About ten years ago, I worked in a rather popular electronics store. An elderly woman came up to me one day and produced a large cordless phone handset from her purse.

Woman: “This is not working.”

Me: “What do you mean by ‘not working’?”

Woman: “It just goes dead when I try to use it.”

Me: “Okay. Let’s check it out. Do you have the base set? We’ll plug it in here and see what’s happening.”

Woman: *Confused* “I left the base at home. Why would you need it?”

Turns out, she would lift the cordless phone from the base, put it into her handbag, and then head into town, but whenever she would try and use it, it wouldn’t do anything. Naturally — she was miles away from her home (and the base).

I tried to explain to her how these things worked, but she just offered the counter-argument:

Woman: “But I see folks everywhere using their phones on the street!”

I used to work at a gas station. One day, our sign malfunctioned and displayed a lower price than was actually charged by the pumps. It was something like four cents a gallon difference. We couldn’t fix it, and we couldn’t make the pumps charge a different price, so we were just giving anyone who complained a refund in cash. (My manager said he’d sort the shortage with corporate later.)

I had some version of this conversation about a dozen times that night.

Customer: *Raging* “YOUR PUMP OVERCHARGED ME!”

Me: “Yes, they’re malfunctioning, but I’d be happy to refund the difference to you. Which pump are you on?”

Customer: *Raging more* “THIS IS FALSE ADVERTISING! BAIT AND SWITCH! I ONLY STOPPED HERE BECAUSE THE GAS WAS CHEAPER!”

Me: “Uh-huh. Which pump was that? Give me a second to figure out your refund…”

And then I’d give them their refund, which was inevitably an amount less than $2, and loudly count it out for them.

They’d slink off, and as a bonus win, everyone else in line who had the same complaint would be chill.

I work at a gas station in a pretty fancy/bougie part of town. I work with the night manager from ten at night through to six in the morning. I’m relatively new, so I’m still learning about the quirky little processes that are always unique to certain places of work.

A customer pulls up around 1:00 am.

Customer: “I want $10 of gas on tank three.”

He tries to hand me a hundred-dollar bill.

Me: “Do you have anything smaller, or a card payment? I can’t break that.”

Customer: “That’s all I got. It’s legal tender, so take it and figure it out.”

Me: “If you got a bit more gas, I could—”

Customer: “Nope, not going much further, so I don’t need you making me buy more than I need. Take my legal tender and figure it out.”

At this, my manager steps to the side and opens up a locked cupboard that has always been marked as “revenge rolls”. I’ve had yet to ask why. They begin to take out rolls of coins, adding up to $90. It’s a lot of coins, and it takes over almost all the counter between the customer and me.

Customer: “What the f*** is this?!”

Manager: “$90 change, as you’ve requested.”

Customer: “I can’t take all those f****** coins!”

Manager: “You want $10 on tank three? Take my legal tender and figure it out.”

The customer swears a little more but accepts the ridiculous amount of coins, storms out, puts $10 in his tank, and drives off.

Me: *To my manager* “Now I know why they’re called ‘revenge rolls’. Rolls of coins.”

Manager: “Yup. I save them for special customers. You wanna come in here at 1:00 am and demand change from a hundred? You f****** got it!”

My eyes catch something else in the cupboard.

Me: “You actually have some spare tens and twenties in there, too?”

Manager: “For those customers who say ‘please’.”

I may have needed the job for college, but because of that manager, I stayed a little longer in the role than I had to.

If you know anything about New Zealand, you should know about our birds. We have multiple smart, playful, and above all, CHEEKY birds. You probably have even heard of the one I’m about to talk about, the Kea, most often known for their love of taking apart cars.

At the nearest zoo to me, they have recently added a walk-through aviary with airlocks for this mischief-maker on wings. The zoo is partnered with our conservation department, and a lot of our natives are here for breeding purposes or (the little blue penguins) because they can’t be released due to injury.

During this visit, we watch the Kea carefully tear apart some enrichment for the treats within, and we listen to the keeper talk about their habits and their intelligence — considered to be on par with a three-year-old human.

A little later on, we come to look at them again, and now they’re being weighed! It is a hilarious scene, and we are delighted to be able to watch. We all notice that the keeper is taking down the notes on a heavily padded digital tablet.

Me: “Oh, wow. That’s a big case you have on that thing.”

Keeper: “Hah, no kidding. We need it. If I put this down for a second, these guys will go for it.”

The keeper showed us a few beak-marks on the edges, chuckling.

We continued to watch as she tried to coax one of the birds out of a spot it was napping in, and, as we humans do, put the tablet down for a split second on the surface beside her thigh.

INSTANTLY, a bird on the other side of the enclosure RACED across the floor, running over my friend’s foot, in order to grab the tablet.

No destruction was to be had, thankfully, but we still laugh at how eager that Kea was to get to their desired chaos.

I’m working as a controller for a taxi company but am remote working from home.

Me: “Good morning! [Taxi Firm], how may I help?”

Customer: “I need a taxi; I am a regular.”

Me: “Sorry, we’re fully booked at the moment, but I can provide you one in the next forty minutes.”

Customer: “No, I need it in five minutes.”

Me: “Sorry, I don’t have any cabs available. I can’t send you one.”

Customer: “You’re lying! You have cabs available! You’re just being very unprofessional, and I will complain to the office about you not knowing how to do the work!”

They start shouting, and I continue being apologetic until my coworker takes the phone from me.

Coworker: “Nothing available! What do you want, a screenshot of our screen saying that we have nothing available?!”

Customer: *Continues shouting*

Coworker: “From now on, we won’t provide you with our services. Thank you for calling. Bye!” *Click*