Grandma Grammar And Her Book Of “Mispells”
It’s my first week working at a fast food place. A coworker has asked me to print out a simple sign to say the ice cream machine is broken (again!) and tape it to the door. As soon as I do so, an old lady who has been sitting in the corner for an hour rushes over to the sign. She seems to read it while licking her lips, and as soon as she spots something, she literally runs to the counter and starts shouting at my coworker, almost foaming at the mouth.
Customer: *With the barely-contained zeal of a child about to open a Christmas present.* “You misspelled the word [word]!”
Coworker: “Oh, so we did! [My Name], can you reprint this but with [word] corrected?”
Me: “Oh, my, I didn’t notice! Will do that right now!”
Coworker: *To the customer.* “Thank you for letting us know.”
Customer: *Visibly deflating.* “That’s it?”
Coworker: “That’s what, ma’am?”
Customer: “You made a mistake.”
Coworker: “That’s right. We’re all just human; mistakes happen. We appreciate you letting us know so that we can correct it.”
Customer: “But… that’s all?”
Coworker: “Yup!”
Customer: “You should be more upset!” *Storms off.*
Me: “What was all that about?”
Coworker: “That was ‘Grandma Grammar’, and you were bound to meet her eventually. She comes in every day, sometimes for a coffee, but mostly she checks any new sign we might have printed for grammatical errors.”
Me: “Ooookay… but why?”
Coworker: “Based on how excited she gets whenever she spots a mistake, I think she gets some kind of thrill from it? I don’t really know, but it’s always fun to see her reaction when we treat a small mistake the way it should be treated… small. She seems to think we should be prostrating ourselves and begging for forgiveness or something.”
Me: “Oh… wow. Now I feel bad about misspelling that word.”
Coworker: “Don’t be! Sometimes I leave out a comma on purpose just to see her take the bait and then experience the disappointment of the staff just not giving a f*** when she does. She has her little power trips; we have ours.”
Working retail… you learn some things about people.
