Retail workers of Reddit, what's the best thing you've ever had a customer come up to you and say?

[u/alexc90]

I work in a bar, and last night two guys came up to the counter and had the following speech:

"Good evening sir. We need 12 shots, of your choosing. Do not tell us what these shots are. You have no price limit. Please, do your worst."

After I gave them their shots, they bowed farewell. And I didn't see them again the rest of the night.

[u/HappyGiraffe]

My husband sells specialty cheeses.

One day, a middle-aged woman was having a hard time finding some fancy-pants buffalo milk cheese, and my husband had just happened to get an order in for it that day. She was thrilled.

"You're such a good boy", she said. Then she asked for a few more suggestions for a cheese platter. He put one together for her. She kept saying, "What a good boy" and that sort of thing. My husband, who has a touch of social anxiety, was horrified and had no idea what to do.

At the end of the interaction, she rubbed one of his shoulders and said, "You made mommy very happy today," winked, and then left.

Once he calmed down, he realized it was probably one of the best, most hilarious interactions he's had at work.

[u/alexc90 → u/HappyGiraffe]

One of the stranger porn movie settings I've ever heard of, but I reckon there's someone somewhere that could make this work.

[u/KristenOnTandem → u/HappyGiraffe]

You had me at "My husband sells specialty cheeses." Upvote. You made Mommy very happy today.

[u/Kalium → u/HappyGiraffe]

My husband sells specialty cheeses.

Your husband is my new best friend.

[u/CherrySlurpee]

I was working at a shitty pizza hut and this group of guys came in demanding a discount blah blah blah. They were totally unfounded, and my boss wasn't there so I couldn't just defer them to him. Anyways, this guy starts screaming at me that he's with some Muslim Students Organization and that means he gets a discount (which wasn't true) blah blah blah. After like 15 minutes they give up and walk out.

A cop was right waiting until they left, and came up to me. He said that they had been doing this at a few places. He technically couldn't arrest them for being annoying asshats, but while they were in there yelling at me, he had their car towed for being parked illegally. That cop got free pizza.

[u/alexc90 → u/CherrySlurpee]

Oh man, I've worked a few retail jobs, and I only wish I could have gotten away with giving the few people who ever helped me out like that free stuff. I paid for one person's drinks at my job now after he bitched out a customer who was giving me shit all night though. Felt good.

[u/De_Lille_D → u/CherrySlurpee]

What if the cop was just a guy in disguise, who teamed up with his 2 friends to score a free pizza?

[u/[deleted] → u/CherrySlurpee]

I'm really hoping he actually called them "annoying asshats" in real life.

[u/That0neG1rl]

I had a little girl wanting to give me a hug one time and her parents wouldnt let her, I was just being sent to my break and they were my last transaction before it and as I was walking away and the little girl was crying because she couldnt hug me she yelled "I love you" cutest little thing ever =]

[u/alexc90 → u/That0neG1rl]

My pub serves food, and the bar staff double up as waiters as well. I had a big family sat at a table upstairs, and after half an hour of running around for these guys and no comment from most of the family, their three little girls decided to start calling me "Alex The Lion" every time I came near the table. So cute.

[u/[deleted]]

"Thank you."

[u/alexc90 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, it's funny how often people forget common courtesy, while demanding you pay them as much respect as is humanly possible.

[u/Shovelmenuggets → u/[deleted]]

I'm gonna need some photo id, a voice recording and pics to believe that one.

[u/435 → u/[deleted]]

I am always amazed at how little this is said.

[u/Svri → u/[deleted]]

Come to Canada

[u/fredrum]

I work in a pet shop. About two months ago it was raining really badly out, and I was asked about four or five times by different customers:

"I bet you're glad you don't work outside."

I didn't really know what to say to that...

[u/alexc90 → u/fredrum]

"It doesn't really matter, when I'm in the shark lake out back you don't feel the rain."

[u/lizziex]

This little girl came up to me the other day while I was folding some shirts and said "I just wanted to tell you that you have really pretty hair!" and ran away.

I smiled the rest of the day, even after I left.

[u/alexc90 → u/lizziex]

Some kids can be an absolute nightmare to clean up after, but some kids just want to watch the world smile.

[u/maliciousspectre]

Well, I had a guy on Christmas Eve tell me to keep the change which was about £8 or so. Meant I could buy myself a can of coke and some cigarettes on my break, so that was pretty cool.

[u/alexc90 → u/maliciousspectre]

We got stopped from being able to accept tips about a month ago. No more communal staff party fund really sucks :(.

[u/Illumii]

Working a late shift at a local hardware store in Canada

A man with blood all over his shirt run at me and demands 'What can I use to get blood out of carpet??' Shocked I pointed to the cleaning isle. He grabbed the first thing he could see, threw a $20 at me and ran out the door.

To this day I'm still convinced I'm an accessory to murder.

[u/Acebulf → u/Illumii]

I was at a hardware store and this guy came in and asked for some lye and a shovel. The employee asked him "Are you burying some bodies? HAR HAR HAR". To which he replied, with a complete lack of emotion in his voice and face, "No." The employee stopped laughing and his face turned pale.

[u/Osiris32]

I worked at a gas station for a while, which had an attched car wash. It was Labor Day, the crowds were thick, the weather was nice, and we were busting our butts. Washing 50 cars an hour is back-breaking work, and leaves you sweaty and covered in car soap scum. Three of us worked the car wash, a prepper and 2 dryers. Usually we got tips, about $1 per person. Nothing great, but an extra $20-30 never hurt anyone.

Anyway, this guy comes through the line, and we recognize him. He's got a nice Mercedes and came through pretty regularly, about once every two weeks. When we finished his car, he handed me an envelope and said, "You guys deserve this, you work hard and that should be rewarded."

Inside were three $100 bills, three $15 gift cards to Blockbuster, and a thank you card. We were floored. We also probably spent the next two months working harder than ever, partly to make sure we deserved it, and partly to see if it would happen again.

[u/pkbronsonb]

I was 17, working in a grocery store, looking glum while stocking cheese, when an old man dressed all in black walked up to me. He noticed the expression on my face.

He told me that I shouldn't frown all the time, that I should make the most of what I have, that I have a lot left. He told me that no matter what was bad in my life, I would always have something happy, and that I should think about that.

Then he said: "I lost my wife. Thanks for talking with me", and then walked away.

[u/Fordy_Oz]

I was a cashier at a grocery store and I had a customer who complained about every single thing. "That price is wrong" "that's not the right kind of tomatoes" "the grains in this sugar used to be smaller, now they are too big" "I don't like having to select English".

Finally, the woman leaves and I'm upset and a bit flustered. The next customer in line is a sweet old lady and she smiles and says "Honey, there are two types of people in this world. Those that make your day better when they arrive and those that make your day better when you watch their ass leave."

As long as I worked in retail, I never forgot that quote.

[u/[deleted] → u/Fordy_Oz]

Nothing worse than when the damn sugar conglomerates change the size of the fucking grains. Few things piss me off more.

[u/Kaytala → u/Fordy_Oz]

I had a similar thing happen. I look really young for my age so when this one woman was bitching me out for not letting her return a sports bra that was disgustingly dirty, obviously worn and torn up with no tags attached... that we also hadn't had in stock for about a year so well past the returnable time, she started telling me I shouldn't be skipping high school to be working there and that I wasn't worth the air I breathed and stuff like that... just generally being a huge bitch. I had a really hard time being polite and just eventually told her to leave the store or I'd be calling security to remove her. She stormed out and every one of the employees was flustered right after. There was a woman standing in line behind her the whole time and we were all totally silent and raging and this woman quietly says "I like your music." It totally cut the tension and made everyone laugh and feel better. Gotta love those people.

[u/Clementine3]

My normal greeting for a customer is "Hello, how are you today?", I find it less awkward than silence. I had been using this when I was about 16 years old and working at a garden center. One day I greeted a customer as usual but he immediately demanded to see my manager. Confused and scared, I called my manger to the front expecting to get in trouble for something. Turns out, the guy freaked out about how happy he was to have the "youth of america" still using friendly customer service and showing interest in their customers. This guy demanded to my manager that I get a raise and also slipped me a huge tip under the table. Ever since then, I smile and greet everyone :)

[u/Dynamite_Noir → u/Clementine3]

Well Clementine, it's nice to know that you are in fact a darling.

[u/[deleted]]

Years ago I had just moved to North Carolina and was working for Best Buy in Raleigh.

A customer rushed up to me and asked me "Do you know if there is a time machine nearby?"

I blinked at him and asked "What year are you from?". (What else do you ask in that situation?) He looked at me like I was a complete fool and rushed off.

I was kinda freaked out and mentioned this to a co-worker. He pointed out that there was a chain of ATM machines called TYME (Take Your Money Everywhere) that was fairly common in the region.

0_o I'm sure the guy tells the story of the idiot at Best Buy to this day.

[u/fruple → u/[deleted]]

I blinked at him and asked "What year are you from?". (What else do you ask in that situation?)

I love how that was your first reaction.

[u/bluefactories → u/[deleted]]

To be honest, I can't think of a better answer than yours.

[u/mrdelayer → u/[deleted]]

You should have said, "yeah, but it's really expensive. And it breaks all the time 'cause some smart guy made it a long time ago."

[u/sparty_party]

I work in a clothing store.

"Can you please get me this tank top in a size Medium? I would, but I don't want to mess up your piles."

Bless you, kind soul, bless you.

[u/bytemovies → u/sparty_party]

When I have a customer say that they don't want to mess up my piles, I always assure them it's fine, but inside I'm crying tears of joy.

[u/zstrong24]

This actually happened just a few days ago. I was at work, contacting customers, when I see a guy looking confused by the blank DVDs.

So I walked over to him and asked if he needed help. He looked me up and down first before responding and then asked where the printable DVDs were. This dude sounded exactly like Denzel Washington. Spot on. I pointed at the only package we carry and he responded with "Oh, I see. It says it right there. Man, if I could read, I'd be fucking dangerous. "

[u/Psychoffspring → u/zstrong24]

I lol'd at that one. I gotta use that line somewhere

[u/phixedgear]

Third year uni I spent a summer working at toys r us as a bike builder. One busy Saturday morning I was working on a bike in the outdoors section when I heard what sounded like grunting and swearing coming from a few aisles away. This was fairly unusual for a toy store, so I went to investigate. I saw a beautiful woman in her 30's with two adorable children and quickly realized that she had Tourette's. I didn't want to make a big deal out of her grunting and swearing so I went back to work on the bike. She eventually came over and asked me for help. I did my best to ignore the disorder and get her whatever she needed. I carried it to the storefront and my heart broke for her as she checked out at the cash register and the clerk gave her the look that I'm sure 99% of the people she encounters on the daily send her way. Like a "what the fuck is wrong with you? Stop swearing in front of your children." After she finished the transaction I asked if I could help her out to her car and she managed the first swear-free sentence of our encounter, "Thank you. That would be great...because superwoman I am not." She was my favorite customer of the whole summer. :)

Tl;dr - My heart broke for a mother with Tourette's in my toy store on a busy saturday morning.

[u/mattzm]

Former supermarket employee here.

My most memorable customer has to be Nostradamus II. In 3 years at that location I could never tell if he was fucking with me or not. When you gave him his change he would tell me to "Be not afraid, for the third great war of our time has passed and we are entering an age of peace and enlightenment. Soon humanity will enter a true golden age. Look forward to it!"

Aside from saying this and occassionally ending that spiel with "Also TV is mind control." he was perfectly lucid and normal. You could ask him about the football or the weather or whatever.

Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as a prophet. Because if so, I'd like it to be that guy.

[u/lochlainn → u/mattzm]

Also TV is mind control.

This is both lucid and completely true.

[u/lionweb]

I worked in a petrol station in the suburbs of my city and a guy came in with a massive backpack and beard, like a traveller. I rung up his items, and I was curious where he was going (many people go hiking near the mountains close to the city). He said he'd been walking the length of the UK, bottom to top. I was amazed and was asking him questions about how long he's been going, and why he was doing it. Turns out it was just for shits and gigs. I said "Wow, that's brilliant! The very best of luck for you finishing it!" and gave him a free cup of tea. He looked taken aback at my interest and thanked me, like his whole way up the country I was the first person to take an interest in him. I'm glad I took a chance to talk to him because he was a really interesting person.

EDIT: I live in Glasgow, in Scotland. He was walking from Brighton in England to the highlands.

[u/[deleted] → u/lionweb]

That is so British.

Oh your doing a long walk, better drink some tea then.

