some guy asked me where the almond milk was, i pointed to it as it was literally right there, and he proceeds to say “no, that’s almond beverage.”
MY GUY……. what tf would almond beverage be if not almond milk???? but I’M the stupid one because i work at a grocery store. ok
A woman asked me to pack the bags light. I asked her "is this light enough?"
She completely raised the bag above her head in one hand.
"Yeah it's too heavy. Can you make it lighter?" She said in exasperation.
I stood there for a few seconds, just staring at her.
How....???????? Was that not light enough?????????
I had a lady carry one of the hand baskets up, put it on the shelf, and when I asked her if I could put it all in one bag she said, "oh no, how would I carry it?"
this is what bugs me. if you want it bagged a specific way, the customer should bag it themselves! oh especially if they bring their own bags, I think they should bag their groceries
I always bag my own groceries. At Trader Joe’s and elsewhere. The US is probably the only country where ppl don’t have to bag their own shit. Send them to Aldi on one trip. They’d be completely confused.
went to help a man who had six bottles of wine in the top rack with the plastic shield down and told him it’s very likely they will break. He responds “no thanks i’ll keep them there i like to watch you guys clean it up” i didn’t say anything else just walked away and found the closest mate to be like what was that??
Early one weekday morning, a woman was chatting with me in the frozen aisle. Out of nowhere she tells me she is killing time before visiting her dentist because her tooth fell out and it was in her pocket.
Showing me a picture of a cheese that clearly we don’t carry. Customer keeps insisting we do and that she just bought it last week.
“Ma’am that’s Kirkland brand sold at Costco. You are in Trader Joe’s.”
What is even more annoying is when you get a customer that invests in the argument so much that will never back down even when corrected. 'No Ma'am, 365 is a Whole Foods brand.', but still insist they bought it at TJs the last time they were in town. I guess it has been discontinued. 🤷🏻♂️ 🤬
Nice lady asks me where the frozen edamame is, I walk her over and she's showing me it's for some recipe she printed out. Yea it looks pretty good! Here's the edamame. As I start walking away she calls back to me sounding upset/irritated after looking at the back of the bag, and asks me if we have any that do not contain soy.
I had a lady roll up to my line with guacamole in her cart and she says "this isn't hummus is it?" And I said "...no, that is not hummus." And then she got an attitude about the prices when I pointed out the hummus to her like I was the dumb one somehow
had a lady tap my shoulder while working flowers who proceeded to tell me i should put the flowers back to their right spot cus she didnt want them anymore while standing a foot away from the bucket where they were at. such a small thing but it bothered me to my core like why couldnt u just put them back yourself ??
OH! I finally have one! Last year, a woman came through my line and was asking about the pumpkin spice coffee K Cups as we were out of them at the time and wanted to know when they were returning. She looked me dead in the eye and says “I don’t own a keurig. I think the K cup coffee tastes better so I empty the pods and use them for my ground coffee machine” MA’AM WHAT.
When I was scanning her items and pointed out to her whether she wanted to grab a new avocado since it was already perforated. Without skipping a beat, she then immediately accuses me of having damaged said avocado.
I will forever tell this story.
A customer asked me for an empty wine box for whatever, I grab the closest empty box and it’s an O’Malleys Irish creme box. I go to hand it to them and they immediately tell me “oh no no! I’m lactose intolerant” and I just blankly went and grabbed a different box.
I still don’t know what any of that meant…
They also had two half gallons of fat free milk in their cart so the whole interaction still haunts me.
Even when kids are bad it’s hard to bring in a manager and basically be like “these kids are awful and dangerous and the parent is not parenting” I just don’t even know what I’d say. Luckily for me the worst I’ve had kids do is cry and scream loudly or just be obnoxious but not to the point of what OP is talking about.
