I’m in a pet store looking at their aquatics. It was alright, but I noticed they had some amazing plants. I wanted to know when the betta’s water had last been changed because two were dead. So, I hovered and waited for the clerk to be ready. What had been holding them up was a woman who came in to just… go insane over the “Skinny Pig”.

A skinny pig, by the way, is a guinea pig without hair. Disgusting act of hubris on man’s part. I find their breeding abominable. She held him up for a solid fifteen minutes, asking stupid questions and video calling, whom I can only imagine was her daughter. 

Finally, he’s ready and goes to help a woman check out, and I hang around by the bettas. The woman walks up to me.

Now, mind you, the uniform is black. I am wearing a chiffon printed shirt from Hot Topic with a bunch of insects on it, with bright blue makeup on. I am 100% not an employee.

She walks up to me, shows a normal-looking guinea pig on her phone, and goes:

Customer: “Is this a boy?”

Me: “Does it have testicles?”

I answer without hesitation. Rodents have rather large balls. There is no reason you cannot take a gander at what’s beneath and figure out if they are male or female. The rodent has no sense of pride and does not care if you look at its genitals.

She stared at me for a SOLID ten seconds, before replying, very indignantly:

Customer: “WELL, HOW SHOULD I KNOW?!”

Me: “I don’t work here, hon.”

After I replied, she was flustered and left.

I work in transportation logistics. Most of my drivers are awesome. Sure, we might butt heads sometimes, but most of them are salt of the earth and amazing people.

But then… I have a few that I would like to say are “special.” Either the rules do not apply to them, or the idea of reality only applies to them when it suits them.

ONE of these drivers (I have about five of them), whom I will call Bob (Bob is not his real name), makes me want to ram my head into walls, in hopes that I find the stud in the wall. I am absolutely convinced that Bob does not think for himself. He just acts, and if something happens, it’s never his fault.

The other day Bob called me in a frantic panic. He is upset and starts immediately blaming me (the manager) for the reason for his panic. Here is what transpired:

Bob: *Screaming at the top of his lungs on the phone.* “[Manager]! This is YOUR FAULT! YOU MESSED UP HUGE THIS TIME!”

Me: “Okay… what did I supposedly do?”

Bob: “Well, see, I was at the receiver, and I got out of the truck. And I saw that the passenger side tire had a HUGE nail in it. So, I pulled the nail out, and now the tire is losing air, and it’s now almost flat! I put the nail back in, and now it isn’t leaking air… but you can see what YOU did here! The tire is FLAT!”

Me: “Okay… I have multiple questions here. First: you said you pulled a nail out of a tire, and it immediately went flat?”

Bob: *Scoffs.* “NO! It’s been losing air for a while now. That nail has been in the tire for two weeks. But when I pulled the nail out, it lost more and more air, making it flat. I stopped the leak by putting the nail back in the tire.”

Me: “So… let me get this straight. You have been driving on a bad tire and have known that your tire is almost flat for a few weeks now. You haven’t notified the team or me about this. Furthermore, you saw a nail in the tire this morning and pulled the nail out of the tire, releasing what little air is left, but put it back in.”

Bob: “YES!”

Me: *Trying to not to pop a blood vessel or head desk myself into a stupor.* “Let me put this in another perspective for you. For over two weeks, you have failed to do a proper pre-trip and write up a bad tire. You have driven on the bad tire, knowing it was bad, so if you had ever been pulled over by the DOT, you would have received a ticket. I am re-emphasizing this point, Bob; you saw a nail in the tire and pulled the nail out of the tire, and are acting shocked that pulling a foreign object out of a tire would lead to air leaking out. This is the LAST time I am giving you an out to correct your statement… I am being very generous here.”

Bob: *Pauses for like a minute as the brain processes.* “Well… I guess… that’s… one way to look at it. But… I didn’t do anything wrong!”

