The most valuable skills you gain in a retail job may just be a heck-ton of patience and a steely resolve.

For one new employee, a small oversight that left a customer shortchanged five cents led to an unnecessarily rude encounter with a customer.

Read on for this harrowing tale from retail.

A customer got mad at me over 5 cents at my new job

This is my first retail job. It’s at a stationery store that has some other services too.

She was brand new at this job and was having a hard time picking up the cash register.

I’ve been working for just 6 days, so I don’t have the whole mental change calculator thing down yet, and sometimes my brain just freezes when it comes to money math.

Then, in came the worst possible customer.

Anyways, earlier a man came in and asked to buy some stuff (think it was a newspaper and a pack of cigarettes— not sure, can’t really remember).

I told him his total, and in the money he handed me, there were two 5 cent coins.

I only saw one (I just completely missed it by accident), so I was like, “You’re missing 5 cents.”

And that’s when this customer totally lost his cool.

He got mad at me, and after I noticed the other 5 cents, he was like, “You’re slow. Are you aware of that?” in a very condescending tone.

He shouldn’t have gotten that mad at me over 5 cents.

He knows I’m new here, and it was just 5 cents.

It was a small mistake, but by the customer’s reaction, it didn’t seem like it.

This commenter offers some words of encouragement.

Another retail employee knows someone who dealt with a similar situation.

Some customers seem to go out of their way to make employees’ lives miserable.

It’s possible some people are just looking for a reaction.

She may have been a little slow with the change, but he was even slower with his compassion.

At the end of the day, his reaction revealed far more about his character than it did about her competence.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.