local Joann store next to the grocery store I made a quick run to.

The Joann store is closing and is in the final few days of liquidation because the whole company is going out of business. I was curious to see how empty the store was today compared to two days ago when I did my last shopping there during the clearance sales.

When I got up to the door, it didn’t open, but I was able to push the sliding doors apart and get in. Two other people before me did the exact same thing, so I didn’t think twice about doing that too.

It all started over the employee’s tone.

I honestly didn’t think in that moment that the doors weren’t opening automatically because they were closing for the night. That hadn’t occurred to me at all. I thought there was some kind of malfunction with the automatic door opening mechanism.

So, when I walked in, I called out to the cashiers to tell them there was something wrong with the doors. Then one of them started telling me in a condescending, disrespectful manner that they had just closed and there was a sign on the door stating the holiday hours.

I said I wasn’t aware and didn’t see the sign, but she didn’t change her tone and continued talking to me in a way where she was insinuating that I was either stupid for not seeing the sign or I was ill-intentioned somehow.

When the cashier wouldn’t stop being rude, she yelled back.

I was told to leave, so I proceeded to, but the employee did not let up on her condescending tone, so I yelled at her to shut up. She continued telling me to get out, so as I did, I flipped her off.

Her reaction was one of disbelief that I would do that. I left and drove home because I didn’t want the situation to escalate any further.

I don’t tolerate disrespect from anyone.

From her perspective, it was clearly an accident.

When I’m disrespected, I respond in kind. It was obvious that I was honestly mistaken in pushing the doors open and entering the store, but the employee spoke to me the way she did anyway.

For added context, the sign on the door with the holiday hours that I didn’t see was a dinky little black-and-white sign the size of a regular sheet of paper.

Because of the liquidation sales, there were many much larger and more colorful signs placed all over the front entrance to the store, making the sign with the holiday hours easy to miss.

Plus, after years in retail, she knows what it means to lock up a store for the night.

Also, I worked retail for 13 years, so I know very well that when it’s time to close up a store for the night, it’s not enough just to turn off the automatic sliding door mechanism to keep customers from entering after closing time.

The doors must also be latched shut to keep anyone from opening them manually. The proper thing to do at that point is for an employee to open the door manually to let out any remaining customers after they check out, re-latching the door after each customer leaves.

This way, no one can mistakenly enter after closing time. But these employees decided they couldn’t be bothered to do this, and one of them instead decided to speak to me in a disrespectful manner over my honest mistake that they could have easily prevented.

AITA?

Yikes! It seems like this whole thing got blown way out of proportion.

Let’s take a look at what the readers over at Reddit think about it.

According to this person, everyone was in the wrong.

Here’s someone who thinks she was wrong for the hole thing.

That’s a really good point.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tech support worker who told a manager a computer needed replaced, only to be told no thanks.

This person is probably onto something.

Everyone dropped the ball here.

Sure, the employee was wrong for speaking to a customer like that, but the customer was way out of line too.

If you walk up to a store at night and have to force the doors open, it can only mean one thing: they’re closed. And let’s not forget, those employees are losing their jobs, so no wonder they were probably stressed and ready to go home.

Next time, she needs to leave it alone and come back the next day.