Me: “…Okay, now, shut your computer all the way down and then restart.”
Caller: “I can’t.”
Me: “Why not?”
Caller: “I’m not on a laptop.”
(To clarify, when I said ‘shut down’ she thought I meant to close the lid of the laptop.)
(My department for the local county council takes service requests from residents of the area for all sorts of things:)
Me: “Bore da. Good morning. This is [Local Council].”
Caller: *shouting* “I’M OLD!”
Me: “Okay, sir, it happens to all of us eventually. Now, how can I help?”
Caller: “I’M OLD, YOU SEE! I’M DISABLED! I HAVE ARTHRITIS AND SCIATICA AND BUNIONS.”
Me: “I’m sorry to hear you have those things, sir. Now, please tell me how I can help you this morning.”
Customer: “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME. I’M OLD AND YOU NEED TO GET THIS SORTED.”
Me: “I listened to everything you’ve said, sir. You’re elderly and you suffer from arthritis and sciatica and bunions. Now, these things understandably cause you pain and would have meant you needed help with something. If you can remember what that ‘something’ was and recall why you might have phoned me up, I can try and help you.”
Customer: “I NEED YOU TO… Oh. I can’t remember. If you remember can you call me?” *click*
Me: *to thin air* “Uh… not without your phone number, I can’t.”
Woman: “I want an omelette: no mushrooms, no meat, no onion, no salt, no pepper, and could the eggs be scrambled?”
Waiter: “So, you want scrambled eggs with tomatoes and cheese?”
Woman: “No, I want an omelette.”
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(I work part time in a store that sells sweets and little toys. A man in his mid-twenties walks in.)
Customer: “I’d like to buy this. How much would that be?” *points at an item*
Me: “That would be [Price].”
Customer: “So. I’m thinking about [Price] right now. I take it out of my mental savings account and mentally transfer it to you. How about that?”
Me: *puzzled* “Uhm…”
Customer: “Did you get it?”
Me: “Uhm… No, I didn’t get it. I work with real money here.”
Customer: “But I want to buy it with my mental money! Can’t I buy it like this? I’m imagining it really, really hard right now! I WANT THIS!”
Me: “I’m sorry; I can’t help you with that.”
Customer: “Well, at least I tried.”
(I’m the receptionist at an allergist’s clinic that’s just across the street from the city hospital.)
Man: “Hello, I’d like to fill a prescription for one [Name] for [strong allergy medicine].”
(This immediately sets off a red flag in my head, as the name he said was the name of a patient that I can recognize by his face, who comes in for weekly allergy shots, and I’ve never seen this person before.)
Me: “Really, he’s out of medicine already?”
Man: “Yeah, I guess he, uh… took too many doses?”
Me: “I don’t recognize you, sir; are you family?”
Man: “Uh, yeah, I’m Eric [Last Name].”
(I look at my coworker who is listening in, and she immediately walks to the back. The name the man just told me was the name of the normal client, but that client lives with his grandparents who share a different surname.)
Man: “I have his pill bottle if you need proof he sent me.”
(Sure enough, he produces a pill bottle, I take it and set it behind my desk and feign typing information in while an officer walks in.)
Officer: “Hey!”
(The man immediately turned pale as a ghost and tried to bolt past the officer, only to get taken down. The officer hauled the man away as he cussed and hurled threats. Apparently he was a former worker of the client’s grandparents and went through their trash to get an empty pill bottle to try to get medicine to make drugs.)