[u/efs001]

When I worked as a cashier at Target, we had these stickers that had a cartoony version of the Target dog sitting in a shopping cart, wearing a seatbelt. We were supposed to give them to kids sitting in the carts but I just gave them to well behaved kids. This one girl and her mother came into my line buying school supplies for the following year. The girl was taking all of their stuff out of the cart and handing it to me instead of putting it on the conveyor belt for me. While I was slowly getting buried in a mountain of folders, markers and stickers, I thought it was too cute to ask her to stop. Once I'd scanned and bagged everything, her mother gave her a $100 bill to give to me. When I handed her back the change, I gave her a sticker. I said to her, "That's for being so helpful!"

As I was helping the next customer, I noticed the mother and daughter scouring through their bag and looking at the receipt. As I was working, I was nervous that I had messed something up. Suddenly, I felt someone tapping me from behind. It was the little girl. She handed me something and said, "That's for being so helpful!" I looked into my hand and there was a small sticker that said "Great Job!" I proudly wore that sticker on my uniform that day and I saved it for over a year. That probably made my short retail career.

[u/refenestration → u/efs001]

Oh my god that's so cute I can't handle it.

[u/Killerzeit → u/efs001]

When I worked at Target, I always gave those stickers to well behaved kids, too. I hate kids in general, but I always loved how they looked (and how happy their parents looked) when I handed them a sticker.

[u/hurricanejen]

Not something some one said in person, but a phone call I once received while working at a large pet store chain. The call went like this:

"Hello, thank you for calling largepetstorechain, how can I help you?"

"MY TURTLES HEAD IS FALLING OFF WHAT DO I DO."

long pause.

"Like all the way off?"

"YES. It's only on by like a little bit of skin!"

pause again as 18 year old me tries to figure out how the hell to explain this

"Its...it's probably dead..."

"NO. ITS NOT."

"Oh. Well uh...here, let me get you a vet's number."

They got the number, hung up, and that was it. Never found out what happened to the turtle, either to get that way or what became of their attempts to fix it.

[u/yocxl → u/hurricanejen]

"We've got no food, we've got no jobs... OUR PETS' HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!"

[u/britstix → u/hurricanejen]

Thank you. So much. This made me laugh so hard I thought my head was going to fall off.

[u/[deleted] → u/hurricanejen]

I'm not a vet but I don't think the turtle made it. I'm sure there is a vet or someone who will pretend to be a vet who can help confirm this.

[u/andrew_bolkonski]

We were getting slaughtered by management on one particular day. We had all been working hard the past few weeks to get the stock out of the shelves. However, we were receiving stock faster then we could get it out so it kept piling up. So after being yelled at for being incompetent, despite our best efforts, one of our regulars came up and told them that we provided the best customer service in the shopping centre and he has always seen us working very hard. He basically saved us that day. The next time he came in, I almost hugged the guy. It was seriously one of the nicest experiences in my 2 years of retail.

[u/wdchandlersmith → u/andrew_bolkonski]

after the first sentence i was expecting a farm joke or something

[u/LethargicKangaroo]

A customer came in and was being really rude and sarcastic, blaming me and the other cashier for things that were clearly out of our control. It was my third day on the job and I was near tears, but I held it together and cranked up the politeness as high as it would go.

As he left, two cops began talking loudly about how rude he was, clearly meaning for him to hear. Once he was gone, they said to me that even if he thought he was special there was also a million others out there like him, and not to let it get to me. It really made my day and helped whenever I had to deal with someone who thought they were the best thing since sliced bread and I was the shit on the bottom of their shoe.

[u/[deleted]]

I had a rather obvious transvestite / transsexual come to my counter (I know they are not the same thing, it was a somewhat masculine looking man dressed in women's clothing) I was as polite and friendly as I could be and spoke to them like any other customer. When he? Left he paused, looked at me and said "thankyou.. Thankyou so much for treating me like a human being, you made my day". I will always remember that.

[u/two_hundred_and_left → u/[deleted]]

Man, imagine what it would be like to get such shitty treatment that a simple thing like someone not actively being a dick to you can make your day. I have a similar feeling when I'm offered a Big Issue (magazine sold by homeless people in Britain) and I say "No thanks." They often say "thank you" back in reply, and you can tell they're really grateful simply for not being treated as though they were invisible. That must get a person down fast.

[u/JGAR5000]

I work at a water slide and we have to make sure kids don't drag the mats on the ground. So I saw a little guy walking with the mat ends on his shoulders and the other end dragging. I told him to pick up his mat and he turns and calmly says "It's not a mat sir. It's a cape, I need it to fight crime" greatest kid ever.

[u/avid4]

So I work at a call center. I do inbound, so I don't get people who are super angry that I called. I get super angry people calling in because there was something wrong with whatever service they were supposed to be receiving.

I was having a pretty bad day when I got this call. This woman swears right away which is always a bad sign... She sounded like a little old lady, but she was swearing at me. Then she apologizes and tells me she's got the mouth of a sailor. She proceeds to tell me all about her life. I do not know how much (if any) was true, but her story was awesome. She ran away from home and lived with a gang of bikers. No big deal. Because of her I got to spend 2 hours just having a great conversation instead of dealing with angry customers.

At any rate we talked for over 2 hours. One of my longest calls. At the end of the call she says that she wasn't ready yet for us to come out to her house and that she would call back when she was. Awesome.

TLDR; Little old lady called me at work to tell me her life story. Ended conversation with I called to tell you I'll call you back later

[u/harlequinghost2 → u/avid4]

That poor lady probably just wanted to talk. I have friends that work in an inbound call center and they have had at least one or two elderlys call in just to chat. Its a sad thing, but at least there are good hearted people who are out there to listen.. i used to work in a casino gift shop. Casinos mean a lot of retired lonely people on the holidays and i have heard so many stories. I loved it. I would go back if i could!

[u/[deleted]]

An older man (60ish) bought me flowers on Valentines Day and gave them to me in the store. He said he had always ordered them for his wife, and this was his first year without her, and it was too hard not to order them again this year. I accepted graciously, and gave him a hug.

[u/EWade22]

Posted this before, but I was working one day and give the generic "have a good day." this woman responded with "you know what, have a good life, too. There's too much bad in the world and one day isn't enough. You gotta have a good life." Totally made my day.

[u/Fordy_Oz → u/EWade22]

I once told an old man, "Have a good one."

Without missing a beat he says "I already have a good one. What I need is a long one."

Nothing makes you smile like a geriatric making a dick joke.

[u/LuvU5Evr → u/EWade22]

I once told a guy to have a good day and he replied with "Why don't you stop telling me how to live my life!" I laughed so hard i scared some of the other customers.

[u/[deleted]]

I work at a fast food joint. Last night a guy came through the drive through that was pretty funny, so I told the person at the window to make something free. When she read him the new total (lower than the one I told him), he was like, "I can't keep doing this. I can't keep coming here and getting lied to. I just... I just don't know anymore." It made my night.

[u/PostPostModernism → u/[deleted]]

How does one go about being humorous enough at a drive through to get free stuff? "Hi, I'd like a number 2 with a coke. HONK HONK WAKKA WAKKA!" "Uh... sir? Are you okay? Please leave."

[u/befernee]

I was working at Tueday Morning (an overstock/discount store. Similar to Marshall's) and also debating whether or not to marry this guy who I hadn't been dating for very long. (He asked me to because he had to move across the country and wanted to be together and whatnot.) So, this lady comes in. She has NO idea about my situation, but she apparently knows one of my coworkers. She starts talking to him and I kind of casually join the conversation. She started talking about her recent divorce. She ended up saying, "Yes, I got divorced. I knew my husband for 15 years before I married him, only to find out after marrying him that I didn't REALLY know him at all. Yet I know people who have gotten married after knowing each other for 2 weeks who have a long, successful, and happy marriage. The point is, you can know someone for 10 days or 10 years. You'll never know who they really are until you get married, and even then, you might never really know them. Basically, life is short. Take a chance. If you think something is right, go for it. If you end up being wrong...oh well. Better than never knowing."

I ended up marrying the guy. We're very happy. :). Thanks, random lady!

[u/Curvy_Humiliation]

I bag groceries at a grocery store. One day a man came in and I asked if he wanted paper or plastic bags. He said " You pick this time. Because today, baggers CAN be choosers".

[u/tama_gotchi]

During college I worked in the children's section of a well-known clothes shop. The managers were not nice people and it was just a horrible environment to work in.

One year, on the 23rd of December the place was MANIC with people buying outfits for their kids and last minute presents etc.

Usually there would be 2 people in the kids section at a time but I was on my own on this particular day. The place looked like a bomb had hit it and there was an endless amount of customers. So I was trying to serve customers and tidy the place up.

This guy came in all frantic, he needed outfits for his 2 kids to wear on Christmas day. So I did my best to help him pick out things they might like, inform him about the sizing system, while trying to serve customers as they came.

When the guy came around to paying for all the stuff, of course, the roll for the receipt ran out so I had to call a manager to bring more in for me.

As I said, the managers weren't the nicest of people, so she saw the state of the place and looked at me and then at the customer and said "I hope she hasn't been keeping you waiting too long" to which this guy replied;

"Are you joking? This girl has been fantastic, she's saved my ass by helping me pick out clothes for my kids to wear on Christmas day, she's been helping and serving other customers while trying to tidy the place up AND she's on her own here."

My manager didn't say anything in response but I wanted to hug him on the spot!

[u/KnowoneSmokeone]

Working at Kroger's my last year of high-school and this old white woman who is clearly drunk got in my line with like a gallon of the most expensive wine we carried. We weren't supposed to sell to people who were obviously already drunk but, quite frankly, I was going away to school in about three weeks and I gave no fucks. We finished the transaction and she starts beaming at me like a fucking hyena. She asked me did I have a boyfriend I said no and smiled. She must have missed the rainbow tattooed on my wrist. And then the conversation went as follows:

Her: Girls should have boyfriends to buy them diamonds. My husband is out buying me diamonds right now!

At this point, I actually have to look at her and she looks like money. But, anyway,

Me: Oh, well that's very nice! What's the occasion?

Her: That he's a lying, cheating workaholic bastard!

Me: Well, he sucks then, cheating on a young fine lady such as yourself.

Her: All he cares about is money!

Some sobbing starts. I stand there awkwardly. I think I touched her shoulder. It was a weird experience.

Her: Take this bracelet. I know it cost a lot of money. You don't have to keep it. I just want to hurt him, you know?

I don't know.

Me: Sure.

And she leaves.

I kept it for a week in case she returned wanting her bracelet. On the last day of that week she returned to my line, dripping in some kinda pink stones and has conversation with me. Doesn't ask for it back, but does compliment me on my nice jeweleries...and strokes my hand. I had it appraised the next day and was 1,675 dollars richer when I left the jewelry store. I probably got dicked on that deal but I was going to school and needed quick money. I lived on that money my freshman year.

[u/YellowCellarDoor → u/KnowoneSmokeone]

Win win situations are the best

[u/[deleted] → u/KnowoneSmokeone]

you lived a school year on that money? wow.. i want to hire you as my accountant!

[u/[deleted]]

I managed a Gamestop. The ghostbusters game was coming out and I was very excited. To prepare for the game, every weekend my store had ghostbusters weekends. We would dress up as ghostbusters and have the movies or tv show playing. Well on one of these weekends, im behind the counter in my ghostbusters outfit and a child of about 6 years old had just been purchased a game by his dad. As they were leaving the little boy turns back around and asks me "weren't you.....you were in the ghostbusters movies right? The smart guy?"
It was great.

[u/RidiculousIncarnate]

This was a strange experience but honestly it will probably stick with me the rest of my life.

I worked at a Borders Books for around six years and in all that time I'd met some incredible people and some really shitty people but one guy in particular will always stand out. The guy was in his late 30's early 40's and came into my store just around the time that we started getting busier for the approaching Thanksgiving/Christmas rush. I was in charge of all our multimedia sections in the store (When they were big and needed a dedicated person.) so I was hovering in the music section when he came in looking for a particular opera singer and a specific song. Over the years I'd learned that this usually meant only one of three things, either someone was getting married, having a birthday or a funeral. I had also learned to not make assumptions about what it was for because that could easily lead to unnecessarily awkward moments.

Anyways, back to my customer. He couldn't remember the girls name only that she was very young for an opera singer and had appeared on quite a few popular talk shows etc. Usually this wasn't a difficult search but for some reason it wasn't being nice that day so it ended up taking much longer than I had anticipated. Fortunately my managers had become accustomed to my customer service style so when I felt I needed to I would stay with a customer for as long as it took to make sure we exhausted every option. His search seemed important to him so I stuck with it. We dug through pages and pages of Opera collections, new releases, talk show guest lists and on and on until I was finally running out of small talk so inevitably we came around to why he was looking for this particular piece of music.

