I agree, somewhat, but the employer is the one who says we have to grin and bear it, and cater to those whims. The nicest thing about my current job is the ability to say “No.”
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Those are probably retail prices?
My wife is on Synthroid, and I think I pay ~$60 USD for a month’s worth. It isn’t subsidized (or not very much) by my insurance since she doesn’t take the generic.
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I come out of the break room, smockless.
Customer spots me.
“Do you work here?”
“Yes, but I just went on break.”
“You can’t answer a question on break?” (in snotty tone, IKYN)
So, I answered question. Next time, the answer will be, “No, I can’t.”
Our customers are such that, even with signs everywhere in the spray paint aisle saying not to spray the paint, EVEN when I was standing DIRECTLY BEHIND them or nearby them, they will STILL spray the paint.
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Nods
Old job: Oh, you special ordered these five things that we got ready for you, but you changed your mind and want something else and twice the size? No problem † we’ll get that done in ten minutes despite each one being a 30 minute job.
New Job: Oh, you didn’t give us the right information the first time around? Well, your new request goes back in the queue and will be processed in the order it was received. Oh, you forgot the deadline and didn’t notify us you’d be late? Sorry, but that counts as tomorrow, please adjust accordingly. (I am quite sympathetic to things going wrong and can be flexible, but when it comes to deadlines, it is FAR better to ask permission than forgiveness. Or at least have a good sob story and not a track record of submitting late. Deal with me in good faith, and get the same).
I really like my new job.
†Actually, it’s a massive problem and we all know it, but don’t dare tell the customer.
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My favourite telling kids not to climb on the display, then getting chewed out by their mother who only decides to pay attention after you raise your voice a bit on the third telling, and the only reason you were telling them at all was for their own safety. And the management dressing you down in front of mommy, because she’s upset.
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Hahaha I used to work in a department store, and I could be in the basement, in the restaurant, sitting at a table, eating my lunch and people would walk up to me “do you work here”? - honestly people are the worst. LOL
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Eric Idle’s line about working in PR, at the 2:53 mark:
And then there’s the old-but-oh-so-true chestnut: “I used to be a people person, but then people ruined it for me.”
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I have never worked in retail, but I’ve learned never to wear an orange polo shirt while shopping at Home Depot, or a red one at Canadian Tire. 
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I haven’t worked retail either but people think I’m working wherever I’m at. Headphones everywhere. It doesn’t stop everyone … but then nothing would. 
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Not if they assume you work there, they don’t.
One of my least favourite incidents, I did work at the store but wasn’t on duty and had headphones on. I explained to the lady that I wasn’t on duty and she flipped on me for a) saying so and b) not even being the person she was looking for. Outside of “short and dark haired”, me and person she was looking for looked nothing alike.
One of my favourites was (after years of being told that absolutely no customer liked me) after I had quit, someone came up to me in an entirely different store to tell me how much she missed me because I was the only person who paid attention enough to stop what I was doing to help customers out. She said she wouldn’t even shop there after I left, because she couldn’t get service.
But I should stop, before I write a database’s worth of “retail sucks” stories (because I could).
ETA: it’s not that she misrecognised me so much and more that she acted about how other person and her were close and friendly. Well, if you guys are that friendly, you would think you could recognise her, lady. (Yes, I know about face blindness, but IME people who are faceblind are_more_ cautious about ensuring that they’ve got the right person).
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Because in capitalist U.S., even if you’re employed full-time in a good job with good insurance, you still have to struggle game the system to pay for things sometimes. I had a very brief downtime between jobs which meant my family would lose insurance. The downtime between jobs wasn’t long, but the new insurance didn’t kick in right away. So in the meantime I’d need to pay for family’s prescriptions. IIRC, it was going to be something over $3000 (assuming no one got hurt or sick), which we really couldn’t afford.
Time to find the loophole… I could also sign up for an FSA, in which the company deducts from your paycheck throughout the year and sets it aside into an account where anything you haven’t spent on healthcare at the end of the year is lost. The limit was over $3000. More importantly, the full balance became available immediately - it was basically an interest-free loan to pay for health care until the insurance kicked in.
HR looked at me like I was crazy for signing up for the maximum amount and risking losing some at the end of the year. Most people only put $100 or $200 in it if they even got it. But it saved us. (And we easily spent it all down before the end of the year.)
One prescription alone was over $1000 / month.
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Hey, that’s my local bomber factory! The Yankee Air Museum is located at the airport that used to serve as the airstrip for the factory, and they’re trying to move back to the factory. We have a B-24 and a couple P-51 trainers flying around my house dang near every weekend. They also have a B-17 and B-25 that we see almost as frequently.
Sorry about the derail, but the museum is trying so hard to preserve this bit of local history that I’d be remiss if I didn’t give 'em a plug.
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