I’m going through airport security to get home. I have a water bottle on me, but I know it can’t have water, so I just leave the ice and plan to get more before the flight. As I show my ID and boarding pass, I decide to confirm it’s all right.

Me: “Hey, is it okay if I bring this through? It’s just ice.”

I shake the bottle a bit so she can hear it. She looks tired and responds like I’m an idiot.

TSA Agent: “That’s fine. Ice isn’t water.”

This happened about a decade ago while I was still a university student. One day, on my drive home from campus, I passed by the bank my account is with as I did nearly every day. However, this time, I saw numerous police cars in the parking lot and figured something had gone down.

Sure enough, when I checked the news upon arriving home, I found that the bank had indeed been robbed. There was a silver lining, though; the culprit was arrested at his home only a short time later and all the money was recovered. And when I say, “a short time,” I mean it took police less than an hour to track the culprit back to his house, arrest him, and recover the stolen money.

How did they manage to track the criminal back to his house so quickly, you ask? Well, in this case, the bank robber was incredibly dumb. How dumb was he? Dumb enough to write the note to the teller on the back of one of his own personal checks — the ones containing his full name and home address. Not only that, but he only lived a short distance from the bank.

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.

At the doctor’s office where I work, one person schedules appointments in a handwritten paper schedule book, and I create and print off the day’s fee slips the morning of. Her handwriting is difficult to read, and she frequently misspells or abbreviates patient names, so I have gotten in the habit of trying to find a close match for possible names when I make the fee slips. Usually, new patients are noted on the paper schedule with “NP” in a circle.

Today, we had two patients I could not find names for in the computer, but I found a close match for one; think “Mel Brooks” on the schedule but “Melvin Booker” on the computer. Given how bad my coworker’s handwriting is, the fact that it’s not marked as “NP,” and her history of misspelling and abbreviating names, I was fairly certain that Melvin is the person we were scheduled to see.

Nope.

This afternoon, my coworker comes charging up to my desk and slaps a new patient chart with Melvin’s fee slip on it

Coworker: “Does this look like Mel’s name?”

She gets in my masked face with her unmasked face. (She believes the health crisis is a scam invented for political gain.)

Me: “Closest match in the system. He wasn’t marked as a new patient, and you sometimes abbrev—”

Coworker: *Snarls* “I never abbreviate! And you should never assume that I wrote it down wrong! He’s obviously a new patient!”

I sighed, remade a fee slip for “NP Mel Brooks,” and requested that she note new patients when she schedules them so I could avoid looking for them in the system.

She’s not the only reason I’m job hunting — our boss is much worse — but seriously!

A couple enters the furniture store where I work. They are older folks, and they say they are looking for many things. I give them a very short version of the floor layout and ask them if it is all right for me to check on them sometimes to make sure their questions are answered. They say this is fine.

The first time I check on them, the very friendly husband asks me some questions, and I answer them and dismiss myself to allow them to keep looking in peace.

The second time I check on them, the husband finds a very nice oak CD rack and asks me if we have anything more narrow. I tell him I might and that I’ll check around the store and catch up to them in a few minutes. I dismiss myself after answering another question of his about a table.

I find an item that matches the description of the oak CD rack, but I cannot find the husband for the life of me. I see the wife walking by and go to inform her that I’ve found it.

Me: “Oh, ma’am, about that item your husband was looking—”

Woman: “Look, I didn’t come here to chat! I came here to just look!“

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Woman: “Well, you did!’

Me: “Just trying to feed my children, ma’am.”

With that, I looked down at the floor, turned on my heel, and walked away pitifully. It had the desired effect — I don’t even have kids — and the customer lost all of her zeal, looked down at the floor, and walked straight out of the store in shame.

Maybe she’ll think twice from now on before she explodes on another retail salesperson for no reason at all.

Related:
Childish Behavior, Part 3
Childish Behavior, Part 2
Childish Behavior