I work in a library. Right as my lunch break wrapped up, the power went out. I headed back to work because the policy says we stay open for half an hour after the outage, and I didn’t want to leave my coworker, a grumpy-yet-sweet man in his seventies, hanging.

Upon arrival, I learned that we were being instructed to stay open as long as there was enough light to see — that is, until regular closing time, since it was summer. However, all of my current projects were digital, and there is really only so much straightening of shelves one can do in a small library before there is simply nothing left to do; we also only had two patrons the whole shift, and they came and left in the first half-hour. I was left playing on my phone and fooling around with the board games we have available for checkout for almost two hours.

The power came back on an hour before closing, but our systems were damaged by the outage. IT didn’t have them up and running again until five minutes before closing, leaving us with an additional hour of nothing to do.

As we left, I turned to my coworker.

Me: “I don’t think I’ve ever been so unproductive in one shift.”

Coworker: “I have.”

I am working at the customer service desk at a craft store when the phone rings.

Customer: “Hi, do you have any geese?”

Me: “Uh… geese?”

Customer: “Yeah, like a little goose to put on your desk?”

I figure she means a figurine or a plushie. It’s close to Easter, so maybe we have something in our seasonal section.

Me: “If you hold for a minute, I’ll go check for you.”

I look in our seasonal Easter section but don’t find much.

Me: “Ma’am, I found some duck plushies, but no geese.”

Customer: “Well, do the ducks look like geese?”

Me: *Utterly dumbfounded* “Umm… I’m sorry, but I’m not an expert on the differences between ducks and geese. You could come in and look at our selection to see if anything works for you?”

Customer: “Okay, thank you!”

The customer was polite and friendly the whole time. But really, who calls a craft store looking for geese?

I am working at the fabric counter in a craft store when a little old man wanders in, looking extremely lost and clutching a scrap of fabric for dear life.

Me: “Hello! Can I help you find something?”

Customer: *Very hesitantly holds out the fabric scrap* “My wife sent me to get more of this fabric.”

Me: “No problem! This looks like a cotton quilting fabric. Let’s go over to that section and see if we can find a match.”

I take the customer to the quilting fabrics section and start looking for a match. As I look, the customer stands nearby, still seeming confused. I finally find a fabric that’s a close match, but because of different dye batches, the colors are very slightly different.

Me: *Shows customer the fabric* “This one is almost the same as what you have. The colors aren’t quite an exact match, but very close. Do you think this will work for your wife?”

Customer: *Looks at me with a look of panic in his eyes* “I don’t know. I’m color-blind!”

I ended up sending him home with a sample of the new fabric to show his wife and told him that if his wife approved, he could come back and buy more.

When I was growing up, my mother regularly talked about how she hated Pomeranians — “little yappy things,” she called them — and how she hated dogs named Mitzi and would never own one, ever. She had a neighbor when she was young with a vicious little dog that matched this description.

One day when I was about fourteen, I was at a mall with my parents and my mother had gone into a fabric store. My father and I walked into a pet store to kill time, and while we were there, someone brought in a sweet-tempered little dog she wanted to sell.

My father started interacting with the dog and liked it.

Father: “What sort of dog is this?”

Owner: “She’s a Pomeranian.”

Father: “What’s her name?”

Owner: “Mitzi.”

My father lit up like a Christmas tree.

Father: “[My Name], go tell your mother I’m buying a Pomeranian named Mitzi.”

I thought it would be funny to tell her that, so I found her.

Me: “Dad’s buying a Pomeranian named Mitzi.”

I’d never seen my mother look so horrified in her life. She dropped her shopping and stormed off to the pet store. However, by the time we got back, my father had actually bought the dog. My mother stared daggers at him all the way home and said she wanted nothing to do with the dog. 

But within about three days, that dog had my mother totally smitten. She was gentle and mischievous and not at all happy — except when moose came into the yard. The only remainder of her previous insistence was that we were not allowed to call the dog Mitzi but instead called her Mits.

She ended up becoming my mother’s dog until the day she died while out chasing a moose — her favorite activity. My mother ended up with her favorite dog all because it was a breed and name she despised.

A lady I’ve served maybe once or twice arrives with some checks to deposit. They are all a little old but still within six months — except one. This is a money order for all of $20, dated from seven years ago. This particular brand of money order should be negotiated within a year of it being cut or monthly fees start racking up. This piece of paper is going to be swallowed by its own fees at best and rejected as a stale item at worst.

Me: “Uh, this is a little bit old, isn’t it?”

Customer: “Yeah, but it’s a money order, so it’ll be fine.”

No, it won’t, and I know it.

Me: “Let me see what we can do here.”

I rope my manager in, not because I expect her instincts to be any different to mine but more to make it look like I’m at least trying to do something. [Manager] looks at the date.

Manager: “Oh, wow, we really shouldn’t take this.”

Customer: “No, it’s a money order. It was paid for in full back when it was bought so it’s guaranteed.”

This goes on for maybe a minute; [Manager] first wants to refuse the money order and then deposit it on a seven-day hold, but the customer will have none of it. Bear in mind, if it gets rejected — which we both expect — that’s a $30 fee that the customer is going to have to pay.

Manager: “There’s a number to verify on there, right? Call that, and if it says the check is still good, then I guess we can deposit it.” 

I call the number and verify that the check hasn’t been cashed and it hasn’t had a stop put on it by the original purchaser. This is as good as we can do, so we go ahead and deposit it.

Me: “All done, but please bear in mind that this still could very well bounce because of how old it is.” 

Customer: “Yeah, sure.”

She left. I made sure to put an extensive note in her account explaining what had happened. A few days later, we got an email from our call centre; the customer was unhappy about a returned item fee that had put her account negative. Lo and behold, the money order had been rejected as a stale item. I made a point of not being the one to call her back because I had very little confidence in my ability to avoid saying, “I told you so,” in a less than polite way, though I did make sure the note I put in the account at the time got added to the email chain. I cannot fathom why she thought she knew better than me, a teller, how money orders work.