Client: “The Vice President did a three-hour speech that needs to be cut down to thirty minutes, and I need a VHS on my desk in half an hour.”

Me: “I can’t possibly make that deadline. Also, are you sure you don’t want a DVD?”

Client: “You are so negative! Why can’t you do it?”

Me: “I can’t cut down a three-hour speech in half an hour. Even if I could, it would take me more than thirty minutes to make the VHS and spot-check it. It can’t be done.”

Client: “You always have an excuse. I need that VHS now.”

I finished the VHS in four hours. It sat on the client’s desk for a week before I received this email:

Client: “Received your VHS — late! Why is this on tape instead of DVD?”

A highly-anticipated film has finally been released (a very pink film about a popular children’s toy), and the evening screenings of the first weekend are especially very busy. I made sure to book tickets for my friends and myself well ahead of time, so we have great seats at an agreeable time, which is not the last screening of the day. (This will turn out to be important.) 

As the trailers and commercials play, people are still coming into the theater, trying to find their seats in the near-dark. The theater has assigned seating, and while this usually isn’t strictly adhered to on emptier screenings, this particular show is nearly sold out, so everyone wants to get into their assigned seat.

The film starts and we all enjoy it. It’s great! About thirty minutes from the end, when the film has been playing for well over an hour, three people come into the cinema, turning on the flashlight apps on their phones to see where they’re going. They start to walk all the way up the stairs, looking at the seating row numbers, and they end up at ours. They start to walk toward us. Mind you, we’re just about in the middle, so they have to pass directly in front of at least six other people before they get to our spot. The woman in front shines her bright flashlight on my seat number.

Woman: “Excuse me. I think these are our seats?”

Me: “What? No, they’re not. We’ve been sitting here the whole time.”

Woman: “Is this row [number]?”

Me: “Yes.”

Woman: “Seat [number]?”

Me: “Yes, but I bought a ticket for this seat.”

Woman: “No, I did. Look.”

She gestures to the guy behind her to hand her the tickets. In the meantime, I can see that she holds her phone in such a way that her flashlight shines directly toward the several rows sitting in front of us. People are turning around, wondering what’s going on back there and why someone is shining this bright light in their peripheral vision.

The woman gets the tickets and shows them to me. Sure enough, they have the same seat number on them. However, I notice something else.

Me: “These are for the screening at 8:00 pm.”

Woman: “Yes, so?”

Me: “This is the 6:00 pm screening. We’ve been sitting here for over an hour and a half.”

The woman checks her watch.

Woman: “Oh… sorry!”

She informed her friends, and they all turned around and walked back out, still shining the flashlights the entire way, bothering people with them. She had come in right in the middle of an important dialogue scene, which I completely missed! Hopefully, they’ll check the time more carefully next time.

Customer: “Do you have any books on ghosts and demons?”

Me: “Fiction or non-fiction?”

Customer: *Almost offended* “Non-fiction of course!”

Me: “We have a few, such as a history of ghost sightings and the paranormal.”

Customer: “No, do you have anything specific to demonic possession? I just saw that Conjuring movie, and I had no idea that it was a real thing!”

Me: “Well… those movies might be based on real people and what they claimed they saw, but they’re extremely exaggerated, and I wouldn’t use them as evidence for what is real.”

Customer: “But it said it was based on a true story!”

I have also recently seen the movie.

Me: “I think it actually said it was inspired by the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, which allows the filmmakers a bit more… creative license.”

Customer: “Well, that’s disappointing. I wanted to learn about demonic possession!”

Me: “Well, we still have books related to the subject that you might find interesting.”

Customer: “Oh, good. My new neighbors have been bugging me for weeks, so I wanted to curse them.”

Me: *Lost for words* “That’s… interesting?“

I bring him to our small section on the paranormal and leave him to it. Ten minutes later, he’s leaving the store, shouting over to me: 

Customer: “Useless! None of them are about haunting your neighbor with a demon!”

It is 2005, and “King Kong” is playing in our theater. A man and his young son are leaving the screen at the end of a showing. I overhear their conversation while they wait for someone to come out of the restroom.

Father: “That was a lot of fun!”

Son: “Yeah! Thanks, Dad.”

Father: “I wonder if that’s why they changed the top of the Empire State Building.”

Son: “Huh?”

Father: “I saw pictures of how the top of the Empire State Building looked when they first built it, and how it looks today is different. Was it because of King Kong?”

Son: “Uh… are you messing with me?”

Father: “What do you mean?”

Son: *Laughing* “Like a giant gorilla climbed the building in real life!”

Father: “Oh. I thought it was based on a true story.”

Son: “It’s a giant gorilla!”

Father: “What? Lots of animals go extinct!”

Customer: “One adult and one child for The Boy And The Heroin, please.”

Me: “You mean The Boy And The Heron?”

The customer glances up at the movie names above me, then down at the little seven- or eight-year-old boy he’s here with, and then back at me. 

Customer: “Yes, that sounds more age-appropriate.”