I will be honest; I should have left it at this and moved on. But I am a logical person. One must go to two, two to three, and so on. So… I couldn’t let this go. I was hypnotized by the sheer stupidity of this entire situation. So, I had to keep going… and hindsight being what it is… I wish I hadn’t because of what Bob said next:

Me: “Okay, Bob… I must ask this another way because I feel that you think that this isn’t your fault, and you are going to blow it off. But I also feel that you need to learn a lesson here as well. Let me give you an example here. Say this same situation occurred on your personal car. Would you have driven on a bad tire and pulled the nail out?”

Bob: “What do you think I am… Stupid!? I wouldn’t do that to my car in any way. I wouldn’t do that to anyone’s vehicle.”

Me: “Then why did you do it to the company truck!?”

Bob: “That’s different… and it isn’t my fault!”

At this point, I had to end the call and go walk around the building. Bob and I are going to have a LONG talk when he gets back to the office…

I work for the post office in a very, very rural area. The door opens, and there’s a thud on the counter. A customer is standing there with a box, taped up, with nothing on it.

Me: “Hi! What can I do for you?”

Customer: *Grunt.*

Me: “…I’m sorry?”

Customer: *Nods at box on the counter, grunts.*

Me: “Were you looking to send this off?”

Customer: *Grunt.*

Me: “Okay, well, let me get a weight on it and while I’m doing that, if you could get the address ou—”

Customer: “Bubba.”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Customer: “Bubba. Send it to my cousin Bubba.”

Me: “Sure, that’s no problem. I just need his address.”

Customer: *Disapproving grunt.*

Me: “I’m sorry, but without at least a ZIP code and weight, I can’t even get you a price on it.”

Customer: “I dun know. You dun know Bubba’s address?”

Me: “No, sir. I’m sorry. I don’t and there’s no way for me to look up addresses for a person.”

Customer: *Disapproving grunt.*

Me: “I’m sorry, there’s just a lot of people in the U.S., and for security reasons, we don’t keep a huge database for everyone to access with that information.”

Customer: *Grunt.*

Me: “You could maybe call him?”

Customer: “Georgia.”

Me: *Eyebrow raise.*

Customer: “Bubba stays in Georgia.”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, I’d need more info—”

Customer: *Grabs box and stomps out.*

Related:
Knows Zip About Zip Codes, Part 5
Knows Zip About Zip Codes, Part 4
Knows Zip About Zip Codes, Part 3
Knows Zip About Zip Codes, Part 2
Knows Zip About Zip Codes

A week earlier, this customer had dug in his pockets for change and started laying out on the counter everything he was carrying. One of the items was a pistol, so I know he carries. 

I’m wearing a pentacle necklace while checking this customer out. He peers at my neck and decides to share his opinion.

Customer: “You worship the devil?”

Me: “Uh, no, sir. There’s no devil in the craft.”

Customer: “Good, because if you did, I’d have to shoot you dead.”

He then leaves like he didn’t threaten my life. I don’t think too much of it at first, until he’s been gone for ten minutes, and then I remember he actually has a gun. My boss tells me to call the police immediately. 

Long story short, he’s the same guy who threatened a Walmart cashier earlier that week, but they didn’t have his name until he checked out with me using his membership card.

He gets a visit from the cops and is banned from my chain of stores nationwide.

All over a necklace.

It is Black Friday at the large superstore where I work. The massive crowd has been waiting in a pen (yes, like cattle) and as soon as we open the gates, they unleash h*** on the towels.

I see a lady literally dive into the pallet and start throwing stack after stack of towels in her buggy with her husband following suit on the other side. A little grandmother walks over to the buggy and starts removing stack after stack from that lady’s buggy over to hers.

Of course, this does not go down well, and I find myself calling security over the ensuing physical fight that has started over $1 towels.

As they’re fighting yet another woman casually walks over to both of their buggies and takes all the towels for herself, noticed by no one except myself. I’m beyond caring at this point, if they’re willing to shed blood for those towels I am not going to get involved!