Retail Confessions

A lady ordered anchovies on her pizza from our pizza section. After getting her order she called up to complain that she ordered anchovies on her pizza and received fish instead. Confused, we tried to explain to her that anchovies are indeed fish and that was what she ordered. She proceeded to scream down the phone that she, “Did not want these f***ing fish!” on her pizza. In the background, I could hear someone telling her that she ordered anchovies and that they were indeed fish. Still, she wasn’t having any of it. She then threatened our manager by saying she was going to beat up her mother and husband. Charming lady.

I was shopping in the meat department and noticed a woman picking up various packages of meat, poking holes in the wraps and sniffing each package before she put it back where she got it. It wasn’t until another customer alerted me to what this lady was doing that I realized how much danger we all could be exposed to. The manager talked to her about not violating store policy but even after he told her off, she called him every name under the sun-it almost seemed like revenge from somebody who had been fired. In any case, there’s no excuse for exposing people to raw meat!

So during my first job in retail, I was talking normally to a customer and she goes “Wow you have such a lovely British accent”, which is strange because I’m actually American.

At that point, I didn’t really know what to do, so I said thank you with some subtle British inflection into my speech.

I should probably stress that all my knowledge of the British accent up until that moment had been gained from watching scenes with Emily from Friends… which as I understand now, isn’t how the vast majority of people speak in Britain.

The good news is that I totally pulled it off and the lady left happy. The bad news is that she shops in the store EVERY SINGLE DAY and says hello. I now live in fear of the day she accidentally overhears me busting out my natural accent…