The Day This 17-Year-Old’s Sweet Job Turned Sour

Hope in humanity was lost when I was taken advantage of at work

Have you ever felt a giant hole of despair open up in the caverns of your stomach?

It eats away at every crevice of your gut, churning out worry and anxiety that escapes from you in droves. And it only takes a single event to open the portal to your mental health’s demise.

I was seventeen years old and working my first retail job at a local chocolate store. The bottomless pit of despair formed in my stomach because of these two sentences:

“I ordered a gift basket online and the chocolate inside was smashed to pieces. I demand a refund!”

A woman had marched into our empty store as I was closing up for the night. Following those words, she proceeded to scream at me until she was red in the face.

Alone and terrified since I was the only one left on the closing shift, I panicked. I threw out apologies like shields to try and cushion the blow of her anger.

I opened the cash register and gave her the refund, which amounted to $250. In true Canadian fashion, I apologized once more for good measure.

“I’m so sorry ma’am. It won’t happen again.”

She seemed appeased and took my apology in stride, walking out after a stern warning not to mess up her order again.

Still shaking, I called my manager and explained what happened, hoping she could identify where this order went wrong. I had only worked during the latter half of our store’s opening hours, so she could fill me in on what happened earlier in the day.

There was a pause on the other end of the line before my manager spoke.

“Bernice, we never sold a gift basket today. Did this customer have a receipt?”

My blood ran cold as her words traveled through me like a bolt of lightning. Replaying the scene over again in my mind, my heart sank.

I never asked her for a receipt.

I handed cash over to a screaming woman without any proof of purchase.

I had taken her at her word, thinking the store was in the wrong.

Immediately, I began to sob into the phone receiver cradled in my ear.

“I didn’t even think to ask her for the receipt. She was yelling at me and was so upset…and I…I didn’t know what to do!”

The wails were coming out of me involuntarily now, my chest heaving as tears streamed down my face.

This woman had lied to me. She scammed a local chocolate store out of one of our most expensive products.

And like a fool, I fell for it. Taking cash from me was probably like taking candy from a baby.

I braced myself to be chastised or fired for this stupid mistake. I felt like kicking myself for being so gullible.

Instead, my sweet angel of a manager offered these words:

“She saw you were a young woman working alone in a store and took advantage of you. There is a reason why you were targeted.

Don’t beat yourself up about it. Scammers keep doing this to people your age because it works.”

Alas, it was one of those moments where no matter what someone said to me, I resolved to be hard on myself. Despite her kindness, I did, in fact, beat myself up.

I sat on the floor and sobbed. I felt like a used piece of tissue that someone had blown their nose into and tossed on the floor.

It never crossed my mind that this woman would be lying. I never second-guessed her intentions, despite how awful she was to me.

Internally, I shook my fist at the world and wondered how it could be so cruel.

Looking back, my point of view on the world was tainted that day. Coddled by my parents and people in my life who loved me, it was sobering to realize that not everyone had my best interests at heart.

Falling for a scam at my first job made me realize I had to grow up.

Seething with anger and cursing myself for my stupidity, I built a wall around myself at work. Every potential customer that came in afterward was subject to an internal double take.

Now there was a question that was permanently imprinted on my teenage mind: were they there to buy chocolate or were they going to scam me?

I would no longer let myself be bullied by a lie.

I began to check in with my gut, where that bottomless pit of despair had once been. Fine-tuning my intuition took practice, and it happened over several shifts with my manager.

I never saw that woman again, but I heard she tried the same thing at other branches of our store. Other people fell for her lies too, before a company-wide memo informed everyone of her suspicious activities and she stopped trying her luck at our stores.

I wonder what happened to her. Did she still make a career out of screaming in people’s faces? Was she polishing up her vocal chords to hurl insults at those working in customer service? At the very least, I hope she stopped making teenage girls’ lives miserable.

As the all-knowing Forrest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” I tend to think the best of people, and in fact, I still do.

But I learned it is sometimes necessary to love people at arm’s length.

Want to read more from me? Become a Medium member and read as many articles as you like. When you join with my link, I earn a small fee at no additional cost to you.

This story was submitted for The Narrative Arc’s writing competition. Check out the details here:

March Cash Prizes Competition: Lies, Lies, All Lies