(A customer is at the fishing license kiosk, entering in his application. He is looking visibly frustrated.)

Customer: “Oh, come on!”

(I walk up to the customer.)

Me: “Alright, can I see you go through this?”

Customer: “I’ve already done it four times!”

Me: “I understand. Just one more time, please.”

(The customer types his full name in the space provided. I see the problem. Instead of ‘John L. Doe’ he writes ‘johnldoe’.)

Me: “Alright, you’re going to need to put spaces in there.”

Customer: “Fine.”

(The customer puts the spaces in. We get to the address. He types in an equivalent of: ’123adr3$$@Clty’.)

Me: “…alright, why don’t I just handle this?”

(The customer is attempting to use the touch screen credit card machine, but the attached pen is not working.)

Me: “Sorry, sir, the pen is not working right now. It’s a touch screen, so just use the pad of your finger.”

Customer: “What? What the heck is a ‘patio finger’?”

Me: “Pad. Of. Your. Finger.”

Customer: “Oh! I thought it was some kind of young people slang.”

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Client: “Can you make these messages go away?”

Me: “Which messages are those, sir?”

Client: “The ones I get when I run backups.”

Me: “Ah. What do they say?”

(He reads out the error messages.)

Me: “Uh, sir, how long have you been getting these errors for?”

Client: “Since your software was installed last year. Why?”

Me: “And did you report this earlier, sir?”

Client: “No, but they’re really starting to bug me. How do I make them go away?”

Me: “Sir, you do realise that ‘Backup Failed [error code], contact [supplier]‘ means you have no backups of your entire financial system?”

Client: “What the h*** does that matter? I’m sick of having to hit ENTER all the time! Just tell me how to get rid of these stupid messages!”

(My photo lab has two self-serve machines for customers to order prints of their photos. They either put in electronic media, such as a CD, or camera memory card, or they can scan a print into the computer.)

Customer: “What do I do first?”

Me: “Well, we will scan your pictures, and then tell it what you want.”

(The customer shows me an album of wedding photos that were taken approximately in the 1950s-60s.)

Me: “Unfortunately, these are still protected by [United States] federal copyright law. For anything less than 75 years old, we need permission from the person hired to take the pictures.”

Customer: “But how does the machine know they’re copyrighted?”

Me: “Uh… it doesn’t. That’s my job. We look at each order before printing, to make sure we have proper documentation so we don’t break the law.”

Customer: “Then how do you know they’re less than 75 years old?!”

Me: “They didn’t have cars like that in the 1930s!”

Related:
Needs To Learn Copy-Right And Wrong