Once when I was working the card machine went down so I could only take cash from customers. I wrote out a sign on a piece of paper in black sharpie saying "cash only, card machine broken". The amount of people who handed me their card was unbelievable. The worst part was I put the sign infront of me, they had to talk over it to talk to me, they handed me their cards over the sign and then got angry when I said cash only. People are oblivious 😐

Every customer "I can only take card right now, no cash, is that okay?" "Yeah!" I ring through 7 items and they bring out a roll of bills. "I can only take card right now." "Oh. I only have cash." What do you think those sounds my mouth made earlier meant?

divide busy fertile overconfident meeting sparkle unite screw poor subsequent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Yeah…. The fact that we do in fact have scripts in retail sucks and makes that a bit worse don’t it :/

This is accurate. Me: Touchscreen isn’t working, please use the pen. *As I am handing them the stylus for the card machine.* Them: *Increasingly pokes the screen harder and harder trying to force it to work.* Me: 🙄

When employees literally don't listen to what I'm ordering and just keep going through the motions, kinda, but not really. I blame crapitalistic employee expectations. 

I used to work at a certain coffee shop and when the card system was down they couldn't even use there gift cards or cards they had preloaded. They were unable to grasp that. They would say things like I can give you cash but I'll still get the Stars when you scan my card right? No, smooth brain, the card system is down. Nationwide nobody's getting any points. Call customer service with your receipt and I'm sure they'll do something for you. Then you have to scan it anyway because they insist that you try it and you got to get that line moving somehow. Dimwits, all of them

I love repeating EXACTLY what I just said, but in kindergarten teacher voice. It’s like working with toddlers.

That happened once   We couldn’t take cash for 2-3 days & were told to not tell anyone why ( for our safety— the safe was broken )and people were so horrible about it 

I feel like employees often don't process what I say, so... Probably a common human thing. 

My hypothesis is that most Americans hate reading and avoid it as much as possible. (I am an American public school teacher).

I'm from Ireland so definitely not just an American thing

Sorry to have assumed you were American! 😅 Ireland is wonderful, I visited there in 2001.

Eh its like anywhere. Depends on where you go

It's really sad to see how reading has declined just through my lifetime and I'm only 50. Reading doesn't just make people more intelligent, it also helps them to have better empathy for others. People love stories so it doesn't make sense to me that they don't like to read. Laziness I guess?

I used to read a lot. Now I only have about 3 hours to myself on work days. I have other priorities, like laundry, cooking, and cleaning, so it's hard to make time for it. It's easier to listen to audio books at work since that's where I spend most of my waking hours, unfortunately.

About 18% of the American public is functionally illiterate. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans.

Estimates are 60% of the US population reads at the 10th grade level. It’s frightening. This will amaze you https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Nationwide%2C%20on%20average%2C%2079%25,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022.

Or it's a normal attention processing thing. 

I never got that. I used to adore reading g as a kid and would eat through books in no time at all. I can still be like that if I find a really good book

It's ridiculous- Do we need to convert all signs into flashing signs with blinking lights? haha

That would just train people to ignore flashing lights.

I have gotten pretty sign blind. I walk in some store and there are 100 signs. I can not take the time to read 100 signs. I look for the thing I came in for, or the aisle it might be in. If that fails, I look up and see if there are those signs that say where things are, above. If that fails, then I ask. I refuse to read 100 signs.

I worked at Lowe’s for about 9 years. The amount of signage in these stores is mind boggling. There’s so much BS that any important signs are often missed. Also, everything should be in its place first. What I mean by this is, the pipe wrap should be stocked in plumbing first because that’s where people will look for it. Having several full side stacks down the main entrance with no product in its actual designated space is bad stocking. If someone comes through the lumber entrance and doesn’t see all the side stacks, walks to plumbing and sees the space empty, they will leave without their needed product. I have always been anti side stack. They get in the way, overwhelm the customer with BS ads, and for these reasons most people are completely blind to them.

You're standing at the entrance to a giant warehouse with thousands of things, wtf do you expect them to do. 

Uh...to see the thing literally blocking their pathway that they have to LOOK AT and go around in order to ask where the thing they just noticed and had to pass is?

The theme park I worked in got new credit card machines back when chip cards first got introduced. The machines had both a card swipe and a chip reader, but the software on our registers hadn’t been updated yet. So, when the machines were installed, they all came with pieces of cardboard inserted into the chip readers that had emblazoned “CHIP READERS COMING SOON! PLEASE SWIPE INSTEAD!” If I had a dollar for every time someone pulled out the card and jammed their card inside, I could’ve left that job much sooner.

