We all make mistakes.
It's simply human nature.
But that doesn't mean we don't often find ourselves frustrated when other people make mistakes.
Particularly if these other people are our colleagues, resulting in having to clean up the mess they created.
Redditor xk543x was curious to hear about some of the worst, or most inane mistakes made by unreliable co-workers, leading them to ask:
"What's the dumbest mistake you've seen an incompetent co worker make?"
There's a reason we keep the boys away from the girls
"At a Petco all the Guinea pigs were in a big plexiglass enclosure with a center divider."
"Boys on one side and girls on the other."
"An employee decided that all the long haired Guinea pigs should be on one side and short haired on the other."
"It took forever to sort them out and all the females were pregnant."- PumpkinsDad
Dangerously negligent
"Social worker here."
"We’re supposed to see clients who live with families once a year."
"A mom of a kid kept calling her worker but got no answer."
"Mom called the on call worker who discovered the assigned worker had logged the visits in and made thorough notes."
"The mom said she never saw her in two years."
"This led to her whole caseload being audited and then they found she had logged a visit with a client who’d been dead for months."
"While being audited, her supervisor decided to do a surprise visit to the client she was supposed to see."
"She never showed up and logged in the visit the next day."- ShiroHachiRoku
Slow and steady... gets you fired
"Had a guy take a cover off the base of a radar unit which had like 40 bolts holding it on."
"Gave him a ratchet wrench to do it."
"Half hour later I go check on him, only had about 10 off. "
"Watched him a bit."
"He would take it off each time to move it for the next turn!
"Showed him how a ratchet works."
"Never assume people know stuff." - User Deleted
Old Faithful!
"Tried to cool down hot oil, in a chute, all ready to be emptied, with a nice big bucket of water."
"I heard 'THOMAS NO' only to turn around and see a GEYSER of hot oil shooting towards the ceiling before it hit and splashed down around him."
"Nobody was hurt some f*cking how."
"The chute that the oil was in was on wheels and had a wooden handle, it absolutely didn’t need to be cooled lol."- Ohiolongboard
How to make a bad situation even worse
"I worked on a golf course during the summer."
"Area with lots of poison ivy."
"Two of my coworkers were instructed to weedy a river edge area."
"If we encounter poison ivy, we either stop what we are doing or go get full suit protection with respirators."
"These dumba**es were weed whacking in the thickest poison ivy I had ever seen."
"No protective suit or glasses or respirator."
"I roll up and notice what the hell they're doing and point out all the poison ivy everywhere."
"They were aerosolizing the oil."
"They both ended up in the hospital on steroid to prevent their death because of the oils they inhaled."- Onwisconsin42
"30 days has September..."
"The designer, creative director and head of production all missed that there was an eight day week on a calendar."
"We sent 10000 copies of a useless calendar to a client."
"Rightly so, they refused to pay for it."- atot806
Isn't that why they call it long division?
"Not a mistake necessarily, but I once witnessed our chief accounting officer, and our only accountant; it was a small company, type in values into two Excel cells, pull out a calculator, add the two numbers together in the calculator, and then type the answer in a third cell."
"She had apparently been doing this for years, with sheets consisting of thousands of rows."
"I explained how to use formulas and copy them but she apparently forgot because I saw her doing the same thing again months later."- zachm26
Isn't that what these pockets are for?
"When I worked construction, there was a guy who showed up with nothing in his tool belt except a small bag of peanuts in one pocket."
"He didn't stay around too long."- Incredible_mango
This is how much I care about my job.
"I used to work at a dealership."
"I was the guy who parked all the cars on the lot and made it look organized."
"I had access to every car on the lot, as long as the key for it was not lost."
"Attached to the dealership was a very small parking lot just big enough to hold about 5-6 cars with room to maneuver."
"As long as you knew what you were doing, you should be able to maneuver our CX-9, 3 row SUV, with relative ease in and out of its parking space even if there are a few extra cars in the lot, which happens from time to time."
"One day, towards nearing the end of my shift, a saleswoman went to borrow one of the test drive vehicles, a midsize sedan, for a reason I can’t remember."
"The job allows us to use just about any car to travel between lots, go for lunch, etc. but it is kind of encouraged to take a used car since it’s not as big of a deal if anything were to happen to them."
"Some time goes by and the saleswoman returns to the lot and attempts pull into the parking space."
