A customer is talking to a coworker, holding up a tube of paint.

Customer: “Hey, this says ‘burnt sienna,’ but it looks more like brown. Is that… is that right?”

Coworker: “Yup, burnt sienna is a type of reddish-brown. It’s a standard artist color.”

Customer: “But why not just call it brown? Who names these things?”

Coworker: “Artists. Mostly Italian ones, a few centuries ago.”

Customer: “Well, it’s confusing. My kid asked for ‘burnt sienna,’ and I thought it was a prank.”

Coworker: “I promise it’s real. Right next to ‘raw umber’ and ‘payne’s grey.'” 

Customer: “…You’re just making sounds now.” 

Coworker: “Working here for the last few years, I’ve discovered that naming paint colors is 30% pigment, 70% drama.”

The last couple of summers of high school, I worked under the table for an accounting office. After high school, I worked retail in an office supply store for a couple of years, and from there I was head-hunted for a Mac support position at an online catalog retailer.

I started training the week after Thanksgiving and got on the phones the week between Christmas and New Year’s 1999. I was seated at the desk of the Mac trainer (because shadow training was a thing back then).

One of the first calls I had was from a woman who had received a brand-new iMac and printer for Christmas. She was a worship leader at her church and was trying to print out something inspiring and heart-warming because the winter of ‘99 was a bad one wherever she was, and she wanted to evoke Spring early in the New Year.

Except…the graphics she was adding to her newsletter weren’t showing up.

We reinstalled drivers.

We reinstalled her publishing software.

We tried different USB ports. Even tried going through the keyboard USB port.

We tried cleaning the print cartridges (even though they, like the printer, were brand new, and the cleaning cycle on Epson inkjets at the time was tremendously wasteful).

We even tried replacement ink cartridges, because someone had the foresight to send her extras.

At this point, I had both support managers listening in on the call, both trainers leaning over my shoulder, and a good handful of the team milling about trying to offer suggestions. I was about to process an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) for the printer when something she said out of pique caught my attention.

Church Lady: “I just don’t get it. Where the graphic is supposed to be is wet.”

Me: *Latching onto that.* “Say that again, please? What do you mean, wet?”

Church Lady: “Well, it’s a newsletter, which I think I’ve already said. I just love flowers, daisies are my favorite, so I wanted a few daisies on the page for spring-y feelings, you know?”

Me: “Ma’am, out of curiosity, are your daisy images black line art?”

Church Lady: “Oh no, honey, they’re full color. Just a beautiful yellow. You wouldn’t know they weren’t photographs, this technology is so amazing!”

Me: “And you say the page is wet.”

By this point, her frustration had waned, and she was just answering questions in between stories about her church, her grandkids, etc.

Church Lady: “Yeah, right where the flower is supposed to be.”

Lightbulb.

Me: “Ma’am, what color is your paper?”

Church Lady: “Why, goldenrod, of course!”

Pause.

Me: “Ma’am, you can’t print yellow flowers onto yellow paper. That’s like using a blue crayon on blue construction paper. It just won’t work.”

I had to mute my phone because of all the people laughing behind me.

Later, someone asked me how I knew what in the world color “goldenrod” was. Well, outside of C-3PO being called that as a nickname pretty consistently in ‘Star Wars’, I had worked with all different colors of color-specific corrective liquid from my previous jobs. One was goldenrod, and it was a mix of near-nuclear yellow and orange.

I was at work today doing my normal thing. I work at a dessert place where most of my coworkers and I are college students. The hourly pay isn’t great, so I try to be as polite as I can to earn tips for my coworkers and me. A lady comes in with her child, and I do my usual thing.

Me: “Hey, how are you!”

The child excitedly orders some ice cream. The customer looks me up and down and pulls her child away from the POS.

Customer: “Please don’t talk to my child.” *Looks at her child.* “These are people you should avoid. Don’t be like him.”

The customer then turns her attention to me.

Customer: “God, why would you do that to yourself? You look dirty.”

I have forearm sleeves on both arms: a Japanese dragon to remember my dad, who passed four years ago when I was fourteen, and Japanese clouds on my other arm as a reminder for my mental health to be free and open-minded. I carefully explain to her that these tattoos tell a story and don’t make me a bad person. I say this mainly to reassure the child that I wasn’t a bad person.

Me: “These tattoos are to tell a story and don’t make me a bad person.”

Customer: “I didn’t come for your life story. I came for ice cream. Now, can I order?”

Me: “Then I don’t understand why your input was needed in the first place. It’s part of my culture. If you can’t respect something you don’t understand, then I suggest you go somewhere else because I won’t serve you.”

The customer begins to throw racial slurs until a family behind her starts arguing with her and defending me. I wasn’t exactly too sure what was being said at that point because I had just gotten my manager to help sort the situation out. The kid started crying because his mom was being yelled at by a whole family.

Another Customer: “Holy s***, can you shut your kid up?”

My manager and I both realized the kid doesn’t need to go through all of that. From here, my manager kicks the lady out and that was the end of it.

There’s much more to someone’s story that can be told rather than just their physical appearance.

I work for a creative agency, and we’d just taken on a big national brand, so there was a lot of pressure to get it right from the get-go. They were launching a new campaign and had supplied a brand kit and a list of approved messaging.

Our main contact, their head of brand, was never happy, never seemed up to date with what was going on, and always found something to nitpick. Things like wanting stock imagery, shooting down the suggestions we made by complaining the stock imagery “looks like stock imagery” (funny that) before presenting the same images as her own suggestions three rounds later, and regularly changing her mind about which of the approved message lines she wanted to use.

Eventually, after nearly two weeks of back and forth (and a week later than planned), we received sign off and managed to get the social campaign live late on a Thursday.

Three days later, on Sunday, I got a panicked call on my personal mobile from my boss.

Boss: “[Client] has kicked off about the creative that’s gone live!”

Cue me getting dragged into an out-of-hours weekend call with the client.

Client: “This is all wrong! We can’t be using this messaging! None of this is approved; this is a mess!”

Me: “I’m sorry… this was all listed in the approved messaging framework you gave us, though. And do you mind my asking what has changed? This was signed off on Thursday?”

Client: “I needed it to be more visual! When I signed it off, I didn’t read it!”

Me: “…I don’t know how to respond to that.”

She was swiftly pulled from the project when we raised a complaint about her on Monday.

A guy walks into the tattoo parlor. I’m prepping for my next appointment when he marches up to the counter.

Customer: “Yeah, I want a big eagle, full back. But I need it done by tonight. I got a pool party tomorrow, and I want people to see it.”

It takes me a while to realize that he’s serious.

Me: “Full-back eagle? That usually takes a few sessions to do properly. Healing alone is gonna take weeks.”

Customer: “No, no. I need it done now. I just need something that looks cool in photos. It doesn’t need to look good up close.”

I pause. The shop is quiet. Even the buzzing of the other gun fades a bit.

Me: “You want a lifetime commitment rushed for a twelve-second selfie?”

Customer: “I’m the customer and I’m asking for your service!”

I get my phone out.

Customer: “Are you scheduling me in?”

Me: “No, I’m looking for the nearest place that does temporary tattoos. We’re fully booked, so we can’t serve you today anyway, and it would be unethical to send you back out there without an alternative you won’t regret.”

Customer: “The f*** you talking about?”

Me: “No respectable tattoo parlor would ever honor your request, sir, but just in case they might, I have to suggest getting something temporary. What you’re asking for just can’t be done.”

Customer: “Why not?!”

Other Customer: *In the middle of his session.* “You can’t microwave a masterpiece, man.”

He stormed out, muttering about finding a real artist…