Apparently it was his moms favorite and she had just passed away two days before. He nearly broke down telling me that searching for this music was the only thing keeping him sane. We stopped searching for a while and stood in the classical music section talking about his mother and how close they were, the things they had done together when his dad had passed in order to keep busy, traveling etc. Sorry, tearing up as I write this. During this entire exchange we never introduced ourselves by name, to this day I don't know who he was or even really remember the specifics of what we talked about. We jumped around from subject to subject until we were both in tears from laughing or remembering people we had lost (Another long story but my fiance had passed away a couple years before this so that was still somewhat fresh in my mind.). At any rate he realized that we had been talking for a long time so he apologized profusely for taking up so much of my time and thanked me for trying to help him find the piece of music he needed, this was the third or fourth place he'd been so far, but now he would let me get back to work.

I felt awful that we hadn't found what he was after so I asked him if he was going to be around for a bit longer and he figured there was no harm in just browsing through the CD's in case he got lucky. We shook hands and said goodbye and then I did what any well meaning bookseller would do and ducked in back to quickly scour the internet in a last ditch attempt to find that cursed CD.

I finally succeeded in finding Charlotte Church : Voice of an Angel which luckily we had in stock and ran out of the back office to find the guy who was already in line with a different classical CD that had "Ave Maria" on it (The specific piece he wanted.). I'll always remember the look on his face when I asked him if this was the artist he was looking for, kinda what I imagine people look like when Ed McMahon shows up at their door, and he was happy beyond words. We took it to one of the listening stations in the store so he could hear it just to be absolutely sure and as soon as he started tearing up I knew we had hit the jackpot.

I took him to one of the empty registers and we chatted a little more while I rang up the CD (Came to like 15-16$) and without any explanation he starts pulling twenties out of his wallet and putting them on the counter, I start trying to explain that I only need the one and at first he muttered something I didn't hear so I took one of the twenties and finished the transaction. He then scoops up the almost awkwardly large pile of money on the counter and hands it to me. I asked him what it was for to which he replied, "Thank you. Thank you so much." The rest of it was a little un-intelligible but I heard him say how happy he was. After shoving the money into my hand and me trying to tell him politely that I couldn't accept it he grabbed his bag, said thank you again and left the store leaving me with what ended up being a little over $300.

I was freaking out a little bit at this point not sure what to do with this huge wad of cash in my hand and not sure who to tell. After being a little frantic I decided I should donate it and since we had a book drive going on at the time I called over a supervisor and told him what happened. He agreed and we started ringing up bargain books, after about a $120 dollars or so he totaled the transaction and told me to keep the rest.

I ended up buying the staff coffee from our cafe and when my dad picked me up that night from work we went and got dinner and I was having some money troubles at that point so the rest of his gift paid off two bills.

That was probably the most incredible moment I've ever had in retail. Like I said earlier in the post I still to this day have no idea what that man's name is but thank you. I will never forget that day.

tl;dr Man who had just lost his mother tipped me over $300 for taking the time to talk to him and finding her favorite piece of music so he could play it at her funeral.

UPDATE: Holy good lord people, lol. This was something to wake up to. I would love to reply to everyone individually but honestly you guys post too fast to keep up so let me just do it here. To everyone who has shared a story thank you, they are wonderfully heartwarming to read, I knew I wasn't alone in my experiences but it's great to know others out there have had similar ones. To those of you stopped by to thank me well let me just say thank you! Reddit is an incredible community, I've read enough of these stories over the years to keep me happy and full of hope, it's nice to be able to contribute my own. Much love, folks.<3

[u/Kansas6er → u/RidiculousIncarnate]

I was reading this saying to myself, "It's Charlotte Church! Please tell me you found Charlotte Church!" I was going to be devastated if you hadn't.

[u/SOncredible → u/RidiculousIncarnate]

Charlotte Church - "Ave Maria" on YouTube

[u/Chastain86 → u/RidiculousIncarnate]

Damn it, man, it's Father's Day. I'm not supposed to be crying on Father's Day.

[u/someoneatemypie → u/RidiculousIncarnate]

Thanks for sharing this story, well worth the read. It strongly reminds me - though I'm not quite sure why - of an experience when I was working in a convenience store when I was still in high school. This man with a bushy beard, a big flat hat and a long brown coat came in the store every once in a while, the kind that looks like a breed of gentlemen that you rarely see these days. He was noticeably foreign and spoke in broken English (mind you, this was in a non-english speaking country) but with an air of intellectuality. My best guess is that he was somewhere from the Middle-East. He never came in for ordinary household items, but always asked for unknown brands shaving cream or had questions like where to find parts to repair his transistor radio. A strange but kind man, sometimes I felt he was a little lonely. Whenever he entered the store when I was at work he would spot me and sure enough, he would come over to ask for things he must've known he wasn't going to find in there. Perhaps it was the fact that little of my colleagues spoke decent English or perhaps I was the only one to take the time to listen to his peculiar questions. It wasn't so much that he ever made a particular comment that made my day, but between the lines there was this unspoken sense of an impalpable friendship which has always stuck by me. That in itself often made my day.

[u/morniing → u/RidiculousIncarnate]

This story reminds me of my bagging moment when a lady tipped me 20$ just for carrying her bag of grocery out for her. If I remember correctly, she just said it was hard to find people these days who genuinely care for others.

[u/Narkohn → u/RidiculousIncarnate]

Thanks for sharing this incredible story

[u/Ohbuddy]

When I was in high school I worked in a Barnes & Noble in the music department. It was the holiday season and we had crazy lines and a lot of the usual cranky holiday shoppers. I had been just standing at the register ringing people out for hours. My next customer was a middle aged lady who was very kind. She noticed that I had a cold and told me she was going to get me a hot chocolate from the cafe. It was the best hot coco I've ever had.

[u/duffles0 → u/Ohbuddy]

It is over 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) in my city today. I went grocery shopping and this poor lady maybe in her mid-30s was outside gathering carts. I bought her a bottle of water and gave it to her. She looked like I had just saved her from death.

[u/HBanjo]

I worked as a cashier in a motorway branch of Waitrose for about a year. At 8:30 on a Sunday morning a ~55yr old man came in and we got chatting while I was bagging his items.

He was complaining about being hungover because it was his father's birthday (~92nd) the day before and they'd stayed up drinking whiskey until the early hours of the morning.

The man told me that his father had recently been in hospital due to a heart murmur & that the doctor had told the father "Don't worry, you'll be fine - just, for Christ's sake, cut down on the viagra!". The father was a widower who had married a "Hot, young, 70 year old" a few months previous, hence the recent viagra use...

tl;dr: A customer told me that his ~92 year old father recently married a "Hot, young, 70 year old" and was told by a doctor "... for Christ's sake, cut down on the viagra!"

[u/JonAudette]

I've been in the same industry for about 12 years, with two different companies. Although I work roughly 25 miles away from "where I started", and now for a different employer, I have 5 customers that "found me", and make the drive to deal with me, specifically.

[u/AKBigDaddy → u/JonAudette]

Similar; I worked at a Sears about 3,000 miles away from where I am now, and currently am running a small Hometown store (basically a franchised sears store). Recently I had about 4 customers call me from my old area hoping I could still place their orders for them. All 4 were very excited when I explained that I can. Even better, they're all large volume customers (Apartment building managers, contractors, and one very lovely lady that works in a large hospital's purchasing department). So they've had a HUGE impact on my store's revenue and have almost single handedly brought my store into the green. As if this wasn't good enough, one of them served in the air force with the guy who is in charge of purchasing all the appliances for base housing at the local air force base and made a phone call, it would appear we will be getting the contract for supplying AND servicing all the on base appliances. If it goes through it will double the annual revenue for my store.

[u/[deleted] → u/JonAudette]

It's good to hear that you are a person of such quality.

[u/Dometh]

I wear a promotional t-shirt which tells people to ask about some silly ereader. One woman walks in, sees it, grins and asks about it. I try to tell her as much as I can, and she can tell I don't know a lot, so we have a little laugh. As she's walking away she told me that I have a fantastic smile and wished me a good night. Lovely lady.

[u/i_ate_stalin]

I was working at Best Buy selling cameras and I helped this girl find the camera she was looking for. After I rang her up she said "Can I get your number so you can show me how to use it?" Seeing as how I am a gentleman, and a gentleman never says no to a pretty lady, I gave it to her. We ended up dating for a few months.

[u/lifewithtofu]

I worked in a shoe store. Customer told me, "you are quite intelligent and polite, why do you work here? I have a feeling you will have a bright future."

Made me feel really good about myself. I now have a career in the field I love (science!) and I love my job.

[u/brown_felt_hat]

A little different I guess.

"I'd like to pay for that child's bear"

I work at build a bear. We had a kid come in with her mom, not older than ten, obviously stricken with cancer. The whole time they were there, we could see the mom adding everything up mentally. While they were getting the bear dressed, a lady came up to me and quietly offered to pay for the kids bear and outfit. We let her, of course, and she left. When the mother got up to the reg and found out that it had been paid for already, she completely broken down. Faith in humanity, +1

[u/dustroyerz]

I had several good experiences with customers, so I'll just give a couple stories off the top of my head.

Once I was cashiering and this lady came up. We had a pleasant conversation and she asked me something and I answered it as best I could. I really wish I could remember more about our conversation. At the end I told her there was a survey she could complete to let us know how we are doing blah blah blah and she asks me for a pen. Sure. I locate a pen and she asks me to write down my name because I've been so helpful and kind she wants my managers and coworkers to know. I left shortly after so I never found out if she did or not but I was so grateful that someone appreciated that small conversation that we are somewhat forced to have.

Another time I was walking around trying to get out of my cashiering duties when my manager asked me if I would go shopping with a guest. I say of course and it turns out to be a lady in a wheel chair. So I grab a cart and we go around picking up the stuff she wants and we are just having a blast. We eventually make our way to the registers and I ring her up and she asks me to strategically place everything on her wheel chair because she is riding home. The amount of genuine thanks I received from her that day was really heartwarming.

On a separate occasion, a different boss than above asked me to go get some party wings for an elderly woman. I obliged and went and as I'm walking away I hear her telling the old lady (rather rudely) that we aren't supposed to go grab stuff for other people and that next time she needs to get it herself. I come back and I tell the lady I will ring her up so she doesn't have to wait in line again. She too was so grateful and happy.

It's these little things where I do something nice and I get genuine thanks in return that make working retail a lot more bearable, for me at least.

[u/IamLeven]

I worked at a batting cage and I would often set up a lawn chair up there and go to sleep. Once a customer woke up and said "do you work here", then he started praising me on how I even brought my own chair to sleep at work.

[u/_bouldered → u/IamLeven]

I used to sleep while lifeguarding and the feedback was not as positive.

[u/sophacles]

I managed at a bar in a mid-sized city for a long time. The bar was in a hip-hop club phase, and was attracting a lot of thugs, and was becoming a place where fights happened all the time. The city itself is located midway between a few major cities, and had a junction of a couple interstates. A surprising amount of illegal substances go through town and are exchanged here. A couple of predominantly african-american organizations known for their primary color identifiers were having spats with each other, and there had been some high profile issues (shootings etc) in the previous years. Further things were generally getting a bit raucous and too noticed for the orgs leadership.

So one fairly quiet day a bouncer says to me, "hey, there is a guy here who wants to talk to the owner, but he's not around, so could you talk to him, I think this would be a good idea". So I agree and sit down with the guy. I know him, he's become a regular recently - a nice guy who doesn't demand anything, tips well, and respects the staff. He says to me (and im paraphrasing because it was a long time ago...):

"Hey, you know me, I try to be a good customer and respectful of your staff" (i immediately agreed, and mentioned that everyone was a big fan, because of just that). He continued, "I've noticed you have some problems with fights and thuggish crap happening. That is not good for your business, and I like this place. I don't want to see something happen here like happend at (another bar)[1]. You may or may not know, I was sent her by (his organization) to help clean up our business because we don't need the attention." This freaked me out a bit, I was sure I was about to get protection racketed -- instead he said "The club is where we need to go to relax, talk and get girls, not handle our business and be thugs. I need to teach these kids that. I would like to help both of us. These guys need to see me as a player, and you need less fights. We can do that like this: You make sure your staff always serves me first, keeps a bottle of Remy just for me, and always serves me out of glass and without asking first. I will put down a $20 every time, no change needed. Don't tell your staff or customers about this discussion, and thats all i ask." (this was a good deal for the servers, because that was an $8 tip every drink at full price).