"Virtually every dealership backs their cars into parking spaces so that the front of the car faces the public, this saleswoman did not do this."
"What’s more is that she turns too wide and scrapes the adjacent car and the damage is visible."
"She gets out of the car and walks inside like nothing happened."
"Normally, I’d be livid at the amount of extra work she just gave me, but seeing as I clocked out, I figured that was someone else’s problem to deal with before the dealership closed in 2 hours."
"Fast forward to the next day when i show up for work and I kid you not, the car is still there as she left it."
"I thought that was shocking until I realized that the saleswoman LEFT THE CAR ON the entire time."
"The real kicker is that I got replaced maybe a month or two after this happened."
TL;DR: Car Saleswoman crashes test drive car and leaves it as is for 12 hours.- SuccessfulRoad5574
Had he ever been in a kitchen before?
"Working in Hospitality, new worker around 23 yrs keeps to himself , but doesn't seem to understand how everything works."
"He's cooking in the kitchen and decided to grab a cooking tray from the oven without gloves and then burning his hands."
"He did these two more times, before eventually realizing hospitality not for him."- Lamoose2018
Never a dull moment...
"This will probably get buried but too good not to tell."
"When I did my internship at a hospital, one of the administrators was working her last week before her pension."
"In this last week she left candles on her desk burning after her shift and the whole wing burned down."
"Luckily nobody got hurt."
"Not a great way to end your career."- CalvinWeirFields
Let's hope he washed his hands again...
"I was a temp at a factory and we got a new batch of temps with some real dummies partway through the summer."
"My best exchange with one of said dummies came after he said he was confused by 'those fancy weirda** urinals in the bathroom'.”
“'What are you talking about?'”
“'I mean it’s like the communal birdbath thing and everyone pisses at the same time'."
"'It was weird man'.”
"Birdbath… the sink!?"
"'You pissed in the sink?'”
“'Ooooohhh, well that explains why that guy was washing his hands in it'.”- jmradus
Pump first, pay later... much later...
"A guy went to fill the work van up with the fuel card."
"We said just check they accept that card before you fill up."
"He went and asked if they took the card and they did so he filled up and drove off thinking all was good."
"Anyway police were called and he had to go back to pay."- Past-Squirrel8286
Oblivious arson?
"At a corner 24 hour fast food restaurant with an expensive cardboard box bundling machine."
"The machine was inside a chain link fence with the dumpsters, general garbage, cooking oil, etc."
"On truck day a new employee was tasked with taking half a semi’s worth of boxes out to the cardboard recycling machine."
"He was supposed to break the boxes down flat and slide them into a slot so that they would lay flat ready to be bundled up."
"Instead he forced opened the top of the machine and tossed the unflattened boxes in."
"The dumpster was quickly overflowing and he just kept tossing up boxes on top of the pile until there was a mountain of boxes covering everything."
"The fenced area was soon full and as it was just a few feet from the side wall of a fancy furniture showroom on one side and a 6 foot high privacy fence for a residential area behind garbage area the the boxes were then piled between the showroom and the wood fence as well."
"Seeing this manager sent the new guy back out to 'clean the boxes up' properly only to have to call the fire department a few minutes later."
"Yes the guy set fire to the pile."
"We had a spectacular grease fire, black smoke from the melting dumpster lids looked like burning tires."
"The area had to be evacuated, and the cross streets were closed for hours."
"The fire department was able to save the furniture store though its wall had heavy damage."
"New guy was arrested for arson."
"He said 'How was I supposed know that was not a burn pit'.- Crazy-Hippo6299
Extra thrilling, thanks to incompetent employees
"I used to work as a zipline tour guide."
"Our weight limits were between 50lbs and 300lbs, but at 220lbs we switched you to a magnetically limited trolley to control your speed."
"I was working with a newer guide, who was currently sending people down one of the fastest lines, where I would catch and detach them at the bottom."
"On one of the last sends in the group, I notice that one of the customers (around 285lbs) was going way too fast."
"My coworker had put him on the wrong trolley."
"That man fully compressed the spring bank meant to slow down any larger riders, which usually compressed halfway at most, causing the spring to all detach from one another and sending the man a quarter of the way back up a 1500ft line."
"He eventually rolled back in and I apologized profusely and proceeded to cuss out my coworker over the radios."
