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    13 Really Screwed-Up Secrets And Stories From People Who Worked At Clothing Stores In The Mall

    Mall madness.

    We recently asked mall clothing store employees in the BuzzFeed Community to share their secrets and stories from the job. Here are some of the wildest ones:

    DISCLAIMER: We can't confirm all of these stories, but these people are allegedly speaking from their own experiences as former employees.

    1. "We would have to work until 2 a.m. cleaning up the store. The customers were by far the worst. I remember one time we couldn’t find a shirt in someone’s size and this woman went off on us and called us 'minimal wage motherfuckers.' I was 17 and this woman was like 40."

    2. "The stockroom was just a giant pile of clothes that got chucked into the back room. Literal piles of clothes stacked 20 feet high in a room probably 15x30 feet. It looked like a landfill of clothes. I only worked there a month because I couldn’t take it anymore."

    jlbaum

    3. "One woman wanted 40 hours per week so she could have the health benefits, but our boss would consistently book her for 39.5 hours a week so she wouldn’t get the benefits."

    cecilia777

    4. "One afternoon, my manager confronted a shoplifter in the back of the store and asked her to leave. She left the store in a fit of rage, destroying every display she could get her hands on as she ran out of the store, tossing armfuls of hangers on the floor and ruining carefully folded table displays as the employees looked on in horror."

    idontmakeenoughforthis

    5. "When I used to work there, there was always this same group of teens who would steal from the store and come back to shop either the same day or week and wear the clothes they just stole. We couldn't really confront them about stealing or stop them from leaving. We were told to approach them and 'help them shop' and directly describe the item they stole and mention what can match with it to let them know we knew they stole something."

    6. "A woman and her daughter were shopping in my section, and the mother came up to me and said, 'This store should be divided into two sections, slut and non-slut.' Her daughter seemed embarrassed, and I don't think I even responded. I was so shocked."

    chr1ss1e

    7. "This one time when I was working, an older woman came in, was shopping around, and then asked my manager if we had a public restroom. We didn’t, but my manager gave the woman directions to the nearest mall restroom. Not even five minutes later, the fitting room attendant came over to my manager, visibly disturbed and said there was literal shit on the floor. My manager didn’t believe it at first but sure enough, there was a hot, steaming pile of human feces in the middle of a fitting room..."

    "...I can’t remember who cleaned it up but I remember management thanked them by making them employee of the month."

    blondiegirl

    8. "We had a scarf catch on fire next to a hot light bulb, so the sprinklers went off. We spent the day throwing away $3,000 worth of jewelry that had gotten wet that wasn’t even damaged, just wet."

    9. "Our regional manager would show up in the morning, stay on the clock, but leave the store to go shopping elsewhere. We would watch her strut back before closing time with bundles of her shopping. She also made us wash her car."

    senpainoticedu

    10. "One day when I wasn't working, I swung by to grab my paycheck and I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I was told that I represent the store and need to look nicer when I come by."

    taylora4a7e985c9

    11. "One day, our district manager came to our store out of the blue (she always gave us notice). Come to find out, the cameras caught the general manager stealing $400 dollars out of the petty cash drawer. We were all shocked because there’s a camera right in front of the drawer. Apparently she had been doing it for a while with no suspicion...They fired her that day before we opened. We went months without a manager."

    12. "We would have a constantly backed up stock room, and we would have to do something called 'box-diving' to find certain pieces that needed to be featured in a floor set. Box-diving would consist of climbing up onto two or three stacked boxes in order to get through taller stacks of boxes to find what you were looking for."

    soshell

    13. And finally, "I used to work in the fitting rooms as the attendant...The fitting room's privacy gave people the audacity to do the grossest things. To list a few things I've found after customers left their room: a used tampon on top of the mirror with blood smears, a shopping bag hung on the door handle filled with pee, and a pair of boxer briefs."

    renaism

    Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.