(I’m a volunteer lunch-server in a nursing home, but I’ve spent the last month working in the south of France. I’ve picked up a slight tan, but usually my skin is as white as it gets. One lady stares at me oddly as I bring her her food.)

Lady: “Where are you from?”

Me: “From here, ma’am. I live a few roads away.”

Lady: “No, I mean where were you born?”

Me: “Finchley, originally, but I moved—”

Lady: “No, no, no. Where are you from?”

Me: “Uh. London, ma’am. Britain.”

Lady: “And your parents?”

Me: “Also from London.”

Lady: *squints at me* “No, you’re lying. There’s no shame in being Jamaican, you know. You can tell me.”

Me: “I… What?”

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Customer: “I need help. I’ve locked myself out of my Netflix account and I can’t remember my password.”

Me: “Okay, well you should probably call Netflix and ask them for help.”

Customer: “But how can I get them to stop charging my bank account?”

Me: “Call them and cancel your service.”

Customer: “How do I call them?”

Me: “On a phone.”

Customer: “How do I get their number?”

Me: “Google.”

Grandmother: “Come look a these pictures.”

(The waitress is obviously uncomfortable as my grandmother proceeds to show her a ton of pictures of my cat.)

Grandmother: “See, it looks like it’s playing piano.”

Mom: “She doesn’t want to see all of our pictures, mom.”

Grandmother: “Look at this one.”

Mom: *mouthing silently* “I’m so sorry.”

Grandmother: “He’s playing with something here…”

(The customer is the CEO of a graphics design company that has hosted email with us. He calls in late one night to report that he is unable to get any email, and that he has important business to attend to and must have his email. I’ve almost exhausted all troubleshooting with this customer. I verified settings on his email client, verified settings on our server and mail flow to his inbox. In a last resort, I have the customer attempt to set up the email account again as a new account.)

Customer: “It says it can’t connect to the server. Are you having server issues?”

Me: “No, sir. If we were, we’d have a lot more callers about this issue. Try [alternative incoming server address and port] and see if you get a different response.”

(Typing and a pause…)

Customer: “Nope, still says can’t connect to server.”

Me: “Hmm…” *thinking there’s no way this can be possible* “Are you having any Internet issues? Are you able to load any web pages?”

Customer: “No, our ISP is having an outage right now.”

Me: “… Well, there’s your problem. Unfortunately without Internet you won’t be able to get email.”

Customer: “Why? What does Internet have to do with email?”

(The husband of a couple has come to collect a menu about an hour before they would like to eat because his wife has difficulty making decisions. Our menu for cooked items is very limited and has only a full English breakfast, a vegetarian English cooked breakfast, smoked haddock, smoked salmon, and kippers available. The couple come in for breakfast, having studied the menu.)

Wife: “Do you do eggs benedict?”