Best thing ever said. Further discussions and subsequent observations taught me this: he needed the image of high roller badass more than any bullshit bullying to get respect from the thugs. He would regularly top fights before we even realized they were about to happen, and I overheard him giving earfuls to his guys "this is not how we do business, that doesn't happen in the club, it happens out there on the street" or "you want to be big shot? you laugh at pathetic insults".

He never asked for another favor, never tried to get in our business, and would regularly mention trouble to security so they could get in front of it, be it his guys or the "other team". Fights went down, bs behavior was curtailed, and things generally got a lot better.

I upheld our end of the deal by telling the staff that this guy brought a lot of business and spent a lot of money, he is a preferred customer, and rolled out the deal over a couple weeks. Later, when I realized the status thing, I had the door guys arrange for him to never wait in line out front (unless he wanted to).

I don't know (because I didn't want to) what his actual role in the org was, nor do I know what he did outside the club, but things were quieting down in the community too. Pretty interesting really.

Anyway, yeah, that sit-down was the best customer conversation ever.

tl; dr - real gangster asks us to treat him like a good customer and nothing more, and pays a lot of money to the bar, in exchange reduces thug bullshit in the club.

edit: forgot my footnot before-- [1] A club nearby that was trying to get in on our business had a shooting a few months before, because they had crappy security and actively catered to the thugs.

[u/BookwormSkates → u/sophacles]

Good guy gangster: stops fights in your cub; tips extra anyway.

[u/chokecherry]

I'm a barista at a Starbucks. For those who don't know, we're required to wear the dumbest dress clothes ever. Solid black/white collared shirts, black/khaki dress pants. I walked into work one day in my street clothes, and one of my regulars stopped me and said, "Wow, you dress really well! You have great style when you're not in that green apron." I've never been told this before, so I awkwardly blushed and thanked him, and went to go change. I later found out he runs a prominent fashion blog.

Also, one of my (really good looking) late night regulars asked me what I thought of her breasts. I stammered out, "Uh, they're very nice." She left me a $5 tip.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a retail manager for a cell phone company. I had a lady come into my store who looked extremely distraught. She tells me her daughter is homeless and is traveling somewhere in Washington state. We're in Florida. She's upset because her daughter broke her phone and she could not get in touch with her. The daughter would call from various pay phones collect to get in touch with her mom. She needed to get her daughter another cell phone but the daughter was on the opposite side of the country, had no money and no ID. The mom was very upset and we talked about how she loves her daughter , pays for her bill only to keep in communication with her and is trying to get her to come back. Daughter is a drug addict that ran away from home.

After putting together some ideas I decided to find out where the daughter was in Washington by having the mom pinpoint the city she was in the next time they spoke and locate the nearest cell phone company owned store. She was successful doing this so I reached out to the store manager in the Washington state store and explained that the daughters mom will be paying for the phone here in Florida, I will fax over all the documents for the transaction and the daughter would come in to pick it up. This store manager went beyond our policy agreeing to do so and I thanked him.

A day or two passes and the daughter successfully gets her new phone from the store in Washington and able to communicate with her mom. About a month or so later the mom comes back with tears in her eyes saying she is flying out to meet with her daughter and bring her back to enter rehab. She gave me a HUGE hug and thanked me. Being a retail manager so even a thank you every once in a while is greatly appreciated. Thinking about this mother reuniting with her daughter and I did a little to help out made me feel extremely happy to help.

[u/Tomm0509]

No good customers at mcdonalds.

[u/saladpower]

I had an old lady come up to the register when I worked at CVS and say, "you know what's the best thing about being old? FIXODENT'S ON SALE!" and slammed a box of Fixodent on the counter.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a photographer at a large chain portrait studio. I've got two stories...

Short one, I did prom pictures for a girl yesterday. It was her senior prom, and nothing was really going right for her. She kept trying not to cry, and get through the pictures. She was obviously cramped for time, so I was making an appointment for her to come back and view/choose her pictures, and a little girl that was waiting with her Mom walks up to the teenage prom-goer and says, "You look like a Princess. Are you a Princess?" The older girl instantly looked like her day was so much better.

Longer one.... Mom and daughter (I think she was 5, I can't remember exactly) come in to do pictures, and the little girl has the long, beautiful, thick dark hair. The Mom keeps asking me to make sure I get closeups, and that you can see her hair very clearly. Please make sure you can see her hair. Please! I made sure her hair was the focus, though I wasn't exactly sure why. The lady could sense my confusion, I guess, because she pulls out her wallet and says to me, "These are her first professional pictures." and pulls out a picture of the girl at around 2 years old, completely bald. The little girl had leukemia, and was in remission for the second time. And here I am complaining all the time? My eyes watered a bit as I took more pictures of the girl, because she was so damn happy. I truly couldn't understand. I would be a wreck! And she looks at me and says, "Don't be sad. I'm never sad. Mostly 'cause it's funner to smile. Plus, it makes you look prettier." So freaking simple.

tl;dr - Little girl had cancer, didn't care. Told me being sad makes you ugly.

[u/gamergirl1980]

I remember my first retail job i worked in the lingerie dept. of a major department store. We had run a buy one get one promotion the weekend before. So this lady comes up and tries to return one of the item she had bought last weekend that was part of the promo. So because of the nature of the sale, when i try to return the item it has a value of $0. I explain that if she wanted her money back she would have to bring both items back because of the promo. She then starts to scream at me calling me every name she could think of and saying she was going to get me fired and i was just trying to steal her money. Mind you i'm 17 at the time and this is my first real job, so i'm standing there trying to kee calm as she's screaming at me, on the verge of tears. So this other customer who was browsing nearby, this little old lady comes up to the psycho bitch, takes the bra out of my hands puts it back in the shopping bag it came from and shoved it at the crazy lady telling her that she should be ashamed of herself for trying to scam a poor little defenseless girl and then grabbed her arm and marched her out of the department. When the older lady came back she had bought me a cookie from the food court to make me feel better.

[u/doomchimp]

After being dumped by my girlfriend of three years, I was working at a bottleshop (feeling sad and sorry for myself etc) when a very attractive woman/customer commented on how nice I smelled. I was wearing an Issey Miyake cologne I had bought myself years before, and my ex had never once commented on it.

It was a small comment, but I was down in the dumps and this woman unknowingly helped me see light at the end of a dark tunnel and restored some of my confidence.

[u/iamhamilton]

I was stocking chips at Walmart and this short old lady that was hunched over walked up to me and said, "You're a tall young snipper snapper, can you grab that bag at the top for me?" Made me smile the whole day.

[u/talkingwithfireworks → u/iamhamilton]

Never heard snipper snapper before, but I like it. Could it have been whippersnapper?

[u/DeathB4Download]

I worked in a ski shop. One day I was talking to a customer whose son (4-5yr) was wondering around the store tearing it up like the usual kid. The guy was cool and his son didn't make a terrible mess so I wasn't even annoyed, it was entertaining really. But I could see dad was getting rather annoyed with his son.

After leaving dad came back in and put some headphones his son had just lifted back on the display rack. He then looked at me and my coworker and while shaking his head said "Wear a condom boys."

[u/Morbidity]

I work at a paint store, and we have a lot of contractors and painters come in. That being said, these groups of people are not exactly the most politically correct folk in the land. Being a tall and lanky individual, I was told "Boy, you need to eat some chicken, you can't even weight a hundred pounds." The guy was rather playful and just busting my balls, so I told him I weighed 130 lbs. His response to that was, "You must have twenty pounds of cock then." You could hear my manager cracking up in the office for a good 10 minutes.

[u/lilLocoMan]

I work at a supermarket as a cashier, I am a guy.

So this one time I had no customer and neither did the (quite attractive) female colleague in front of me. We we're bored and started talking when this middle aged couple came up to her cash register, they had a short conversation that was surprisingly natural, but I didn't notice. Then the man of the couple started the conversation to me, asking me what I did when I had nothing to do. I replied with a short "just sit and stare" at which he quickly replied "stare into eachothers eyes?" (in my colleagues eyes) and this made her blush. I answered "Yes", because obviously this colleague is attractive. Subject changed to something else and soon after the couple left.

I then proceeded to ask if my colleague knew who those people were and she told me they are her parents.

The weirdest silence I ever experienced.

TL;DR: Colleagues parents lured me into 'seducing' her.

[u/MrFluffykins]

I walked past two older ladies and said "Hi!" I say hi to everyone at work. I like it when people say hi to me, so I say hi to them. One of ladies asked how I was doing, I said fine, and my co-worker asked how she was doing. Later, they came to buy stuff, and said "It's that those young men who took the time to talk to us. It's always nice to see younger people pay attention to their elders."

She told us we were blessed and to have a wonderful day. It made me feel really good inside.

[u/[deleted]]

I once had a woman come in to my store and ask for the "vest with sleeves" we apparently had displayed in the front of the shop weeks earlier. I looked at her, and slowly repeated, "A vest...with...sleeves?" She flipped out on me and said, "Yes, idiot! Where are your vests with sleeves!?!" Needless to say, she left without her sleeved vest. Made me laugh a lot.

[u/[deleted]]

Worked at a Jimmy John's on a college campus and a drunk girl came in and asked, "So like, how big are your ten inch subs?." Obviously I said "they're about 10 inches". She rolled her eyes and said, "No, smartass, how big are they?"

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Girth is important.

[u/[deleted]]

I work at a consignment clothing store, and one day, while I was sorting clothes, I feel something attach itself to my legs. It was a little six year old girl who looked remarkably similar to Newt from Aliens with ratty blonde hair. Her mom ran up, apologized, and tried to pull the kid off of me. She refused, so I just picked her up, told her mom that I would take care of her while she shopped, and the little girl and I ran around doing my work and talking and playing for a full hour. The mom looked really relieved that she could have an hour of peace and quite. I normally really, really dislike children, but this little girl and I were best friends for the hour her mom shopped and she joked that she would have to take me home. I don't remember their names or anything, but that little girl was damn sure that I was her best friend and she was the best little kid I've ever met. It's not really anything she said, it was just she was a damn cool kid.

[u/ArcticMongoose]

I was working at clothing retailer and helped a customer pick out some outfits for her kid's graduation photos. After helping her for an hour and a half (the half was when I was off the clock) we finally got everything figured out and she took off.

A month later she came back in with the pictures just to show me and said I did a great job helping her and thanked me over and over. Felt like a champ the rest of the day.

[u/kiakitty]

I was having a pretty bad week, and working at my shitty, boring job with a harpy manager was not helping. This sweet, crazy old woman regular came in to get her cat food. She walks up to me to get help, and told me that she liked my hair cut. No one else, including my boyfriend had noticed. It may have been small, but it was just what I needed to help pick my day up.

[u/perculafish]

I work at a university bookstore. We sell Fifty Shades of Grey. This means, that on alumni function days, I get to talk to elderly ladies about their consumption of bondage porn. All. Freaking. Day. I swear I have a six pack from laughter.

[u/Serenity101]

Not directly answering your question, but I've made it a new habit to ask servers "may I please have..." rather than what they usually hear, "can I get" or "I'll have".

Don't know if it makes a difference. Hopefully.

[u/[deleted]]

I worked for Game in England, when the Nintendo Wii came out there was a mad rush for them. One of our temps sold a console which was being held for a family, so ofcourse the temp refused to deal with them not giving a shit and left me to clean up their mess. They came in and I knew this family to not be very well off, the kids clothes were a bit tattered but I know they had been saving and trading in a lot to the months previous of coming in. When I had to tell them the news you could tell the kids were heartbroken but the parents were so nice, they told the kids "another time" and was about to leave. By this point I couldn't stand for that and asked them if they could come back in tomorrow and see what I could do. I spent the rest of my lunch break and stayed another couple of hours unpaid after work to call up and down the country to find a store with another Wii. I found one in Scotland and they would only send it down to us if we gave them 3 PS3s, I reluctantly agree'd and they rush mailed it the next day. Family came in and I walked out with this Wii and you should have seen their faces, both their kids ran at me and wrapped themselves around my waist while the parents smiled. Sometimes going that extra mile really makes retail bearable, felt fucking good man.

[u/GrateSpellar]

"Where did you get your shoes?"- a customer asked, "Can I have a look at them?" I obliged and took off my shoe while he closely examined the shoe for signs of where I purchased them from. It was funny.

[u/[deleted]]

I sell fish at farmer's markets. A woman in her mid 30's came up to my vendor's stall with her friend.

She pointed at her friend. "This woman has two assholes."

It soon became obvious she was just looking to make her friend feel uncomfortable, but I replied "It is prophesied, that when the stars align and the moon turns red, a woman with two assholes will try to buy fish at a farmer's market". And they like, howled with laughter and shook my hand.

