(It’s my third day, and my colleagues are telling me stories about bad customers and workers. One of my floor colleagues is Turkish but speaks perfect Dutch — the local language — with an accent.)

Turkish Colleague: “This guy is the biggest racist you’ll ever meet. The moment I open my mouth, he screams, ‘GET AWAY FROM ME, TURKISH PIECE OF S***!’ He’s banned from the restaurant, but he isn’t getting the message and keeps– Speak of the devil, there he is.”

Manager: “I’ll go tell him.”

(I’m part Russian, and I normally speak without a trace of an accent, but I can mimic one perfectly.)

Me: “Boss, might I try?”

Manager: “Sure. If you think you can get him out of here.”

(I go up to the man and start speaking Russian.)

Man: “SPEAK GOD-DANG DUTCH, YOU A**HOLE!”

Me: *with the most comical and thick accent I can do* “Very sorry, sir. I forget I should do Dutch. Table for one?”

Man: “F*** you!” *storms out*

Manager: “That went better than expected.”

Me: “Honestly, I didn’t expect him to leave. I was about to call [Turkish Colleague] to step in if he wanted someone else.”

(I’m the customer in this scenario. I’m around 16, shopping in an alternative-clothing store. The staff are all people with various tattoos, piercings, and dyed hair. The cashier is clearly gay, is wearing all black, and has a nose piercing. My hair is short, and I’m wearing a band shirt, skinny jeans, and combat boots.)

Cashier: “Would you like to sign up with our rewards program? You get coupons and all kinds of deals year-round.”

Me: “Sure, why not?”

Cashier: “Okay, can I have your email?”

(Note, my last name is my email.)

Me: *tells him my email*

Cashier: *looking very scared all of a sudden and stepping away from the register* “N-nazi?”

(The last four letters of my last name are N-A-Z-I.)

Me: *realizing he thinks I’m a white supremacist* “Oh, no, I’m Jewish and that’s my last name.”

Cashier: “Oh!” *starts chuckling nervously*

Me: *laughing* “And if it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t be shopping here!”

Cashier: “Oh, yeah, fair point!”

(At our restaurant, which closes at 4:00 am and opens again at 10:00 am, the bathrooms close at midnight. They open again for neither love nor money, so at 2:00 am, I’m cleaning one of them.)

Random Dude: *kind of angrily* “Yo, can I use the restroom?”

Me: “Restrooms are closed. There’s a public restroom at the end of this building; it’s around the corner, on the left.”

(The guy mumbles something I can’t understand about his friend and the public restrooms, to the eventual effect of, “I don’t want to use those.”)

Me: “Restrooms are closed.”

Random Dude: “When do they open?”

Me: “10:00 am.”

Random Dude: *suddenly shouting* “Well, f*** you, too, b****!”

(I shrug and finish cleaning up the bathroom, and then come back behind the counter.)

Random Dude: *in the middle of talking to one of the managers* “That’s him! That’s the guy! He said, ‘F*** you! Restrooms are closed!’”

Me: “Sir, I did not use such language.”

(I continue to the back to put up the cleaning supplies, and when I return to the kitchen…)

Manager #1: “Did you really say that?

Me: “No, I did not.” *I relay the exchange* “—and then he started screaming profanities at me.”

Manager #2: “Yeah, I didn’t give him anything. I gave him the number to the franchising office, told him we were store number [other location’s number], and said your name was [Not My Name].”

(I nodded and continued with my shift.)

When I was 16 years old, I worked in a children’s museum where I was in charge of the aquarium section. We had a “touch tank” where people could feel sea life. Because the animals are delicate, we had a strict policy that people could only touch animals I had put on trays at the edge of the tanks. Despite this policy, (and numerous prominent signs stating the policy) people would routinely stick their hands in the parts of the tank that were off limits.

One day, a woman came in and proceeded to repeatedly stick her hands into the tank, despite my requests. Finally, I forcefully said, “Ma’am, please don’t stick your hands into that part of the tank, as it distresses the animals.” She pulled her hands out, flicked water in my face, said, “You just need to chill,” and stomped off, cursing about “little s***s who think they know everything.”

(I am what they call a “floater” — basically a substitute — at a local day-care. This means I might work with different age groups each shift I am called in to work. Today, I am working in the one-year-old room. We have a schedule for when we change the children’s diapers, but they are also periodically checked throughout the day. A coworker and I have our group playing outside in the fenced-in area. A mom comes up to the fence to pick up her baby after signing her child out of the office. I hand the child over the fence to the mother, then go in to get her child’s things. She takes her child and the things to the car just a few feet away, so I think nothing more of it. A minute later the mother comes back to me, holding her child out in front of her as if she is disgusted by her.)

Mother: “She needs to be changed.”

(I wordlessly stare at the mother for a few seconds before it registers to me that, yes, this is actually happening. Not wanting to cause a scene or fuss with the mother, I take the child back in, change her, bring her back out to the mother, and hand her back over the fence.)

Coworker: “Did she really just bring her child back to us just so we could change her?”

Me: “Yep.”

(Both of us stared at the mother as she drove away, wondering how in the world some people ever became parents.)