"Eventually he sent down the next group, he sent a 60lb kid down on the mag trolley meant for 220+, instead of his 200lb self."
"This resulted in the kid stopping 200ft short and me having to climb out and kick him in."
"It was a miracle he didn't get fired after that, but he did go on to continue f*cking up, and continue staying employed."- UpstairsSilly1738
Maybe a little guidance and help was all it took to put these colleagues on a better path forward.
But one imagines the only path these less-than-star employees found themselves on was right out the door.
Thanks to the internet and social media, it's never been easier to become famous.
Indeed, some people have used social media to such an effect, that they are as or more well known than any number of movie stars.
But others might have put something on the internet just for fun, unaware that they had a viral sensation on their hands ("Charlie bit my finger" anyone?).
Some people soak in this unexpected fame for a moment or two, and then let it pass as they go on with their lives.
Others, however, might enjoy being unexpectedly famous, and will relish in their unexpected celebrity for the rest of their lives.
No matter how small an audience their internet fame reached.
Redditor JesseB342 was eager to hear examples of when a tiny bit of internet fame resulted in an expanded ego, leading them to ask:
"What’s the smallest amount of internet fame / clout that you’ve seen go to someone’s head?'
Blink and you'll miss them.
"Friend was in a video at a car meet that went viral back say 2011-2012."
"He said like 8 words and couldn’t see him but you could hear him."
"He would go around telling people after he is 'famous' for being in a viral YouTube video."
"I was like 'if you have to announce you are famous, you might not be as famous as you think Broski'."- HoneyMussy4goodBoy
It made the movie!
"My dad's collection of vintage drinking glasses were used in 'The Mothman Prophecies'."
"His glasses made the movie much better.:
"Just ask him, he'll tell you."- cleonavarro
Anyone remember MySpace?
"I made a fairly successful MySpace type quiz once.'
'Over a million people took it. I put that on my resume.''- effieokay
"Remember when I did that thing? No? Well, you should!"
"A guy from my hometown who was sort of a skeezeball helped some elderly folks escape a fire."
'The act itself was commendable and he deserved the recognition he received in local media and he went viral for a week or two."
'But uh….5 plus years after the fact he was still using that as a way to try to get out of tickets or being cut off at the local bars after refusing to pay tabs."
"My brother encountered his Instagram recently and his self-description says something like 'Unspoken hero, DM me for details."
"lmao.'- FartAttack911
Fame can't get you everything.
"I work for a company that books luxury travel, think $20,000 packages."
"A woman contacted us wanting a free trip in exchange for posting it on her blog, proudly proclaiming that she had 800 followers."
"My coworkers' dog photo account has more followers."- AnastasiaSheppard
Even if he's not wrong.
"That dude telling Keanu Reeves that he's breathtaking."
"He would later comment on other stuff whenever breathtaking was mentioned, as if he was the one that came up with the word and made it his thing."- Sir_MoonDoggy
Big ego making up for other shortcomings?...
"The guy from TikTok dancing in that parade to 'I’m just thinking with my d*ck'.”
"He went home to Indianapolis and started doing meet and greets with people at local car dealerships lol."- jkaycola
It happens to the best of us...
"I entered a blog competition to my uni the summer before I started.'
"I won, and myself and two others were given a free laptop on the understanding we'd keep publishing blogs as 'Insiders' for the uni to use as a marketing tool."
"I put one up a week, and enjoyed it."
"They were decently entertaining and linked to on the uni website, but probably got no more than a few dozen reads."
"On my birthday a few months into the year the bouncers at a club wouldn't let me in as I appeared too drunk."
"I got into a pedantic argument with them about whether the pavement was public property or not, then shouted at them I was going to write about it in my Uni-sanctioned blog."
"I woke up hungover the next day and did not write about the incident in my uni-sanctioned blog."- Fascinatedwithfire
It's one way of putting yourself out there...
"Any amount of sound cloud rappers that get a few hundred views and a few mates gassing them up and think they've found their calling."
"Source, I have to produce them."
"Money is money tho."- EddieHxtler
Bad sportsmanship will never pay off...
"Back in the day when I played Wow there was a guy on my server who had a tiny amount of name recognition."
"He was good at the game and spent a lot of time and energy organizing things."
"People on the server knew him and would ask for his help, or show him deference in order to get his attention on things."
