I am filled with Halloween spirit. I have to be. It’s what they pay me for. I’ve had a side job at a local Halloween store this year.

And to be perfectly honest I love it there, but the amount of completely ridiculous customers and the sort of things I’ve had to put up with from them reached an all time high. Just because we are here to help you doesn’t mean you get full reign and control of the store.

This year we got rid of our changing area to try to cut down on people using it to steal things. To compensate, we made our return policy super lax. For example, you could return your purchase in nearly any condition so long as there was a receipt. This usually prompted people to impulse buy the first two or three costumes they saw, and return one the next day.

I recently explained this to one lady (and her three friends) who picked one of every costume in the store and wanted to know if they could try them all on.

She scowled, but says OK when I told her about the return policy. I gave her my best and brightest smile and rushed off to help someone else. Not two minutes later I turned to deal with a commotion at the back of the store.

The lady and her friends took over the back of the store and were stripping off and trying stuff on for all the world to watch. And watch they did. Weirdly, there were no men taking advantage of this prime opportunity to leer; it was a series of soccer moms and their children who all just sort of smirked and lurked around to observe like they were at a zoo watching penguins frolic.

To be perfectly honest, I let it happen for awhile and just sort of directed traffic as best I could away from the back of the store. But they had gathered a crowd. No one was actually complaining. They were just sort of observing (creepily and quietly) as if this was some sort of weird performance art.

I figured so long as they were cool with changing in the open and nobody complained I was in the clear.

I was wrong.

In fact they were about to try on their third or fourth costume when the assistant  manager approached me wide eyed and horrified. She demanded I do something.

As politely as possible, I told them they were causing a scene and had to get dressed; they got offended and outraged. They were standing there, three women in their underwear, and I was trying my best to maintain eye contact and be professional, but then one of them started yelling at me. I was trying my best to ignore the heaving bosoms in my face and said something like, “Listen, get dressed, pick a costume, buy it and/or leave. Now.”

While getting dressed they start saying things such as: “The nerve of this place…no changing room and they get mad when you change in the aisle…%$#! this place, we’re leaving.”

But not all customer encounters are randomly sexy. Some are outright terrifying.

As someone who’s not necessarily the pinnacle of perfect sanity myself, I can sympathize with certain levels of crazy. Every so often you go through something so traumatizing that you feel the need to bottle it up until the right person comes along and you feel the need to unload and vent your problems to them.

This happens to me a lot. I am a magnet for crazy.

A young, spaced out woman recently entered the store. I went into my “obnoxiously helpful retail guy” routine.

“Hello! Is there anything I can help with?”

“Yes,” she said. “No. Maybe. I…I have this dream. It’s more like a vision.” She leaned in and whispered, “I have nightmares.”

At this point, I think she’s being sarcastic, so without missing a beat – in what turns out to be an inappropriately chipper voice – I belt out:

“WE HAVE ALL KINDS OF THINGS TO HELP YOUR ‘Nightmares’ BECOME A REALITY!”

She recoiled in terror. I start to think nothing is OK. She speaks in hushed tones.

Eventually she thanked me for listening and left the store.

Every day at this job left me with several completely nonsensical tales to tell, and it wasn’t even Halloween yet.