I’m at our local sandwich shop. We usually order our food online and pick it up, but we stopped doing that at this shop as they always screw up the order. A turkey sandwich with no turkey? Really?

I order my sandwich. The employee asks what toppings I want.

Me: “Lettuce, tomato, and mustard only.”

Employee: “Do you want salt and pepper?”

Me: “Lettuce, tomato, and mustard only, so no salt or pepper.”

I got my sandwich. It had lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayo, and pepper.

I guess “only” is too complicated of a word. I don’t see us going back again.

Related:
A Big Mayo No No, Part 7
A Big Mayo No No, Part 6
A Big Mayo No No, Part 5
A Big Mayo No No, Part 4
A Big Mayo No No, Part 3

Recently, I had to take out a reverse mortgage. As a result, I have been getting all sorts of emails and letters from other various firms, mortgage and otherwise.

I get this call from someone trying to sell me “appliance” insurance. He tells me that if anything happened to any of my major appliances, they would cover the full value of the replacement. The signup fee is $200 and the monthlies are about $1,500 a year.

Me: “The total I’ve spent on my appliances for the last twenty years is just about the same. So, what I am getting for $1,500 a year?”

Caller: “Oh, very well.” *Click*

Many, many years ago in the 1990s, when GPS, smartphones, online bill pay, and other such commodities were but a sci-fi dream, I was a teenager, and my parents and I took a family trip to California. Since we would be gone for a few weeks, my mom had brought the checkbook and was staying in contact with our house sitter who was opening our mail so that she could pay any bills that came in during our trip. So far, so good.

One morning, after staying in a motel in San Jose, we went in search of a post office to buy more stamps and mail out the bills. This was a suburban area, so we stopped at a gas station, filled the car, and went in to ask the cashier where the post office was. He stared at us in puzzlement.

Cashier: “Post office? I don’t think we have one of those.”

After assuring him that he absolutely did have one — otherwise, the mail would not arrive — we moved on in our search.

A short while later, we saw a traffic cop. Aha! Surely a police officer would know where the post office is. We parked off to the side and walked up to him. We explained how the gas station cashier thought there was no post office and laughed. He laughed with us.

Police Officer: “No, of course, we have one! It’s… It’s…”

Oh, dear. We sensed trouble.

Police Officer: “No, we do have one, I just… don’t think you can get there from here.”

Stymied by how a post office could be located in a place unreachable by humans, we left him at the corner.

In the end, we decided to wait another day to mail our letters. Thankfully, San Francisco had the foresight to install a post office and roads that led all the way to it.

My spouse, son, and I have flown from the east coast to attend an extended family gathering. The day of the gathering is big and energetic, and we all have fun catching up with each other.

Around eight pm, my son comes to me and asks if he can go back to our hotel room, and since he looks tired and I saw him talking and playing with the others all day, I let him. I inform my spouse that I am taking our son back and I think nothing more of it.

My dad thinks otherwise, however, and comes to me the next day.

Dad: “Where were you and [Son] yesterday? I only saw [Spouse] at the gathering.”

Me: “We were there. I was talking with our relatives and [Son] was playing with his cousins.”

Dad: “You sure? I tried looking for you at ten and you were nowhere to be found.”

Me: “Oh, we were in our room by then. I think he came to me around eight and asked if he could go back, so I went with him.”

Dad: “Why didn’t you stay longer? You know we only see everyone else every few years, right?”

Me: “Yes, but [Son] was tired. He was playing and talking a lot yesterday and was clearly at his limit.”

Dad: “He’s too young to be saying he’s too tired! You should have made him stay until everyone else was done!”

Me: “Yeah, but [Spouse] didn’t return until midnight. I really don’t think [Son] would have made it until then.”

Dad: “[Son] is going to be lazy if you keep coddling him like this!”

My dad walked away after that. The funny thing is that I’ve been very attentive to my son’s desire to stay at gatherings as my parents always stayed long after everyone else left and my siblings and I were beyond tired and irritated while our parents chatted. I just don’t want my son to become discouraged from going to social gatherings like I was for a while.

A coworker and I were conducting an interview for an open position with a man who had applied for the job. As the interview progressed, we both noticed that his answers tended to be vague and evasive — not as though he had something to hide, but more like he simply had trouble making up his mind. For example, we’d ask about a time where he had to get information from someone who was uncooperative, and he’d start to answer, and then backtrack and say that probably wasn’t a good example and give him a moment to think of a better one.

Finally, in exasperation, my coworker tried to see if she could better understand his decision-making process: “If we were to offer you this job, what process would you use to decide whether you wanted to take it?”

He hemmed and hawed for a couple of minutes, and then said, “Well, I’d probably have to go home and ask my wife about it.”

He didn’t get the job.