Your Bittersweet Memories of Working at HEMA (Especially the Customers…)

The other day, I took a trip down memory lane and wrote about my memories of working at HEMA. I worked in the restaurant there for two years, and also partly behind the checkout in the store. Some of the things you experience there are simply unforgettable—especially situations involving customers. Many of you recognized yourselves in them and entertained us with your own memories. Those were the days, huh?

One conclusion we can draw in any case: HEMA customers are creatures of habit, sometimes suspicious, often pretending they don’t know what’s going on, and usually also rather stingy by nature. But it was a pleasant place to work. Oh, the nostalgia!

Memories of working at HEMA

For the HEMA customer, more is less:

Chantal: ”Yes, I still remember the exact words: ‘a large decaf coffee, but not too full because I still need to add extra milk’ 😂”

Stingy and pretending they don’t know what’s going on…

Karin: ”’In the morning, the doors were practically bursting with customers who would run to the counter for breakfast as soon as the doors opened. “No, ma’am, you can’t have an extra bread roll instead of the croissant.” “50 cents for extra jam?? What a bunch of rip-off artists!” Or at customer service, bringing back several items of clothing that reeked of cigarettes. “No, it was in a smoke-free room the whole time!” Or customers visiting the restroom. You can probably imagine the kind of nonsense you encountered there… Plenty of stories, at any rate 🤣”

…huge creatures of habit…

Conchita: ”Running with a cushion under their arm to ‘their own spot’ in the restaurant.”

…and quite suspicious:

Annemarie: ”I worked at the deli counter on Saturdays from the age of 15 to 18. That was quite a challenge too. People wanted you to turn the packages of deli meat over to check whether there might secretly be small slices underneath. As soon as the store opened, the same people would always storm over to the deli counter and the pastry section 🤣🥰”

The HEMA customer always finds a way to get a bargain:

Oke: ”I once had to return knives covered in blood because they were less than a month old, so they were still under warranty 😣”

As an employee, you need to have quite a lot of patience with the HEMA customer:

Debb: ”I regularly get asked whether the pastries are fresh… I only once told that woman they were three weeks old (she asked every Saturday, and at some point I’d had enough) 🤣🤣”

If it can’t be made cheaper, the HEMA customer will just steal it:

Rudi: ”My sister worked in the lunchroom. Every month there was new crockery, cutlery and artificial flowers, because customers took anything that wasn’t nailed down.”

And yet there are plenty of warm memories too:

Marlies: ”Nostalgia! I worked in the lunchroom from 2000 to 2006, alongside school/university. Regular customers who were already standing outside when the shutter was still down. Pea soup, chicken ragout, sausage rolls, ice cream with fresh strawberries, coffee/tea for €1.25, PLU code for coffee ‘101’. Beige carrot-cut trousers, a straight-cut ecru blouse, blue cap, blue apron. The transition from PLU codes to prices, from prices to touchscreen, from guilders to euros and the accompanying comments (for years!). Full tables, stuck-on chewing gum, broken dishwasher. Refrigerated drawers in the workbench that reminded you of an average morgue. And also: super fun colleagues!”