23 Fucking Rotten Struggles Faced By People Who Work In Retail

Look, every job has its advantages; money, for one thing, and even decent back-and-forths with your colleagues over a bagel and coffee during breaks.

But on the whole, anybody working in retail will tell you that it's one of the most unimaginably painful experiences known to man. Why? Well, it's largely because of the hoards of disgusting people you're dealing with. Here are 23 horrid everyday experiences faced by people who work in shops:

1) Customers coming in 5 minutes before the shop closes, even when the shutter is halfway down

These arseholes are very much an evil presence in society. What could they possibly have been doing all day?

2) People who act surprised when their card gets declined, (57% of whom will proceed to 'transfer money' between accounts on their phone, while holding up the rest of the queue)

Don't act all innocent with me, you con-artist. You knew.

3) Customers who complain about having to pre-pay for petrol

Erm, you do realise you would have had to come in and pay afterwards, yeah? Like, in either case, it would have taken literally the exact same amount of time. Now get out before I douse you in unleaded and set you alight.

4) Customers who don't believe you when you say you don't have their size

What motive could I possibly have which would cause me to lie in this scenario? Because I only discovered you were a dickhead after I gave you the bad news.

5) Customers who take about 15 items into the fitting rooms despite there clearly being a six-item limit

And handing every single item back. A close relation to:

6) Customers who leave shit thrown all over the fitting rooms and casually leave the store

It's actually almost worse when they make a balls of trying to put the clothes back on hangers; do it right or just don't do it at all.

7) Husbands who believe it's their marital right to stroll into the ladies' fitting rooms with their wives, or vice versa

Do you go to the toilet with her in restaurants as well, you do?

8) Customers who complain about there being makeup stains on white tops

Did I put it there, I did? Get in the sea!

9) Customers who quite conspicuously wore an item the night before and are now making an effort to return it

Could you live with the shame?

10) Customers who try to return something without a receipt

We don't even sell those.

11) Customers who ask for a discount when a fucking thread is pulled

It's just the design, hones- WAIT, is that a pen-knife sticking out of your purse?

12) Wild children running amok, hauling things off shelves and flinging Rusks at their siblings

Gone are the days when a child would be planted in the unbearably uncomfortable child's seat in a trolley and wheeled around the store. No, the New Age approach to parenting seems to include allowing children to develop a sense of devilry, which entails acting the maggot on a shop floor and bringing full sections tumbling to their knees.

For many of us growing up, that would have earned a stern telling-off and perhaps even a slap on the wrist, but these little shits get the soothing 'do you know why what you did there was wrong?/you're not bold, but what you did was bold' treatment. Or, worse still...

13) Parents who tell their child to stop acting the bollocks because "the man/lady will get cross" before pointing at you from two feet away

Nope, you can do your own parenting, thank you. Keep doing you, kid.

14) People who ask if your shop accepts One4All vouchers

The thing you need to know about One For All vouchers is that no shop actually accepts them. They're simply an elaborate ponzi scheme built on the art of the last-second token gesture.

15) Customers with dreadlocks who ask for gluten-free everything

You're not coeliac; you're just a cunt.

16) The genuinely unbearable shop soundtrack

If you work in a shop that runs its own playlist as opposed to putting on the radio, at least 12 or 13 songs will eventually force you over the edge.

This especially applies at Christmas, where you quickly become aware of this rancid sub-culture of every Tom Dick and Harry on Earth taking it upon themselves to cover classic anthems. These garbage covers will end up being accidentally added instead of the original by whichever fucking gombeen threw the ramshackle playlist together in the first place.

17) 'Clopening' the shop

Leaving a closing shift before returning hours later to open the shop once more.

18) Secret shoppers

We'll catch you eventually, you bastards.

19) Customers who say they can find the same product for cheaper somewhere else

Well, I'll still be paid the same shitty wage regardless, so let me walk you to the door before I roundhouse kick the pasta section.

20) When you initially take a job for the summer, and 8 years later you're still there

.............How did this happen?

21) Managers who make a concerted effort to walk faster than you so they seem - oh my God - so busy and important

A skill they learned in management college along with telling you something you already know literally every time they see you.

22) Customers who pick something up and drop it aisles away from where it belongs

Usually when they've found a bigger version of the exact same product that they perceive to be of better value.

23) Customers

Jesus, people are just the worst.

UPDATED

Thanks to Sliced Pan readers Éamon Poplin and Claire Cahill, who astutely suggested the following two additional gripes:

24) "Customers who insist you check 'in the back,' even though you know that this seasonal item sold out two months ago"

"After all, 'the back' is the magical place where 'creatio ex nihilo' was first discovered" - Éamon Poplin

25) "People who think the changing room cubicles are actually toilets"

- Claire Cahill

26) "People who leave their old, extremely dirty, an' very smelly clothes in the changing rooms, an' waltz off out in their new gladrags"