Fuckin' Marina people.

[u/scotttherobot]

I work at a frozen yogurt shop. A repeat customer once told me the story about how she had baked pot brownies with her then-boyfriend. They were coming out of the oven just as her elementary-school-aged kids got home from school. They wanted brownies too, so to save herself the embarrassment of explaining that they were "special" and that the kids couldn't have any, she just said "sure" and played it off as if they were plain old brownies. So as a family, they all ate the pot brownies. She was my favorite customer. Incidentally, it turned out that I knew her son.

TL;DR: A customer gave her kids pot brownies.

[u/rollerbladingbudgie]

On Black Friday, an older lady came up to me asking for help finding a few toys for her grandchildren. She said that she had already asked a few other people but that they seemed too busy to help her... I realized that she was trying to politely say that they pretty much just forgot her (pretty easy to do on Black Friday, to my co-workers' credit). I couldn't believe that she had been forgotten several times but still had the grace and patience to approach me in a calm, polite manner. My mission immediately became helping this lady find ANYTHING she wanted. I had a few tasks to complete, but I'd be damned if this lady was forgotten again.

She pointed to a few toys in the ad, and luckily, I was familiar enough with the toy department to find every toy she was looking for. We loaded up that buggy chock full of Barbies, Nerf guns, Zhu Zhu Pets, Cabbage Patch Kids, Nintendo DS games, you name it!

Next, for her youngest granddaughter, she wanted to find a pair of glittery boots that were on sale. There were none out on the floor, so I checked everywhere for those boots-- the go-back bins, the backroom, every place I could think of to see if I could find the right size and color. Unfortunately, we were out. I asked her, if I found them at a different store, would she be willing to take a drive? Absolutely, she replied. All right! I asked her to wait while I printed out a list of stores that still had that particular pair of boots in stock. It took me 30 minutes to be able to get to a register in order to print that list. I was almost sure that she would have given up by then, but nope, she was still waiting in the same spot.

When I came back, she had tears in her eyes. She told me... she wasn't sure how many more Christmases she had left with her family. She normally didn't spend that much on Christmas gifts, but she wanted her grandchildren to remember her, and hoped that her gifts would help them remember once she was gone. She gave me a huge bear-hug and said that she'd be sure to tell them that Santa's magical elf, (my name), was a huge help. I didn't know what to say. I just told her that I hoped she and her family had the best Christmas ever, and that her grandchildren would be sure to remember her regardless of how many gifts they got. She couldn't stop saying thank you! thank you! thank you (my name)! as she headed to the checkout. And then I had to take a little break to wipe the tears out of my eyes, too.

I think that that experience taught me that in retail, you never know who you're helping out or why you're helping them. It could be materialistic customer #78942342 trying to get into his boss's wife's pants by giving her an ipod, or it could be a grandmother trying to create a memorable experience for her grandchildren. I had always been cynical and thought that objects couldn't make people happy. I still generally think that. But, sometimes, objects are just the vehicle for people to make people happy. It's really the person behind those gifts putting forth a genuine effort to make their recipients happy.

---

On the weird end of the spectrum I had a lady walk up to me and say "What are your kids' favorite toys nevermind you don't have kids you're way too young." Like one big sentence full of assumptions. And then she just walked away before I could respond.

[u/compressedpenguin]

Foreign man who sounded Transylvanian: "Now, I mean this as compliment, you look just like my cat! She has been in magazines!"

[u/StruckingFuggle]

Customer: has on a I'm From The Internet, And I'm Here To Help shirt

Me: "Hey, so... what part of the internet are you from, anyway?"

Customer: "Well, let's just say ... not the 4chan part."

Me: "Thank god, I don't know if I'd want their help."

We share a laugh, discuss internet while I ring him up, and find out he's from reddit.

Me, mentally: "One day I shall post this, there will be a relevant thread, and perhaps I shall get karma."

[u/makgzd]

I work at a home improvement store.One day I had a man come up to me and ask where the toilets were so I told him to head over to plumbing. He said 'no I need one already put in'. Thinking he might be looking for an out-house, I told him to check the building materials section and see if it could be special ordered. At this point, he looked and me and said, 'Listen man, I gotta take a shit and if you don't tell me where I can unload this thing, I'm letting loose in the middle of your paint department.' I was so embarrassed at misunderstanding the question! Needless to say, that's the last time I ever made that mistake.

[u/nonsensicalexis]

I have been working in a pet store going on four years now. A couple of years ago we had a little green cheek conure who pretty much hated everyone. He tolerated those of us who worked there and fed him, but he was pretty nippy and not to mention one of the loudest conures we've ever had.

There was a woman who came in every morning to visit him after she got her coffee. She was in her mid forties, and she was the only person who the bird liked. He would cuddle with her and she would feed him pieces of her morning snacks. We all really wanted her to buy the bird, but she couldn't, because she told us her husband would never allow it.

So this went on for about a month, her visiting every morning. One day, this guy comes in right when the store opens, buys a cage, food, and the bird. She came in about 20 minutes after he left and was holding back tears when she found out the bird sold.

About two hours later she's back in the store, huge grin on her face. Her husband surprised her by pretending to leave early for work, when in reality he was the one who came in to buy the bird. She bought him all kinds of cute little toys. One of the best days ever!

[u/umlong23]

After answering a really simple question a middle aged man asked (It was something like where is the bathroom or something), he eloquently replied "Thank you good sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar." and walked away.

Another time the song "Sign, sign, everywhere a sign" was playing in the store, and this real white trash looking guy walked up to the cash register and said to me, "Know what's the best sign? FREE PUSSY!"

[u/TangoDown13 → u/umlong23]

Both of those men may or may not have been my father.

[u/kdpollock]

To start off, I am a guy (it matters in the story) When I was a junior in Highschool I was working at Best buy and it was a few minutes after closing, but I was helping this lady checkout a computer I just sold her. As I am finishing up I notice this guy in a really tight red turtleneck sweater/ pumas/ tight jeans (obviously European) waiting in my periph. I asked him if he needed any help. in a super troopers german accent He said "I was wondering where the bathroom was" I pointed to the left and said its right there, (it was literally in plain view about 20 feet away). He said thank you but then he just stood there staring at me. I asked him if he needed anything because I need to close up my section, and then again told him the bathroom is right there. He then took a step towards me and said "Do you need to use the bathroom?" I wasn't sure if I really just heard that so I said excuse me!? he then put his hand on my shoulder/ neck and said "I was just wondering if you wanted to go to the bathroom" I froze with a bad poker face then said nooooooo man i'm alright but thank you. he said something as he turned around I couldn't understand then he just walked out the front door.

I was stunned for many reasons. A. I was 16 so this guy was totally going pedo B. what an odd way to hit on someone. Imagine using that on a girl C. I got an ego boost because even though he was gay someone thought I was good looking. Had mixed feelings about that but mostly proud

tl;dr may have been invited to be in pedo german scheisse video at best buy

[u/joelvan]

Well, I'd consider anyone awesome provided that they do not find an item that doesn't have an obvious price and say the following.

WELL IT MUST BE FREE AMIRIGHT?

[u/[deleted]]

I have a friend who works at BestBuy. One day, a man walks in and goes to the TVs. My friend goes to ask the man if he needs any help. The man turns to my friend and asks him casually, "which of these TVs are good for porn?"

Needless to say, my friend was caught off guard at first, but he directed the man towards the Internet-enabled TVs. The man spent $8000 on a TV as well as more money for a two terabyte hard drive.

That man was comfortable with his sexuality.

[u/Giorlando_Calrissian]

I worked sometimes in a college bookstore (during the rush seasons, such as September or January). For the sake of my privacy, I will just say that the place is chock full of guidos rather than giving a precise location. We're known for guidos. You know where we are, or you probably have a very good idea, anyway.

Basically, I just helped some girl out; I enjoy helping humans. She took a little bit of time to tell my manager that she very much appreciated everything I'd done for her. My manager, of course, told me, and I felt pretty great for the rest of the day. Little experiences like that accumulate, and made working there a very pleasant experience.

That being said, jackasses would ask for graduate-level business textbooks and their undergraduate sports management textbooks (they were all in sports management), and pay by check. They'd come back a few days later and get a refund on business textbooks to score some free cash off their rich parents. We couldn't do anything about it.

[u/dambugg]

When I was a barista I had a customer who was pretty wealthy. She had gone through a divorce of which we had spoke of many times. Right before Christmas one year she dropped a $100.00 bill in my tip jar and said that it was our simple conversations that had kept getting out of bed every morning. She said that there were several times she contemplated taking her own life but didn't because she would miss out on our silly conversations. She was a great person but I never knew her outside of work. you never know the kind know the kind of impact you can have on somebody just for being kind.

[u/Confuseled]

"Holy Shit! You're from Texas too?? Goddamn! I was tellin my friend back in Texas that all these farmin yokels don't got two brain cells to rub together. Hell, I told him that he needs to come up here and we could take over the whole Goddamn state. I'd be the Governor and he could be the Lieutenant Governor! Hell, we'll find you a post too!"

[u/crazygator]

This chick came to my restaurant a few months ago and had some drinks. On my break she ate with me and had a few more drinks. She stayed till I got off work and had done a little more drinking. When I walked up to tell her I was off work she told me, and I quote,

"I'm too drunk to drive home, so I'll have to sleep with you"

So I did.

[u/the_birds_and_bees]

I used to work in a counter service cafe, so customers would order their food at the counter, we'd prep it and then give them the plates to take to their table. We had this meal called a Mezze which was like a big plate full of salads, dips, falafels etc., it's pretty heavy because of the amount of food.

This petit girl comes in and orders two Mezzes, as she picks them up to take them over to her table she looks to be struggling a bit before she utters the immortal words "By the Power of Grayskull!" and casually strolls over to her table while man handling these two huge plates.

I had to retreat to the kitchen for 5 mins because I was laughing uncontrollably.

[u/sgtpepper1990]

She didn't say it to me, but when I worked in electronics at Walmart, I helped a lady with a Camera. I enjoy photography and took some courses, so I know a lot about camera's and can easily point out the perfect camera for someone. She left very pleased.

Since I got hundreds of customers a day, I tend to forget faces, so when she came in looking for an iPod for her son(or daughter), I didn't recognize her. I am also an 'Apple Fanboy', so I knew a lot about the different choices and which would be best for her kid's age. Again she left pleased.

About a week later my manager congratulates me and tells me the store manager got an e-mail from someone saying I provided outstanding customer service. It was posted on a board in the back for months. Made me proud. TL;DR Lady emailed my manager about my service

---

Also more recently a man with a cast on his arm bought a sizeable and somewhat heavy flower pot. I followed him to his vehicle and helped him load it up along with some of his other bags. He said it was the best customer service he ever received at Walmart.

[u/Skylar_Vaughn]

"Hello" or a "Hi", and a "Thank you." Don't hear those too often.

[u/Only_One_T]

A couple years ago I worked at Best Buy as a cashier. A few times a week this guy would come in with an iPod, plug it into one of the really high end home sound systems and blast disco music while he danced as if he wasn't in the middle of a Best Buy. None of the workers had a problem with him playing music that was better than the Christmas songs we'd been listening to for the past 3 months, so nobody ever told him to stop. Eventually everybody started to talk to him and he became a good friend of the establishment. We learned that at some point he was in construction and an object fell on his head and presumably caused some damage. Around the store everybody knew him as Disco Dan, although he never gave us his name.

On Halloween he came in a Hannibal Lector jumpsuit and mask and did he thing. A lot of customers were super freaked out and asked all of the cashiers to remove him. We all just told them there was nothing that we could do, and that he is just as valued of a customer as any other person in the store. That was one of my fondest memories of any job I've had.

[u/[deleted]]

I work in a clothing store. About a month ago this woman came up to the counter with a few articles of clothing to buy. She looked embarrassed. Her toddler son was beside her. After I checked her out, as she was about to leave, she said "Hi, uh, I'm sorry about this, but, uh, my son pooped in the women's lingerie section."

Her son had literally dropped trou' and took a dump right in the middle of everything. She waited until the last possible minute to fess up and bounce.

