Today's world is filled with things that terrify, confuse and infuriate. Just watching the news is enough to make one despair of the human race. Those of us who work in retail unfortunately get subjected to a bit more of it than most, though we don't often get the worst of society. Drug addicts, shoplifters, and con artists are what we typically encounter on a given day. Con artists are easy to deal with once you figure them out. You just keep saying "no". Shoplifters not so much, as most stores have policies against employees interacting with them due to the dangers involved, and so we typically have to leave that to store security. The most terrifying, however, are the addicts.
When someone who is high on a narcotic comes into the store, it can be the most terrifying experience of your life. People who are high are unpredictable at best, dangerous and deadly at worst. Depending on the drug, they could just be acting loopy, or inversely they could be acting deranged. Either way, the situations become far more tolerable in hindsight than while involved with them. Let me give you an example of each.
While I was working in retail electronics, we had a woman come in to return a television. She was erratic. She was pungent. Worse yet, she told us she'd bought the TV and wanted to return it because she'd put it in a room and flies had come out of it. Now, if someone behaving normally told me that I would have been confused and concerned about how that could be. Her behavior was erratic, she kept pausing what she was telling us to turn and address the empty space to her left, and she was twitching. In all seriousness, she looked like an extra who'd walked off the set of The Walking Dead. It was all the hallmarks of someone with a serious addiction to methamphetamine. We took the TV out of the box, gave it a cursory look-over that included plugging it in and turning it on, then processed the return so we could get her out of the store. Not exactly approved procedure when returning a television but we all wanted her gone before she snapped and pulled a weapon. She took her refund and left, and we conducted a more thorough check of the TV.
There were no flies anywhere, living or dead. There was no evidence there had ever been flies. In fact, there was no evidence the TV had ever been used at all. The only smudges on the shiny black plastic were from where we'd lifted it out of the box. She'd been tripping. Looking back on it now, the story is funny. At the time, though, we could only breathe a sigh of relief we'd gotten her out before she'd snapped.
That was a case of terrifying. Now for the funny.
This is a more recent tale, from my time in retail home improvement. There was a gentleman (and I do use the term loosely, as he was not gentlemanly in his behavior) who came into the store while tripping on something that made him clearly a very happy person. He was grinning and laughing randomly, dancing around in a black tank top, saggy pants, and sunglasses with only one lens. Now I emphasize his attire because this is important for the humor part of it. His pants were low enough that they were clinging to his mid-thigh instead of his waist, and while his dancing was mildly disturbing, that wasn't really my problem with him. My problem was that he was blocking access to the cashiers for our customers. I was nearly to the point of approaching him and saying something when the problem solved itself in the most spectacular way.
His pants fell down.
Yes, the comedy sketch you are imagining in your head right now is likely very close to what actually happened. In the middle of what were in his head surely some slick dance moves, his pants slid right down to his ankles, showing us all his lovely "white" underwear. Clearly cognizant enough to realize this was a problem, he bent down and grabbed, them, pulled them back up, and then grabbed a cart, threw his belongings in it, and headed for the bathroom. The thing that finally made me lose my composure, however, wasn't that it happened in the first place.
It was that it kept happening every time he let go.
So there you are. Sometimes you just have to take a breath and laugh at the things you see, or else you'll go mad. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that it's terrible these two people are both suffering from drug addiction. That's not the case at all. I'll kindly point out, however, that if you can't learn to laugh at it, you run a greater risk of becoming it.