"One day he put together an optional raid and at the end of the raid a particularly rare item dropped."
"Instead of an open roll - which was the standard at the time - he simply gave the item to his friend."
'When people complained, he said something like, 'I'm so and so, I'm the most important raid leader on this server, you're all lucky to even be here right now, so shut up and deal with it'."
'Well screenshots were taken and links were sent around."
"Dude ended up transferring off the server less than a week later because nobody would give him the time of day."- shaidyn
We all like being recognized for an accomplishment.
But rather than let fame get to our heads, it's important to use that fame for good.
Particularly if you can reach as many as 100 followers to make a difference.
Weddings, and the festivities leading up to them, are a major milestone in many people's lives. The sheer stress and effort that go into planning a wedding are usually enough to make people realize they should try hard not to screw things up.
Sometimes that isn't the case though, and when things go wrong they often go very, very wrong.
Reddit user u/MediocrePNumber6 asked:
"What's the biggest bachelor/bachelorette party or wedding night f**k up you have seen?"
20.
Myself and some mates went paintballing a few years ago and the other team was the groomsmen from a wedding happening the next day, all went well but at the end of the game the paintball host said "showdown between groom and best man" so they go back to back and walk 5 paces and shoot eachother but the best man shot him on the neck and it looked like the biggest hickey ever so id say it was fun to try explain that!
19.
I was at my uncles fiancés bachelorette party. The next morning we wake up and her engagement ring is missing. Her drunk brain reasoned it was safer to take her ring off to wash her hands in the club but she never put it back on after. We tried calling the place but they never found it. Probably made worse by the fact the ring was the grooms mothers engagement ring and she had picked him out of her 7 sons to take the ring for his fiancé. The groom was very cool about it and she felt really bad but they ended up having to get a lookalike for the wedding a few weeks later.
They're still married years later with kids so it's a happy ending.
18.
My buddy's bucks weekend was after the wedding. We partied in a hotel room for the night then met the bride and her party the next day to stay and party at a house for a few nights.. first night we got super hammered at the hotel, place got totally destroyed, tried to order a stripper to the room, instead a hooker showed up, no one wanted to have sex with her and she didn't speak much English so we had to pay her $400 to leave. Groom fell over on the hotel room floor that was covered in broken glass.. in the morning the groom disappears to a brothel..at the house all the strip joints that we called (it was a lot) to try and get a stripper we're calling back, new wife finds out, takes off the ring and gives it back to the groom.. very awkward. They are still married with two kids.
17.
My best man fell down some steps at a strip club. Another dude picked him up, but his foot must have been wedged under the stair. One almighty crunch later he was back on his drunken feet, only to wake up to this the next day.
16.
We had a big going away party for one of my buddies, as with all groups of soldiers - the night ended at the strip club (yeah I know). Anyways, one of the guys just happened to have gotten married earlier that day. He decided that rather than going home with his lovely bride on their wedding night, he would rather come with us while she went home.
They just announced they're getting divorced, it's been 2 months.
15.
We are Greek-Americans. And not many Greeks actually break plates at weddings. But this bride insisted on breaking plates. So people are dancing and others are breaking plates by their feet. The bride (and others) are kneeling in a circle clapping around the people dancing.. and all the plates being thrown.
And as you could guess, a piece hit the bride in the face right under her eye and she started gushing blood all over. Her dress looks like it's out of a horror film. It took a while for the tiny nick to stop bleeding. But it was scary seeing her just start bleeding like that.
14.
Was at a bachelor party years ago, early 20s, for a friend and he got a private room with a stripper and had sex with her. Don't talk to him anymore for other reasons such as him being dead but the marriage fell apart pretty quick
13.
My BIL went go karting for his bachelor's. Came off, face planted, gravel rash all down the side of his face right before the wedding.
He went to hospital and got it bandaged. The dressings didn't come off until the morning of. 100% healed. Doctor was impressed and he lived to the honeymoon.
12.
A friend of mine worked as a bartender and told me that this 26 y/o girl was celebrating her bachelorette party when she saw a video of her fiancé having sex with another woman at his bachelor party. For almost an hour he had to act as this girl's therapist until she stumbled off into the night still depressed at the way things turned out.
11.
Wedding videographer here. I have full on seen people get married, sign the paperwork, and the dude goes off to gave sex with a bridesmaid the wedding night. It's honestly impressive how little time it takes to end that marriage.
