Texas Retail Worker Says Shoppers Wanting An Exchange Always Make This Mistake. Now She’s Sharing A PSA

The woman wanted to exchange an item at a retail store. That much was clear. What wasn't obvious, to the growing bewilderment of Texas-based retail worker Alexa (@simplyalexamarie), was why the customer had come to the store without the actual item she wanted to exchange.

Alexa’s video is actually a smorgasbord of silliness that retail workers deal with regularly, especially around the holidays. It seems that every single retail worker has at least one story like hers.

Trouble With Change

One story involves an unusual understanding of American currency, with a young man who didn’t know U.S. coin denominations.

“I had this man come in—this American man, that's very important to remember because he was American,” she explained. “He comes in with his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was—she seemed like she was not from here. She didn't speak English. She, yeah, she didn't speak English. So I'm like, ‘OK, she's not from here, obviously.’”

Then, she noticed the man didn’t have his money together.

“He spoke English. I was like, "OK," and maybe, you know, they just got back from living in a certain place for a while, and they were used to that money,” she thought then. “But he was so confused about the currency.”

“I'm like, ‘Your total is $18.50.’"

He handed her $18 in bills.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I need 50 cents.’”

“And he gives me one nickel,” she said. “And he was like, ‘Sorry.’ He gives me one quarter. And he's like, ‘That's—that's five cents, right?’”

“I was like, ‘That's a quarter.’”

She continued, “I was like, ‘Just give me the other quarter that you have.’ Because he pulled out two quarters and a nickel. I was like, ‘You can give me the other quarter that—give me the other quarter.’”

Brain-rot Kids

“Oh my god. These brain-rot kids,” she went on, already exasperated. “This brain-rot child comes into my—comes to my register, and all the little girls are paying with their gift cards for the season because they got them for Christmas.”

She tells the young girl she has a remaining balance of 67 cents.

“You already know what she's about to say,” she said, annoyed. “And says it out loud.”

She’s speaking of the 6-7 meme. It’s derived from slang from the drill rap song "Doot Doot (6 7)," where rapper Skrilla raps, "I know he dyin' (oh my, oh my God) 6-7, I just bipped right on the highway (Bip, bip)." The meme typically comes with a hand gesture, with the hands moving up and down with palms facing upward.

“I'm just like, if I worked in fast food, if I worked at my old job, I would have been, like, ‘Don't say that. Don't say that to me," she said. “Because don't—it's not [expletive] funny. It's annoying, actually.”
YouTuber and linguist, Taylor Jones, said that the 6-7 meaning may come from the 10-67 police call responding to an apparent death.

Regardless of the origin—and as a signal of where we are in meaningful culture—the ridiculous meme was so popular that dictionary.com named “6-7” the word of 2025. “South Park” made an episode about it. Domino's Pizza even had a promotional deal around the meme.

The Return

Now, we’ve heard stories of customers trying to return items without receipts (which is very common), customers upset about return policies, and even violent reactions to denied returns.

What about showing up with nothing to return?

This was Alexa’s best story in the chain.

“Then I had this lady come in, right? She wanted to do an exchange,” she started. “I'm like, ‘OK, do you have the receipt?”

The woman says she does not, but that she bought the item the night before.

Alexa asked the woman if she had an account, and the woman confirmed that she did.

"So, do you have the item with you to exchange?" she asked the woman. “She was like, ‘Well, no. I thought—I didn't know I had to bring that with me.’”

Alexa is flabbergasted at the absurdity of the request: “I'm sorry. You said you didn't—you said you want to exchange it, but you don't have an item to exchange? Maybe I misheard you. Hold on a second.”

The woman then tried to claim she was overcharged on the item, which again, she didn’t have with her, only to find that she was making yet another mistake and misreading the sales signage.

The Peanut Gallery Weighs in on Alexa’s Retail Rage

Given the presented information, one woman thought she knew where Alexa worked. “I know u work at Ulta cause I work at Ulta and that’s exactly how I feel.” Alexa liked the comment, but there's no confirming indication on the page of her actual work location. (This is smart, because some people are insane.)

“People who don't work in retail don't know how hard it is to not [make] smart comments towards customers who lack basic knowledge or be lying straight to your face,” one person wrote.

“Why do they always act like it’s their first day on earth?” joked another commenter.

Related to the “return” that wasn’t, one person quipped, “Or the customers who want to do a return and then purchase something separately instead of just doing an exchange in a single transaction because they 'want their money back', babe...”

One woman made a wild claim. “Today a lady wanted to exchange a tube of hair dye SHE CAME WITH A MEASURING CUP filled with the dye already mixed and used and was mad I couldn’t exchange it for her,” she said.

The best comment laid out the reality: “Working in retail will really make you realize people have no common sense.”

Patch reached out to Alexa for additional information. This story will be updated if she responds.

@simplyalexamarie