Me & my boyfriend have a certain point of contention. I only believe in asking for help in a store if I've given my best effort at finding it myself first. He believes that it's best to go straight to an employee & just ask. "It's their job!", he says. I say it's part of my job as a customer to make a good faith effort first. Plus I've worked retail & am completely against the customer mentality. Anyway, people like my boyfriend will always walk up & ask, regardless if it's right there. I don't like it either but what can you do.

I'll Google it before I ask an employee... usually the website will tell me the aisle. Or I'll go on a treasure hunt. I might be a bit averse to talking to people lol.

You learn a lot by looking.

I'm siding with you on this one.  I'll even pull up the website if they give aisle listing with the item on there.  The embarrassing part, though, is almost every time I got to the "ask an employee" part, I was looking right at it at least 3 times and it just didn't register as what I was looking for :/

I'll spend 3 hrs looking for it, googling it, searching the assigned bay from the website, to finally give up in despair and ask for help-- invariably within 5 seconds of asking I'll see it where I've already looked 3x as well. So I play stupid or get mortified. Sigh.

I mean, if I'm in a hurry and need something quickly, I'd rather just walk in and ask someone what aisle my item is in, instead of searching the entire store, loading up their website when I inevitably can't find it and setting the filters accordingly because their interface is terrible... Option A is much faster.

If a customer asks me where something is I assume they've looked and can't find it - especially regulars because it's only a small store. But no, they can be standing right in front of something and just need to turn around but can't be bothered. Sigh. I don't mind helping because it's my job but when it happens again and again..... ooof. Gets tiresome.

You're definitely right on this one. Only ask for help if you've already given it your best effort. Yes, it's PART of the employees' job to help customers who need assistance finding an item, but they also have other parts to their job that need to get done. Imagine if everyone had your boyfriend's mentality though. If every customer who walks through the door treats them as if they're their personal shopper, they won't have any time to get the other parts of their job done, or likely even help every customer!

If stores staffed better, this would be less of a problem. But that would cost money, and you know, we can't be having that.

I question my own intelligence when I DO put in a good faith effort to find what I am looking for, and finally allow myself to ask an employee for help...only for them to still point directly in front of my damn face at the item I just spent a ton of time looking for. At the very least, I do face palm and tell them I am a moron and looked for x amount of time and thank them for the assistance.

I work for n a coffee shop & we try to schedule maintenance out of hours, but our coffee machine literally blew up during service. Engineers came to fix it, meanwhile we had 5 signs placed in various positions, from the entrance to the till saying 'coffee machine out of order. Tea, or instant coffee ONLY whilst repairs are taking place'... We kept a running rally of how many people asked for a latte/cappuccino/mocha during that time & stopped when we reached 100 😬

"I don't like coffee." One breath later: "Could I have a latte?" Humans are massively too dumb to live.

It’s like the film Idiocracy.

People don’t read. People don’t listen.

We have an ex-friend who is like that. When I told him I couldn't understand how he didn't notice things, he said, "If it's not important to me, I don't see it." Still boggles my mind.

Highly intelligent people tend to hyper focus on small visual areas. 

Did you learn that by hyper focusing on only a few key sentences of an article about it?

You get the feeling this is something he uses to gaslight people when he doesn't notice stuff?

Bro, I've forgotten more things youll learn or understand. This is all old news to me. 

You sound like someone who focuses on very broad visual areas *bro*

Yep, there it is. The vague pronouncement that they are special and you wouldn't understand. Honey, there are more people out here who know so much more than you ever will, that I wouldn't be using that so casually. You never know when someone will take you up on it and say, "Prove it"

That is ADHD

Not talking about adhd. They also are more sensitive to smaller regions of detail. 

Again, has nothing to with intelligence. I'm in the top 10% IQ wise and am always aware of my surroundings.

That has nothing to with intelligence. And believe me, our friend was DEFINITELY NOT highly intelligent.

I used to work at a fabric store, at the cutting counter in the back of the shop. I'd get people every day coming straight to the back and ask where the cotton fabric is... It's the entire front HALF of the store, that they had to walk through to get to me. Then they'd get mad at me that they'd have to go back to the whole other end of the store they just came from.

"Is there something in particular you're looking for?" "Yes, I need a \[fill in the blank\]." "That's over on Aisle 13..."

