Even though menstruation is a normal and healthy part of life, getting your first period can be a time riddled with anxiety. Not only does society tend to treat the topic as something “unclean” or “impure,” but there’s an expectation to conceal and hide a period due to fear of judgement. With that in mind, one thing that one should never try to do is to make an inappropriate joke about periods when talking to a youngster who is experiencing their first one. That’s allegedly what occurred resulting in an awkward exchange between a father and a Dollar General clerk in Bonham, Texas.
The footage is recorded from the perspective of the father in question, and sees the Texas dad confront the Dollar Store clerk who made the inappropriate joke at the till. “Hey, man, my wife and daughters just came up here and bought some pads for my daughters who are 12 years old, and you cracked a joke and embarrassed my wife and embarrassed my daughters. You think that’s okay?” the father calmly asks. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass anybody.” responds the clerk.
The dad then starts to get a bit more specific and adds a little more detail to what the supposed “joke” was, saying, “You cracked a joke about buying pads for 12 year old girls. They just started their period.” To this, the clerk replies, “I wasn’t making a joke about them.” before the father asks what he was making a joke about. The clerk explains, “I had said do you need a bag and when she had said yes, I was like, what do the neighbors think?”
This answer doesn’t seemingly placate the dad, however. “Yeah, how do you think that’s gonna make somebody feel, especially 12 year old girls?” he asks. “You have a track record of running your mouth up here, man, and you keep doing it, corporate’s gonna get called and you’re gonna have no job. You understand that?” In response, the clerk simply says, “Yes.” Going further, the father explains, “And you also gonna have a bone to pick with me. You live here in Bonham? Because I do, and I see you up here all the time, man. And I’m not cool with it. My daughters are embarrassed, crying. My wife is embarrassed. I’m not alright with it, man. Keep you mouth shut at work. Quit cracking jokes. It ain’t cool. Keep your mouth shut and do your job.”
After further back and forth, the clerk declares, “I’m sorry that you feel that way,” though it doesn’t really sound like he truly means it. Adding even more context, the father tries to spell it out really clearly for the clerk. “You’ve had complaints called on you multiple times. You know that. It’s not cool, man. You need to cut it out. You picked a nerve on me and I’m pretty upset about it.”
However, the manager of the Dollar General then turns up, and the father explains the situation to her. Both the manager and the clerk give the father the contact number for the company’s corporate office, and after hearing the clerk explain his side of the story, the manager asks him, “Why would you say that for?”
As the awkward exchange continues to circulate online, netizens flooded the comments section to air their feelings on the footage. One Redditor weighed in with, “What every girl wants when they are first starting their period, a uniquely stressful and embarrassing time for a child, is a creepy guy with a big Gardevoir badge making jokes about it at the checkout line. Some people just have 0 social skills.” A second commenter, meanwhile, asked what a “Gardevoir” badge is, and another explained that “Gardevoir is a Pokémon.” Lastly, another user added another layer of complexity to the situation, insinuating that the clerk may actually be on the autistic spectrum, writing, “I’m getting on the spectrum vibes. Especially with all the weird flair he’s wearing. You’re at a retail job, not Chotchkie’s“
