Many years ago, I was supervising at a supermarket checkout. An older lady (late 50’s / early 60’s) started berating one of the young checkout girls, she was newish about 16yo.

I over heard, it was hard not to after a little while. I walked over, I was 19 at the time. I’m not a big guy 5’9" and weighed around 60kg (checks math…132lb). The old woman sees me and begins to go into a rant, to which I simply said, get the fuck out of my store. It was latish (8:30pm), there were no managers left in store.

She went into (what is now called) full karen mode, ranting about calling my manager. I got a bit pf paper and wrote my managers and the store managers numbers down with their names and said, “go ahead, call them”. She quickly calmed down and went to go stand back in line…I said, “no I told you to get out”.

So, so many; I have spent far too long in hospitality.

A relatively benign one: At a small coffeeshop. Found a quirky little hat behind the counter - a tweed fedora thing with a rakish orange feather in it. Full of youthful high spirits and caffeine, I proceeded to lark around the shop in the hat (yes I wish I still had that much energy), much to the amusement of my coworkers. A lady walks in, interrupting us. She’d left her hat.

At a bar: A nonzero amount of customers buying a bottle of beer and then pouring it into the tip jar (edited to add: thinking it a glass for their beer). Some version of “how was I supposed to know?!”, repeatedly. I don’t know, maybe the fact it was covered in chalk pen, contained money, and was very, very ugly?

At a pub: boomer getting very angry at me because he’d asked for a spiced rum and coke and I’d offered Sailor Jerry’s (cheapest). Apparently that was a wussy drink. No, he clarified, a girly drink. He chose some other rum with coke. Yeah drink your sugar water old man.

I work at a sex store. Was showing guy products. Asked if he could fuck me. When I say no, asks if he can suck my dick. I’m a trans woman and I get a lot of this sort of thing.

I also had a customer grab my breast after I checked him out at the gas station I worked at.

Maybe it was the time a lady asked me to put in gloves to handle her change, or the time after that when the same lady dropped change on the ground next to her car and ordered me to pick it up for her (this would require me to walk in front of her vehicle).

Maybe it was the time a woman my age walked up to me and asked if I was “one of those transgenders” and when I said yes she asked if I was “one of the angry ones”.

Idk

Everything sucks

I am in one of those jobs that invites me to visit people in their homes, and there are just so many that aren’t homey. Think the mother of all messes but not as fun.

When I was a kid working at dominos a guy came in to make an order and wanted to pay with his card and when I asked him for the card number he like physically shrank away from me and became shifty and said “why do I have to give you that?!”

I teach outdoors for school groups in a nature area and a part of that process is a discovery hike. Its me, about 12 kids, and a parent chaperone and as we are walking through the woods we see a deer. All these kids, who were in 4th grade, were so excited! We very quietly watched it grazing around in this woods, not giving us any mind at all, when it sort of gets its antlers tangled in some vine and ends up pulling a dead tree down on top of it.

The deer is now flailing under a whole ass tree that collapsed right on to it, and it clearly is suffering. It is making the worst kinds of noises and I have the parent keep the kids back as I approach this crazed stag. It clearly suffered head trauma and was bleeding. The worst part is that it was right on the path back and, due to the terrain, there was really no way to get around this deer without being close to it. After trying and failing to get the deer loose, I had the children all vlimb over the tree and we went back. To top it off they all immediately got on the bus to go home, so it was the last memory these kids had of the place.

I ended up going back and putting the deer down. Absolutely traumatizing.

Two of us running a quiet little wine bar, him behind the bar, me taking a break at the back of the room. Three lads come in and we both recognised them as the ones who had trashed one of the rooms upstairs the previous week. When my co-worker refused to serve them, one of them grabbed a bottle and hit it against the bar, trying (and failing) to break it for a weapon.

I saw red. All 5’4" of me advancing in fury, yelling “get out” repeatedly at the top of my voice. They looked at me, froze for a second, then scrambled out the door.

I was quite impressed with myself until I turned round and saw one of our regulars, a great big bear of a man, had heard the commotion and come in from the back room to see what was going on.

A guy strung out on meth robbed me at gunpoint with the smallest pistol I have ever seen. I was so surprised I asked if it was real and he said “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” why chuckling. He politely took the cash and left a big old hand print on the glass door so he could be caught about an hour later robbing his third store where they did confirm it was real and loaded.

He was far from the worst as far as hostility since he was polite and all, but he did point a loaded gun at me while high on drugs which is just plain unsafe.

CW: Vomit, gross imagery.

Oh I have a good one. I worked at a paint store for like 15 years. One day, this guy drives up in a Mercedes, wearing a Burberry scarf, and asks me for “Black Marine Paint.” We were a housepaint store so I told him we didn’t have it, we didn’t sell paint for boats, and what was he wanting to paint. He said he wanted to paint his front door, and the doors at Buckingham palace are painted with black marine paint, and did I know what he meant. I said I didn’t know about the doors on Buckingham palace, and he indignantly says, “What?! It famous like the doors of the White House!” I told him I wasn’t familiar with the doors of the white house either.

But I start showing him some oil based paint and he seems happy with it. He’s about to buy when he asks what he should do to strip the paint off of his door, since its latex and this new paint is oil. His eyes narrow and he skeptically asks me, “can you put latex over oil?” I said sure, if you use a primer. He gets real angry and, as two new customers walk in, screams, “You’re a fucking idiot!” storms out and gets into his Mercedes which the two women had parked beside.

They give me a look, I shrug and walk over to help them pick out colors. When they are done they go out to there car, but a minute later come back and ask me I I knew the guy, and to come outside.

Someone, I presume the Burberry guy, had kicked in the door to their car, leaving a huge foot shaped dent. I assume he thought it was my car or something.

I’ve definitely had bad experiences at that job, but that entitled freak stands out to in my memory years later

I misgendered a woman who was already very irate. This was probably 30 years ago, before trangenderism was as common as it is now (or at least as publicly presented). It did NOT go over well, to say the least. Other customers were smirking and giggling, and even a coworker was having trouble keeping a straight face. In my defense, she was heavyset, had shaved hair and a raspy voice. Luckily I didn’t say any of this to her. I just got my manager and let her yell at me (and him) for 10 minutes. I learned the value of keeping your mouth shut until you’re certain that day.

A man went on a misogynistic tirade and punched me.

He wanted some thing we were out of stock of. Then he wanted some other thing for free because we were out of stock of the first and I told him I could give a discount but not free. He got increasingly mad. I offered to have the store call him when we got the thing in stock, referred him to another store where they did have it in stock, offered coupons, nothing deescalated him. Lots of screaming, calling me bitch, cunt, whore, etc. He reached over the counter to punch me, which fortunately took a lot of power out of the punch and gave me enough time to shift so he hit my arms instead of my face (mostly).

I hit the panic button early on but the response was a couple min too late.

He was arrested and pled guilty without me having to talk in court, so that was nice.