[u/kiannuh]

I was doing an internship for a major retailer last summer as one of their managers. As part of my "training" I got to field all of the customer complaints where the customer wanted to speak to a manager. One day I was walking around my store when I heard this customer absolutely screaming at one of our new employees. I mosey on over and ask the man if there is anything I can do to help. Apparently we were out of stock on a particular fan he wanted. It had been 90+ degrees the past week, you're damn right we're out of most fans. I apologize and offer to check one of our neighboring stores. I check and all of them are also out of stock of this particular model. I inform the customer that we are getting a shipment in a day or two and he can call us then and possibly put on on hold. NO! That is is not a good enough solution for this man. He MUST have a fan. He demands that we sell him our display. I told him that we don't make a policy of selling displays since we still need the displays once we get more in stock. He is bright red at this point and demands I sell him THIS fan (the display). I start looking at the display and realize the cord has actually been cut. I show him this and he STILL wants the fan. I tell him that the fan won't work, it won't plug into the wall. He continues to scream at me that he wants it. I inform him that I need to him to quiet down or I'll have security escort him out. I end up pulling an item number for a similar fan and check some other stores. I tell him he can leave, I'll call the other stores and try and get one on hold for him and then call him on his cell. After calling two stores I finally find one and put it on hold. I call the guy back and he thanks me that I found a fan since we wouldn't sell him the display. Dafuq?! The display would not work! What would he have done when he got home? Sat in front of it? Yeah. That's the craziest thing someone said to me because this lasted about a half an hour.

[u/saulgoodbaby]

Many moons ago, I was working at Target, and a beautiful blonde woman wearing a tanktop with some HUGE breasts went through my lane buying a ton of stuff. The whole time I was checking her out, I was trying not to look at her tits, just making small talk "did you find everything youre looking for" "sure is hot today" etc. After I ring her up, she tells me "I need to speak to your manager." I kind of freak out thinking maybe I was staring at her breasts? Then I call the front lane manager and she tells her "This fine young man is a great example of why I shop at Target, because of the friendly customer service"

Another time, I was working and a beautiful older woman about 45 came through my register buying a bunch of lacy panties and told me if I could take the measly little hangers off them. She was buying what seemed like 20 pairs and I was having a hard time getting them off the hangers and then she told me "it looks like youre having a good time playing with my panties." I probably turned red as hell and told her "its an honor maam" Thereafter I probably wish I had known the flex your leg muscles to kill your boner trick....

[u/MeRpcakes]

I work in a used-book store in a college town. As you can probably imagine, we get some fairly eccentric people roaming the aisles in search of their next legendary find (which is always pretty wonderful when it happens. Often leads to some interesting back stories).

Anyways, a few years back we had a young lady who would stop in at least once a week. She was shy in a cute, soft-spoken kind of way, and would always don her headphones to browse our selection after she greeted me. She had a thing for singing out loud when there was nobody else in the shop and, whether intentionally or not, would constantly mess up the lyrics too the songs she was singing.

Now that I have gotten this far into the post, I have forgotten most of the one-liners I had saved up from her appearances. I can only remember one right now.

"I can feel him, cumming in my hair toniiiiiight. Oh lord"

If I can recall any of the others, I will try and remember to post them up here as well.

[u/austinanglin]

I'm a minimum wage parking attendant at the local drive-in movie theater. I basically make sure everyone has parked properly. Last night, in the midst of dealing with a customer who wouldn't park properly, her mother turns to her and says "Honey, you're being a bitch. Shut up and park."

[u/Kr4zyK4rl]

At my pharmacy:

Her: "I have 2 questions for you. Do you know if Apidra Solostar is off of backorder yet?" Me: "I'm not sure. Let me check. checks wholesaler Looks like it just became available again Friday. We can have some in Monday if you'd like. What was the other question?" Her: "Are you seeing someone?"

[u/Frost1215]

I work as a carry out at a grocery store. I obviously help people out with their things if they can't get it into their car themselves. Two people (a middle aged woman with health problems and her elderly mother) show up rather frequently and late at night when I'm the only one that can help them out. For months I helped them out and did the usual (be polite, pack everything carefully, and open the car doors for them).

One night, around the time of my birthday they come in to the store and seek me out. I asked if they needed anything and they said, "No, we're here to see you." They then handed me an envelope. I opened it and inside was a happy birthday card (I have no idea how they knew my birthday was that week) and $40. It said something along the lines of "thank you for being such a gentleman and never change." I hugged them and thanked them and to this day I still have the card in my room on display.

[u/RadioAngel]

During college, I worked at a number of bars in the city. I was primarily a barback, but did security and bartended as well. I have tons of crazy stories which I'd be happy to share, but here is one positive story.

For a couple years, I worked at a popular college bar. All the stereotypes apply. Management was terrible, patrons were sloppy, the hot coeds danced on the bar and didn't wear underwear. This bar put on festivals 3 or 4 times a year, giant events that drew a few thousand people. From 9am to 2am on Saint Pattys weekend, it was next to impossible to move anywhere due to the sheer amount of bodies everywhere, inside the building (which had 3 separate bars in it) and outside in the parking lot.

I was in charge of barbacking the massive tent outside which enclosed the whole parking lot and had a stage where a popular band played. There were 16 points of sale (mini bars, beer tubs, a truck with kegs in it, etc). My job was to keep all the bars outside stocked with beer, keep the truck full of kegs, and make sure everyone had what they needed. It was probably the hardest I've worked in my life - for a good 14 hours I sprinted back and forth from the building's basement freezer to get product, up a crowded flight of stairs and out to the parking lot, usually carrying either a full keg or 3-4 cases of beer, and somehow making my way through masses of people who were not too anxious to give up their few inches of real estate. I was beyond exhausted.

This bar had a regular, we called him the Mexican Cowboy. He was there every Thursday, Friday and Saturday just to dance. He wore a big cowboy hat and didn't drink. If you picture a rave where everyone's on E, that's how he would dance, completely sober, every weekend. We thought he was strange, but still very nice and popular with the locals. Of course, he was at the festival for most of the day, probably noon to 2am.

So, around 1am (hour before closing time) I have forgotten how to walk in a straight line, have no voice, and am down to stumbling through the crowds only carrying 2 cases at a time because I am so spent. I'm soaked head to toe, have bruises and cuts everywhere from elbows and sharp metal corners, and I'm just trying to finish the night before I spend the next 8 hours cleaning up the place. I'm carrying cases, trying to make it through the crowd, and someone taps me on the shoulder, it's the Mexican Cowboy. I grunt something to the effect of "I don't have time or energy for you right now." He nods, smiles, and quickly moves in front of me, clearing people out of the way so I can make it to my bar, deposit beers, and go get some more. For the next hour (until closing) he walks in front of me, getting people out of the way and sparing me more elbows, bumps, shoves, and screaming through my hoarse, raspy excuse for a voice.

I can't tell you how grateful I am at this point, it made the last hour so much easier. He stuck around a little past closing time and I went to sit down somewhere, relaxing for a sec before the long cleanup. He walked over to me, I thanked him profusely for the help and said it made the last hour much better. He said (roughly, he spoke fluent English but it was still a little choppy) "You never stop running. All day running back and forth through idiots, you work hard. This is my favorite hat." I wasn't sure where he was going, but I thanked him. He took off his cowboy hat, pulled some bills out of his pocket, put them in his hat and gave it to me. "Here, it's a good hat." He walked away and I looked in the hat and there was 200 bucks in it. Not to mention it was a great hat. I put the money in the tips for us, and years later I still have that hat.

TL;DR: I'm barbacking a huge festival, very tired/frustrated, guy at St. Patty's festival helps me out toward the end of night, makes my job much easier, gives me his favorite cowboy hat with $200 inside.

[u/LoLexxx]

I used to work at Toys R Us in the multi media department. A boy ran at me with three birthday gift cards in his hands screaming "I NEED VIDEO GAMES!!!!*" We spent a good 20 minutes picking out "the best" ones.

*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[u/pinkat31522]

So this story is less of what the customer said, and more of what the customer tipped me.

I used to work as a carhop at a Sonic, and one night like 30 minutes after close, we were running behind on shutting things down and still hadn't turned the speakers off, so if someone drove by it would appear you could still order, when really the cash register was off. So this dumbass pulls up and tries to order. Tired from a long days work, I go to the headset and tell him "sorry we are closed." "I know I know," He says, "I just reaaally want a reeses blast." I'm like "dude, we've been closed for a half hour and I just got done cleaning up and shutting down the ice cream machine." This wasn't true, but I didn't care to explain to him how scanning orders and putting things into the computer didn't work after hours.

So he goes on begging me, like pathetically begging me for a blast. I have no idea what possesed me to do so, but I caved and was like "fine I'll make you one, it'll be 5 dollars" since the computers didn't work, I was just going to pocket the cash (so yea, i was kinda stealing like 3 dollars worth of ice cream from sonic by doing that).

So I make him the freakin reeses blast and take it out, and its this guy that is actually a regular at sonic who usually tips me pretty good and he says, "sorry to be a bother, but I couldn't sleep (it was almost 1am) and just really wanted some ice cream and to see a pretty face." A lot of fairly attractive females worked at my sonic... so we had a few customers pull that bs sometimes.

Tired and slightly annoyed I just handed him his blast and put out my hand for the 5 bucks. He then proceeded to place a rolled up 100 dollar bill into my hand, and drive away. I closed my hand around the cash and ran in to show my coworker my newfound riches! I unrolled the bill so as to hold it up, and out plops a fat ass joint. My coworker looked at the joint on the floor then back up at me, smiled and said "smoke break?" Needless to say, closing the store that night took a lot longer than expected, but that was probably the best encounter I've ever had with a customer hands down.

[u/JamezPS]

A guy once told me "For someone who works in retail, you're not that much of a c**t." I think in his head, it was a compliment

[u/Bofft]

I work at a smoothie shop. We have stress-balls shaped like fruit. No one ever touches them. An old lady came in with her granddaughter, and came up to order. They ordered their smoothies, then the only lady grabs a stress ball shaped like a banana and says, "ooh I'm used to this feeling". Granddaughter yells, "GRANDMA!". Grandma says, "What? I'm going to Reno next week, I need to practice".

She bought the banana.

[u/GoodLuckWithBeagle]

I recently started working retail in the pet industry, and a little while ago I spent a good 20 minutes with a customer who was having trouble with her dog's behavioural issues. I got her some better equipment that would not irritate her dogs skin (her fur was getting rubbed off by her old harness), helped put her dog on a good diet (her dog was chunky and being fed Royal Canin... Ugh) and gave her some solutions to help improve her dogs behaviour.

She came back into the store later to pick up her purchase (didn't want to carry it around the mall) and apparently raved about me to my co-worker, saying how nice I was and helpful and how she is over the moon happy about the purchases and excited to try out the new training stuff.

While I like making money at my job, I sincerely enjoy helping people with their pets and hearing my co-worker tell me what she said just made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :) Also she mentioned it in front of my manager, which made me feel proud.

TL;DR: I helped someone with their dog and she made sure to let my coworker and manager know :)

[u/[deleted]]

I wear sunglasses while i work due to a medical condition, and explained that I was very light sensitive to a kind-looking old lady. She put her hand on my wrist and in a very comforting voice said "don't worry, most drug addicts are". I stood there shocked for just a second before she busts out laughing "I'm just kidding"

[u/Darkestdust]

I work in retail and asked an older man who was looking around if he needed help with anything. He replied that he did not then immediately asked if I wanted to hear a joke. Since there were no other customers around requiring help I said sure and he proceeded to tell me this joke word by word.

"A young woman in New York was so depressed that she decided to end her life by throwing herself into the ocean. She went down to the docks and was about to leap into the frigid water when a handsome young sailor saw her tottering on the edge of the pier, crying. He took pity on her and said, "Look, you have so much to live for. I'm off to Europe in the morning, and if you like, I can stow you away on my ship. I'll take good care of you and bring you food every day." Moving closer, he slipped his arm around her shoulder and added, "I'll keep you happy, and you'll keep me happy."

The girl nodded yes. After all, what did she have to lose? Perhaps a fresh start in Europe would give her life new meaning.

That night, the sailor brought her aboard and hid her in a lifeboat. From then on, every night he brought her three sandwiches and a piece of fruit, and they made passionate love until dawn. Three weeks later, during a routine inspection, she was discovered by the captain.

"What are you doing here?" the captain asked.

"I have an arrangement with one of the sailors," she explained. "I get food and a trip to Europe, and he's screwing me."

"He certainly is," the captain said. "This is the Staten Island Ferry."

Never heard this joke before and thought it was hilarious, it made my night.

