I used to work at a little hipster restaurant in my city, not in the best area, but not in the worst area. We were a really popular place but very small and in an old building upstairs from a coffee shop, so there was always a long line of people down the stairs on weekends.

We just cleaned off a large table, and this random disheveled young guy just walks past everyone on the stairs and sits down at the table. 

Me: “Uh, can we help you?” 

He’s obviously on some psychedelic. He just puts his hands up and says: 

Customer: “Let me draw you a graph.”

Me: “Yeah, no, thanks. Let’s get you out of here.”

We escort him out, and as we pass the host stand, he grabs some paper and a pen and shouts: 

Customer: “Let me draw you a GRAAAaaaph!“

Coworker: “A graph of what?! How high are you?!”

I am having a hard day, but it’s no one’s problem but my own, so I am grinning through it and not letting it affect my work as a checkout operator.

A man and his little daughter are checking out and seem to be in the middle of a conversation.

Daughter: “So, I can grow up to be anything I want?”

Customer: “That’s right. If you work hard at school, you could be a doctor or an astronaut! No job is too good for my little girl!”

The daughter sees me, and I smile over at her.

Daughter: *Talking to her dad but looking at me* “I want to do what this lady does! She always helps us with the ice cream!”

The dad looks over at me and smiles kindly.

Customer: *Talking to his daughter, but also looking at me* “Like I said, no job is too good for my little girl.”

They both smiled at me, and the little girl excitedly asked me lots of cute questions and observations about my job, such as, “You get to press ALL the buttons?” 

It made me feel so much better!

I overhear a mother who is shopping with her son, likely around three years old.

Young Boy: “Mom! I gotta go potty! Moooom!“

She ignores him and keeps shopping.

Young Boy: *Almost crying* “Moooom! I gotta go!”

Mother: “Stop it, [Young Boy], I’m almost done!”

He cries and runs… dropping a trail of turds out of the leg of his shorts.

Me: “Ma’am, your son has had an accident.”

Mother: “So?”

Me: “You’re cleaning that up.”

Mother: *Stunned* “Why?!” 

Me: “Because the customer washroom is literally fifteen feet away and has been available this whole time…”

My dad moved for work to a small country town in the outback. Actually, I think we were a hamlet or a village, technically. The point is that it was a very small place with a lot of old, white, salt-of-the-earth men. The white-haired Boomer-generation man who ran the local hardware store was exactly what you’d expect from a man running a hardware store in a small farming town. 

That made it even more surprising that said hardware owner agreed to let me work there on weekends. I am weedy, I have never nailed a wall in my life, and my clothing choices lean to the swishy-skirt side of nonbinary. I was not who you expected in a hardware store.

Still, money was money, and I wanted to make a good impression. On my first day, I wore my manliest pants and a nice button-down shirt. The owner greeted me and, in order, showed me how to work the register and how to search his inventory database and then got down to running down with me the details for how I’d be paid and what he wanted me to do if I had to call in sick.

Owner: “Now, I think that’s the basics, so the rest I can show you on the— Oh, no, wait. There are questions I’m meant to ask. What was… Ah, do you have any of them pronouns?”

Me: “Sorry?”

Owner: “Pronouns. My daughter says it’s important these days.”

Me: “Um… I prefer they/them.”

Owner: “That all?”

Me: “Like, do I use other pronouns? Nooooot really?”

Owner: “All righty, you show me how to do that later. And if you change your mind, no tails on the floors.”

Me: “Wait, tails?”

Owner: “My grandkid, she and her mom come up for the holidays, and she’ll wear them cat ears, but tails aren’t safe when you’re moving pallets. The identity stuff is all well and good, but we don’t compromise on safety here, understand?”

Me: “Hold up. It doesn’t bother you?”

Owner: “The old folks round here might say they’re not taking hardware advice from some cat-not-man, but they come in already thinking they know better and weren’t going to take any advice from you kids on the floor anyway. So I don’t see what difference it makes.”

Best job I ever had.

My mom just died in 2021, and we inherited some money from her. I invested mine into my tiny home, and I was waiting for it to be finished so that I could move out of my mom’s house, where I was still living when she passed away.  

I live from month to month on a fixed income.

It was getting to grass-cutting season, so I called my uncle and asked him if he would come cut my grass, which he had always done for my mom. He said that he always was paid $40 to do so, in addition to a $10 tip. I said okay to the $40.

He came and cut it, and he left the grass all over the concrete; he did not blow it off or anything. Well, I had already made out the check for $40. He started to bad-mouth me, saying that it took gas to come up here, blah, blah, blah, to try to get the extra tip out of me.

Me: “I already made the check out for the amount that we originally agreed on.”

He accepted the check as it was written, but the next time he passed by the house, guess who was cutting her own yard? Me! I had managed to save up and get myself a push lawn mower.

I never asked him to help me with my own yard again as long as I lived there.