When my best friend was getting married, she asked me to be her photographer of the day. It was my wedding gift for her. The bride and groom were very happy with the results. A couple of weeks later I receive a call from an unknown number.

Caller: “Hi! It’s [Caller’s Name]. I hope you still remember me from (name of besty) wedding? I saw the pictures you took, and they are so neat!”

Me: “Hi! Thank you. Were you the one with the baby-blue dress?”

Caller: “Yeah, that was me! I was just wondering; I am going to get married in three weeks. Could you give me your address so I can send you an invitation?”

Me: “Uhm, wow. Thank you…”

Caller: “Don’t worry about the wedding gift. You can bring your camera and take pictures.”

Me: “So you don’t want to invite me but to hire me?”

Caller: “No, silly. I invite you as a friend and I ask for the same gift as [Besty’s Name].”

She got pretty upset when I told her that this is not going to happen. When I told my besty about this she was really sorry. The girl was her cousin and kept asking for my number even though she begged her not to bother me.

My father has 8 siblings, all but one of whom are married with children and/or step-children, many of whom now have children and/or step-children of their own. At every family get-together, everybody greets everybody by saying, “Hi, I’m X, son/daughter of Y,” and then calculating until you figure out how you’re related. The point is, it’s hard to keep track of our relatives.

One day, just a few weeks before my brother’s wedding, my sister texts me.

Sister: Hey, who’s [First Name] [Last Name]?
Me: That’s our cousin [First Name], [Uncle]’s oldest daughter. [Last Name] is her married name. Why? (My sister had evidently put her full name in her phone contacts but forgotten who the person with that last name was.)
Sister: She just texted me. It sounds like she thinks someone in our family is having a baby. Is there something you’re not telling me…?
Me: Lol I have no idea what that’s about! Maybe she meant to congratulate you on [Brother]’s wedding and got confused? Reply and ask.

Now that my sister knows it’s a safe person to reply to, she does that, then texts me to explain. Apparently, our cousin has a good friend with the same first name as my sister in her phone contacts and sent a congratulatory text to the wrong name on the list.

Moments like this are why big families are so much fun.

The wearing of masks has become mandatory in UK shops, and while most of our customers are co-operative a lot of them want to get into a debate with me on the subject, which gets tiresome after a while. A middle-aged lady is in the shop browsing the merchandise, and overhears me jokingly ask my manager if I can put a 20% surcharge on the bill of the next customer who wants to enter a discussion about wearing masks. Shortly after this, the lady customer’s husband comes in, and I ask him to please put his mask on; he apologises, complies and then says, “Just let me ask you something – what do you honestly think about all this?” and from the other end of the shop his wife shouts, “Twenty per cent!”

I’m chatting online with a friend from the UK and we’re talking about her going back to vet school soon. While I’m usually pretty good at sussing out terms I’m not familiar with from other dialects, some words still throw me for a loop sometimes.

Me: So you’re going back to uni… to take online classes?

Friend: Some practical, some online. I’m in the abattoir for the first week.

I’ve never seen the word “abattoir” before. Looking it up, it’s a…

Me: … slaughterhouse?

Friend: Every abattoir has to have a registered vet, and we all need to learn how to inspect meat.

Me: Oh. Oh!! You’re going to an actual slaughterhouse. I thought that was a metaphor!! Like “the first week is going to be hell” sorta thing.

Friend: Ohhhhhhhh.

The conversation then steered back to Disney movies.

I have been working at my grocery store for a few years so whenever we get anyone new on the floor I take them under my wing until they’re up to speed. Our latest hire is a super-sweet sixteen-year-old girl who is working at the weekends to save up enough to not be a burden on her parents who are struggling a bit. She’s super nice and super hard-working.

This is why it pained me to see her walking away from a customer with tears down her face.

Coworker: *Through sniffs and crying.* “Can you please assist the customer in the baking aisle, I… I wasn’t able to give her what she needed.”

She pushed on through to the back to no doubt calm down, and I proceed to the customer she had just interacted. And there she stood… imagine the typical Not Always Right customer and she fitted the description to a tee – the oversized sunglasses, the designer bag, the “I want to speak to the manager” hairstyle, it was almost comical.

Before I could even speak, she starts running her mouth.

Customer: “Hopefully you’ll be of more use to me than that child you have working here. Absolutely useless, I should complain to management about your hiring processes but lucky for you all I am pressed for time.”

She’s pressed for time, but she hasn’t actually asked me anything yet. I stand and smile patiently.

Customer: “I’m making a mirror-glaze cake for the school bake sale and I refuse to be outdone. I need gelatine for the glaze and your stupid little colleague asked me if I would be making the cake for vegetarians! As if I would be stupid enough to accidentally put any meat into my cake!”

I realize my coworker was trying to be helpful and was likely recommending gelatine products that were standard (i.e. made from collagen from animals) or vegetarian options. However, this customer has still not stopped rattling on.

Customer: “I have been making the best cakes at my school bake sales for years and no one can believe they are vegetarian and vegan, and I do not intend to lose this year! Now if you would like to not get management called, please fetch me five more of these.”

The customer holds up a package of the gelatine she is using for her mirror-glaze, a brand that is most definitely NOT vegetarian.

Me: “Certainly, ma’am. I wouldn’t want to tell you how to bake your own cakes, especially when it sounds like you have as much experience as you do.”

She sniffs in approval of my “subservience” and I fetch her items for her.

Just over a week later I am working in another corner of the store, and I hear a loud barrage of obscenities and the voice of my manager trying to calm someone down. I peek my head around the corner, and I see the same customer, snarling and almost foaming at the mouth. She is pointing at my sixteen-year-old coworker and the manager is standing in the way.

When I next see the coworker in the break room, I ask what that was all about.

Coworker: “Oh, that. That woman is the mother of someone I go to school with, the leader of the “mean-girl” pack. Her daughter gets away with bullying because as soon as there is a complaint, she rolls up in her fancy car and strong-arms the principal into doing her bidding.”

Me: “Okay?”

Coworker: “She’s run the school charity bake sale every year since I can remember, something to make her look good but she uses it for bragging rights. She always boasts that her cakes are vegan and such, so when she found me in the aisle last week asking about gelatine I thought I should confirm if she was making a vegan cake or not. That’s when she exploded on me and I… I got a bit upset.”

Me: “You did fine, don’t worry about that.”

Coworker: “Oh I’m not worried. I posted this on the school’s Facebook page on the bake sale event.”

She shows me her phone. She posted this next to a picture of her “vegan” cakes.

Coworker’s Post: “Hey, Mrs. [Customer’s Name] if your cakes are vegan why did you scream at me to the point of crying last week when I tried to stop you from buying [meat-based gelatine] to put into your cake?”

What followed was a string of comments stating shock and disgust, such as “I’m a vegan and you made me eat meat?!” and “I’m never eating your s*** ever again!” and so on. It got worse, but hey… internet comments.

Coworker: “So she came back and tried to get me fired. Not much they can do though – I read the rules – I am simply a student at a school sending a personal message on said-schools private chat group. It’s a school issue, not a [Grocery Store] issue. She couldn’t get me expelled so now she’s trying to get me fired.”

She was right. The store or management couldn’t do anything, and the customer couldn’t even get Corporate to do her bidding, something she wasn’t used to. My sweet young coworker who I thought was going to be a quiet little sensitive thing only needed to work in a grocery store for a few weeks to become something scary and capable of revenge. Ah, retail…

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