When you work in a shop, you have it constantly hammered into you that the customer is always right (yeah, thanks Mr Selfridge) and you always have to be on your best behaviour to ensure that no-one coming through the shop realises that you are a human with foibles and feelings like them.

But as perfect as we like to seem (especially when there are pesky mystery shoppers snooping around), every retail worker gets up to no good now and again. Whether it’s telling fibs, cutting corners or even allowing outright profit loss to save yourself a second or two of hassle, everyone who has done shop work is guilty of at least some of these.



We bet many can tick them all off.

1. You have, on more than one occasion, put something back in the wrong place when you couldn’t be bothered to find its correct location. You’re not going to look through 300 spices. The turmeric is going in with the cayenne pepper because you finished five minutes ago.


2. You have told a customer something is out of stock when it isn’t. Usually because it’s on an unreachable shelf or you’re not quite sure where it is. Probably because one of your colleagues has carried out confession number 1.

3. You have pretended to type something into a computer to look like you are researching your customer’s query when in actual fact you didn’t have a clue where to even start.

4. You have let a customer take away something for free after it didn’t scan rather than hold up your queue to wait on a barcode being fetched.

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5. You have, somewhat shamefully, rated the looks of customers as they come through the door. Especially if you were that person handing out leaflets at the entrance.

6. You have kept your anger in check by pulling faces and inappropriate gestures behind customers’ backs after they have been rude to you.

7. You have looked up a customer you got on well with on Facebook based on the details they have put on an order form but never had the courage to strike up a conversation. You’re not a TOTAL stalker after all.

8. You have sneakily altered your clocking in card and forged your supervisor’s signature when you were late and thought no-one had noticed.

9. You have turned up to work extremely hungover and felt close to collapsing with each passing minute – but somehow managed to get through the day. This occasionally involved a fifteen minute warehouse snooze.

10. You have broken something and shaken your head disapprovingly as you blamed it on careless customers to your manager.

11. You have outright denied a customer’s claim of bad service when in actual fact, it may have been slightly true.

12. You have cheated in a training session and shared answers with colleagues and also pretended to still be working on the test to avoid returning to the shop floor.

13. You have advised a customer to go to a rival shop for the product they seek if you think it might be helpful to them, despite knowing this to be a retail cardinal sin.



14. You have taken extra breaks when you could sneak them in. Just because, being a terrible shop employee is hard work.

Somehow, you once got a certificate for good service, though. *proud face*

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