AI plagues art store cashier

I just wanted to share some nothingburger stories from my job at Big Chain Craft Store. I've had this job for not even a year, so these stories are fairly recent.

The first story is from I wanna say December 2025. It was dark out and a few hours until we closed. This guy came in with a printed out list of things he needed to buy, one of them being "Friendly Plastic Pelets" from "Ameco" or "Amaco." I had not recalled ever seeing this brand in the store, let alone hearing about it ever. I ask my manager if we have this item, they say no. I persevere and search our website, but no luck. Then, he said, "Oh, well Chat-gpt said you sold them.

Oh my fucking god the list was ai generated. He wasted water AND paper for some bullshit that didn't even exist! What he wanted was perler beads. We HAVE perler beads, we just don't have made up items and brands. He didn't even bother to check our website or just look up anything on what he might need, he just went straight to asking Chat-gpt and that really freaked me out.

Upon further investigation, Ameco and Amaco are real companies. Ameco is a construction service and Amaco is a ceramics brand. Neither have ever sold any sort of perler beads.

I'm not great with math, which can suck sometimes when you work with money. I was ringing up this woman, and she had one or two kids with her. There was a small hiccup in the transaction, and I had to recalculate how much change I needed to give her. I was pulling out my phone to use as a calculator, but the woman's daughter said "Why don't we just ask Chat-gpt?" Because that's just a worse version of a calculator? It's entirely unnecessary and adds nothing good to solving this problem? At least the mom didn't like it. She didn't stop her daughter from using Chat-gpt, but she did keep telling her daughter that it was making her stupid so at least there's that.

This happened about a month ago. I clocked into my shift, and my coworker was getting ready to leave. Before he left, he informed me that the pile of items on his register was left by a customer who was getting more stuff from around the store. This isn't crazy, and similar things happen all the time. I put his stuff into a basket because we need the space for it's intended use. Why he didn't just get a cart, I don't know. At least twenty minutes later and the guy shows up with more stuff, asks me where X and Y items are, and leaves again to go find them.

This is more of a pet peeve, but he left the basket on the counter. I don't why he didn't just TAKE THE BASKET WITH HIM OMG WHYYYYY. It might not sound that bad that he left the basket on the counter, and it isn't, but we have the bigger ones with wheels that are basically tiny shopping carts so it's just kind of annoying and somewhat unsanitary because the wheels are constantly rolling on the ground and are now being placed onto a much cleaner surface that people often put food on.

He comes back FINALLY and I ring him up. We're chatting and stuff and it's nice. He was buying a lot of painting supplies because he wanted to get into that. Cool! I love when people try new things and explore new hobbies. He was also telling me about his mirror making business and showed me some photos. It was cool and he offered to give me a business card later, which I didn't entirely take seriously because no way he would leave the store and come all the way back just to hand me a business card, right?

Well, I was super wrong! He did come back, and at first I was pleasantly surprised. I love supporting small businesses. Then, I actually read the card... Unfortunately, I can't remember where I left it :( I will add what the card said when I find it.

Anyway yeah these stories have been rattling around my brain for while. Let me know if anyone else has had stupid ai related interactions with people like these.