'CAN YOU.. READ..?': Merchandizer shuts down annoying dumbfounded customer

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Apr 9, 2023 9:00 AM EDT

Once upon a time, my second job ever was as a merchandizer (vendor) for an unnamed beer company^TM. At the ripe age of eighteen, I'd travel around from site to site in a barely functioning van, ensuring that our product was better stocked and more nicely presented than our competitors. I was somebody finally doing something on my own without an adult breathing down my neck and, with a fairly rural route, I spent a significant chunk of time driving and reflecting on whatever thoughts an eighteen-year-old has. When the radio worked, I'd listen to the same fifteen "in" songs on repeat, often humming along to Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" for the umpteenth time that day. Then I'd stop—move a few cases of beer around (xylophone melodies still bouncing around in my head) and be on my merry way. Rinse. Repeat. All day, every day—all summer. It was… life.

This was a great gig—most of the time. Occasionally things would go sideways, sometimes literally. You've never smelt a mistake until you smell an entire palette of cheap beer toppled in the summer sun, exploded cans still leaking and fizzing, the golden liquid evaporating on hot asphalt with a distinct acrid aroma.

Plus, sometimes you'd have to deal with "the public" (cue Beethoven's 5th in C Minor) who were ever determined to acquire your service because you happened to be wearing an uniform in their general vicinity. And uniformed people are supposed to help you when you demand it… Most of us would take that logic a step further and reason that a person wearing the correct uniform would be supposed to help you, but that's a step too far for some people.

You'd end up in situations like this one, exasperatedly dealing with a permanently perplexed individual who is in the midst of short-circuiting because you've refused them help while carefully explaining you're not actually an employee of the store.

This Redditor, u/ablestmage, did what I would have liked to do at that time and gave the customer some harsher words, taking to Reddit's r/IDontWorkHereLady subreddit to share their story. Keep reading for some screenshots of their story and the responses it generated; follow the attribution links for the original Reddit thread. For more, check out this Karen, who accosted a random customer and refused to move out of the way of their car.