I work at an auto shop. A customer wanders in and asks:

Customer: “I need a transmission pan cover.”

Me: “Okay, sir, I need the year, make, model, and engine size, please.”

He tells me.

Me: “Thank you. It appears there are two different transmissions made for that vehicle that year. Does your transmission pan cover have fourteen or seventeen bolts?”

Customer: “Which one is cheaper?”

Me: “Well, the one with fewer bolts is cheaper, but it may not fit your vehicle. I would need to know how many bolts it has to sell you the proper one.”

Customer: “Hmm… well, which one do you recommend?”

Me: “I recommend you go outside and count how many bolts there then come back in and tell me so I can get you the right part…”

Customer: “…Alright.”

The guy actually went and counted and got the right part! He was super nice…  just probably should not have been fixing his own vehicle.

I work in a tire store. A customer has been walking up and down the store and is getting more and more frustrated.

Me: “Can I help you, sir?”

Customer: “Is this all you got?!”

Me: “This is our current stock, sir, but we can order more if you—”

Customer: “—Fine! I need…”

He starts rattling off the name and model number of a tire I don’t recognize.

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, what car is that for?”

Customer: “Car?! What car? This is for my tractor!”

Me: “Oh, I see. We only sell auto tires here. There’s a farm supply store at—”

Customer: “—Tire is in your store name! That means you have to sell it!”

Me: “As I was saying, sir, we sell tires for regular automobiles. For tractors and other—”

Customer: “—Tire is in your store name! You should sell all tires, or it’s false advertising!”

I take a breath and bring up an image on my phone.

Customer: “What’s that?!”

Me: “That is the Firestone 70/70×57 SRG DT LD L4 84, to give it the full name. It’s 157.3 inches tall, weighs 14,931 pounds, and costs, oh look, they’re on special, $75,000 each.”

I look around our decent-sized but not-too-large store.

Me: “If we’re to stock every tire ever, let’s start with about four of these and, oh look, we’ve run out of room.”

Customer: “…Fine. You said there was another store?”

I gave him directions to the farm supply store and then spent ten minutes getting lost down the online rabbit hole that was the world’s largest tires…

My friend and I are both women. She admits she has zero car skills, and I have very little knowledge, but I do look up a lot of things online. Her car’s low beam bulb went out, so I removed the bulb myself and took it to a local chain automotive store with her. Let’s say for the story the bulb ID is “10.”

Employee: “Hey, what’s going on?”

Friend: “I need two of these bulbs.”

Employee: “Okay, so two 12s will be [about $80].”

Me: “It’s actually a 10. We need two 10s.” *The amount is about $50.*

Employee: *Condescending.* “What kind of car do you drive, ma’am?”

Friend: “[Her car].”

Employee: “Right. So you need two 12 bulbs.”

Me: “I literally pulled this out of the car. We need 10s.”

Employee: “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. You can buy a set of 10s and a set of 12s and see which one fits. And when you see that it’s the 12, you can return the 10s.”

Me: “You have a sign right there that says open merchandise is not refundable. Will you take the wrong bulbs back?”

Employee: “As you just said, open merchandise cannot be returned.”

Me: “Get the 10s, [Friend].”

Employee: “You can buy whatever you want, but when you see that it’s wrong, you’re stuck with it.”

Me: “We’ll be fine, thanks.”

[Friend] got the 10 bulbs, and I installed them both with no issue. I couldn’t resist calling the automotive store when we were done.

Employee: “[Store], [His Name] speaking.”

Me: “Hi, I was just there, and you told me I needed 12 bulbs instead of the 10s for my friend’s car.”

Employee: *Smug.* “As we said when you were here, you can’t return open bulbs.”

Me: “Yeah, we don’t need to. I was right.”

He made some angry noises and hung up on me. It was a small victory that probably meant nothing to him, but at the end of the day, I just wanted him to know he was wrong. I also left a review on Yelp telling people about our experience. The manager reached out and asked me to take it down because it “wasn’t a big deal,” but I refused.

Customer: “I need an air filter for my car.”

Me: “Sure thing. Do you know what one you need?”

Customer: “Yeah, yeah, just show me where they are?”

I show him, he grabs one, pays, and leaves. He storms back in later that day.