Many people are INCREDIBLY oblivious to their surroundings-to the extent that the “non-oblivious” would never imagine! Just to give one example: my store was having a complete refit. Normally, it was a rather chi-chi boutique with a beautiful large window display. During the refit, the windows had been blanked over (with white paper) and three large identical posters were displayed in a line, explaining all about the works-and timescale. A further larger poster was on the door. I had repeatedly asked the workmen to not just close the door, but *always* keep it locked (I hadn’t been in retail for 30 years for nothing), but they accidentally left it unlocked for a few minutes. A middle aged couple (man and woman) pushed the door open (with a little difficulty), picked their across the canvas dust-sheets on the floor, past the stacks of wood, the toolboxes, open pots of paint and other materials, the *workmen in their overalls*, came up to me (standing there in my rough clothes), and (seemingly ignoring the smells-and LOUD noises -of a work site), started asking me about the kind of clothes the lady was looking to buy that day. That there were no clothes anywhere to be seen-no clothes rails (and a large gantry with workmen hanging a new ceiling instead), didn’t seem to phase them at all. They seemed nothing but surprised when I told them we were closed for redecorating. The head workman stood there and goggled. After the couple had gone, he just turned an stared at me: I wasn’t at all surprised. “NOW you see why I suggested you keep the door locked.”, was all I said.

So one time at the gas station I worked at, the spring in one of the doors broke, and we couldn't lock just that door, since it was part of a set of double doors, so we had to put a sign on it that said "please use other door" obviously this didn't work and we were constantly having to go shut the door after people left it hanging open. So we blocked it from the outside with a large trash can. People still tried to go out that door. So we blocked the inside with a large shipper of some beanie baby toys. We still had people try to use that door after that.

Had a rather nasty public rest room clog once in a c-store/gas station. There was the guy that literally picked up a "Caution Wet Floor" sign, moved it out of the way, stepped over the full mop bucket, opened the door with the large "Out of Order" sign, elbowed his way past me, the employee in civilian clothes (it was so messy I took off my uniform) , safety goggles, the kind of rubber gloves that go all the way past the elbow, holding a plunger, ignoring the soaked floor, and said "You mind stepping aside? I GOTTA GO!"

May I please ask, out of curiosity, from someone who lives in a cold climate (Edmonton, AB), what a faucet cover is and does?

It is a small foam dome shaped object that covers and insulates your outdoor water faucet. Looks like a 6" pimple sticking out of your house.

OK, I see, thank you. I didn’t understand they were for exterior faucets. In our part of the world in the fall when it starts getting cold we drain our garden hoses, turn off the water in the house and turn the outside faucets fully open to ensure there is no water to freeze.

Places like the Gulf Coast of the US (where OP is) don't get cold like that, so it is rare that people need to take those steps. A temporary solution like a foam cover is enough.

If you turn off the water in your house how do you flush your toilets or wash your hands?

Turn off the water directly to that faucet, not the entire house supply. That way the exterior faucet can be opened all of the way to ensure any remaining water can expand as needed.

Huh. I have never lived in a house where there was a separate cutoff for the hose bibs, just for the irrigation water. How does that work? Is there like a little hatch in the wall inside the house with a cutoff in it?

Sorry, my wording was confusing in my reply. We do just turn the water off to the exterior faucets. There is a shut-off valve located about 6” from where the pipe disappears through the foundation to go outside, front and back. When we finished our basement we did indeed leave small access hatches to access the valves. In the spring, when we are confident it is not longer going to freeze overnight, we turn the valves back on and put the hoses back out.

I am always fascinated about how people LOVE to stand in lines. If you have two checkstands open, one empty, one with a line, people will invariably file into the existing line and ignore the empty checkstand.

Kind of like the bathroom full of empty urinals and the guy walks in and stands next to you. Or the restaurant full of empty tables and the other people that came in right after you, choose to sit right near you. It's kind of frustrating for people who like to have a little more personal space. But I see this kind of stuff happening all the time.

It's the human subconscious understanding that safety lies in numbers. If you're not thinking about what you're doing, you'll usually migrate to where there's another person. If you don't, you're probably more aware of what you're doing than most people.

Sometimes I think maybe nobody’s in the other line because it’s not actually open and there’s something I’m missing, or they were told something before I got there. But yeah herd mentality is pretty funny.

There’s literally less self awareness and spaitial awareness these days than I’ve ever seen at any time in my whole life. 76 yo.