10.
My old boss cheated on his bachelor party night, swore all his friends to secrecy, went through with the wedding then told her on the first night of their honeymoon out of guilt. Married and split up within 1 week!
9.
Buddy smashed his face on the first night. He passed out in the hotel wearing socks. Got up to go to the bathroom and slipped on the marble floor. His teeth went through his mouth. Blood everywhere. We called hotel staff to help. EMTs came, and two of us took him to an emergency dentist. He ended up leaving the next day. Worst parts: $8k in dental work, had to have his jaw wired shut, and was scheduled for his first day at a new job three days after the accident.
8.
I used to strip at bachelorette parties. Some brides to be were way too physical in ways I sometimes wondered if marriage at that point was a good idea for them.
7.
My gf went on one where they got a party bus. Everyone was drunk before getting on. They just drove around the town we live in after picking up all the guests (about a 20min drive gets you from one side to the other on a slow day). The toilet on the bus broke early on then started overflowing as people kept using it even after being told not to. 2 people had asthma attacks as they were allowed smoke on the bus but windows didnt open enough to ventilate for 15+ people smoking like trains. 1 person passed out and woke up only to projectile vomit all over the place.
Fights broke out after onboard alcohol supply ran out gf demanded to be dropped home as due to all the smoke her chest became heavily irritated and she couldnt ignore the smell of the busted toilet any longer. She got dropped off and then 2 people off the bus came to our door with her demanding I give them extra alcohol then trying to guilt me by saying its a gift for the happy couple (I planned their entire wedding for free and paid for the dj as a gift) so I just laughed and said no.
A month later they got married (the couple got alot of praise for having such a wonderful wedding on such a budget). 4 months later filed for divorce after one's drug habit came to light along with both realising they were cheating rings around each other.
6.
While smoking outside groom (brother of my fiancé at the time) started hitting on me and wanted to get a blow job off me - literally took his junk out etc. Apologised promptly and put it back after seeing my reaction, saying he's too drunk and excited. But then again, he has been cheating on his wife-to-be throughout their entire relationships, so not a big surprise he did it on their wedding night too. Just never thought it would be with me, I thought siblings partners are off limits for everyone no matter what!
5.
I have the opposite sort of story, my friend "rented" a sloth and had a very quiet party were they fed it sweet potatoes. It was apparently fun and cute.
The sloth came from a conservation organization and you can pay for a "sloth experience" in your home where a guy comes over with the sloth and you hang out for a while.
4.
Totally caused by ME. Drank too much free Champagne (son of a heart surgeon was groom) and I got chucked out of the reception for saying out loud the groom's sister was ugly. Got ousted from the friend group. Totally deserved, I was out of order and extremely drunk.
3.
A worked in a small family restaurant/pub in my small college town while i was in undergrad. We were the classiest "bar" in town, so we had a surprising number of bachelor/bachelorette parties come through. In one particularly bad incident i remember, we were the last stop at the end of a daytime bachelorette party.
They had toured a bunch of wineries/breweries, and most of the participants were trashed by the time they got there (around 4 PM). As soon as they walked in, the bride-to-be disappeared to the bathroom. A few minutes later, we noticed a lot of water begin streaming out under the door. She had puked everywhere, and somehow in the process RIPPED THE SINK OUT OF THE WALL!!! The icing on the cake, her mother in law had to carry her vomit covered butt out of the restaurant. We ended up having to shut down for a few days in order to repair the damage.
2.
Had a distant cousin get arrested on the way into the church to get married.
Credit to the bride. She said it's all paid for let's party. It became an impromptu family reunion. They had the jp marry them a week later
1.
Nothing worse than when one of the friends to the groom had a massive drunken meltdown over the fact that we weren't going to a strip club. Ugly crying and everything.
Our parents should be able––and willing––to protect us and to fight for our best interests. But that's not always the case, and the unlucky ones can spend years seeking mental health counseling to figure out what went wrong.
Our parents are human and they have the ability to disappoint us and devastate us like anyone else. It just hurts a little more, as we were reminded once Redditor banbidoe asked the online community,
"What's the worst thing your parents ever said to you?"
"My family..."
"My family never went on vacations, we couldn't afford them."
