I worked in retail – why you should ALWAYS wash your clothes in hot water the second you get home

WHEN you buy new clothes at the store, you might want to throw them on as soon as you get home – but one retail worker revealed her reason for washing new clothes before wearing them.

In a since-deleted TikTok that was archived on YouTube, one former employee of a major American department store made shocking claims about her time there.

The woman, whose identity The Sun has chosen to protect, shared a dire warning for customers at retailers nationwide.

"Any time that you buy clothes from any kind of store, wash them as soon as you get home," she advised. "Wash them in hot water."

At 16, the woman worked for a retailer with a popular clothing department.

While the majority of customers would try on and purchase clothes with no issue, there was apparently a subset of the consumer base who only came into the store to wreak havoc.

"Quite often people would pee and poop in clothes in the fitting room, and those clothes would go right back on the floor," the woman reported.

Commenters on YouTube were aghast at the disgusting claims.

"She is not lying about department stores," one fellow retail employee said grimly.

Another viewer recounted the time a close friend who worked in retail had a similar experience during the Christmas lunch.

"She called me at the end of her shift because someone had gone into the fitting room, tried on a pair of pants, peed in them, then left the soiled pants on the fitting room floor," the comment recounted.

"My friend was the one that found them. Wash clothes that you buy before you wear them."

Others were skeptical about the story and blamed poor management at the store for the original poster's bad experience.

"That's definitely just a f****d up thing they did at her particular store," a viewer wrote. "As a manager or employee why would you even do that?"

Another employee who'd worked at Macy's for years said "they'd throw out pretty much anything even slightly damaged."

An ex-employee of Target echoed the sentiment.

"We would have labels for things we would return to corporate/companies," the viewer wrote. "We would never put nasty clothes nor other items back on the sales floor."

And one astute commenter asked the question on everyone's mind.

"Why you would need to wash it as soon as you got it home," the viewer wrote. "WHY would you BUY anything that was in that condition?"