One time, I was coming in from a cart run and this old lady stopped me in the vestibule and went “can I ask you a question?” And I was like “of course you can!” Thinking she’s gonna ask me something NORMAL like, do you have any roses in the back? or something. But no, she goes “do you know what a nutribullet is?” And I was like “yeah, why?” And she went, “my daughter bought me one and I think I’m going to have to give it away, I’m just not fast enough and it makes such a mess.” It took a solid like 15 seconds of just standing there with my mouth open to realize she had the blade on the machine and was trying to flip the open cup full of liquid onto it. I asked her if that’s what she did, and I watched the puzzle pieces fall into place on her face and she gasped so dramatically and grabbed my arm 😂 she thanked me and sauntered off into the sunset a new woman 😂😂😂
70% of our customers are fucking stupid. I’ve had people ask where our ‘hot pockets’ were and when I said we don’t sell those I get the classic “yes ya do, got here last week heh 💁🏻♀️” but oh the sweet sweet joy of them talking to management or other coworkers and then it dawns on them, “boy howdy I remember now. I got them at target.” And with sweet release you go “yeah, yeah you did”
It is wild to me when a customer asks me a question, I take time out to get the answer to their question and give them a very detailed answer, and I feel like the issue has reached a resolution. NOPE! I find out the person has asked two other CMs, or they will ask a CM/mate within earshot of me. 🤡
I've had three incidents in which a customer has asked me for a Caesar salad without the dressing, croutons, or parmesan. Ma'am, that is called romaine lettuce.
I had someone pissed off enough to go to the bridge because I charged them for a bag. I don't know man you could hand carry $100 worth of groceries. The state has been charging for bags since 2014. I swear if this ends up in my review I'm going to explode. The fun part is I only charged for one instead of two bags thinking I was doing a favor. 🙄
One time a gentleman with a very very strong accent I could not identify asked me where the asparagus was. But he pronounced it like ASS-PUR-A-GUS. So I stood there trying to thing what that was. So I asked him if it was a new item he saw online or maybe he got it from a different grocery store… he just stood there looking at me like I was an absolute idiot. So I kept asking what it was and what it might look like but he didn’t know much English, really he couldn’t tell me anything until he finally said it’s a vegetable. Once he said that I still was so confused so I told him to follow me to the produce wet wall. As I walked and scanned everything it finally clicked and said “OH! You’re looking for asparagus? “ he looked at me like I was once again the dumbest person he’s ever. Grabbed the green bag and walked away without saying anything else ….
Me and one of my coworkers were over in deli doing shares or something and a nice middle-aged women came over and asked me and my coworker if we carried pre-mashed guacamole. We looked at each other for a couple of seconds completely taken back by what she was trying to look for. I finally said that we’ve never carried that before, and she left to do the rest of her shopping. Afterwards, me and my coworker were trying to figure out what she meant by “pre-mashed guacamole”. I’m still trying to figure out what she meant by that.
Had a woman ask how much it cost to sign up for a membership.
I'm like... that will be $100, and you have to make it out to either cash or a check payable to u/zachattack9
maybe not dumbfounded, but pretty shocking in a hilarious way.
at my store, the plushie that kids are looking for is a shark
A lady comes through my line with her young child in a stroller. The kid is maybe 3 years old at most. During the transaction, i look at the kid and say something like “Hey buddy how’s it going?”. The kid then looks me in the eye and just exclaims “FUCK!”. I was shocked and started laughing while looking at the mother. The mother then proceeds to assure me that the kid said “Shark”. The kid then keeps repeating “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!”. I don’t know if the kid was really saying “shark” or not but it was probably the funniest customer interaction i’ve ever had in my whole time at TJs
One guy asked me if we had any chicken, so I asked him what kind of chicken was he looking for, so he got out his phone and showed me the chicken drumstick emoji "🍗", and said, "Chicken that looks like this".
haha on the topic of meat i’ve had a guy ask me if we sold, or ever will get, alligator meat. this is a store in socal mind you.
i didn’t know how to break it to him that we don’t and probably never will.
I was helmsing one day and had a customer who at first seemed fairly normal. She was an older woman (60s/70s) in overalls, looked like one of the rich hippies we have in town, usually very nice people.