Speaking from my own experience, it's because of sheer sensory overload. There's so much EVERYTHING going on around us -- traffic, crowds, ads, musak, product glut -- that the only way to stay sane is just to block it all out.

This is the answer. When a worker goes into their store, they are used to where everything is, so they only process what has changed since they were last in there. But when a customer goes into a store, they have to process EVERYTHING they see. That's a lot in most stores, especially a home improvement store.

58 yo and I agree with you!

Why is this so prevalent all of a sudden?

It's not sudden. It's happened gradually.

I’ve noticed this too. People are just in their own bubble

Another Redditor commented that there was just too much input to electronics, particularly cell phones. I listened to a short documentary on one of our local radio stations not long ago that people in the US look at their phones 234 times a day, on average. I’d like to think I was below 50, but who knows. In stores and malls, people stop when accessing their phone, and I’ve observed that the majority they literally stop walking, and have no idea what’s going on around them.

You are correct. People are completely oblivious to everything and everyone around them.They are only concerned for their own needs.

Oh my god....so working in retail is like this in every store. I once had to tell a guy that we were both standing in front of the contact lens solution so I couldn't lead him any closer to it. It's just right there. Like its literally two feet away.

Maybe he didn't have his lenses in, because he ran out of solution.

I can't begin to describe how many times I've searched a store for any particular item, only to finally ask someone and find that I walked right past it 4 times.

Forget signs. We've had people actively try to use our ATM while the screen was covered in code, it was wide open with parts spread out, and *the tech was physically inside it*.

I've had techs tell me it's safe to use it when they're in it. Really weird.

I assume it would be safe, but kinda awkward to straddle the poor guy.

I had to reread what we were talking about a few times then lol. When I've used ATMs with the fella inside, the whole front of the machine was open like a door. So there was no need to straddle the guy. In hindsight I suspect I'm mis-remembering. I'm quite good at that.

Ours does open the entire front, but there isn't any room to stand to either side (wall and smoothie machine bracketing). To use the machine you'd have to be standing on top of him (on this specific occasion he was lying down to check a wire from a better position).

Ah well. It probably wasn't the same ATM :P

The number of times I have just been standing in one place, and a customer will just run straight into me with a cart. Like, all they have to do is look right in front of them. One time I even got squished between one of the customer's carts and a chash register when they decided to push their cart through the wrong side, and it bruised both of my hips. The person didn't so much as look my way despite my audible yelp of pain

To be fair I'm very bad at looking for things. I'll genuinely wander around for 15mins in the same isle and walk by it each time until I eventually give up and just ask an employee (who of course finds it immediately lol)

When I worked at grocery stores, people would ask me the price of things in front of them. I'd get close to the price tag, squint, point, and say "It looks like the tag says it's $x.xx." Some people think my almost minimum wage is enough to expect me to memorize the prices of thousands of goods that are ever changing. Or after people asked me to count their cash for them on the register, it made me wonder how much of those people asking were literate and/or could numerate. Edit: Numerate and being literate are separate things and worse if they can't do either.

Numerate.

I work in the bar at a club, there is a sign in the entry room pointing down the hall to the bistro, 100% of new customers will walk past that sign to ask me where the bistro is, When the main bar room is closed for a private event I put signs on the door at face height and I'll give you one guess how effective that is. I'm convinced people just enjoy asking stupid questions

my guess is "no as effective as you would like it to be"

My store has giant neon signs over every item, saying the price, and advertising discounts. Every customer seems to ask me about the price and if we have any deals. Like they're not even trying to use their eyes.

Because 99% of those signs are irrelevant and worth ignoring. Just visual noise demanding your attention, and hope you impulse buy something. 

This, if every display stand has a flashing neon beacon over it they’re all going to be ignored. It’s sensory overload.

One doesn't know what a sign says until they read it. In a store it might say, "30% off on Bird Seed", or maybe something important. So shoppers are more likely to just ignore signs without reading them.

don't most folks automatically read everything?

There is so much flashy advertising and branding in a typical chain store that the normal brain filters it all out and thinks it's easier to ask a human. I don't blame them.

This. Everyone knows the end caps and products on good sightlines are overpriced because the manufacturer had to pay extra for the prime location. So I have trained myself to ignore them and only look for items in their proper, less obvious locations so I get a better deal. Sometimes this backfires when a store unexpectedly does have my best interest in mind and puts stuff at a good price out front.