"When I was 18 my parents told me that they were going out west to see the Grand Canyon, do some hikes, etc. I exclaimed how cool and fun that would be. Then my dad said, "Oh, you're not going. You're staying here with Sally (16). We're only taking Mary (14) and Jeff (12)."
"I froze for a minute, trying to compute what he said. "Why can't we come?" I finally asked."
"You have summer jobs."
"We can take time off..."
"Well, we just can't afford to take you."
"They had a really fun time without us. I still think about it over ten years later."
"Gotta be when I was 12..."
"Gotta be when I was 12 and my mum told me my uncle fancied me. She said it so matter of factly. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. I've never really been able to get past that."
"10 years later..."
"One month after my sister died unexpectedly, I was having a complete breakdown about it and called my mother for comfort."
"Get over it." She told me, before hanging up."
"10 years later in therapy, I was finally able to trace the start of our relationship breakdown to this moment."
"I hate that phrase now."
"I'm 30 now..."
"My dad telling my brothers (10 & 6 years old) and I (8 years old) over and over again that we should go find a new dad because he didn't want to be ours anymore while ranting and raving after our mom served him with divorce papers. The best part is that he would also tell us "You'll understand why when you're older." I'm 30 now and the only thing I understand is that he's a lunatic."
"They told me..."
"They told me they didn't want me, they wanted a girl so they tried again and got lucky and had the girl they wanted."
"I'm adopted..."
"I'm adopted, and at one point my mom said to me "If I had known you'd grow up to be so screwed up I would have picked another child," as if my physical conditions are my fault somehow and my mental disorders aren't at least in part caused by how she raised me."
"That I was faking my depression..."
"That I was faking my depression, and I need to "man up."
"When I was 15..."
"When I was 15, my dad patted my belly and said "put on some weight haven't you?"
"Which is probably not the worst thing in this list, but as I was already struggling with my body image, this was the last nudge I needed to push me into an eating disorder."
"After my sister died..."
"After my sister died, I was in a very dark place mentally / emotionally. The way I dealt with the grief was to keep it bottled up inside - I know it wasn't healthy, but that's how I survived the trauma. My mother was frustrated that I never talked about my sister. I couldn't even say her name or visit her grave. I did attend the funeral, but after that I went back to my silent grief."
"One day, my mother was pushing me to talk about what happened. I was frustrated because I didn't want to talk about it and she wouldn't let it go. My mother told me I disgraced my sister's memory by not talking about her, and it broke me."
"My Dad once told me..."
"My Dad once told me that no girl would love me because I'm fat. That cut me like a knife! There are people who love fat people!"
"Who does he think he is?"
The ones we love the most absolutely know the right buttons to push when it comes to an insult.
Do you have similar experiences to share? Let us know below.
It's human nature to have various opinions about the people we come across.
What sets us apart from heathens is that we keep our judgments to ourselves–especially when they are not of the flattering variety.
The people who probably interact with strangers the most are those who work in any type of service industry, and they should be good about keeping their mouths shut if they don't have anything nice to say about a customer or of their purchases.
But Redditor gracoal gave those who worked in retail the opportunity to share their anecdotes by asking:
"Cashiers of Reddit, what items make you silently judge the people who buy them?"
When it came to the sale of beverages, these Redditors had some interesting thoughts.
Repeat Customers
"When I worked at the liquor store we only judged people if they came back several times a day."
"Edit: I only did this because it was illegal to sell alcohol to drunk people, when you have someone making multiple trips during a shift they may be drunk, whether or not they where an alcoholic wasn't my concern, but yes I had to judge them."
– RenegadeOfBonk
Evasive Customer
"When I was drinking heavily every night I’d go to a different store each day so as to avoid judgment lol"
– musetoujours
Quality Of Water
"The ethos water at Starbucks. We literally give out free water and it’s way better than the ethos water like sir."
– Sweet-Ad1906
Some of these are examples of how cashiers shouldn't respond to items being purchased.
Because Priorities
"This was about ten years ago, but the only time I judged someone was also when I lost a little faith in humanity."
"Guy in his late twenties comes through the line. Belt is filled with junk food; chips, chocolate, popcorn, candy, etc. The whole time I'm ringing him up he's saying how glad he is to be out of the house, that the baby has a flu or something and hes at his wits end."
"Fair enough, I suppose."
