I work in a restaurant with a drive thru, but unlike most stores, we have a speaker in a permanent spot in the back. This means that if I’m taking the money at the window, the person at the speaker has to wait a moment to be acknowledged.

So the other day a lovely woman pulls up to the speaker and the following conversation happens:

Woman(as soon as she pulls up): “Hello? Are y’all taking orders today? HELLO?”

Me(after running to the speaker): “Sorry about that, what can I get for you today?”

Woman: “About time! I need a Caramel Macchiato… ”

Me: Ma’am, we don’t sell coffee here. Are you sure you didn’t want either of the restaurants beside us, because they both do?”

Woman swears and speeds away from the speaker.

I am working as an online “homework help tutor.” This means that during a session, I am supposed to help students solve a question or two that they’re stuck on. Unfortunately, all the questions are multiple-choice, and the students like to guess random answers in the hope that I’ll just tell them the answer — which I am very much not supposed to do. This exchange takes place in the text chat of the tutoring service.

The student guesses an answer.

Me: “How did you arrive at that answer?”

Student: “Math.”

Me: “In more detail, please.”

Student: “Mathematical equation.”

Me: “What equation did you use?”

Student: “Pytagoras.”

Important note: there are absolutely no triangles in the problem we are working on.

Me: *Confused* “How did you apply the Pythagorean Theorem here?”

Student: “F*** you.”

The student then quit the session.

I’m the weird customer in this one. This happened when I was on a group trip to Manchester. Two friends and I, all Dutch, wanted to try out a certain restaurant one of us had heard was good. It was, but I’m afraid we lived up to a stereotype of Dutch people. You see, splitting the check is called “going Dutch” for a good reason, it’s how we roll. I’ve heard people from other countries say they think it’s weird we always do this, but it just makes sense to us.

So at the end of the meal, when we get the check, my two friends and I dive into the, to us completely normal, business of calculating what each of us should pay (no, we don’t do an even split, except for the tip, everyone pays for what they had). None of us thinks anything of it, but the waiter, who is lingering nearby, is looking at us pointing at the bill and talking in Dutch worriedly and decided to come over.

Waiter (politely and worriedly): “Excuse me, sorry, but is everything alright? I saw you discussing the bill, is there a problem with it?”

Friend 1 (cheerily and completely oblivious): “Oh no, no problem, don’t worry. We’re just figuring out what each of us has to pay.”

The waiter looks at us like we’re from another planet, but stays polite.

Waiter: “Okay…” (Translation: “WTF!?”

Suddenly I have a moment of clarity and realize that this is a Dutch Thing, not a British Thing, and the poor guy doesn’t realize we’re foreigners and is probably wondering if he wandered into the Twilight Zone or something.

Me: “Sorry, we’re Dutch. It’s what we do. No problems here!”

Waiter (looking relieved and seemingly suddenly understanding): “Oohhh, okay, good, sorry!”

We joked and laughed with him a bit, and made sure to tip generously. Both as an apology for the confusion, and so we wouldn’t live up to another stereotype about Dutch people, namely being bad tippers. And we were a lot more discreet about money matters over the rest of the trip.

My spouse and I saved up and bought our first house. To save some money we advertise a roommate. We rent 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom and essentially half our kitchen to a guy for $300/month.

At first we get along fairly well. Our new roommate tends to sleep through his alarms, so I take to waking him up in the morning. He appreciates that.

But about a year in something sours between him and my spouse. He starts teasing my spouse, saying things like ‘itchy’ really loudly so it almost sounds like ‘bitchy’ to rile her up… my spouse does NOT like getting teased.

So I ask my spouse if she wants to finish the lease and ask him to leave. No, she’d rather not. OK.

Well, then he starts accusing my spouse of going through his stuff and being mean to him. I explain that my spouse is a grown adult, and I don’t control her at all and ask him if he wants to move out? No, he’d rather not. OK.

It’s gotten to the point where the two of them are sniping at each other halfway through the house, calling each other immature children, yelling, shouting, throwing things at each other.

She makes ugly gangster faces at him and complains about him playing twin-stick shooters in his room all day on weekends, or He makes a sexist joke or two to get her goat, or he eats his ice cream and she thinks it’s hers. It escalates again, and next thing you know the peanut jar is clunking against his door again.

