Our place has started to offer “impossible” burgers – basically, plant-based vegan burgers that are meant to resemble real meat. I’ve tried them and they’re honestly pretty good, but they’re not going to fool someone who loves real beef.

Customer: “Excuse me, I’d like one of your double impossible burgers, but I need it to be beef.”

Me: “That’s not possible, sir. The impossible burger is plant-based, we can’t put meat in it.”

Customer: “No, no, I want to try the double impossible burger, but I still want it to be beef.”

Me: “Sir, the impossible burger isn’t some new flavor of burger that we’re doing, it’s just the same as our regular burgers, but we replace the beef patty with a plant-based one.”

Customer: “Yes, yes, I know all that. I want the impossible burger as it’s meant to be better for the environment. But I also want it to be beef.”

Me: “Sir… that’s like asking for water but not wanting it to be wet.”

Customer: “But I don’t want water.”

Me: “No, that’s… never mind. Sir, are you a vegetarian or vegan, or is there a health reason why you can’t eat real beef?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “And you want to try the impossible burger but with real beef?”

Customer: “Finally, you get it.”

We gave him a double burger, one patty of beef, and one patty that was plant-based. He loved it.

I work at a debt collection agency.

Me: “You’ve reached [Company]. This is [My Name]; how can I help you?”

Caller: “Hi. I have three bills I want to pay.”

Me: “Sure. I’m not pulling anything up by your phone number. Do you have an account number?”

Caller: “No, but I have three bills for me, my daughter, and my husband.”

Me: “Okay. Is your daughter under the age of eighteen?”

Caller: “Yes.”

Me: “Okay. What is your name?”

Caller: “Oh, well, I had my name changed.”

Me: “All right, what’s your husband’s name?”

Y’all, I have no clue why or how, but this woman goes from zero to a hundred faster than should be possible on a Monday at 9:00 in the morning

Caller: “The f*** are you talking about, b****? You’re making some f****** assumptions that she would be underneath his name!”

Me: “Ma’am, you said you changed your name, so I thought it would be easier on both of us if we searched his first—”

Caller: “B****, how dare you assume she’s under his insurance?! What, do you think women are f****** better than men?!”

I have no idea where she got this from.

Me: “All right, ma’am. At this point, I’m gonna have to ask you to tone your language down—”

Caller: “SHUT THE F*** UP, YOU SEXIST B****!”

And she hung up on me before I could hang up on her.

Y’all… I just can’t this morning. It is waaaayyyy too early for this level of bulls***.

It’s my day off and I go to the gym. I actually enjoy spending the occasional half-hour on the treadmill listening to my tunes and zoning out.

I walk into my gym and head to the front desk to check in, and there are two guys in their late forties or early fifties hanging around the front desk chatting. I scan my membership card.

Guys: “Good morning.”

I nod and say, “Hello,” back to them and then go back to the treadmills.

Nothing too unusual. I probably would never even recall that it ever happened if it weren’t for what happens at work several days later.

I finish up a long, busy shift only to be called into my manager’s office. She has received a written complaint about me — not about anything I have done at work but what I did NOT do at the gym!

Apparently, those two jerks at the gym felt that I was not friendly enough to them when I checked in at the gym. They recognized me from my job as a cashier, and while I did acknowledge them, they felt I should have been friendlier in my greeting to them.

A direct quote from the complaint was:

Complaint: “Even though your employee was not at work, that does not excuse the lackluster greeting she showed valuable customers. Furthermore, you should discipline your employees on where they are allowed to spend their free time. I’m not sure I am comfortable working out at the same place and rubbing elbows with the kiddies who bag my groceries.”

So, even when I’m not at work, I’m supposed to go around with a big stupid smile on my face and greet everyone I see like I’m their best friend in the whole wide world and it’s been years since I’ve seen them?

I could see them being upset if I had been rude to them, but I acknowledged them and said hello. I just didn’t give them a great big “Hey, buddy, whatcha doing? Let me get down on my knees and give you a big butt-kissing!” type of greeting.

And the last part.

I think what they were really offended by is my presence. It’s not that they were upset that my greeting wasn’t friendly enough, it was that, oh, no! They have to go to the same gym with the common folk! The horror!

Thankfully, I’m not in any sort of trouble. My manager showed me the letter because she thought it was so over-the-top snotty that it was funny. She said I’m one of the nicest cashiers she has and that it was straight-up idiotic to think that my job had any say in what I did during my time off. My manager assured me that if they tried to follow up on their complaint, they would be told in no uncertain terms where they could forcibly locate their complaints.

But still, it did make me angry that they tried to get me in trouble on my off time.

I work at a mid-tier extended-stay hotel. Most of our extended-stay guests are government workers, and with them being here for months at a time, you develop a good relationship with them — if you’re lucky!

One of these guests is super nice. She’s always outside smoking whenever I pop out on a smoke break. We tell each other our life stories and talk about our cats. She sometimes comes up to the front and chats, too. It makes the nights go by smoothly.

One night, she comes up to the desk while my assistant general manager and I are working the 3:00 to 11:00 shift. She looks… embarrassed? Shocked? It’s not an expression I’ve seen on her face before. She’s former military, and she looks and sounds like the type of lady who has chain-smoked Marlboros for forty years.

Guest: “Can you come down to my room? I had an accident in there.”

I trot down the hall with her because we have good relationship. I’m figuring it’s something minor — she knocked over a lamp or broke a dish or something. No big deal; it’s a quiet night and I’m bored. She opens the door and, dear readers, the first words out of my mouth are:

Me: “Holy s***.”

There is a g**d*** gunshot through her window.

She was cleaning her gun, checked the chamber, took out the clip, and still had the bright idea to point it at the window and PULL THE TRIGGER. On the FIRST FLOOR. She’s government and former military, and she still did that! I don’t know what that hotel uses for soundproofing, but she is on the first floor and we didn’t hear it at the front desk. That baffles me to this day.

Realizing this is above my paygrade, I go back and tell my assistant general manager to take a look at the room. He comes back shaking his head, muttering something about, “I hate my job.”

Unsurprisingly, she does not remain a guest for very long. Her department “reassigns” her and pays for the window, and we never see her again.

Of course, we have guests ask about what happened to the window. My general manager has instructed all of us to say, “A lawnmower sent a rock through the window.”

I told that to one guest, and he looked suspicious.

Guest #2: “It looks like a bullet went through it.”

Me: *Laughs* “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”

Mom is a smoker. I am not. I have recently purchased a nice used vehicle for myself whose previous owner did not smoke in it. I am determined to keep it this way, which is fine with Mom. She doesn’t like that I won’t let her smoke in it, but she respects my decision and honors it.

We need to head to the store for weekly groceries.

Me: “Hey, which vehicle are we taking? Yours or mine?”

Mom: “Oh, it doesn’t matter to me. Whichever you want to take is fine.”

Me: “You aren’t allowed to smoke in mine.”

Mom: “We’re taking mine.”