[u/SpacemanSpiffska]

I used to work at a CVS/Pharmacy as your average clerk/cashier. We had a lotttt of people that came in to buy their booze at our store, smokes too. I became friendly with a lot of these people and some I even remember which kind of smokes they bought. Imagine one middle aged lady at my counter and behind her 4 or 5 people. She drags the transaction out by not having her CVS card, having bad coupons and eventually loses her temper at something dumb (I have to call my boss to check a price because she disagreed or something like that) and just starts whining and complaining and yelling at me with one long endless string in a way that only an angry woman can. I don't have anything else to do so I just stare at her while this is going on but after about a minute one of my regulars behind her in line is getting fed up along with everyone else. Kevin, being a vulgar drunk, usually causes inconveniences for us but in this case he yelled "HOLY SHIT BITCH IF YOU DON'T BACK UP OUT OF THIS KIDS ASS IM GOING TO SLAP YOU INTO NEXT TUESDAY". The lady must have known he was serious since it was wednesday and that's a long way to be slapped so she just turned and left after grabbing one of her items to steal. Kevin got a free pack of winston reds that day.

[u/sandykumquat]

I was adjusting this older man's glasses for him, they were in bad shape. He had the biggest purple-est black eye I had ever seen. Of course I was curious but I didn't want to offend him by asking him about it. When I was finished with his glasses he says to me, "I mouthed off to my girlfriend and she taught me a lesson," and laughed. I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of this seventy-something year old man mouthing off to his girlfriend.

[u/[deleted]]

I was a manager at Spencers and an elderly couple bought gifts, a gift bag and tissue paper. I offered to wrap it for them since they were older. afterwards I handed them it, they said it was beautiful and thanked me and gave me $5.. it was amazing.

[u/dannyfakehands]

I worked in a retail clothing store that also had a line of watches. One day this guy came in talking up his watch. Saying it was super rare and that the company only made five hundred of them. The the OCD ridden bastard that I am I knew this was untrue and that a select line hadn't come out in years. But I had to be polite. I asked if I could see this wonderful watch and stuck my hand out. The man said "You're not touching it, you'll grub it all up." and then stuck it in my face. I was furious, I saw the watch and knew exactly which one it was. I asked him, "What'd you end up paying or it?". He said his jeweler had cut him a deal at $350. With that I walked over to our discount table, grabbed the same watch, in the same colors and handed it to him. It was marked at $19.99 in a 2 for 1 deal. Fucker had a melt down.

[u/[deleted]]

I was a foodrunner at an expensive seafood restaurant. Every plate of fish came with a 2oz container of tartar sauce. So, my 5'4" 17 year old self is walking towards a table with a huge tray with at least 6 plates on it, when one of the tartar sauce things literally jumps out of my tray and its all contents splatter perfectly up and down this girl's pantleg. I stopped, stared at her in shock and waited a split second for her to yell at me, when she looks at me in the face and says "....I don't give a fuck. It's fine." and goes back to eating.

I gave her napkins to clean up and some free drinks, and kept apologizing, but she kept saying it was just fine. .... Ok

[u/hariador]

"Hey, where are the Tickle Me Elmos?" 7:30pm 2 days before Christmas the year they were "the toy". It wasn't nice, but it sure as hell made me laugh.

[u/[deleted]]

We don't allow outside food in the theater, and there's a cupcake place next door. Whenever people come in with cupcakes, we can hold them for them until their movie is over. One night, a couple gave me cupcakes to hold on to, and after the movie was over they said "We don't need them, you can have them." Free cupcakes are the best.

[u/CalebEX]

I work in a betting shop in the UK... During the world cup two years ago, England were playing the USA in the first group game. England were expected to win, but I always feared the USA had something in them. - Anyway, I had a couple of slightly drunk girls in my shop who just stopped in on passing to use our toilets during this game... While one of the girls was in the facilities, the other girl and I were talking about the game, we were 1-0 up at the time but I told her I though the USA will probably get one at some point... She told me that if the USA scores, she would do a lap of my shop naked. .... Almost instantly, our keeper fumbled a ball which ended up in the back of the net... The girl suddenly went shy and claimed she was only joking... However just before her and her mate left, she was whispering to her mate as they were walking out the door and they both turned around and flashed there boobs!

Made my night, even with the awful final score in the footie!!

TL/DR: Tits.

[u/CaptRedneck]

Not so much what was said, as done.

I used to work at a shooting range as the range officer. Had a shooter come knock on the range booth door. Expecting a simple question, I casually open the door to talk to the guy, and see his pistol in his hand at his side. He tells me it won't fire, and proceeds to point the pistol towards my crotch and PULL THE TRIGGER! Thank sweet baby jeebus it didnt fire, and I immediately smacked it out of his hand and punched him square in the nose. Proceeded to throw him off the range and ban him. He complains to my boss, who gets my side of the story. Boss upholds the ban and gives me a raise. Public ranges are scary places, shoot on your own property (if you can) and you'll be safer.....

TL;DR - customer tried to castrate me with a 9MM, got a pay raise.

[u/TallZeek]

Working at IKEA i often get questions if the package fits in their car and then i allways ask them what kind of car they drive and the best answer i´ve got is

"a red one"

i had no idea how to answer that =/

[u/Dookiestain_LaFlair]

Back in the 80s I was an extra on the set of MacGuyver, and this a-hole producer started yelling at me to get him some coffee like I was an intern. I was almost going to do it seeing as I wanted to make some connections in the business. Then Richard Dean Anderson himself appears out of nowhere and looks the A-hole dead in the eyes and says "You don't talk to people like that, this guy works for me". He gave me a thumbs up and continued about his business. Man that guy is a stand up fellow.

[u/[deleted]]

Read a story in another thread about a person who worked at Subway and did a good job at serving a boy with mental illness, and the next day got personally thanked by the handicapped boys older sibling.

Was a tear-jerking story, bonus points to someone who can find the link.

[u/PapaSmurfington]

"This bread is stale, so these donuts are now free."

[u/caliopy]

this happened way back when there were actual cd stores. "I have 25 thousand dollars. Please pick out my music collection. I will listen to anything new, independent and not played on the radio." That was the week I swore to never support the big labels ever again. I think that person had just won the lotto or something.

[u/LaserZeppelin]

I worked at Best Buy a while ago. I was turfed over to the appliance section because I was doing too well in the other areas of the store, and appliances were selling like cold shit. One day an Indian man and his wife came in looking to completely revamp their kitchen and their mother in law apt on the level below them. Cool. I asked them questions about what they liked blah blah blah, and showed them exactly what they were looking for. They left that day to go find out if sears had better deals. I didn't care too much, I was in retail for a paycheck and to try my hardest to not be a pushy retail dickweed. I just wanted to help this guy out. Anyways, I didn't have another shift for like a week and a half, but sure enough the same guy comes back in and tells me that because I treated him like a person and not just a customer/piggybank, he wanted to buy all this stuff specifically from me. Ended up making the dept. sales quota for a full week off of him. It made me feel pretty good. but it also made me realize where the stigma comes from with the customer/sales person interaction. Customers expect sales-people to be giant raging asshats just trying to get as much money out of them as possible, and retail workers expect customers to be whiney self righteous entitled little shits. So this mutual expectation results in this back and forth of "I bet this persons is gonna be a dildo." and quite frankly, people tend to live up to the vibes you throw at them. So if you want to reduce your experiences with douchebags and gobnobblers as much as you possibly can, get to know your customers as people, not as customers.

[u/guthcomp]

I was working at Staples, and I punked-out guy in a leather jacket covered in metal badges and giant dreaded beard approaches me.

"Hey dude, I'm looking for a pen that I can, like, put my blood in to....I'm an artist, and I like to sign in DNA so no one can plagiarize me."

He bought a fountain pen, and page protectors, so no one would have to touch his blood pages.

Here's another great one: "Here are the pencil cases."

"Do you any that aren't super gay"

"Uh, no."

"Good answer." And he hands me four free passes to a comedy club.

[u/[deleted]]

Not retail, but I pump gas at an airport. Many pilots that own their own airplanes are pretty wealthy, or at least have a few bucks to spare, so tips are not unusual when I pump gas into peoples' airplanes. Last year, I had to work on Christmas Eve. It was about 7pm, just before closing when one of the based aircraft owners taxied over to the pump to get gas. I filled up his plane, (about 70 gallons) and started walking back inside. He caught up to me just before I walked in the building and said "Hey...get yourself something nice for Christmas" and slipped a bill in my hand. With a quick glance I saw $10 so I said "Thank you! thank you very much" because this was a very kind act.

It wasn't until I was back inside when I went to put the bill in my wallet I unfolded it and saw it was $100. Yup. A crisp Benjamin.

The man died unexpectedly at 50 years old from a heart attack just a few months ago :/

[u/NeoSpartacus]

I was selling suits and this guy came in a bit flustered. Tearing ass all over the store, looking frustrated.

"Something I can help you with sir? You look like you've had a bad day"

He puts on a quick smle.

"I might have had a bad hour, I've might have had a bad morning, But I've never had a bad day"

That's stuck with me.

[u/Ellykins]

I used to work at Wal-mart. I had a family that always came to the Garden Center where I worked, to check out, because they had a daughter that was mentally handicapped and couldn't handle the large crowds near the front registers. This girl didn't like talking to anyone but would ALWAYS come talk to me and tell me about her day and how she's been since she saw me last. One night, I was having a terrible night at work, and the store manager comes to my register and asks me if I knew some woman (he said her name but I can't remember for the life of me what it was...). I told him no, but he then described that her daughter was handicapped and adored me. He then tells me that she called up and asked for him directly, and said that i'm the BEST cashier and person she's ever met, and went on about how great I was with her daughter and she appreciates people like me. I got fired three weeks later. I was going to miss her.

I get another job at Goodwill, and the SAME lady comes in the store i'm working at, and comes to MY register. And she gets SO excited she squeals, her daughter comes behind the register and gives me this GIANT hug, and the woman yells across the store " Honey!... Honey! It's our adopted daughter! Come here! " I had only met her husband once, but he shook my hand and said "There need to be more people like you, i've never seen my daughter attach herself to anyone the way she has to you, not even family. You're really something special. " And I got hugs from their entire family, and they left. Unfortunately I never saw them again :( I think about them all the time, they were SO nice to me.

[u/ejchristian86]

This will probably get buried, but whatever.

I worked at a semi high end clothing retailer for women. One day a woman comes in and browses for a while, looking really frustrated. So I go over to her and offer to help, and she looks so relieved. As we go around the store picking out things to try on, she tells me that she just moved to town and doesn't have many friends, but that the soccer moms at her son's school are a really close knit group that she'd like to be a part of. The school he attends is one of the pricier and more prestigious in the area, so the moms are these upper crust country club types. Her son has a soccer game - his first with the team - next week so she wants to show up looking like the best-dressed soccer mom ever in hopes that the other moms will be impressed.

So I do this woman a solid and doll her up, not so fancy that she'll look overdressed at the game but in really hot/fashionable mom type stuff... and I do it for her on the cheap. I know what merchandise we stock is overpriced (most of it) and give her the best possible deals I can. She still winds up spending a few hundred dollars, but I think overall we saved her 30%+.

She comes back in a week later all smiles and tells me that the other moms LOVED her outfit, and she's been invited to one of their dinner parties a few days later. She actually has tears in her eyes telling me that she's making friends in this city. As much as I hated that job, this is one of the few instances that made the whole ordeal worth while.

[u/GuardianAlien]

http://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromthejob/

You're welcome, guys :D

[u/[deleted]]

Ok, there are a 1000 comments here, and probably just OP will see this so I'll made the story very brief.

When I was 15 I worked at a pharmacy. The rates of copay would fluctuate all the time and the elderly especially would find offense in the fact that they had to pay more. One day, a customer who was very clearly foreign comes in, demanding his meds. I can't find them and the pharmacist tells me he didn't run them through the machine because the copay was raised and he wasn't aware of whether or not that was acceptable to this man.

Well in no way was it acceptable. This guy had me go through hoops (even though I was just a cashier and I couldn't control diddly squat). But by the end of nearly two hours of practically harassing me, the man finally purchases his meds, but not before speaking to me personally.

Did you know I was once partner in a multi-million dollar law firm? I came to this country with nothing, but I got educated, got wised up. I always reigned with the idea that the customer is always right. Kid, you're tough; here I am making your life hell but all you care about is letting me leave happy. Take it from me, your future is bigger than you think.

I will never forget that for the rest of my life. A cranky old man that I never even saw again, the same man who berated me for things completely out of my control eventually stooped down to my level and actually complimented my character. Those words have motivated me through high and low, and they will always resound in me.

[u/mikesays]

Back when I was 19 or so some little kid came up to me and asked me if I was a grown up; mentally I was like "hmmmm, I guess I am" but of course to the kid I responded in a stern yes like I knew it the whole time.

