I was at a self-serve gas station, pumping gas into my car and minding my own business. I had just gotten off of work at a fast food place where the uniform was a plain grey dress shirt and black pants. The uniform of this gas station was a bright red polo and dark pants; they’re known for their employees wearing bright red shirts.

A screeching woman came running up to me.

Woman: “Do you work here?!”

Me: “Absolutely not. The employees are all inside; this is a self-serve gas station.”

Woman: “Well, you don’t need to be so rude. You are wearing a uniform!”

She stormed off inside. 

Yes, I was wearing a uniform, but not for there, and she was the one who came running up to me while I was pumping my gas at my own personal vehicle, being rude. She must look for anybody wearing a uniform anywhere and think they work there. [Sandwich Shop Chain] employee at the gas station, do you work here?

Where I live, there are popular gas stations that provide full service for pumping gas, fluid checks, windshield washing, etc., at no extra cost. Maybe if I had been wearing a bright red polo, I’d understand her thinking I was an employee. If she needed help pumping gas, she could have pushed the “Help” button that is on every gas pump to get someone to help her.

Related:
Uniformly Rude

My cousin has had lots of partners, and she has two kids.

Grandma: “[Cousin], are you ever going to get married?”

Cousin: “It’s not the same nowadays. We don’t buy cars without test-driving them first.”

Grandma: “Yeah. But they don’t let you put a hundred thousand miles on them, either.”

The point goes to Granny.

In the mid-1990s, I started working for a large computer company in the Midwest. Holiday season 1996 sales went nuts because they were first to market with an internal 28.8k modem, to the point that we poor schmucks on phone tech support were working 80-, 90-, and 100-hour weeks to try to keep the hold time down to two hours or less. We used to send out a VHS tape but had to discontinue that earlier in the year when someone at the video production company decided to splice adult content into the setup video, so no more setup VHS tapes were being sent out.

A lot of the calls had to do with setup, how to connect the monitor, the keyboard, or the mouse, even though the back of the computer was color-coded. But computers as household items were still relatively new, and there was a lot of hand-holding, old people trying to figure out that complicated AOL, maybe someone actually had a problem, etc. — all in all, pretty easy money.

Enter this dad on the line.

Me: “Hello, thanks for calling [Company] Computers. My name is [My Name]. Could I—”

Caller: “What in the f*** are you doing? How the h*** can you send out that computer with that on there?!”

He continued to scream for the next several minutes. (It felt way longer.) Then, he finally calmed down.

Me: “Well, I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues with your computer. Let’s see what we can do.”

I got his information.

Me: “Okay, so what software was on the computer?”

Caller: “It’s not the software. I went to try out AOL, and all of a sudden, when I typed in the browser, it was showing [adult content] sites. Is that some kind of weird joke you guys do there? I remember you guys were sending out [adult content] tapes to people.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. The tapes were from a third-party company, and we fired them and destroyed any tapes.”

Then, I heard a voice in the background.

Male Voice: “Dad, I’m headed out for a bit.”

Caller: “Okay, brat, just wait a minute…”

Me: “Ummm, mind if I ask a question? How old is your son?”

Caller: “Oh, he’s fourteen.”

I decided this was the time to lead him down the path.

Me: “So, like I said, I’m sorry that showed up on your computer, but when we build your system, it’s never attached to a live phone line to test the modem, I’ll talk you through what we do.”

I talked him through opening a DOS shell and issuing a debug command to run a self-test on the modem, and he heard that lovely sound we all knew so well in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The line went silent, but I could hear his wheels turning.

Me: “So, you said your son is fourteen. Was he on the computer last night?”

Caller: “Why, yes. He said he had homew—”

The penny finally dropped.

Caller: “Oh, my God. I’m so, so sorry for yelling at you like that. You didn’t deserve it.”

I was grinning evilly. By that point, I was forty-five or so minutes into the call. My manager swung by to ask if it was all okay, and I waved him away.

At that point, I was hearing in the background of the call:

Caller: “GET OVER HERE, BRAT! I JUST SPENT TIME YELLING AT THIS GUY WHEN YOU WERE LOOKING AT [ADULT CONTENT] UNDER MY ROOF? YOU’RE GOING TO GET ON THAT PHONE AND APOLOGIZE TO HIM!”

This kid knew he was busted and busted bad. He meekly apologized for looking at the adult content. I was just trying to keep from laughing out loud. Then, there was a bit more yelling that I couldn’t make out, but it did sound like Mom joined in on the berating.

Dad got back on the phone.

Caller: “Once again, I’m so so sorry that I acted that way to you. I shouldn’t have sworn or yelled at you.”

Cue Mom in the background:

Caller’s Wife: “YOU DID WHAT?!”

At that point, the phone hung up. I had my manager pull the call because there were a lot of people who had to listen to it just for the humor aspect of the call.

I used to work at an outdoor education program that involves middle schools bringing their students to stay overnight for three to five days. One week, we had a slightly more affluent group, and one of the girls was having a birthday during the week. This happens all the time, so we’ll usually sing for the kids, and their parents can pack a card and treat for them.

This girl’s dad did not find this celebratory enough. He asked the school to ask my boss if he could fly his plane over the field and drop bags of candy for the kids. The camp owner obviously said no because this was a huge safety issue and he didn’t want to get sued. The teachers told us that it would not happen.

Then, during the week, we started to hear murmurs from the teachers that maybe the dad was planning to do it anyway. My boss confronted them and they assured her that it definitely wasn’t going to happen, that they were just talking about how they would have done it if they could have. My boss was very suspicious, so on the day of the girl’s birthday, she warned us to drop off our kids with the teachers for our break and go straight back to our cabins so we wouldn’t be around and liable just in case.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, the dad flew by and started dropping trash bags full of candy out of his plane. He clearly was not well-practiced in this because the majority of the bags ended up landing in trees and getting caught there.

My boss was furious and the school was banned from ever returning. I think the camp director also tried to get the dad fined for littering because of all the trash bags in the trees, but I’m not sure if that ever went anywhere. Luckily, no kids were hurt.

I work as an IT-support team lead. We have a typical office building of a few floors. Each floor has its own printer. On one hectic day, I’m trying to do inventory on the IT department’s floor. I’m in the middle of scrounging for all sorts of technical assets that my barcode reader can get its filthy red line onto when, suddenly, I hear the audible sound of high heels clacking on the floor, and by the sounds of them, lost.

The person opens a random door — which happens to belong to the brand-new director of the infrastructure bureau — and exclaims that their floor printer is not working.  The director confused, sends the person down the hall, saying, “Maybe you’ll have more luck there.”

They turn the corner and look at me, still lost.

Me: “What’s wrong with the printer? Did it show any error codes or anything along those lines?”

Employee: “I don’t know. It hasn’t worked for the past four years!”

Now, I’m confused. There aren’t any broken printers on that person’s floor — not even in the whole building.

Me: “Can you show me your process for printing a file?”

We go to their office, they log in, and we are immediately faced with an overcrowded desktop. Alas, that is not the issue at hand. They open up MS Word, write in “test”, save it, and then close the document. They start getting up from their chair and try to take me to the printer.

Me: “All right, now we just need to print it.”

They look at me, even more confused.

Employee: “I just did? The file should be printing right now if the printer worked!”

In short, I sat them down, introduced to them the printing function, and left, wondering how it was possible that they hadn’t needed to print before for four years, only to conclude that the printer that was whirring daily with documents must be broken.