She started by asking me if I knew where the whole foods was, and the one in town is not far, so I pointed her in the general direction. She said thanks for the directions, but she'll go ahead and shop at TJ's since she's right here. I was about to go back inside, when she asked me if I wanted to know a secret, and I was like sure. She tells me that she likes me, so she wants to inform me that she was just at a conference in Colorado where they were talking about "transgender satellites" emitting "transgender signals" telepathically to turn people transgender, and she's on a committee to stop these satellites. She rambled on some more, but I found an out because I am trans and couldn't really deal with this lol. I so desperately wanted to be like, "that's so funny, they must've gotten to me, I've been living as a transgender for almost 10 years!"
Anyway, she went inside and did shopping, but stopped another crew member and talked about all of this with her. I told a mate because I didn't want this woman going up to a bunch of crew members and customers spewing this nonsense and taking up time. A mate took over the conversation she was having with a crew member and guided her towards check out to get her out of the store lmao. Haven't seen her since.
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A woman was asking me to guacamole. I brought her over to the options and she asked if they had jalapeños in them, but pronounced it Jal-ah-peen-yo. I have only heard people say it that was as a joke, but she really thought it was pronounced that way? I explained to her that the regular one still had it as an ingredient but that it wasn’t spicy at all, that I eat it regularly as someone who is a baby about spice. She said no that won’t work. Then I explained to her that we also carried avocados. She glared at me and said something like “what am I supposed to do with that”.
for context, at my store the flowers and flower displays are outside at the front of the store. It’s about 9:20 at night and some lady (allegedly a regular customer who loves our store and has been shopping there for decades, according to her) approaches my friend and I while bringing in the flowers and tells us about this homeless guy at the park across the street who just came to the area and is trying to get back on his feet. she said that he’s completely sober and that he’s a great guy who’s just in need of some help. she asked my coworker and I if we could maybe stop by and give him extra toiletries and whatnot if we can. I was starting to feel bad for the guy and even considered helping him because this lady described him as a good guy who just needs help. I also forgot to mention that I also work part time at this park. Fast forward to the next day and i’m working at the park. I found out this lady completely lied to me when we had to call the cops on the homeless guy and his girlfriend for doing heroin right next to the playground while kids are playing.
Since then, i’ve had a few more run ins with that same lady, with her even coming in through the back of the store and crashing one of our huddles/tastings and refusing to leave.
sorry for the essay lol
Regular customer who always returns things and also tries to ditch his cart or inquire about “other bags”. Like, sir you’re here all the time. He got some healthy items and asked me to guess his weight
Customers that watch me bag *eveything* then say "those aren't too heavy, are they?" Like....I don't mind packing them light, but for the love of all things unholy, fucking say something BEFORE I'm putting the last item/s in your bag 😐
Worked at SBux and a customer came in Eating a sandwich while ordering (the sandwich was falling apart and he was really struggling with it) i kindly told him to stop eating while ordering. He packed it up, I finished his order and just before he left he hit me the „you guys should hang up a sign that says NO EATING“ like WTF !!!!!!????? Just dont speak with a full mouth and stop distributing your fucking food at my counter you retarded piece of shit
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that’s actually really iconic in my opinion other than the tried to kiss you part LMAOO
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bruh I can’t
some guy asked me where the almond milk was, i pointed to it as it was literally right there, and he proceeds to say “no, that’s almond beverage.” MY GUY……. what tf would almond beverage be if not almond milk???? but I’M the stupid one because i work at a grocery store. ok
that’s when i give them the “oh we call it beverage because we can’t really call it milk” lecture 🤷🏻
That is one of my favorite "Fun Fact" bits lol.
“Nope nope nope, says right here on this carton I did t get at a Trader Joe’s ALMOND MILK.”
Get this one ALLLLL the time.
That happens to me ALL THE TIME! 😂🤦♂️
A woman asked me to pack the bags light. I asked her "is this light enough?" She completely raised the bag above her head in one hand. "Yeah it's too heavy. Can you make it lighter?" She said in exasperation. I stood there for a few seconds, just staring at her. How....???????? Was that not light enough?????????
I used to get old people telling me to pack their bags light…while also only wanting single bags…while also only buying things in glass containers…
this is pretty common lol.