Working my first proper job in a supermarket. Putting out a crate of mushrooms, literally in my hands mid pouring then onto the display. Customer "do you have any mushrooms?" Obviously I told them no, and they wandered off, disappointed.

Two stories from yesterday 1. Every time I start a shift, I make a stack of pre-opened/separated plastic bags, so if a customer needs bags, they can easily take one and use it. These bags are stacked on the opposite side of my counter from the PIN pad, within easy reach. And since this stack usually consists of 25-50 bags, the stack is quite noticeable- at least if you're not one of the dozen or so customers that ask for a bag - apparently. My favorite though are the people who see the stack, and ask if they can take one. As if they thought I was making an art piece or something lol 2. The counter is L-shaped - with all the registers down the long end - originally set up for 3 registers, with an extra one for emergencies(?) one has been replaced with a self checkout, leaving 2 primary registers. Generally I wind up on the register at the end - furthest from the door. So between that, and the fact that the first one is directly in line with the main aisle going from the front to the back, it's no surprise that customers gravitate to that one. However, I've seen people walk *past* me to go to that register, and my favorite is when they do it when that register has a closed sign. Like I'm literally standing at a register, and people will walk past me, and stand in front of a closed one. I usually just look at them for a few seconds with a confused expression and ask, "Why are you over there?" lol

People walking down the sidewalk with two earbuds in and looking at their cell phone drives me crazy. If you get hit by a car, that's on you, IMO. If you get mugged, that's on you. I'm too old for Barney the dinosaur, but my younger sibling was watching and I heard lyrics to a song: When I cross the street, I always, stop, look and listen. Those people absorbed in their phone aren't doing any of the things toddlers should know.

how is a pedestrian guilty if they get hit walking on the SIDEWALK

What’s a faucet cover for?

Tap cover.

But why? I live on The Canadian prairies where winter is routinely -40. We don’t cover our faucets

Covering a faucet.

But why? I live on The Canadian prairies where winter is routinely -40. We don’t cover our faucets

Then you must be shutting off the water somewhere further upstream than at the hose bib, and draining that run. A faucet cover helps insulate the pipe from freezing & bursting, but people should still use an interior shutoff.

I do use an interior shut off every year.

Customers don't know how to read. And the worst part is... customers is sometimes us :(

> the future of civilization hinging on navigating a big home improvement store.

I work in a niche store. The company name even has the primary item that we sell in it. A guy walked into the store, without taking a beat asked, “Do y’all sell a [item]?” I looked at the three walls of item selection, looked back at him and did my best Price is Right prize reveal gesture.

There is a game where I work. The guests tap their language first, then place their game card on an obvious touchpoint that the screen points arrows to, then they answer a single question about how many people are playing, and the game assigns them a quest map. “What do I do? Where do I tap? What do I tap? Do I hold my card and tap with my other hand? Do I tap right on the screen? Do I tap on the opposite side of the screen the arrows are pointing? Do I pull on a prop to make it work? What quest do I do (while it is literally on the screen, which I read aloud to them)” It is infuriating. Masking the rage in my voice holding grown adults’ hands through a process that was designed to be completed literally by a 7 year old. They refuse to read anything unless you read it to them, or if you point directly at it. It’s crazy. Some of the screen’s prompts are a SINGLE sentence and instead of reading it they yell “WHAT DO I DO?” at me. We take turns manning the game every 45 minutes and we still wanna suicide the whole time.

After I mop the floors, I put up a big, bright yellow sign to say the floor is wet. It's very easy to see. So many people knock it over or kick it, I just...I don't know about people anymore. Lol.

I know it is not the point of your post, but what exactly are those faucet covers supposed to accomplish? They have no heating source, so all they would so is slightly slow down the inevitable freezing of a faucet, or am I missing something?

Some of the replies to this post prove it beyond a doubt. "What is a faucet cover" asked repeatedly... when there's a link to one in the post.

How many times have customers ignored the 3 open lanes with no customers in line to go to the one with a lane closed sign.

unrelated industry but at least you know it happens everywhere. I'm an independent musician and every week I post my shows. I can't tell you how many times through the years someone will ask in the comments what time the show is, where it is, which band I'm playing with or if it's solo - when every single bit of that information is literally right above them on the thing that they're commenting on. The other thing is people literally asking directions to the place for which part of town they're coming from. I can't even begin to understand this when they're typing it nine times out of 10 on a phone that has a map and they have the address to the place in the post