My 8-year-old niece gets a couple of 18″ tall dolls and decides that she really wants beds for them. My mother mentions having trouble finding doll beds that are long enough, so I search a Swedish furniture store’s website. I find something that looks nice, 20.5″ long, and I call Mom about it. She hates computers and Dad is hard of hearing, and she says she’ll get him to search when he’s free. I get a call half an hour later…

Mom: Ikea doesn’t have any 18″ doll beds on their website.
Me: I just saw it there, what are you searching for?
Mom: Dad searched and nothing came up.
Me: Yes, but was exactly did he put in the search?
Mom: He searched for ’18” doll bed’.
Me: That’s why you didn’t find anything, it’s not listed as 18″. Try searching for just ‘doll bed’.

I ended up searching for it again and giving her the product name, holding the phone away from my ear as she yelled the spelling out to Dad. I hope it’s worth it!

At the drive-thru of a McDonald’s located between two other restaurants:
Me: Welcome to McDonald’s; what can I get for you?
Customer: Do you have the chicken?
Me: Do you mean the sandwiches or the nuggets?
Customer: No, I don’t mean that.
I start listing our chicken menu options, but none of them are what she wants, and I’m starting to be confused. Eventually:
Customer: Do you have the chicken with mashed potatoes?
Light finally dawns on me.
Me: This is McDonald’s, ma’am. KFC is next door.

My younger brother was born shortly before my older brother and I turned ten and seven, respectively (yes, very close birthdays). Being a newborn, he of course needed a lot of attention and care, far more than we older siblings did. Knowing that Mom and Dad were busy, especially with Mom recovering from a c-section, we figured we’d be thoughtful and responsible.

Brother and Me: Mom, don’t worry about us. You can love the new baby more; he needs you more than we do. It’s okay.

Mom, extremely concerned: What? No! I love you all the same! Your brother needs me more because he can’t do much of anything for himself, but I love you all so, so much. Are you feeling ignored?

Brother and Me: No, we’re good. He’s just a baby. Go ahead, you can love him more because he needs it. We’ll be fine! We’re big kids.

To this day, my parents haven’t shown favoritism to one of us over another, and my older brother and I aren’t sure why we felt it necessary to be so “helpful” to Mom. We were simply very insistent that she was free to love our younger brother more.

It was hot summer in our tearoom with open windows, and one customer had a complaint that there was a fly near him 😂. I literally didnt know what to answer 😅.

I’m a faculty support assistant in a university business school. We hired a new temp almost three months ago and she is not working out (to put it mildly). She still requires constant hand-holding to complete the simplest tasks, and her communication skills leave much to be desired (again, mild). As a temp, she doesn’t have a [university] credit card, so she’s been using mine for faculty purchases. Which means I get dragged into nonsense like this.

Recently our manager was on vacation, and the manager of our sister department was covering in her absence. The temp sent her this email one morning:

“[Manager] and I have been making progress with various issues regarding [Professor]’s Google Cloud account and payment method. Since she is out of office, I am reaching out to provide updates about the situation. The credit card ending in [XXXX] was declined for an unknown reason. The auto pay was not able to process the payment for Google Cloud. I was not able to log into the account using credentials provided, but just resolved it yesterday. Under Payment Methods, it says the account is closed but this morning I just resolved this issue. As of now, I am not able to pay the invoice for August yet. Please let me know how I should proceed. Thank you.”

The manager understandably latches on to the one comprehensible thing in that word salad of contradictions–card [xxxx] was declined–and loops me in, asking me to call the bank to figure out what happened and get the charge cleared. After multiple tries navigating through the maze of automated menus (since it’s a corporate line card, they mostly expect you to call in to report a lost card), I finally get to a live agent, who is able to tell me that there is a pending transaction from Google for $3.96 and nothing declined. Well then.

I report this to the manager and temp, asking the temp to confirm the amount is correct. The reply:

“Yes that is correct and I have the payment receipt to confirm. Thank you very much!”

And thank <i>you</i> for unapologetically wasting 30 minutes of my life! Never in my working life have I been more dumbfounded, and I did retail for ten years. Just to confirm–there was nothing wrong with the payment or account, and the declined payment she referred to (I decided later) was one that happened <i>two months previously</i> . No, I don’t know why she never clarified that, even though she was on the email from the manager telling me to call the bank. No, I don’t know what she was trying to ask about in the first place. And no, I don’t know why she’s still employed. Thankfully, I’m moving to a new role and have washed my hands of her.