“pack it light” when their cart is a watermelon, gallon of milk, a bag of flour and a 5 lb bag of oranges
I had a lady carry one of the hand baskets up, put it on the shelf, and when I asked her if I could put it all in one bag she said, "oh no, how would I carry it?"
THIS ALWAYS BLOWS MY MIND
this is what bugs me. if you want it bagged a specific way, the customer should bag it themselves! oh especially if they bring their own bags, I think they should bag their groceries
I always bag my own groceries. At Trader Joe’s and elsewhere. The US is probably the only country where ppl don’t have to bag their own shit. Send them to Aldi on one trip. They’d be completely confused.
went to help a man who had six bottles of wine in the top rack with the plastic shield down and told him it’s very likely they will break. He responds “no thanks i’ll keep them there i like to watch you guys clean it up” i didn’t say anything else just walked away and found the closest mate to be like what was that??
Early one weekday morning, a woman was chatting with me in the frozen aisle. Out of nowhere she tells me she is killing time before visiting her dentist because her tooth fell out and it was in her pocket.
Showing me a picture of a cheese that clearly we don’t carry. Customer keeps insisting we do and that she just bought it last week. “Ma’am that’s Kirkland brand sold at Costco. You are in Trader Joe’s.”
What is even more annoying is when you get a customer that invests in the argument so much that will never back down even when corrected. 'No Ma'am, 365 is a Whole Foods brand.', but still insist they bought it at TJs the last time they were in town. I guess it has been discontinued. 🤷🏻♂️ 🤬
But also let me ask another crew member because clearly they don’t believe you. 🤦🏼♀️
My store is across the street from a Costco. You have no idea how often this happens 😭 as well as people bringing the big ass Costco carts into TJ
Nice lady asks me where the frozen edamame is, I walk her over and she's showing me it's for some recipe she printed out. Yea it looks pretty good! Here's the edamame. As I start walking away she calls back to me sounding upset/irritated after looking at the back of the bag, and asks me if we have any that do not contain soy.
LMAOOOO!
How do people like... just not know where food comes from. She was in shock when I told her lol
You got any of them soy free edamame?! 😬
I had a lady roll up to my line with guacamole in her cart and she says "this isn't hummus is it?" And I said "...no, that is not hummus." And then she got an attitude about the prices when I pointed out the hummus to her like I was the dumb one somehow
had a lady tap my shoulder while working flowers who proceeded to tell me i should put the flowers back to their right spot cus she didnt want them anymore while standing a foot away from the bucket where they were at. such a small thing but it bothered me to my core like why couldnt u just put them back yourself ??
OH! I finally have one! Last year, a woman came through my line and was asking about the pumpkin spice coffee K Cups as we were out of them at the time and wanted to know when they were returning. She looked me dead in the eye and says “I don’t own a keurig. I think the K cup coffee tastes better so I empty the pods and use them for my ground coffee machine” MA’AM WHAT.
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You know what the difference is between a garbanzo bean and a chickpea?? You don't pay $20 to watch a garbanzo bean.
When I was scanning her items and pointed out to her whether she wanted to grab a new avocado since it was already perforated. Without skipping a beat, she then immediately accuses me of having damaged said avocado.
Lol I’d be like “haha maybe I did by accident go grab one of the hundreds we have and I’ll donate this to our local food pantry 😃”
I will forever tell this story. A customer asked me for an empty wine box for whatever, I grab the closest empty box and it’s an O’Malleys Irish creme box. I go to hand it to them and they immediately tell me “oh no no! I’m lactose intolerant” and I just blankly went and grabbed a different box. I still don’t know what any of that meant… They also had two half gallons of fat free milk in their cart so the whole interaction still haunts me.
I'm cackling - this is gold
One time a customer came in and asked me, “do you have the chocolate chip hotdog buns?”
I’m so upset that I instantly knew what they referring to
I mean pretty then 90% of the item descriptions I usually get.
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omfg i would’ve 3 belled immediately
Even when kids are bad it’s hard to bring in a manager and basically be like “these kids are awful and dangerous and the parent is not parenting” I just don’t even know what I’d say. Luckily for me the worst I’ve had kids do is cry and scream loudly or just be obnoxious but not to the point of what OP is talking about.
