In high school, I had the pleasure of folding clothes and cleaning fitting rooms for a living. From rude customers to messy fitting rooms, it is no surprise that working in retail just plain sucks. In about a year worth of working in retail, my tasks for my job were typically very simple and very dull, yet I still experienced some of the most horrifying things that anyone could ever imagine. So here are the top four horror stories that will make you never want to work in retail ever!
1. Customer enters store right before closing, spends hour in the fitting room, and buys nothing
Yes, this customer was warned of the remaining time before the store closed, yes this customer spent no time to take a massive amount of clothing with her into the fitting room, and lastly yes this customer did in fact try on these clothes in a confined place where us employees couldn’t kick her out. After keeping us waiting to clean up the fitting room after the store had already closed, this customer had left a giant amount of clothing sprung out all over this fitting room (which by the way took a good twenty minutes to place everything back with the entire staff helping) and preceded to leave the store with not one penny spent.
2. Grown men running around the store, in onesies
Other than the fact that just witnessing this sight was completely hilarious, the funniest part of this entire situation was having to see the manager having to chase down these grown men, and tell them to stop running. The most ironic part of it all, was that the manager had to physically run to tell the men who were running to quit running.
3. Helping a middle aged woman fit into a girls' dress
A dress straight out of the kids' section of the store was taken to the fitting rooms to be tried on by a 60-year-old woman. I don’t know what compelled the woman to try this on, maybe it was the bright blue and pink butterfly design that drew her eyes towards it? But whatever her reason was, this woman came up to me when I was cleaning a fitting room to help her zip up the dress. Now, this woman wasn't the most petite to say the least, and this dress was just too small to begin with, so this was not at all good combination. More parts of the woman were hanging out of the dress than were actually being covered. It took a great amount of force to shove the zipper up and over the abundance of skin. The final look was given the finishing touch of the woman's bra barely covered by the small piece of fabric.
4. Actual human feces in the fitting room
Yes, you heard me, a customer decided to let one out right on the floor of a fitting room. I really wish I was lying to you about this one, but unfortunately my eyes had to be the ones to discover this lovely present left by a customer. It took every effort in my body to not just get up and leave my job right then and there. But alas I called the manager and he had the poor janitor dispose of the unwanted gift.
