Our store has just fully reopened after lockdowns, but management is mandating that customers be vaccinated. Of course, this goes down with certain groups of the population about as well as can be expected.

Customer: “You can’t force me to take a vaccine!” 

Manager: “No one is forcing you, ma’am, but we also don’t have to let you into the store.”

Customer: “It’s my right as an American to go where I please without being forced to be vaccinated!”

Manager: “This store is private property, ma’am, and we can exercise our right to deny you entry.”

Customer: “Freedom has been a right in this country since 1776! Vaccinations are an attack on those freedoms! George Washington is turning in his grave right now!”

Manager: “George Washington made Congress force all his troops in the Revolutionary War to be inoculated against smallpox, ma’am. Please try again.”

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I am a relatively new air steward, and I have just finished responding to a customer who has been abusing the call button.

Me: “The guy in 45A has had about four gin and tonics. I think I’m going to cut him off as he’s looking a little woozy. I don’t think I could handle it if he threw up.” 

Coworker #1: “Oh, a little vomit is nothing. We get that all the time.” 

Me: “Oh, I know, they drill that into you in training, but I don’t want to contribute to it if I can help it.” 

Coworker #1: “One time, we had this guy who took a s*** in one of the sick bags so that he didn’t have to go down to the bathroom. We couldn’t find what was causing the smell and even almost considered landing the plane early as it got so bad, but the pilot noted that we were less than an hour from the destination, and landing, unboarding, and all would take longer, so we had to endure it.”

Coworker #2: “I remember that flight! We found the bag after everyone got up and left. There was some splatter on the seat, floor, and wall, too. We had to use a different plane and hazmat that one.”

Another coworker, who has been silently mixing a drink in the corner, joins in.

Coworker #3: “Oh, that’s nothing. I once had to stop one of our passengers from breastfeeding her cat.”

My eyes go wide.

Coworker #3: “I mean, I know they like milk and everything… but… yeah… That image stays with you…” 

Coworker #1: “Anyway, welcome to the airline industry!”

I’m at a bridal shower. At the entrance, we were all given a scrunchie with the instructions that if we hear anyone say “wedding”, we take their scrunchie. The person with the most scrunchies at the end will win a prize. The mother of the groom is there with her two teenage daughters. I’ve met them a couple of times, but I don’t know them very well. [Mother] keeps telling everyone who will listen that she has spent A FORTUNE on the wedding.

Mother: “Oh, my gosh, the caterer was $17,000! I couldn’t believe it! I said, ‘[Son], if this is what you want for your wedding—’”

Daughter: *Grinning* “Mom, give me your scrunchie.”

Mother: “What? Why?”

Daughter: “You said the W-word.”

She puts her hand out, but her mother swats her away.

Mother: “Don’t be stupid. I’m not playing right now.”

Daughter: “But Mom—”

Mother: “Go somewhere else. I’m talking.”

The girls leave the table. [Mother] is still talking about how much she has spent, even though everyone around her is uncomfortable. 

Mother: “I just couldn’t believe it! Her dress— Did you see her dress? When I got married, my wedding dress was $800. Hers is over $8,000!”

Man At The Table: “I’ll take your scrunchie, thank you!”

Mother: “That’s just a stupid game. Nobody is actually playing. Even the bride thought it was dumb.”

The bride is standing nearby and turns toward us. She comes over, and removes the scrunchie from [Mother]’s wrist, and gives it to the man.

Bride: “It is a stupid game, but it’s also fun.”

Man At The Table: “Actually, it should go to [Daughter] since [Mother] said the W-word before, too.”

Bride: “Okay!”

She took the scrunchie and gave it to the girl. [Mother] stopped talking and got into her phone. [Daughter] actually won the “stupid game” and got a $100 gift card as a prize.

Client: “I am not happy with your work. I turned down another quote to work with you, so I want more out of you.”

Me: “What did the other people quote you?”

Client: “I’ll email it to you.”

Within a minute, the forwarded email arrives in my inbox.

Me: “They quoted you twice my rate for half my work.”

Client: “Which is unacceptable! We need to revisit your output.”

Me: “And my quote.”

Client: “Exactly!”

The client didn’t exactly understand what I meant by that until he saw my quote rise with his heightened output expectations.

A friend and I are customers in a shop, mostly just doing the tourist thing. Someone’s kids are sprinting around the store doing a hide-and-seek kind of game around the shelves. They’re noisy but not destroying anything, so I’d count that as a small blessing for the staff.

Friend: “Hey, let’s get lunch after this. My stomach is starting to gnaw at me.”

I grab my phone and use it to Google food places nearby, and we find a fish place with pretty good ratings. We’re kind of gathered around my phone, looking at their online menu.

Me: “Their parmesan pollock looks pretty good…”

Kid’s Voice: “Pollock!”

I look up, surprised, as one of the kids goes sprinting through the store yelling “pollock” loudly like he just learned a new swear word. My friend snorts in amusement, and I shrug. It doesn’t take two minutes for the other kids in the store to take up the new word.

Friend: “I guess it does kind of sound like a word you’d say when you stub your toe…”

I snicker.

Apparently, the kids’ mom thinks so, too, because she storms over to us while we stand in line and starts berating us for “teaching children bad words”.

Me: “Ma’am, I didn’t teach your children any bad words.”

Mother: “Then why are they yelling that word all over the store?”

Me: “Because they probably don’t know what it means, just that it sounds like it might be a bad word?”

Mother: *Crossing her arms* “If it’s so harmless, then maybe you should explain the word.”

She has a smirk as if she thinks she has caught me in a lie and I’m going to fumble with the explanation.

Me: *Rolling my eyes* “Fine. It’s a fish.”

Mother: *Blank stare* “Excuse me?”

Me: “A pollock is a member of the cod family.”

Her blank stare continues.

Me: “Cod. You know, like codfish? We’re going to a fish restaurant, and I want to try it.”

Mother: *Suspiciously* “If it’s called cod, then why did you call it a pollock?”

I open my phone and show her.

Me: “Because it’s called pollock on the menu.”

The woman scowled at my phone for a long time and then turned and stomped away, muttering about made-up words to hide swear words.

My friend and I paid for our items and left the store, still occasionally hearing a child’s voice yell, “Pollock!” The fish, swear word or not, tasted great, by the way.