Looking for advice about a customer at my work.

Seeking Support

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit, but I could really use some help. I work a counter service job, and these past few days we've had this unhoused woman come in who I and my manager believe is possibly schizophrenic and/or has some drug abuse problems. She usually comes in and gets some cups of ice, occasionally buys something, and then hangs around for 10-30 mins afterwards. All of this is fine, the city we live in is hot as hell and our seating is usually empty, so no harm no foul.

I'm asking for advice on a few issues. First and most importantly, she walks straight into traffic once she leaves and has almost been hit by a car. We are located on a fairly busy street, so that's obviously very scary and we are very worried about her. The second thing is that she just seems to swing between totally fine and quite nervous, when I talk to her she seems a bit out of it but otherwise very kind and able to hold a conversation, but then will start muttering to herself in what seems (to me, at least?) to be a nervous tone. The last thing is that she will go to our checkout register and look through the free stickers there, picking them out and spacing them on the counter for a pretty long time, which isn't hurting anyone obviously, but we do need that space to check out our other customers, answer emails, and fold boxes.

Me and the folks at my workplace are all pretty concerned for her, and so I just was wondering if y'all had any resources I could possibly give her, as well as how to broach giving them to her without accidentally making her feel bad or embarrassing her or anything, or if that's even appropriate to do. I also was wondering how to gently tell her that we need to keep the countertop clear without making her feel like she needs to leave. Any advice is greatly appreciated and thank you so much! (Also, I wasn't sure if any of the content in this post was potentially triggering to anyone so if I need to mark it as nsfw let me know!)

Posted Oct 11, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

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