The first time Lauren was screamed at over a free lipstick, she laughed about it with colleagues afterwards. But in that half-jokey, half-shaky way women do when they’re trying to style something out.
She was working on a make-up counter and the special offer was straightforward: buy certain items, get a free lipstick. But one customer completely lost it when the exact shade she wanted wasn’t in stock.
“Being shouted at was usually the result of people feeling they weren’t served quickly enough,” remembers Lauren from Brighton. “For being out of an item, for not being able to give someone an appointment at the exact time they wanted. It’s embarrassing to be scolded by grown women and men who don’t get their way, or who are taking their frustrations out on you for something trivial.”
What started as petty entitlement often turned genuinely frightening.
“One customer who didn’t like the shade of foundation a colleague had used to do her make-up started threatening us,” she says. “I’ve also been followed around the store by a woman who kept saying things like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you? You’re probably very unintelligent, aren’t you, if you work here?’ Sometimes I’d have to excuse myself to cry. We could radio for security to come, but they couldn’t do much to help us.”
Selling make-up is intimate. You’re touching someone’s face, talking insecurities, calming nerves. Lauren loved that part. But the aggression chipped away at everything else.
Everyone's clicking on...
“I received some kind of abuse during most shifts, around two or three days a week,” she says. “On multiple occasions, I fantasised about grabbing my brushes and just walking out.”
While Lauren’s experience might sound extreme, it isn’t – and it’s only becoming more common.
Sexist slurs and death threats
We’re heading into peak shopping season, when Instagram is full of festive hauls and “Christmas in one day” vlogs. But on the shop floor, people are quietly bracing.
According to new research by retail charity the Retail Trust, 77% of shop staff have experienced intimidating behaviour in the last year and almost a quarter (23%) have been physically assaulted. 43% say they’re abused or attacked weekly, and 45% feel unsafe at work. Nearly two-thirds (62%) feel stressed or anxious just walking in for a shift.
Alongside this, shoplifting is soaring. The latest Office for National Statistics figures show 529,994 shoplifting offences were recorded in the year to June 2025 – a 13% rise and the highest level since current records began.
But behind the headlines are the real people absorbing the day-to-day aggression, and since women make up the majority of UK shop-floor staff - at just over 64% - a huge proportion of the abuse is falling directly on them.
For Stephanie, who works for an independent retailer in Conwy, Wales, the abuse is explosive and incessant.
“If they don't make eye contact with me, don't smile, don't say hello, I can just tell by someone’s mannerisms how the interaction with them is going to go,” she says. “People will come in and immediately start tutting. They’ll sigh, they’ll huff, and when they get to me, they’ll throw down whatever they’re buying in a really rude way.”
It’s the mundanity that wears her down – often stemming from the frustration that shopping in-person involves more than a simple click and ‘add to basket’: “Their expectations of how long it takes to shop in real life have gone out the window,” she says. “It makes you feel like you’re not a person and that you’re absolutely nothing to them.”
When the adrenaline hits, Stephanie’s hands shake. But there’s often no break to recover: “You just have to smile and carry on and act like nothing happened.”
When it comes to tech retail, the abuse takes on a distinctly gendered flavour.
“I’m constantly having my credentials questioned, usually by men who hear a female voice on the phone and think I can’t possibly know what I’m doing,” says Hannah, 27, from Caerphilly.
She spent two and a half years as an assistant manager in a tech store where rage over refund policies was routine.
“People would throw items across the counter,” she says. “One man called me a sexist swearword and told me I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. People would ask to see the manager, when I was the only manager on duty.”
Once, a customer started filming her mid-argument, as if she were content. It was intimidating, but common: the Retail Trust found 30% of staff have been filmed without consent for someone’s social media.
Now working away from the shop floor in a behind-the-scenes customer service role, Hannah is still being abused. She has had men mock her Welsh accent, call her “annoying”, and fire off insults over live chat. One was so aggressive that he threatened to bomb the office: the police had to be called.
“It’s hard,” she says, “because it feels so unnecessary.”
Tiffany, 26, works in a fashion store in Bracknell. For her, December is when everyday rudeness tips into something more intense.
“Everything gets very frantic,” she says. “People get really annoyed if you haven’t got every item in every size. The shelves get ripped apart, the displays get trashed, and we’re constantly tidying.”
She adds: “I had a woman tell me I’d ruined her daughter’s Christmas because we didn’t have what she wanted in stock. I also got called a ‘stupid fat bitch’ because we only had larger sizes left in something, as if that was personally my fault. Nightmare.”
And once 26 December hits, the mood shifts again. “After Christmas is tough and you have to take a deep breath,” she says. “People bring things back with no receipt, or clothes they’ve clearly worn on a night out. They don’t want to hear that we can’t return them, even when we’re trying to be reasonable."
“I’ve had someone film me while complaining they didn’t have a receipt,” she says. “They said they’d send the video to HQ or put it on socials.”
Shoplifting happens daily too – and Tiffany is not allowed to intervene. “We’re told not to get involved because it isn’t worth putting ourselves in danger,” she says. “We just log it and let it happen.”
And post-Covid, Tiffany says expectations have ballooned.“People are used to online shopping, so they expect us to have everything online in-store too,” she says. “There’s definitely more impatience.”
Not all her young customers are difficult, though.
“We get groups of teenage girls who are honestly sweet, they’re just trying to figure out their style,” she says, which is a refreshing contrast to the hostility she experiences from adults.
There’s talk her team might soon get body-worn cameras, like police officers wear.
“That would make us feel safer,” she says. “At least we’d have backup if anything happened.”
There are, though, glimmers of change.
What can be done?
The assault of a retail worker is set to become a standalone criminal offence with a maximum six-month prison sentence. Retailers themselves are investing heavily in protection measures, from body-worn cameras to extra security staff. The Retail Trust has also rolled out free training to help staff deal with threatening behaviour.
But everyone I spoke to emphasised the same thing: policy and equipment can only go so far. What’s desperately needed is a shift in how customers behave.
“Making the assault of a retail worker a specific offence will help the police deal with serious crimes, but it will do little to stop the rudeness, hostility and contempt that shop workers tell us they face during every shift,” says Chris Brook-Carter, chief executive of the Retail Trust. “It’s time for this to stop, but it will take a collective effort.”
“Even the simplest acts of recognition can make a huge difference,” says Chris. “Look up from your phone. Say hello. Say thank you.”
Lauren agrees: “Remember there’s a person in front of you, not a robot.”
Not everyone in this story is still on the shop floor. Lauren left retail this July for good, focusing on freelance make-up work instead, and Hannah has moved from in-person tech retail to customer service, where the abuse still exists but feels less physically dangerous.
Stephanie is still behind the till, still watching people’s body language the second they step through the door, and despite the constant demands and moments that cross the line, Tiffany hasn’t left retail either – and doesn’t want to.
“I love my team,” she says. “I couldn’t do an office job.”
But she does wish customers remembered something simple.
“We actually want to help and we’re not paid enough to be insulted,” she says. “Being nice gets you further than shouting at us.”
None of them – or any retail worker – is asking us to excuse poor service or faulty products. They understand frustrations, they’ve lived them from both sides of the counter. What they are asking is painfully simple: don’t forget they’re human. Behind every viral “Christmas chaos” video is someone walking home exhausted, upset and wondering why their job has become a lightning rod for seemingly growing public anger.
