I work at a boutique kitchenware store. We sell high-quality glass storage containers that are sold by volume (milliliters/ounces). A customer approaches the counter with a set of three glass jars.

Customer: “Excuse me, I need to return these. They’re faulty.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that! Are the seals not airtight, or is there a crack in the glass?”

Customer: “No, the glass is fine. But they don’t hold what they say they hold. The label says, ‘500 grams,’ but I can only fit about 300 grams of my protein powder in there.”

Me: “Ah, I see the confusion. These are actually 500 milliliter jars. That measures the volume, the space inside, rather than the weight of what you’re putting in it.”

Customer: “Right. 500 milliliters. Which is 500 grams.”

Me: “Well, that’s only true for water. Since protein powder is very fluffy and light, it takes up a lot of space but doesn’t weigh very much. It’s like how a bag of marshmallows takes up more room than a bag of lead sinkers.”

Customer: “I don’t want to fill it with lead. I want to fill it with powder. Are you telling me your jars change size depending on what I put in them?”

Me: “No, the jar stays the same size. The powder just takes up more space because it’s full of air.”

Customer: “Exactly! So, you’re selling me a jar that’s full of air? Just give me the refund. I’ll go to the shop next door; I saw they have ‘one-liter’ jars. Hopefully, those ones aren’t as stingy with their grams as yours are.”

Me: “So yeah, I’m gay. But I don’t know what everyone’s going to think about it. I mean, what would [cousin] say? What would Grandma say?”

Oldest Brother: “What would [Cousin] say?’ Really? [Cousin]?”

Me: “Well, not just her. But yes, also her.”

Oldest Brother: “[Cousin], who is over thirty and who has never even dated anyone her whole life? And wore a suit to my wedding?”

Me: “Yes, her! What if she says—”

Oldest Brother: “—Who owns at least three shirts with an ace-of-spades on it? With the purple, green, white, and black badges all over her bag? The one who signs off every text message with “the family triple-A battery”? THAT [Cousin]?”

Me: “Yes!”

Oldest Brother: “Then the only thing you’re going to have to worry about is how you will pass the IQ test they’re going to make you take.”

Yes. It turns out my oldest cousin is aromantic, asexual, AND agender, but so easy-going about pronouns that I just had never actually noticed. My coming out to the family went well. But I am still paying off my brother’s silence.

CORRECTION: A misspelled word has been corrected.

I’ve just finished checking in at the airport, which took much longer than it should have – I had my boarding pass in Google Wallet, and the kiosk wouldn’t scan my QR code. An older lady stops me to ask for help, and she’s having the same problem, so I try to see what I can do.

I check the phone’s settings quickly and hand it back. She hits the App Overview button to find her pass, but its window only appears as a white screen, and she closes it.

Lady: “What have you done?!”

Me: “Huh?”

Lady: *Frantically searching her open apps.* “It’s gone! You’ve ruined it!”

Me: “…You can get it from Google Wallet—”

Lady: “—I don’t have Google Wallet! It’s gone forever now!”

She opens Google Wallet. The button leading to her pass is on screen, clearly marked.

Me: “That’s it. Just tap that.”

She leaves Google Wallet and begins searching her emails for her boarding pass.

Lady: “You’ve helped enough!”

I consider making an obviously stressed-out airport patron feel like an idiot, but I decide it’s better to apologise and walk away.

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Lady: *Relaxing.* “It’s fine. It’s my fault for asking you.”

She checks in another way and heads to the bag drop kiosk, which also asks to scan your boarding pass. The last I saw of her, she was getting help from airport staff. I hope they had better luck!

We were doing a group exercise at university. There were five people (three guys, two girls) in our group, including a very alpha wannabe guy who was very passive-aggressive and desperate to show off to the girls in the group.

As another guy in the group, he took the opportunity to always talk over me and tried to tell everyone what to do. Every time the other guy or I suggested anything or put forward any ideas, he would interrupt with stuff like:

Wannabe Guy: “C’mon, don’t try and take over. We’re all working together.”

No one could be bothered to say too much to him because he would overreact and cause more disruption… so everyone just worked around him.

That was, until he finally talked over the other guy, who was making an important suggestion (that would eventually solve the main problem of the exercise):

Wannabe Guy: “C’mon now, man. There is no ‘I’ in team.”

Other Guy: “No, but there is a ‘U’ in c**t.”

The genuinely loud laughter from the girls he was trying so hard to impress was enough to make him shut up for the rest of the day.

Customer: “I want to buy [range of toy dolls], but I can’t find it in your toy department.”

Me: “We don’t sell that range, madam. Our department store doesn’t have an agreement with the company that makes them.”

Customer: “That’s a load of nonsense. I’ve bought them from here before.”

Me: “I can assure you, you didn’t, madam.”

Customer: “Are you saying I’m wrong?”

Me: “I’m saying I’m the manager who is fully in charge of our entire toy department inventory, and have been for several years, and I know we don’t carry them.”

The customer says I am mistaken, throws her hands up in the air, and wanders off. 

She came back a couple weeks later. I didn’t recognise her at first, until she started talking about the range of dolls again.

Customer: “Oh, I figured out where I got that doll. It was from [a different independent toy store] in Perth.”

Me: “Perth… as in Western Australia?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “The one that’s over 2,500km away?”

Customer: “Yes! Look, I know what you’re implying, but both of your stores are blue, so it was easy to confuse them!”