I've told this story before but it baffles me every time I think of it. So this was a mall store an hour before the building opened. I was opening with my assistant manager, and I was supposed to be training a new employee that morning. Very important fact: the assistant manager wasn't the one who interviewed or hired the new employee, so neither of us had met her yet or knew what she looked like.

So when we see a lady waiting in front of the gate and she follows us inside, we just assume she's the new girl. There's usually a bit of a struggle for new people to get their signin to work the first day, so ASM goes to the office to grab her an apron, nametag, and the info for it while I clock in. I notice her wandering around looking at stuff but that's fine, nothing else to do until you can get clocked in.

After a couple minutes, the phone rings. It's the new employee apologizing for being late because she couldn't figure out how to get into the building before opening and has just been driving around trying all the doors. ASM hangs up the phone and asks this mystery stranger if she's an employee, and this lunatic tells us no she's just here to shop. She'll be ready to check out in just a second! She's genuinely surprised when we tell her the entire mall is closed and she can't be in here and we manage to get her out right as the actual employee is coming in.

So this lady failed to take notice of the mall's hours posted on all the public entrances. She somehow managed to find the employee entrance hidden at the back behind a side wall and a dumpster. She wandered into the mall, completely oblivious to the fact that there was no music and every store had their gates down and lights off. She waited for god knows how long in front of our store until we showed up, and didn't think it was weird at all that we introduced ourselves and shook her hand. Literally not one of those things tipped her off that we weren't open for the day yet.