pettyrevenge:

This happened about 10 years ago. It was a few days after Christmas, and I’d been sent out to repair some equipment at a Kmart store. The job went well, and I’d already loaded my truck, and cleaned up. All I had left to do was get a manager’s signature on my paperwork. I stopped at the customer service desk and asked for him to be paged, then waited for him to show up. I was still standing there with my clipboard, not really paying attention to much of anything, when this little old lady walks in the door, noticed my uniform and started heading my way.

I should backtrack here and mention a couple of things. The first, being my employer had changed our uniforms about 6 months earlier to a design that made me look like an assistant manager at every single store I set foot in. People were always stopping me, asking where things were, or something similar. I even had people stop me at a fast food chain on my lunch break to complain about something or other. I wasn’t really annoyed by it. Most of the time I thought it was funny.

The second thing I need to mention is, while you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, you can sometimes tell a lot about a person by their face. The little old lady in this story was no exception. Her face looked like the last smile that had graced it, had been sometime during the Eisenhower administration.

I started to tell her that I didn’t work there. I got as far as “I’m sorry Ma’am…” before she barked at me to “SHUT UP SONNY AND LISTEN TO ME FOR A MINUTE!”.
That is a direct quote. To this day I’m not sure if I shut up because I was shocked at her rudeness, or just because my brain was trying to work out whether or not I had actually heard someone use the term “sonny” in actual conversation.

She took advantage of my stunned silence to launch into a diatribe about her experience the last time she shopped there. Something about coupons, and how her stuff was bagged, etc. etc. etc.
When she paused for a moment to take a breath, I tried to tell her again that I didn’t work there. “Ma’am I can’t…” She interrupted me by screaming “I SAID SHUT UP!”, then launches into her diatribe again. Now I tend to avoid confrontations, but I can usually hold my own. This old bat had just dragged me into uncharted territory though. Nothing in my life up to that point has prepared me to deal with a screaming elderly woman half my size. I was more than half afraid she was going to have a stroke right there on the spot.

I let her run down a bit and tried again, a bit louder. “Ma’am, I don’t wor…” She then tries to clamp her bony hand over my mouth! I had to fend her off by holding my clipboard in front of my face. At that moment some of my Grandpa’s wisdom came to the rescue. I remember him telling me once, that when someone is that angry, anything you say will only make them worse. If you just calmly stand there and let them rant until they wind down, then you can deal with them. The best part is they don’t get much satisfaction out of it, and they end up looking like an even bigger jerk than they would if you had yelled back.

So I made up my mind to just stand there nodding and listening until she stopped again. I kept my mouth shut. She stared at me for a long moment, and then says pointedly, “WELL!?!”.

I responded with a mild “ Well, what?”

Old lady, “AREN’T YOU GONNA HELP ME?”.

I keep my voice calm, but speak louder than absolutely necessary

“No, but if you want my opinion, I’d go talk to someone who works here”

Finally, her eyes darted to the logo on my uniform shirt, and widened a bit when she realizes that it did not say “Kmart”. I suddenly realized how quiet it has gotten. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed everyone within earshot, had stopped to watch the show.
With with all the screaming on her part, that included pretty much everyone in the front half of a store, that was already busy with people making returns, and people buying whole cart loads of Christmas clearance items.
Someone snorted, another made a choking noise, and then the laughter started. It hadn’t struck me as funny up to that point, but when it did, it was all I could do to control myself.

She glanced around, opened her mouth and closed it as if she started to say something then thought better of it. After a few seconds, she turned around and marched herself right back out the wrong way through the entrance door, without so much as a muttered apology.

Thanks for the advice Grandpa, you were a far wiser man than I ever realized.

tl;dr Old lady screams at me and interrupts me multiple times when I try to tell her that I don’t work there. So I let her make a fool of herself in front of a crowd.