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First, some background information. I work at a grocery store, basically as an assistant manager. It's about 6:30 or 7PM tonight, the time that most of the cashiers are scheduled to go home, so I'm busy pulling the tills (cash drawers) from the register to count them and get them ready for the next day before locking them up. 7 is usually pretty quiet - the big rush is over.
So I'm in the office, swapping money out of the safe, when someone starts banging on the door. My first instinct is it's a robbery, so I shut the safe, (not really thinking since I'd be opening it up real quick if a gun was on me
) and go to see who it is. Some lady is about to have a breakdown, and I finally get her to tell me what's going on in a way I can understand. Her son is missing, can't find him, etc. I get the description and call for a Code Adam over the intercom (for those who don't know what this is, if a child is missing, a Code Adam basically locks down a store - emergency exit doors are guarded, the front doors are guarded by managers and the parent, the bathrooms are checked, and others look through the aisles for the kid. It is a pretty scary thing just for me, god knows what it's like for the parent. Not to mention this has never happened before, and I was feeling a lot of stress from being inspected by the Loss Prevention that same day.
My boss just happened to be coming in the store from a smoke break, so she takes the mother and goes to the front entrance, while I go to check the cashier register part, and then the aisles, while another person routinely pages for the kid (whose name actually was Adam). So I do a sweep and am walking past the registers, and some customer in the checkout line turns as I'm walking by and basically cusses me out, out of the blue, because we only had two lanes open(we in reality had 3 or 4 open I think, I'm still a little jittery), and that the store is ****ty and we didn't have some stupid can of soup. I sort of turn as I'm walking by and tell her there is a child missing and I'm trying to make sure he's alright, something like that.
"Well I want my damn can of soup so I can get out of here!"
Yeah...so I just turned my head and kept walking, but apparently the customer wasn't finished, because she *grabs* my sleeve, and tells me not to "****ing walk away from her".
I jerk away from her, and another customer tells her to calm down and watch her language (which went really well), so psycho***** tells the other customer to "mind his own goddamned business" and then tells me to "get my ass back over to her".
At this point, I'm about to have a nervous breakdown. I'm used to customers *****ing at me about all the problems in the world, but I've never been "manhandled" while trying to make sure some nutjob hasn't kidnapped some little kid. So I snapped at the customer and told her that if her ass was still in the store when the police came (they get called for a Code Adam), she'd be leaving in handcuffs, and she damn sure wasn't going to get her can of soup, so she could rot in hell. (Boy, that relieved some of that adrenaline). The customer...
....
The customer, at this point, picks up her purse and jacket she'd had in her cart, and accidentally DROPS what I later counted up to be about 80$ worth of OTC meds and other med-related **** that she'd hidden underneath her jacket, and bolts for the entrance like a mother****er. It took me a second to realize what had just transpired, just standing there in shock. My boss had noticed what was going on, but didn't know the lady had all those things she was trying to steal, so was also caught completely off-guard when she ran like hell out of the store.
So I was apparently was just standing there, shaking, like I was about to go postal and slaughter the store, so my manager grabs a Coke out of the refrigerator and tells me to go calm my nerves (and not to touch the money until I'd relaxed...those capitalistic bastards ), so I chilled in the office for 15 minutes or so. By that time, rumor had apparently spread, initially that I'd gotten my shirt ripped by a customer so I was having to change, to that I'd gotten a black eye, and then that I'd been taken away in an ambulance after being attacked by two customers. Eventually everyone realized I was, in fact, not dead or mangled.
Writing this really helped calm my nerves. I just can't comprehend the kind of ****ed up minds some people have, who don't give a damn about a kid who could have been kidnapped and killed, who care more about their stupid can of soup, and appear ready to assault me, all the while trying to shoplift. Mother****ers.
(Sorry for the long pekkapost.)
So I'm in the office, swapping money out of the safe, when someone starts banging on the door. My first instinct is it's a robbery, so I shut the safe, (not really thinking since I'd be opening it up real quick if a gun was on me
) and go to see who it is. Some lady is about to have a breakdown, and I finally get her to tell me what's going on in a way I can understand. Her son is missing, can't find him, etc. I get the description and call for a Code Adam over the intercom (for those who don't know what this is, if a child is missing, a Code Adam basically locks down a store - emergency exit doors are guarded, the front doors are guarded by managers and the parent, the bathrooms are checked, and others look through the aisles for the kid. It is a pretty scary thing just for me, god knows what it's like for the parent. Not to mention this has never happened before, and I was feeling a lot of stress from being inspected by the Loss Prevention that same day.My boss just happened to be coming in the store from a smoke break, so she takes the mother and goes to the front entrance, while I go to check the cashier register part, and then the aisles, while another person routinely pages for the kid (whose name actually was Adam). So I do a sweep and am walking past the registers, and some customer in the checkout line turns as I'm walking by and basically cusses me out, out of the blue, because we only had two lanes open(we in reality had 3 or 4 open I think, I'm still a little jittery), and that the store is ****ty and we didn't have some stupid can of soup. I sort of turn as I'm walking by and tell her there is a child missing and I'm trying to make sure he's alright, something like that.
"Well I want my damn can of soup so I can get out of here!"
Yeah...so I just turned my head and kept walking, but apparently the customer wasn't finished, because she *grabs* my sleeve, and tells me not to "****ing walk away from her".
I jerk away from her, and another customer tells her to calm down and watch her language (which went really well), so psycho***** tells the other customer to "mind his own goddamned business" and then tells me to "get my ass back over to her".
At this point, I'm about to have a nervous breakdown. I'm used to customers *****ing at me about all the problems in the world, but I've never been "manhandled" while trying to make sure some nutjob hasn't kidnapped some little kid. So I snapped at the customer and told her that if her ass was still in the store when the police came (they get called for a Code Adam), she'd be leaving in handcuffs, and she damn sure wasn't going to get her can of soup, so she could rot in hell. (Boy, that relieved some of that adrenaline). The customer...
....The customer, at this point, picks up her purse and jacket she'd had in her cart, and accidentally DROPS what I later counted up to be about 80$ worth of OTC meds and other med-related **** that she'd hidden underneath her jacket, and bolts for the entrance like a mother****er. It took me a second to realize what had just transpired, just standing there in shock. My boss had noticed what was going on, but didn't know the lady had all those things she was trying to steal, so was also caught completely off-guard when she ran like hell out of the store.
So I was apparently was just standing there, shaking, like I was about to go postal and slaughter the store, so my manager grabs a Coke out of the refrigerator and tells me to go calm my nerves (and not to touch the money until I'd relaxed...those capitalistic bastards
), so I chilled in the office for 15 minutes or so. By that time, rumor had apparently spread, initially that I'd gotten my shirt ripped by a customer so I was having to change, to that I'd gotten a black eye, and then that I'd been taken away in an ambulance after being attacked by two customers. Eventually everyone realized I was, in fact, not dead or mangled.Writing this really helped calm my nerves. I just can't comprehend the kind of ****ed up minds some people have, who don't give a damn about a kid who could have been kidnapped and killed, who care more about their stupid can of soup, and appear ready to assault me, all the while trying to shoplift. Mother****ers.
(Sorry for the long pekkapost.)
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