… I don’t work with customers and that’s exactly how I deal with by coworkers.

And people I randomly meet throughout the day (including eg employees at a store).

For me these are just rules on how to deal with humans.

Now if I see a cat that’s a completely different story:

• I’ll maintain eye contact (and blink slowly),
• give them my full name and address for purposes of visiting,
• will accept headbutts,
• will actively agree with their meows & acknowledge just how right they are,
• will apologise when I eventually have to leave,
• will thank them for their time (with some more pats),
• will live in the knowledge we fully understood each other in our little talk.

Additionally I will vow to visit again.

Trouble with the last one is that most of them can, so you can have a full month of getting used to people obeying signage only to suddenly deal with a dozen different customers who will not only ignore a sign placed at eye level saying “We Are Closed” but will pry open the door (if possible) and scale a full barricade to get in, and when you track them down and tell them what the damn sign said they insist that you should have put the sign somewhere obvious and that it’s actually your fault that they didn’t know they were breaking and entering.

My first job was in a grocery store deli, and let me tell you that is the worst job to have if your mental health sucks. My last few months there were spent hoping to get hit by a bus so I didn’t have to go to work. My last two weeks were the worst two weeks of my life. The customers I dealt with were some of the meanest people I’ve ever interacted with, all over a $7 bag of gross fried chicken and pasta salad.

This was a several years ago, I have since gotten a job in IT that doesn’t make me want to die, but this reminded me of one of few funny stories from my time in the deli:

Remember that They are incapable of reading signs in human languages.

We had a Lemon Capellini salad available. Capellini. Big sign in front of it, can’t miss it. Pronounced exactly how it looks. Capellini.

More than half of the people who ordered it could not say that word. A lot of people would stumble through the first two syllables and give up. Some people would throw in some extra letters and create a new word on the spot. Most people avoided saying the word entirely (“lemon salad”). At least one person asked for “lemon speghetti,” and I think I had two or three people ask me how it’s pronounced.

Capellini.

when you are closing up, fully pull down the shutter and lock it… otherwise fuckers are just going to barge in.

if there are still customers in the shop, they can ask you to let them out.

eternally grateful to live in a place where people are more likely to help retail workers do their job

• Time flows strangely around them: You’ll get trapped in a conversation for 30 minutes, but when you look at the clock only 5 minutes have passed.
  You could swear they only arrived 2 minutes ago, but they have been “waiting for an hour!”

• Do not shake their hand lest they trap you in their embrace. (From experience)

• In order to banish them you must deny them 3 times (at least)

• They have an obsession with the power of names. “Do you know who I am?” Or “I know (owner’s name)” will be used as if the words have power on their own.

Then get out of retail.

Let the shelves go unstocked.