Customer: “This doesn’t match! You sold me the wrong part!”

Me: “But, you picked it out?”

Customer: “You must have taken me to the wrong aisle!”

This time, he has the filter that he pulled out of the car in a box. I open it up to inspect it.

Me: *Sighs.* “Sir, that’s not an engine air filter. That’s a cabin filter. That’s for filtering the air inside the cabin, not the engine.”

Customer: “So you’re telling me my car has two air filters?”

Me: “Yes, one for you, one for the car.”

Customer: “Well, that’s just stupid. Why would they need separate air?”

Me: “You and the car are breathing very different things, sir.”

Customer: “I swear it’s all a scam to make you buy more stuff!”

I helped him get the correct CABIN FILTER, and even helped him install it in the parking lot. They’re both VERY different looks and sizes, so I wonder how long he was trying to make this d*** thing fit?

Here in Hawaii, laws are ridiculous when it comes to putting cars back onto the roads, but one of my friends decided to carry through with it anyway when his old family Jeep from the 90s appeared on Facebook Marketplace, posted by a local salvage yard advertising pricing for parts. 

Luckily, he saw it before anyone else did and called the yard. Come to find out, the Jeep was in very poor condition because it had already been sitting in the yard for about sixteen months, they just had it “in the back” because “someone was supposed to take it.” Over that time, weather seals had failed, and the interior was not in the best condition. Regardless, he had them put it on hold.

After some dealing, we had the keys in hand. We worked on it for a long while, using both parts we had brought and parts from the scrapyard itself. A few of the yard employees hung around with us as we worked, keeping track of the parts that we used for billing purposes and warning us numerous times to check the vehicle carefully inside and out for wasps, centipedes, etc. In fact, they repeated this so many times that my friend started to get irritated with them. After a while, we got it started, and despite its age, it had a strong idle.

We paid for the parts and drove out of the lot.

Me: “Do you hear a buzzing noise?”

Friend: “Yeah, kind of like a loose bit of plastic or something.”

The warnings of the yard employees echoed through my head, suddenly.

Me: “Did we actually check for wasps and stuff?”

Friend: “Yeah! I mean no… I mean, kind of? That doesn’t sound like a bug, though; that sounds like plastic or something.”

Me: “Are you sure?

Friend: “100%. . .90%. . . .40% sure, yeah.”

Me: “Do you have your EpiPen just in case?”

Friend: “Yeah, of course, but hear where it’s coming from? Your side under the dash, it’s probably something in the glove box, like loose bolts or something.”

Me: “Actually, yeah, that makes a lot of se—”

Without thinking, I had opened the glove compartment, and what seemed at the time to be 400,000 bees flew out of it. 

There was a full hive inside the glove box and, we later found out, in the dashboard, and the residents of said hive were not happy that their house was suddenly loud and mobile.

With no vision and lots of pain, my friend managed to keep control of the Jeep for a short time, turning into the parking lot of a local bank, over one of their curbs, and into the grass in front of the building. We both burst out of the Jeep, running in opposite directions, and the poor innocent bank people that had walked up to see what was going on were forced to join us as the bees went after them as well.

Someone inside the bank came out with a fire extinguisher and sprayed both of us down. My friend, allergic to bees, was obviously rushed to the hospital despite his EpiPen shot. The police arrived along with EMS and spoke to me, and then the bee people arrived, calmed the bees, and managed to get them into boxes, removing pieces of the visible hive and putting them in framing and everything. 

When everything was said and done, the police decided to let me take the Jeep after speaking to the scrap yard and confirming it had been purchased from them. I showed them all the paperwork and my friend’s ID, and they let me go, warning me to go straight home because the vehicle was unregistered and I could get pulled over and ticketed if seen by another officer.

I went to the hospital, of course, both to bring the insurance cards to my friend that were in his wallet and wait for him to be discharged.

The Jeep sat for an additional month in my driveway. When we took the dash apart and extracted the hive, we found that it was almost the same size and shape as the passenger half of the Jeep.

She’s back on the road now with no additional issues.

CORRECTION: The original submission used both “car” and “Jeep” to refer to the same vehicle. We understand this caused some confusion, so we’ve updated all mentions to “Jeep” make for a smoother read.