Not only will working on a beauty counter get you some mediocre staff discount and an occasional freebie, you’ll also end up with a wealth of customer horror stories. We found makeup artists (past and present) who were willing to dish the dirt and divulge us with their worst tales from the counter… all under the pseudonym of our favourite anonymous mystery makeup artist, Mascara Mandy.

1. Mascara Mandy and the case of the mystery sausage

“One of my favourite customers ever was this little old lady who I only ever saw once. It was a fairly standard consultation that I had with her just before Christmas and because she’d spent quite a lot of money with me I gave her a goody bag as a nice gesture. Due to the time of year there was a German market nearby, and after her consultation she went on her way and I went on my break.

Half an hour later I came back to find a sealed carrier bag on the counter, before I knew it security came flying down the escalator, grabbed the bag and then the bomb alarm started to go off. Everyone was panicking and running about because they were treating whatever it was as a ‘suspicious package’. I went downstairs to the security office to find out what  was in the bag and it turned out it was a German bratwurst sausage, I was crying laughing because I had absolutely no idea why it was there. They found a note for me inside from that old lady saying it was a ‘little something nice for me’ for all my help. We checked the CCTV and sure enough there she was dumping this sausage on my desk. Still to this day I laugh about it.”

2. Mascara Mandy and the screaming eyebrows situation

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A girl came to the counter to get her eyebrows done, she’d been a few times before and had had lots of different people do her brows but there had never been a problem. One of the new starters was assigned to do her brows, but it wasn’t an issue as they were trained the same way as everyone else. The girl had bright orange hair, but wanted her eyebrows to be almost black, and this is how it all began. The brow girl did as the customer asked, they looked awful but the customer couldn’t stop beaming about how wonderful they looked.

Then, the customer’s mother came over and started screaming, and I mean SCREAMING, about how bad her daughter looked. I went over to try to calm the mother down because she was making a scene at 1pm on a Saturday in the middle of a department store, which is never ideal. I asked the daughter what she thought about her brows, but the mother cut in and said that her opinion “didn’t matter” because they looked “f*cking horrible”. My attempts at resolving the situation didn’t work, so I went to get my store manager.

The manager came over and tried to calm the mother down, and by this point the young daughter was almost in tears. The whole thing was so dramatic and ended by that woman actually dragging her daughter off the stool and out of the shop, refusing to pay or to ever come back. We rang head office to report this, and they told us that they already knew about this lady and the tantrum was her ‘signature trick’ so she could get away without paying, and she’d already done the same in three other stores.”

3. Mascara Mandy and the stalking spender

“As the new girl I pulled the short straw and had to work every Sunday. I realised very quickly who the Sunday regulars were, and one of them was this woman who would walk in as soon as we opened and stay at the counter for about 40 minutes. One day I went over to ask if she needed any help, and to my surprise she bought every product that we sold. I was in shock. Every time we had a new product, she would immediately come in and buy it.  So, as the new girl, because she was making me look like some kind of sales genius I would give her free makeovers and we ended up knowing each other quite well, as far as customer/sales assistant relationships go.

She was in her mid 30’s and would come in every week with a hazelnut latte, wearing her denim jacket that had Minions badges all over. It was nice at first, but when it got busy near Christmas she became so demanding for my attention. I stopped working Sundays, and she would refuse to talk to the girl who replaced me on that shift. She added me on Facebook, tried to add my Mum and followed me on all social media platforms.

When I left the company someone at work told her, and she sent me a message saying how sorry she was – which was sweet I suppose. About 6 months after I left I was walking past the counter and asked one of the girls if that customer still comes in on a Sunday, my old colleague told me that she actually no longer shopped in the store, and had even cancelled her loyalty card. Even now she still tags me in those ‘Tag 20 People You Love’ things on Facebook.”

4. Mascara Mandy and the Chanel smash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Unfortunately, shoplifters were rife in the department store where I worked. The worst case of theft that I ever saw was on a Saturday morning, the store had literally just opened and I had already seen security wandering around. The next thing I knew, I saw two young men running towards the front of the store, then all of a sudden a security guard flew past me, pushed customers out of the way and landed on one of these blokes. They crashed into the Chanel counter and all the glass shelves which housed the perfume came crashing down, the place absolutely stunk.

Then, about 10 police officers came in and the female security guard had the other guy in a headlock. This all happened in about 30 seconds and I was stood with my mouth gaping open the entire time. Instead of closing the store to try and make the commotion a little less obvious, the manager decided to keep the shutters open and so I was trying to divert customers around the carnage, whilst obviously trying to be nosey myself and see what had gone on. A girl who worked on a concession stand downstairs started filming the whole thing on her phone (which is now on YouTube), so another security guard started dragging her away. The whole store reeked of Chanel No 5, and the entire fiasco was over a 30ml bottle of Paco Rabanne 1 Million.

Got your own counter horror story? Drop us an email – canvasmaguk@gmail.com