Sometimes, people see what they want, even when the truth is right in front of them.

So, what would you do if a stranger assumed you worked somewhere that you didn’t, and tried to report you to management when you didn’t help them? Would you just walk off right away? Or would you wait around and see how it all plays out?

In the following story, one young woman finds herself in this situation and chooses the latter. Here’s what happened.

She Reported Me To A Manager I Don’t Work For…

I work in a building on my college campus, and sometimes I get lucky enough to get assigned a set-up shift – aka the shift where you don’t have to wear your uniform and instead can wear whatever you feel comfortable carrying tables and piles of chairs in.

It’s my favourite kind of shift, and today I decided to wear a jumper I got the other day from my other job, mostly because it’s incredibly soft, but also to do a little bit of self promotion or whatever (my other job is designing a magazine, and my jumper has the magazine’s logo and name on it).

It’s like a black-and-grey varsity jacket, with the logos embroidered in white. My name and position are also in white on the right side of the chest.

As she looked through some snacks, a lady approached her.

I was heading home from that shift and wandered into Dealz (the Irish equivalent of Poundland for any UK folks) to get some cheap snacks for the evening. The Dealz uniform is usually this plain black fleece thingy, with the Dealz logo, but some staff wear a plain black polo when it’s warm.

I should also point out that I fit the apparent demographic for hire at my local Dealz: young, clearly a student, and full of exhaustion and self-hatred. I suppose that’s what made this lady assume I was working there.

I’m poking through a basket, trying to find my favorite flavor of a particular snack, when I hear someone clearing their throat.

Assuming I’m blocking the aisle, I shuffle to the side and say “Sorry,” still with my hands in the pile of boxes, when I hear her say, “Hey, can you help me?”

She wanted to know where to find the clothes.

I look up, expecting her to be an older woman or something, who maybe wouldn’t have seen the giant logo of another company splashed across my back, but no, she’s younger than my mum for sure – blonde, tall, clutching a handbag I could probably fit my whole body into.

However, I’m still in customer service mode from my actual job, so I smile and tell her, “Sure, what do you need?”

“I’m looking for the clothing section, but this place is huge. Can you show me where it is?”

Then, the woman asked if she was going to show her the way.

I give her directions – the shop isn’t that big, you can actually see the first racks of disgustingly tacky jackets from where I’m standing – and turn back to the basket, but almost instantly she coughs again.

“Are you not going to bring me there?”

I face her again and tell her, “Well, I don’t actually need clothes right now, and I wasn’t heading that way, so no.”

She glares at me.

The manager looked pretty flustered.

“What kind of customer service is that! Where is your manager?!?”

Now I’m confused: she clearly got my name from my jumper, but right under where it says my name, it says ‘Designer’ – a position I’m fairly certain doesn’t exist at Dealz.

However, her raised voice has made an actual employee come over to see what the problem was. She demands to see a manager, so within a few minutes, a pretty flustered-looking woman comes striding down the aisle.

Suddenly, the woman started complaining.

Manager: “What’s going on here?”

Lady: “This employee has been incredibly rude, and I wanted to report the behavior!”

The manager looks at me, clearly just as confused as I am, and says, “I’m sorry – what?”

The lady replies, “I asked for assistance, and was basically told to handle it myself! This is bad customer service!”

The manager apologized, but it wasn’t her fault.

At this point, I’m just shrugging at the manager behind the lady’s back. She clearly decides to uphold the shop’s image, so she slowly turns to me and says, “Alright, maybe you should go and do something else while I help out this customer?”

I just nod and leave, because honestly, I’m starting to get a bit freaked out, and minty Toffifee isn’t worth it.

The manager did find me in the drink section after and apologized, but it wasn’t really her fault.

The lady just clearly ignored that I wasn’t wearing the uniform. If I had been working there, I think she would’ve been in the right, so I wasn’t mad or anything. It just freaked me out because I’ve never been in that position before!

Yikes! That lady sounds pretty entitled.

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit would’ve handled it.

This person would’ve handled it differently.

For this person, the woman was rude.

Here’s someone who finds fault with the manager.

This person is being sarcastic.

The manager handled this poorly.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.