(I used to work in what can only be described as a total dive. Because of the place – and also, I think, because of my skin colour – customers used to make all kinds of incredibly snobbish assumptions about me. Please note that I have the same accent as a BBC news presenter.)

Customer: “Hey! Hey, you! Two lattes!”

(I am too surprised by his rudeness to answer immediately.)

Customer: “Didn’t you understand me? God. Two. Lattes.” *very slowly, as if I don’t speak English* “Two. Lattes. Two. Latte. Coffees.”

Me: *losing my patience somewhat* “Yes, sir, as opposed to two latte teas. If you’d kindly join the queue by the tills; I am making coffees, as opposed to taking orders.”

Customer: *shamefacedly* “Oh. Er, yes. Of course.”

(I work in the children’s section of my bookstore. We get a lot of kids with nannies, who sometimes don’t really know how well the kid reads. I often just talk directly to the kid to find something that will work for them. This day, an adorable, articulate little girl and her nanny come to the store.)

Girl: “Excuse me, where are the four-year-old books?”

Me: “These picture books here are great for four-year-olds!”

Girl: *pointing to chapter books* “Are these for four-year-olds?”

(Some families read chapter books to their young children. They read a chapter a night, then as the child learns to read better, the take turns with the child.)

Me: “They can be. Do you guys read stories at home?”

Girl: “Not really.”

Me: *to her nanny, who has been on the phone the whole time* “Can she read yet?”

Nanny: “How am I supposed to know?”

Girl: “No, I can’t read, but I want to.”

Me: “That’s okay, you’ll learn in school!”

Girl: “Yeah! But right now, I just want a book I can read with my BRAIN!”

(The pool I work at has two accessible entrances. One is for patrons and has a cashier booth, the other is for staff, and goes through the manager’s office. Sometimes people start to come in through the patron door, but once they see people sitting inside they come up with a lame excuse and go to the staff entrance. I am sitting in the office on break chatting with one of the managers one day when a lady comes CHARGING through the staff entrance.)

Manager: “Excuse me, but this is the staff entrance. Please go in through the cashier booth.”

Patron: *continues charging through room, almost running over my coworker that is standing in the doorway* “Oops! Pardon me, I must have gone the wrong way! But my friend is on her way and I have to reserve our chairs!”

(She then proceeded to PUSH my manager out of the way so she could get through the door to the pool. The manager then proceeded to chase her down, all while she ignored him. It finally took four of us to surround her before she acknowledged our presence. We escorted her to the cashier booth where she paid, all while complaining about our terrible customer service. Then when her friend arrived she did the EXACT same thing.)

(I am working one night, cleaning a very messy fitting room, when a customer storms up to me holding a small bundle of clothing.)

Customer: “How dare you allow little girls to wear this type of clothing!”

Me: *confused* “Can show me what she you are talking about?”

(She harumphs and whips out a very skimpy piece of lingerie.)

Customer: “This is the reason our society is crumbling!”

(I calmly explain to her that it is lingerie, not something for little girls.)

Customer: “But I found it in the girls section!”

Me: “It must have been put there by another customer. It is lingerie. It is not for girls.”

Customer: *huffs* “I don’t speak French! I just speak American!”

(My coworker and I are having a bad day after receiving lots of hard tasks. We get a call from a customer complaining about something wrong with his computer, so we tell him go to our office.)

Customer: “Hi, I talked with you on the phone about my Skype and Chrome not working and disappearing.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, let’s take a look.”

(At this point I’m going through his hard drive and checking downloads.)

Me: “I can’t see anything wrong with your Skype but I can’t see any trace of Chrome here.”

(Our boss comes in to check and I tell him the problem.)

Boss: “Are you sure that you had Chrome on the computer?”

Customer: “Yes, I used it yesterday before it disappeared.”

(I go and check through other browsers he has on his computer until I get to Explorer.)

Customer: “There it is! How did you find it?”

(It turned out that he never had Google Chrome, but used Explorer to go to Google.)