I still get along well with both of them. I really don’t understand why they can’t stop pressing each other’s angry buttons. He still doesn’t want to move out, and she still doesn’t want to throw him out. We still get 300 every month on the regular, never late.

One of my friends said that they’re probably fucking behind my back, but said friend always says that about people’s girlfriends, and I doubt my spouse would do that.

That being said, I’m becoming uncomfortable with the situation simply because I don’t like watching people be so aggressive with each other. I think I will be telling spouse that I’m going to ask roommate to move out if the two of them can’t stop doing…

I am an author in the process of publishing my book. Due to budgeting stress arising in part from this process, my mother (whose friend was the one who recommended me to my publisher, and who has read the manuscript prior to my starting the process) offered to take me and my younger brother (who is in high-school) out to dinner as a sort of anti-stress break. I have some other running around to do afterwards, and the rendezvous is almost immediately after [Mother] gets off work, so we agree to arrive to the rendezvous in separate vehicles; I pick up [Brother], we go to dinner, and he leaves with [Mother].

Being as it’s my vehicle, I’m the one driving on the way to dinner, which means that an email notification on my phone goes ignored at the time. After we’ve placed our orders for dinner, I pull out my phone to check the email to find it’s from my publisher; I’m currently at the stage of getting a cover illustration, and the artist has just sent me a sketch for review.

Me: Oh, nice!
Mother: What is?
Me: I got an email on the way here. My illustrator’s sending me the first draft for my cover!

I open up the attached file, and it is GORGEOUS. Despite having reviewed [Artist]’s work before (among others, as part of the selection of which artist to request), I’m floored by the image. This is the first time I have had an artist depict something of my original work, and I’m amazed at what I see. I can’t stop myself from showing it to [Mother] and [Brother].

Mother: Oh, wow! She did a great job! You said it was a she, right?
Me: Yeah, her name is [Artist].

After the initial awe has settled down, we’re still waiting for our meal, so I take another look at the image. Per the terms of the illustration deal I have purchased, I do have the right to request revisions (within reason), and I notice some things that I would like changed.

The short version is, the illustration depicts a winged character; I neglected to mention the size of her wings (I acknowledge the blame for that), and [Artist] drew them as large enough to envelop her, when my intention was that they would be about as long as her arms. I share this (and the other revisory points) with [Mother].

Mother: Well, start off by talking about what you LIKED about the artwork. Then maybe go into detail about the character and why you want the changes you want. She is a little person, so maybe say you want the wings to be this big…

My attention fractures when she says “little person”. I have never met [Artist] face-to-face, I’ve not seen any photographs of her (there aren’t any on the publisher’s site, you pick an artist by their artwork), and although [Artist] has an Asian-sounding name, I don’t even know if that’s her legal name or a pen name. [Mother] is not discriminatory in any way, but she has had an Asian coworker in the past, and I’m briefly stunned at this seeming leap of logic.

Anyways, I’m left staring at [Mother] in confusion as she continues advising me, some small part of me taking notes regarding her suggestions as far as requesting revisions go. I’m not the only one, because [Brother] is similarly staring at [Mother].

Mother: (noticing my expression) Something wrong?
Me: It’s just, you said…
Brother: When you called her a “little person”-
Mother: Oh! No, I was talking about [Character]…!

We all start laughing at this point. The character featured on the cover is of short stature – it’s brought up every time a viewpoint character doesn’t recognize her, it’s reflected in her fighting style during the combat passages, and there’s dialogue where a minor antagonist refers to her as a [slur for dwarfism]. Being non-discriminatory myself, I tend to think of people by their person, not their appearance; apparently, I even extend that courtesy to fiction, of my own writing no less!

The three of us had a good laugh while we were waiting for our meal, no harm done. [Mother]’s advice was largely sound, so I took it when composing my revisions later that day, and I am eagerly awaiting the next sketch.

And [Artist], if you’re reading this: you are not to blame for any of the revisions I’m asking. Thank you for your amazing artwork, and thank you especially for setting the chain of events in motion that gave me a much-needed laugh!