(I work at a supplies store for my university. I have this exchange during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.)

Male Customer: “Excuse me, miss, where are your breast awareness shirts?”

Me: *thinking he has simply misspoken and wanting to correct him* “You mean our breast cancer awareness shirts?”

Male Customer: “Yes, those breast awareness shirts for breast awareness month.”

Me: “Well, sir, our breast cancer awareness shirts are on our back wall along with our other breast cancer awareness month merchandise.”

Male Customer: “Thank you, miss. I know my wife would like to get a breast awareness month shirt.”

(Back in the late 90s, I work as a bike security guard at a shopping center. Mostly we are there to watch for people trying to break into cars, prevent people from drinking alcohol in the parking lot before their movie, deal with traffic problems, and just always be moving and visible to deter other types of bad activity. One night, my supervisor and I are doing our hourly check of the back of the buildings when we see a young lady and a young man, probably teens, walking in the shadows. We pull up to them.)

Supervisor: “Hey, guys, you can’t be back here. It’s not safe at night. Is everything okay?”

Girl: “We’re fine. My boyfriend’s car broke down up by the entrance so he walked down here to get me from work. I’m a waitress at [Restaurant]. We’re just walking back to his car; my dad’s on the way.”

(They don’t stop walking and won’t look us in the eye. I also notice she still has her apron on and is holding it with her hands. After a quick glance, I speed up and pull ahead of them far enough to radio another guard to check with the restaurant. My supervisor keeps trying to talk to them.)

Supervisor: “Why are you walking behind the buildings? It’s safer out front, better lit, and less chance a car comes around a dumpster and hits you on a sidewalk.”

Girl: “Oh, there are too many people out front. It’s nice and quiet back here.”

Boy: “I thought it was kind of romantic.” *as they walk by an overflowing dumpster*

Guard #3: *on the radio, quietly* “Keep an eye on them; the police are on the way. She walked out with her entire bank and several credit cards.”

(I started riding left to right and slowing down a bit, signalling an issue to my supervisor. He tried to engage them even more in conversation, asking their names, asking if he could phone someone for them or if they needed a tow truck, etc. The girl just kept walking and avoiding eye contact. Headlights showed around the corner of the building along with red and blue flashing lights, and the girl made a break for it, running toward a cut-through between buildings. I got there first and blocked her path with my bike and myself. She tried to flail at me and grabbed at the bike, but I blocked her. The boy tried to run into the woods behind the center but my supervisor caught him. After a minute of fighting, I got her wrists zip-tied to a drainpipe and my supervisor had her boyfriend down on the ground. The police pulled up and took them into custody, and we all headed back to the restaurant. She had taken over $300 in cash from the register and had 17 customers’ credit cards!)

(Two women come into my shop looking for dresses. I help [Customer #1] find one, and while she tries it on, I help [Customer #2] look for a dress for herself. [Customer #1] comes out of the dressing room to get our opinion on the dress, and although the dress fits well, the hem is up past her knees, and it is not flattering. I am always honest with my customers, preferring they look their best rather than just making a sale, so I suggest she tries something longer.)

Me: “The hemline on that one is not very flattering; let’s try a longer style.”

Customer #1: “You don’t like the dress?”

Customer #2: “The dress looks great, but your knees are ugly!”

(The convenience store where I have been working for about a year and a half is sold and the new owner decides to keep me for my regular opening shift. I am glad to have new bosses because the last boss/owner was hard to work for and one of the other employees never did anything because she was friends with the owners. This story happens about two weeks after the new bosses take over.)

Boss: “Somebody has been bringing all their garbage and throwing it in our dumpster after we close. Let’s go out here and go through the bags and see if we can find some mail or something with their name on it.”

Me: “Okay, do we have any gloves?”

Boss: “No, just wash your hands when we’re done.”

(We go to the dumpster and open several bags, going through them and getting really nasty and wet doing it. Finally, after about twenty minutes of searching, we get a clue.)

Me: “Here’s an empty cigarette carton.”

(It’s a brand that we only sell to one customer. She’s in once a week to get two cartons of those cigarettes.)

Me: “It has to be her. Nobody else buys these.”

Boss: “Maybe, but just to be sure, keep looking.”

(We dig through bags for about ten more minutes when my boss finds something.)

Boss: “Here it is. It’s [Regular Customer] mail with her name on it.”

Me: “Good, are we done? Her brand of cigarettes and her mail. Are you going to tell her to stop?”

Boss: “No, better not. She spends a lot of money here. I’ll figure out something.”

(After all of the crap we went through and as dirty as we got, then he decided to let it go. After three more weeks of her filling our dumpster, he finally got a lock and that solved the problem. I worked for him for another year before I finally quit.)

(My seven-year-old daughter was recently tested for ADHD, which means she and I have to go back to the psychiatrist’s office two weeks later to review the results. While I am talking with the psychiatrist, my daughter is sitting on the floor playing with an Etch-a-Sketch. The psychiatrist is explaining to me that although my daughter does now have an ADHD diagnosis, she wasn’t able to specify a subtype. Specifically, the tests are less accurate with exceptionally bright children because if a task is designed to take ten minutes but the child solves the problem in two, the test is only able to measure two minutes’ worth of attention span instead of the ten it was supposed to.)

Psychiatrist: “So, it’s clear that your daughter’s brain is working on a different level than her teacher expects–”

Daughter: *interrupting* “Mom, look! Can you guess what I drew?”

(She’d gotten almost the entire Etch-a-Sketch screen to be black.)

Me: “Um… a black bear at night?”

Daughter: “MOM. No, it’s the void! And now I’m going to magically make the void disappear…” *shakes Etch-a-Sketch* “There, now I’ve deleted that dimension.”

Psychiatrist: “So, as I was saying… different level.”

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