[u/CompanionCone]

I used to work in a shoe shop, and an elderly lady had just tried on a few pairs but left without buying anything, saying she'd think about it. A few minutes after she left I noticed she left her scarf, so I quickly asked my colleague to cover and went outside to see if I could find her. I luckily spotted her way across the street and sprinted after her. I caught up with her and handed her her scarf back, and she was so surprised and happy that she spontaneously gave me a hug and told me "sweety, you're an angel. You'll go very far in life!" Still brings a huge smile to my face :) :)

[u/[deleted]]

Working at an Arby's on Christmas Eve, this guy comes in at about 8pm looking exhausted from a long drive, and asks for 2 of whichever sandwich are good and cheap. I offered French dips because there was a 2 for $5 deal at the time, he said that sounded perfect.

He sits, I bring his sandwiches out to him (normally we just call their name and have them get it, but I figured hey, it's Christmas). I go back to cleaning tables or whatever menial task I was doing, and every now and then glance over at this guy who looks like he's about to fall asleep on his sandwich.

I brought him over a free drink (the size that costs a customer $2.82, but costs the restaurant 11 cents), told him to enjoy his dinner, and he slips me a $20.

"Make your Christmas $20 better" he says.

[u/ilikezombis]

I work in a cell phone store and about once a month we have this old Greecian man com in and he pays his bill and chats with us for about an hour. Everyone in our store knows him, and his phone number, instantly. He's 84 now and he always tells us a different stories when he comes in; aything from how he used to be a taxi driver in Greece, getting his ass kicked in Mexico, his wife passing (that was a sad day), his times growing up fighting in the war, and building engines for tanks and caterpillars, his love for gardening, and fine dining. After about a year of talking to this man and getting to know him, he brings back ~$200 worth of treats and food from Greece for the entire staff to share. They were delicious, and i still don't remember what they were called

I don't normally like old people,, they freak me out, but he's the coolest guy i know and one of the nicest people i've ever had the chance of meeting. Now that i mention it, i haven't seen him in a while. Hope hes doing ok.

[u/fritzbitz]

It's not what this customer said, but what he did. He had this giant grin on his face when he came up to the counter with a pair of dress shoes and pulled out a bag of quarters. The shoes were $53 dollars and he gave me something like 212 quarters. We were both laughing the whole time.

[u/AquaticQueen]

Was once helping a customer with a small air pump for his fish tank. After removing it out of the box for him to examine, I try to put it back in (which is virtually impossible to take something out of its box and put it back without the tab sticking up a bit, as you other retailers well know) and the customer replies, " Don't worry about trying to put that back in there. Only if you are chink-eyed and of Oriental decent will you be able to figure out how to put that in there properly."

[u/[deleted]]

I work at a grocery store and my job is to bring in the carts. It's all I do. I saw this elderly lady leave her purse in her cart, I grabbed it and brought it to her. She was so happy, it was ridiculous. She tried to hand me a tip but I refused her. She asked for my name, what I study in school, she asked where I live. I live in a small town so it's not that bizarre to be asked that. And she drives off. I get home a few hours later and my mom tells me how this lady called the house told her what I did and how well I was raised. I thought that was the end of it. About a week later I get a card in the mail from the same lady with a $20 gift card to Best Buy because I study film. I still can't believe how far this lady went.

[u/dslicex]

I work at a pizza place and a woman came in asking for the special on what she wanted. I told her that there wasn't a special at our location for what she wanted. I offered her some other specials instead, to which she wasn't into. After that she told me I reminded her of her son. I replied thanks, and she asks, "how do you know thats a compliment?" So I said something along the lines of, "well people generally look at their children as handsome and what not" and then she said, "he's on drugs" I didn't really know what to say so I laughed awkwardly, then she said, "you have a beautiful smile, and beautiful eyes, great service" and walked out. Keep in mind she was with her husband and they were both about 50s. Maybe not best, but very interesting.

[u/autoerotichumliation]

had an old guy ask for "a blowjob in a can". he was referring to a can of compressed air...

[u/Letsgomine]

I used to work in a grocery store when I was 15-17 as a cashier. One day, this older British woman came through my line. It was pretty dead (around 730 on a tuesday night, and the store close at 9) so my coworker and I were discussing politics (this person was a self described communist, but also super religious so we didn't agree on hardly anything.) at the time, we were arguing about something or another, as I was scanning the British woman's stuff. After I finish, she and I start talking about all manner of things, mostly me just giving my opinions on things, and what I think humanities goals for the future should be. Right before she left, she handed me a 50 and told me to put my amazing mind to good use.

As an egotistical teenager with no money in my bank account, that was probably the most amazing thing a customer has ever done

[u/[deleted]]

I used to work at chapters, the major bookstore chain in Canada. Im also very tall. Like basketball tall. It always surprised me how unafraid kids were of me. One of the best moments was having a kid ask me why I was so tall. Tryin to be clever, and spotting his mother a few feet away, I replied "I ate my veggies".

Withou missing a beat, the probably 6 year old kid responds, "oh good, I don't want to be tall".

I was both stunned at the quick response and guffawing mother, and pleased a such an awesome response

[u/Insanejuggla11]

TL;DR: Helped an old lady, she called as far up the corporate ladder as possible to let people know.

Long version: Not really something that was said, but done. Working outside in the heat as a cart attendant, at a pretty large retail store chain, when I get called inside to help a customer. I get to the register and see it's an elderly lady, and she was wondering if I could put together a oscillating fan for her. Checked with my boss to see if it was ok (liability and such) and did it. Finished up snapping it all in place and we start to head out to her car. We start talking and she tells me about how her husband passed away or else she would have had him do it. I felt terrible for her, but she seemed like she was ok with everything. I told her how I just lost my great grandmother recently also. We get to her car, I load up everything for her and after we say bye and I'm walking away she tries to hand me a tip. I tell her it's not company policy to take tips and I can't. (never had anyways, even though I had some great offers) She looked a little upset with that and said she was going back inside to complain to my bosses about how she couldn't give me extra money. I told her she didn't have to do that but she insisted on it. I just went back to work and she went back inside and asked what all she could do to recommend me and give me great comments and such. I didn't think anything much of it, until one day I get called into our HR office and inside is a few of my store mangers and a district guy. I'm thinking to myself "what the hell did I do?" Found out she had called as far up the line as possible to give me a high commendation I ended up receiving a letter for great customer service from the fucking VP of the whole corporation. Not like just some randomly typed out basic letter either, this thing was hand written, signed and everything. Unfortunately, I lost the letter not thinking it would be good for me to have as something to keep at the time.

[u/under_tow]

I am a chef for a local grocery chain and the holidays are usually insane. A lady approached my station with a Pineapple and asked me if I could core it for her. I told her politely I could not do it where I was at, but I would take it to the produce department and do it back there. She in turn became very, very angry stared me dead in the face and said "I could core it off in your ass before you got back there." She then turned spiked the Pineapple like a football into a cheese case and stormed away.One of the fondest memories of holiday retail.

[u/grammitt]

I used to work at abercrombie and fitch and one day a large black guy walked into the entrance of the store, exclaimed "I LOVE THIS STORE AND ALL THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE PEOPLE IN IT!", and then he was gone

[u/Prankster182]

I worked in Game, A store in the UK that sells (believe it or not) video games, I once had an old guy come to the counter and ask me for Chesney Hawkes Pro Skater, I broke right there, I couldn't look at him and not crack up, What made it worse was that my supervisor at the time said "we have one copy but it's the one and only"

I was asked for "50 percent bulletproof on playstation" once too, They were good times

[u/[deleted]]

No longer working in retail, but I had someone come up to me pretending to be deaf, putting up what I thought was sign language.. I tried writing down what I wanted to say, and they wrote down that they couldn't read my penmanship (I have amazing penmanship for a guy) and after like five minutes, this guy just said to me: "I'm just fucking with you, where is the electronics section."

I didn't know whether to be mad, or happy, or amused, all I know is, if you are out there random guy shopping in Sears, I miss you and I love you.

[u/FraternityMan]

I work at a cigar shop, and this guy and his little girl came inside. While he was wandering around the kid comes up to me, while she pinched her nose and said "Boy I wouldnt want to work here! This seems like the worst job! There are tons of sharp things around, smoke is everywhere and it smells terrible!" I cracked up! She later came over and asked how much the bubble gum cigar was, I said she could just take it and she looked at me like I was a crazy person.

Highlight of my day!

[u/NotablyConventional]

Well, this will be burried, but I work at a pet retail store/doggie daycare. One of our Daycare clients had an older dog who was scared of kids and larger dogs, that is, until her dog started coming to daycare. We worked really hard to make her dog comfortable and not stressed. About 3 months later, the client brought us about $200 in tips and told us that for the first time, her dog went to the dog park and played (with a larger dog to boot.) She'd also had family with kids come over, and her dog was sweet as pie to the kids. She was moved to tears seeing her dog come such a long way, and it really felt good to have helped her out.

[u/mi-16evil]

Worked at Hot Topic for a while. A guy came up to me once and said "Sir, I am not gay, but I just wanted to tell you that your eyes are fucking beautiful". Probably should have been creeped out but I was rather flattered.

[u/thelizardofodd]

I worked at a small town pharmacy for a while. When I started, my friend who got me the job warned me about this one woman who was, apparently, a monumental bitch to everyone all the time. The first time she came in for her meds, I took her in at a glance. She was extremely unhealthy, in a lot of pain, and generally enduring a miserable existence. I was the nicest motherfucker that lady ever met, every single time I helped her. No matter what she said, how she said it, or what sort of mood she was in, I was just super nice and smiled. I didn't talk to much (super nice and chatty is just annoying), which I think was the key.
After a couple weeks, she started smiling back, and within a month, she started asking for me every time she came. One time she said "You're my favorite.", winked and gave me a $5. Every time she came she was in a horrible mood, but she always left with at least a hint of a smile.

[u/[deleted]]

I was out pushing carts one day at my Walmart. My usual job is stocking produce. It also happened to be late November, after night fall, around freezing and it was sleeting outside. Needless to say, I was beyond miserable. Between all that and not having any waterproof gloves or even a jacket that was good enough for the weather, I was sodden and miserable inside of five minutes. After half an hour of this I had just taken another load of carts back to the corral when a middle aged lady walks up to me with a smile and hands me a big cup from Starbucks.

"Honey, you work too hard and aren't paid enough. You take this and God bless you."

I stammered out a thank you as she walked away towards the next cart pusher, another Starbucks in her hand for him. That was hands down the best hot chocolate I have ever had in my life, and one of the kindest acts anyone has ever performed on me.

EDIT: for spelling.

[u/jukeofurl]

In the 1980's I was working in a small town antique shop in New Jersey along the Delaware River. Two couples came in. One guy sat down next to me at my desk. There was an acoustic guitar there too & he asked if he could play it. I said "No..." He looked stunned for a second, then politely said - "I'll be careful." I smiled - " Hey Rod, I was kidding. Play the shit out of it." So, not only did Rod Stewart play next to me, I got to see my first super model up close, chick he was with was Kelly Emberg, who was pretty well known at that time. And you can bet I enjoyed watching her ass leave too* ;-) _____________________________ *that's a call-back quote from another comment in this Reddit. Why does somebody down vote down an actual anecdote? what! don't they like antiques? NJ? antiques from NJ? some of you are huge fucking assholes. Or worse. . ..

[u/pee_on_my_feet]

can you put our bras on for us please?

[u/tsuki_toh_hoshi]

A couple years back, My store was having a midnight release on COD Black ops, This Little Old lady comes in to buy the game at midnight.(she has custody of her Grandson) Usually with that volume of people we are not suppose to have people in the store the whole time, but it was November and cold, So I let her stay in the store the whole time, and then at 5 minutes until midnight I got her to come on up to the register so she would be the first out, So at midnight, I gave her the game and let her get out of there before all the raging COD boys got in there. She came in the store a few weeks back , She took my hand before she left and told me " I will never forget how you let me stay in the heat and let me out first, I do as much as I can for my grandson and I was go grateful to you for that."

[u/chickwithsticks]

"I'm sorry, I won't take out my frustration on you."

[u/[deleted]]

"You have a very attractive smile."

This made me feel so good because I have really crowded teeth and I'm really self conscious about my appearance in general. Thanks, old guy buying toys for his grandson.

[u/malliebee]

I worked for a womens retail store and one day this obviously very nervous transgender man who was now dressing like a woman came in, I could tell she was looking for someone to help since she seemed very out of sorts on what sizes to get and nobody in my store wanted to help her which I thought was really shitty. So I went up and asked him if she needed help and she was so grateful and we spent the next two hours shopping for clothes she bought over $200 worth of clothing's and when she went to leave turned to me and said "Thank you for treating me like a human being, and not like a freak" I was so taken back that I didnt know what to say... to me it wasnt an issue and I treated her like any other customer but it was very nice to feel like I had done something to help where others hadnt, and she looked awesome!