"I get to the total, tell him, and wouldn't you know, he's short a few dollars. So what does he put back? The only non-juck food item: children's cold and flu medicine."
"I still judge that man, and I don't even remember his face."
– Remembermybrave
Saving Face
"At the pharmacy I had a guy not buy an epipen for his child with a $50 copay but pay $100 for tretinoin which was not covered for his own acne which, honestly wasn’t that bad. He really could have used an OTC med. I felt sorry for his offspring."
– ImNotYourOpportunity
Giggly Teen
"I bought toilet paper and laxatives at the same time. Teenage cashier looked at it and got the giggles. This got the bagger laughing. I just stood there stupidly pretending it wasn’t funny."
– goldyblocks
Arduous Scanning
"Not judged as much as hated when people bought dozens of those individually wrapped snack sized cheese slices. At my store we had to scan each one of them."
"🧀 Beep 🧀 beep 🧀 beep 🧀 beep"
– dustbunnee
A Lesson Learned
"Currently working as a cashier and I was reading thru these thinking 'what was something I really judged people for?'"
"Then I remembered this one customer I judged wrongly. Every morning this one guy would bolt into the store, go to the drink aisle, and come out with 5-6 energy drinks. He would come everyday so one day, I made a joke and said: 'don't drink them all in one setting.'"
"He then proceeded to tell me that it's to help with his ongoing chemo therapy. Stopped judging people based on their items after that one."
– Enchanted_nerd
It's not always the merchandise that prompted judgment.
Checking The Attitude
"I was a cashier for 3 years, and I can't think of a single thing that anyone bought that I judged them for."
"I certainly judged people for their attitudes, for inappropriately asking for a discount, or for various other petty things, but never for the items they were buying."
– Amikoj
Entitled Customer
"back when i worked nights at a gas station, i had a lady come in wanting a sale that had ended the previous week. when i refused to give it to her she did the whole 'DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!' bit, and swore her uncle owned the gas station chain and was going to have me fired. i really didn't give a damn. i made $12/hour. i told her go for it. then kicked her out."
"talked to my boss the next day who was a little peeved i didnt give her the discount but said i did the right thing by kicking her out because she doesn't tolerate customers being rude to her staff. never did find out if she really was the niece of the gas station owner, and never got fired. quit a year later for a better paying job."
– rocket___goblin
These former cashiers couldn't be bothered with assessing the behavior or shopping preferences of customers.
On Auto-Pilot
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I barely pay attention to what im scanning most of the time. You could point a loaded gun at me and leave a note saying you're gonna rob me. So long as I swipe it through and hear a beep, I won't even flinch."
– occpotato
Free From Judgment
"I cashiered at a grocery store for 4 years, same. I never judged people for what they were buying. I did judge people for being rude, for complaining about paying for disposable bags, for eating produce before paying for it, and for lying to my face to save a couple pennies. You can try switching the produce stickers but I can tell the difference between a Fuji and a Sweet Tango."
"Something I always wished people knew that we DO NOT judge people for"
- "having their card declined. If you only knew how frequently this happened all day long. No one cares and I do believe you when you tell me the account has money. I believe you. Cards get declined for all kinds of reasons, all day long. It is not a big deal at all."
- "I do not judge you for bringing a reusable bag from a different grocery store. People seem to think it’s bad etiquette or something and would always apologize for using a trader joe’s bag or something. No one cares. At all. Use whatever reusable bag you like, it’s just a bag."
– dumbname1000
The Wild Lovers
"I worked as a grocery store cashier many years ago when I was in college. I saw lots of weird stuff, but never judged what people bought, but did judge them if they were a-holes. Even people on wic and foodstamps buying beer or steaks didn't bother me - sometimes you have to enjoy the little things, and who am I to deny or judge someone wanting a small enjoyment if their life is already rough enough?"
"But there was this one time that was freaking hilarious. Late on a weekend night, a really trashy couple were all over each other as they bought a 12 pack of beer and a box of condoms. Hey, at least they were being responsible. But the funniest part was when they came back not 30 minutes later and bought smokes. I still laugh thinking about that."
– DonkeyHodie
You never know what a cashier might be thinking, but that shouldn't stop you from buying the merchandise you want for fear of being judged.
Just make sure you treat them all with kindness. Because the positive impression you give will be something that stays with them after a long shift dealing with wacky customers.