Grocery Store Staff Catch a Customer Complaining That Their Pickles Have Cucumbers in Them

Working in a customer-facing role is no easy feat. Apart from dealing with downright rude customers or those who feel the need to explain your job back to you (shout-out to the gentlemen who love to mansplain), there’s also the challenge of customers being, well, just plain wrong.

Believe it or not, customers can be factually incorrect.

Despite the age-old mantra that “the customer is always right,” the reality is that customers can sometimes get it wrong. And when they do, it can add an extra layer of difficulty to a worker’s job. Imagine this: a waiter is left scratching their head when a table sends back a crudo plate because it’s raw, and they claim they don’t eat raw food.

Now, most folks know that a crudo plate is meant to be raw. But the challenge for the staff is to explain this without making the customers feel like their intelligence is being questioned. And then, there’s another incident where a customer seems to have missed a crucial pickle fact. Luckily, she didn’t cause a major uproar with her mistaken knowledge, but it does make you wonder who’s going to gently enlighten her?

In a TikTok video shared by grocery store worker Garet (@himbough), he recounts a hilarious encounter with a customer in the produce aisle.

Garet begins his story by setting the scene of his “silly little grocery store job” and how a customer’s comment left him utterly baffled. “I just got home from my shift,” he starts, “and I overheard a customer say something that I will remember until my dying day.”

As he was busy stocking pickles, the customer rudely pushed past him to peruse the pickle selection. Garet, slightly annoyed but trying to stay professional, observed as the customer picked up a hot pickle jar and exclaimed, “Oh, cool, they have these pickles!”

Garet continues to narrate the amusing encounter with the customer in the pickle aisle. After picking up a jar of hot pickles, the customer reads the label. Then they exclaim, “Oh, gross. This one has cucumber in it,” much to Garet’s amusement.

Pickles are made from cucumbers.

For those unfamiliar, pickles are essentially small cucumbers preserved in a brine solution. While various vegetables can be pickled, cucumbers are the standard choice. Garet’s video humorously highlights the irony of the customer’s surprise at finding cucumber listed as an ingredient in pickles, akin to being shocked that bottled water contains water.

The video sparked a wave of shared experiences from others who had encountered similarly baffling customer moments. One former Subway employee recalled a customer asking which tree black forest ham comes from, while another shared a memory of someone questioning if tuna salad at Panera contained mayo or mayonnaise.

The comments kept pouring in from other users.

In response to Garet’s TikTok video, a third user chimed in with their own amusing customer encounter. The user shared that a customer once asked for “taco bread,” not realizing it’s called a tortilla.

This conversation highlighted a broader trend. Customers can be misinformed or confused about various things, not just limited to food. Another example shared was from someone working at a zoo, where a visitor mistook a rounded stone in the goat paddock for a “goat egg.”

These anecdotes serve as humorous reminders of the quirky and sometimes bewildering interactions that can occur in customer service and public-facing roles.