Do grown people in stores really laugh at customers?

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Yeah, me too, because it is the done thing to do.
*joke*

There was a website made expressly for laughing at customers of one specific store.

Well what do ya know, it still exists, https://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

Couldn't see a normal-looking 32-year-old woman among the pictures.

people dont randomly laugh at me in public and im more autistic than you
they only laugh and stare if im having a meltdown but i know you dont have meltdowns in public and you know how to blend in and look normal

it must be your social anxiety playing tricks on you.people dont just laugh even if you do look a bit shy or whatever

Your question wasn't "why would it be acceptable" but why would they do it, in the first place.

As for why it would be "acceptable," I dunno.

I do know that there are some stores, including one in my neighborhood, where the clerks routinely giggle at customers and get away with it. Indeed some of the clerks there do far worse things than just giggling at customers. For example, some of them occasionally ask very socially inappropriate, nosy questions.

One reason this particular store gets away with it is that this store (usually) has the freshest milk in the neighborhood. It's also the only store within easy walking distance that has some other foods I eat regularly. So I continue to go there occasionally, although my boyfriend refuses to go there at all.

The store you mentioned is in an area with a lot of tourists. So perhaps the store's business depends solely or primarily on one-time customers (the tourists), rather than on repeat business from customers who would be put off by ill-behaved clerks?

If you happen to remember the name and location of the store, you might try looking it up in Google reviews to see if other customers have reported similar experiences there.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 23 Apr 2022, 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Most people don't just laugh at other people for no apparent reason. But a few do.

I used to work retail. Store clerks are people and might laugh just as anyone else might, but I can't remember my coworkers ever laughing at anything that wasn't a joke. My coworkers had a lot of jokes, though. Whenever the store was slow or we didn't have a lot of customers (like when you were there,) that's when we tended to joke around.

That's certainly a possibility. It's probably a good idea to avoid jumping prematurely to the conclusion that clerks are laughing at customers, rather than at something else. I know for a fact that some clerks really do laugh at customers, but hopefully that's rare.

I'm one of the ones that do. Not sure if it's to do with adhd. If I see something or hear something funny (no matter what the setting) I just can't contain myself.

I could never do customer service because I would literally laugh in the customers face.

I was the same when I did telesales. I would either just get bored of the customer and put the phone down halfway through the sale or I would end up laughing at them and would have to put the phone down.

Most of the time it's not even malicious. It's just my sence of humour. People just don't realise how hilarious they are sometimes.

There are different types of laughing at people. Sometimes I can laugh if I'm nervous around someone, or if I like them very much and I'm laughing in admiration or to show that I'm enjoying their company. But these two women were different. There were two of them and their laugh sounded like they were snickering just as I walked past the till, as if one of them commented on something about me. But I don't really know what. It couldn't have been my body language because why would they just comment on that and laugh?..."Look at that woman's body language!" *Giggle, giggle*.

I'm hoping it is just my social anxiety telling me that whenever people laugh when I'm nearby it means they're laughing at me.

Sorry. It could be your social anxiety.

In the vast majority of cases, the people who laugh “at you” are primary school kids laughing at another primary school kid.

Could you consider—that there might be some other reason they’re laughing?

I sometimes feel that people are laughing at me, too. So I understand your feelings.

My guess is that either it was gossip or a dirty joke or something else not to do with you.
Or something like "See that woman? Doesn't she look exactly like the nut who worked here last year".

/Mats

Reminds me of a situation I was in a few years ago when I was at my last job. My friend was walking in front of me and this girl who she didn't like much, and a man who I had a crush on walked by and after he had gone the girl looked at me and grinned, and I looked at her and grinned back - just when my friend in front happened to turn her head round to us for whatever reason (she didn't know I had a crush on the guy). But she might have thought we were grinning about her, even though we weren't. She didn't say anything or look upset or anything but from her perspective our facial expressions could easily be mistaken for silently snickering at the person in front.

But when you have social anxiety like me you typically dwell on this sort of thing for weeks. Any NT with social anxiety will tell you that.

Trust me, I know. I tend to dwell far longer than a couple of weeks over these kind of things.

/Mats

I have noticed that too where people who are otherwise supposed to be “Grown-up” act like that. They are not doing it to single us out, rather, people who gossip will do that to anyone. In fact, they will probably stab each other in the back.

anyone of any age or occupation could laugh at anyone else.

plenty of on duty professionals from a wide variety of industries/fields, some with a lot of job skills and education, have had the nerve to laugh at me.

in your post, the two women could have been laughing at anything about you, or they could have been laughing at anything else.

it never ceases to amaze me, how some precious lil "people" could find the every slightest thing either personally offensive or hysterically hilarious. they are just way too dramatic. interacting with them is like *adrenal fatigue*.

it makes me wonder how they would overreact if they knew anything about me.
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please do not take it personally.