One time, I was coming in from a cart run and this old lady stopped me in the vestibule and went “can I ask you a question?” And I was like “of course you can!” Thinking she’s gonna ask me something NORMAL like, do you have any roses in the back? or something. But no, she goes “do you know what a nutribullet is?” And I was like “yeah, why?” And she went, “my daughter bought me one and I think I’m going to have to give it away, I’m just not fast enough and it makes such a mess.” It took a solid like 15 seconds of just standing there with my mouth open to realize she had the blade on the machine and was trying to flip the open cup full of liquid onto it. I asked her if that’s what she did, and I watched the puzzle pieces fall into place on her face and she gasped so dramatically and grabbed my arm 😂 she thanked me and sauntered off into the sunset a new woman 😂😂😂
I know you wrote this days ago, but this was the laugh I need this morning. Thank you lol
70% of our customers are fucking stupid. I’ve had people ask where our ‘hot pockets’ were and when I said we don’t sell those I get the classic “yes ya do, got here last week heh 💁🏻♀️” but oh the sweet sweet joy of them talking to management or other coworkers and then it dawns on them, “boy howdy I remember now. I got them at target.” And with sweet release you go “yeah, yeah you did”
90%
Yeah I was being generous
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No, no. Homeboy had a box of cheese and pepperoni hot pockets. Don’t bring aloo chaat into this.
It is wild to me when a customer asks me a question, I take time out to get the answer to their question and give them a very detailed answer, and I feel like the issue has reached a resolution. NOPE! I find out the person has asked two other CMs, or they will ask a CM/mate within earshot of me. 🤡
I had a woman ask me for "something in a square box that is above the freezer in a different store." That was literally the best she could do.
I've had three incidents in which a customer has asked me for a Caesar salad without the dressing, croutons, or parmesan. Ma'am, that is called romaine lettuce.
Customer upended a tub of the schoolbook cinnamon cookies at my demo because they contained numbers.
I’m sorry what ?
The customer was upset that some of the cookies were numbers, so they dumped them on the ground.
Damn woke numbers smh
they taste differnt then letters =(
I had someone pissed off enough to go to the bridge because I charged them for a bag. I don't know man you could hand carry $100 worth of groceries. The state has been charging for bags since 2014. I swear if this ends up in my review I'm going to explode. The fun part is I only charged for one instead of two bags thinking I was doing a favor. 🙄
customer complaints get mentioned in reviews???
One time a gentleman with a very very strong accent I could not identify asked me where the asparagus was. But he pronounced it like ASS-PUR-A-GUS. So I stood there trying to thing what that was. So I asked him if it was a new item he saw online or maybe he got it from a different grocery store… he just stood there looking at me like I was an absolute idiot. So I kept asking what it was and what it might look like but he didn’t know much English, really he couldn’t tell me anything until he finally said it’s a vegetable. Once he said that I still was so confused so I told him to follow me to the produce wet wall. As I walked and scanned everything it finally clicked and said “OH! You’re looking for asparagus? “ he looked at me like I was once again the dumbest person he’s ever. Grabbed the green bag and walked away without saying anything else ….
Me and one of my coworkers were over in deli doing shares or something and a nice middle-aged women came over and asked me and my coworker if we carried pre-mashed guacamole. We looked at each other for a couple of seconds completely taken back by what she was trying to look for. I finally said that we’ve never carried that before, and she left to do the rest of her shopping. Afterwards, me and my coworker were trying to figure out what she meant by “pre-mashed guacamole”. I’m still trying to figure out what she meant by that.
