This was the first thing I ever posted on Reddit. Now that I'm here, I thought I'd throw this up somewhere.
So, I don't work in retail anymore, but I did it for 10 and a half years up until the start of ~~last year ~~ 2014 and this event still stands out at me though some details are a little fuzzy.
It was probably maybe five years ago, I was working checkout, the photo counter, and who knows what else random task they had thrown at me, pretty much typical. Big huge sales floor in a Drug store and it would usually just be one clerk and one supervisor working the whole front end.
Our doors were the kind that slide sideways apart from each other. They were old and crappy, always either letting casper come and go, clapping to show how happy they were or just sitting there all like "What now? you wanted to go somewhere?" and no number of calls to the door company ever changed this.
Anyway, there I was in my tacky vest minding my own damn business getting it done and smiling at all the people pretending I like my job when I get this one customer who just comes up to me and starts chewing me out about how we never have something, or some other such complaint. Whatever it was I just remember it being really unbelievably uncomfortable and know I tried to ask if she would like to speak to a manager or something but she was just at the point of rage and anger and I don't want help I want to punish you.
Then she huffs off and says she's never going to come into the store again and marches to the door. This is where the door decides that it is its duty to make sure this customer does not leave because clearly, I wanted this situation to go on longer. The door doesn't register the customers existence on this plane. It has closed its electronic eye in some sort of vile game of peek-a-boo as if for this moment it wanted to make me have to approach this raging anger fest of person so I could get burned again.
I was desperate for this to end. She turned to me and yelled about how her exit was being thwarted by our poltergeist infested doors.
My instant reaction was to put my hands together as if I were readying to separate invisible automatic doors manually and made the motion of moving my hands apart and then I said it. "just push them open.." push... not slide... push. WHY did I even do this... I should have just rushed over and opened them like I would have on any other day.
This is where I explain something else about the doors: Sliding Automatic doors are typically also hinged. You see, the panels of glass that they slide behind are also actually hinged doors. When the doors are off, you can slide them open a couple inches, flip out the outer glass panels as hinged doors, and then push the sliding doors all the way open and then swing them open for a super mega huge opening through which you can run a car through or any other object which doesn't typically move through the doors under normal operations. It's also handy for cleaning glass doors while continuing to let people enter and exit.
So she pushed. She put her palms up flatly against the doors and pushed outward. The doors popped outward, not only did they pop out but they of course, caused the side panels to pop open. To the customer this was a most alarming event. She stepped back utterly aghast at what had just happened, as if somehow she thought she just broke the whole door frame. It did make quite a grinding noise as the bottom of the door scraped on the pavement outside.
So what did I do now? I bust up in a nervous hysterical laughter. I didn't know what to do so my brain just said "Hey! let's laugh our asses off at this angry customer's embarrassed expression! This simply genius action will go over ever so swell!" "HAHAHAHAH AHAHA AHHA!!!!!! Oh @#$!" I was now staring at her thinking "What the f*?" I suddenly got this utterly huge pit in my stomach like I had just committed one of the most deadly sins possible.
So the customer just turns around, and runs, not walks, but runs out the store to her car and jets out of the area.
I peered around and noted that other than the angry customer, no one at all was anywhere near the front to witness this happen. So, I walked up to the doors, slammed them back into their tracks and then... they opened.
I did this to my Sister and I'll do it again!