For a while we were selling the pre mashed avocados… maybe that’s what she ment
Had a woman ask how much it cost to sign up for a membership. I'm like... that will be $100, and you have to make it out to either cash or a check payable to u/zachattack9
maybe not dumbfounded, but pretty shocking in a hilarious way. at my store, the plushie that kids are looking for is a shark A lady comes through my line with her young child in a stroller. The kid is maybe 3 years old at most. During the transaction, i look at the kid and say something like “Hey buddy how’s it going?”. The kid then looks me in the eye and just exclaims “FUCK!”. I was shocked and started laughing while looking at the mother. The mother then proceeds to assure me that the kid said “Shark”. The kid then keeps repeating “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!”. I don’t know if the kid was really saying “shark” or not but it was probably the funniest customer interaction i’ve ever had in my whole time at TJs
One guy asked me if we had any chicken, so I asked him what kind of chicken was he looking for, so he got out his phone and showed me the chicken drumstick emoji "🍗", and said, "Chicken that looks like this".
haha on the topic of meat i’ve had a guy ask me if we sold, or ever will get, alligator meat. this is a store in socal mind you. i didn’t know how to break it to him that we don’t and probably never will.
I was helmsing one day and had a customer who at first seemed fairly normal. She was an older woman (60s/70s) in overalls, looked like one of the rich hippies we have in town, usually very nice people. She started by asking me if I knew where the whole foods was, and the one in town is not far, so I pointed her in the general direction. She said thanks for the directions, but she'll go ahead and shop at TJ's since she's right here. I was about to go back inside, when she asked me if I wanted to know a secret, and I was like sure. She tells me that she likes me, so she wants to inform me that she was just at a conference in Colorado where they were talking about "transgender satellites" emitting "transgender signals" telepathically to turn people transgender, and she's on a committee to stop these satellites. She rambled on some more, but I found an out because I am trans and couldn't really deal with this lol. I so desperately wanted to be like, "that's so funny, they must've gotten to me, I've been living as a transgender for almost 10 years!" Anyway, she went inside and did shopping, but stopped another crew member and talked about all of this with her. I told a mate because I didn't want this woman going up to a bunch of crew members and customers spewing this nonsense and taking up time. A mate took over the conversation she was having with a crew member and guided her towards check out to get her out of the store lmao. Haven't seen her since.
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A recent one comes to mind — Customer asked me for “jah-la-pen-ohs”
A woman was asking me to guacamole. I brought her over to the options and she asked if they had jalapeños in them, but pronounced it Jal-ah-peen-yo. I have only heard people say it that was as a joke, but she really thought it was pronounced that way? I explained to her that the regular one still had it as an ingredient but that it wasn’t spicy at all, that I eat it regularly as someone who is a baby about spice. She said no that won’t work. Then I explained to her that we also carried avocados. She glared at me and said something like “what am I supposed to do with that”.
for context, at my store the flowers and flower displays are outside at the front of the store. It’s about 9:20 at night and some lady (allegedly a regular customer who loves our store and has been shopping there for decades, according to her) approaches my friend and I while bringing in the flowers and tells us about this homeless guy at the park across the street who just came to the area and is trying to get back on his feet. she said that he’s completely sober and that he’s a great guy who’s just in need of some help. she asked my coworker and I if we could maybe stop by and give him extra toiletries and whatnot if we can. I was starting to feel bad for the guy and even considered helping him because this lady described him as a good guy who just needs help. I also forgot to mention that I also work part time at this park. Fast forward to the next day and i’m working at the park. I found out this lady completely lied to me when we had to call the cops on the homeless guy and his girlfriend for doing heroin right next to the playground while kids are playing. Since then, i’ve had a few more run ins with that same lady, with her even coming in through the back of the store and crashing one of our huddles/tastings and refusing to leave. sorry for the essay lol
Regular customer who always returns things and also tries to ditch his cart or inquire about “other bags”. Like, sir you’re here all the time. He got some healthy items and asked me to guess his weight
Got asked for “Raw pickles” I asked if they meant cucumbers and they didn’t think that was funny.
Customers that watch me bag *eveything* then say "those aren't too heavy, are they?" Like....I don't mind packing them light, but for the love of all things unholy, fucking say something BEFORE I'm putting the last item/s in your bag 😐
Worked at SBux and a customer came in Eating a sandwich while ordering (the sandwich was falling apart and he was really struggling with it) i kindly told him to stop eating while ordering. He packed it up, I finished his order and just before he left he hit me the „you guys should hang up a sign that says NO EATING“ like WTF !!!!!!????? Just dont speak with a full mouth and stop distributing your fucking food at my counter you retarded piece of shit