(My coworker and I are the only ones working. My coworker is flamboyantly gay. There are two customers in the store: a female in her 30s and a male who seems to be in his early 20s.)

Coworker: *upbeat* “Hi. What can I get for you today?”

Female Customer: “Absolutely nothing! I refuse to speak to a [slur]! Get me someone else!”

Coworker: *upset* “Okay…”

Female Customer: “Yeah, go cry! You deserve it for being an unholy [slur]!”

(Suddenly, the male customer jumps in.)

Male Customer: “Excuse me, miss, but I’d like to shake your hand for being such a good Christian.”

Female Customer: *looking proud of herself* “Certainly!”

Male Customer: “Oh, wait a second… Are you on your period?”

Female Customer: “HOW DARE YOU ASK ME THAT?!”

Male Customer: “Well, the Bible says contact with a woman on her period is forbidden, so I’m just making sure to be a good Christian.”

Female Customer: *turns red and runs out of the store*

Male Customer: *laughing* “God bless, b****!”

(I’m ordering an item for a customer. In some cases, we have to use the tablets provided by the store to look up the item number online, then input that into the register to complete the order. If you’re thinking that sounds unnecessarily convoluted and annoying for both employee and customer… yeah. It definitely is. It’s not helped by the fact that the Wi-Fi in the store is terrible, so as usual, the tablet is moving very slowly through the necessary steps. So, to help pass the time while we wait, we start joking around a bit.) 

Customer: “For what those things cost, you should be able to just take a picture of the item and say, ‘Find this for me!'”

Me: “You’d think so, right? But hey, we’ll get there eventually. Our Wi-Fi just sucks.”

Coworker #1: *overhearing* “Hey, don’t say the S-word in here!”

Me: “At least it’s not the worst S-word I could say.”

Customer: “That’s true; I can think of a few. Anyway, sometimes sucking is good. In my line of work, sucking is very important!”

Me: “Where do you work? Do I even want to know?”

([Coworker #1], [Coworker #2] who has joined us behind the registers, and I all burst into laughter before the customer can explain any further.) 

Customer: *when we finally quiet down* “I work in absorbent products. Diapers, feminine hygiene, that kind of thing. So, like I said, in those cases you want them to suck well!”

(The tablet finally loaded what needed loading and I was able to complete her order. We laughed through the rest of the transaction, and my coworkers and I kept making jokes about it even after the customer left. Thank you, wonderful customer, for giving me a much-needed laugh at the end of a long and hectic shift.)

(My husband and I are checking in our one suitcase at the airport. The airline of our flight has multiple “DIY check-in stations” and several employees walking around to assist. The QR code that needs to be scanned is on my husband’s phone. He sticks the phone inside a hole in the station that clearly has some laser-scanning action going on inside, but nothing happens. An employee is already stepping up to help us out as I point out the animation playing on the screen on the station to my husband.)

Me: “You have to point the screen downward to scan, not upward. See?”

Husband: “Ah, d***, and it was so obviously pointed out right in front of me. I feel like an idiot.”

(He flips his phone around and the machine beeps.)

Employee: “Ah, sir, you need to– Oh.”

Me: “Sorry for not paying attention to the animation right away.”

Employee: “I… I have been working here for five years and I have never seen someone pay attention to the animation. You are the first to do it right without any assistance!”

Me: “Wow, that sounds… terribly frustrating. The animation is so obvious!” 

Husband: “Thanks for the assistance, anyway!”

Employee: “You are most welcome!”

(The employee turns around to help out someone else while the machine prints the label we need to stick around the handle of the suitcase. I take it and see that there are directions printed on the backside: instead of peeling off a sheet to make the ends stick together, the label will stick all on its own according to the two drawings. NOTHING on the ends seems sticky but I trust that the drawings are correct, so I stick the label through the handle and press both ends together. By magic, they stick like glue immediately. A second employee steps up to help halfway through my actions.)

Employee #2: “Ma’am, you need to… oh…”

(I have not seen a woman so baffled, impressed, and hopeful for humanity all at once. I cannot help but think that they talked about “this crazy couple that did everything by themselves at the DIY station” at their coffee break!)

I was heading in to work one day and saw a man with his children. The man was, shall we say, a beefcake. Super muscular, short-cropped hair, tattoos — a dudebro as I like to call them. His son in the cart was crying about something, and instead of consoling him or helping, he just shouted a barrage of, “YOU KEEP UP THAT CRYING AND I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT,” over and over finishing with, “DRY IT UP. DRY IT.”

Disgusted, I headed into the store and heard other customers making fun of him. I wish I could’ve said something, but as I was in uniform, I couldn’t start a conflict with a customer.

I headed over to the bakery and started to get my tasks together. Another man and his son were looking at the full-service cake case, trying to decide on a birthday cake for the son. The dad asked, “All right, bud, which one do you want?” The little boy excitedly said, “The unicorn!” I cringed, expecting the worst from the dad. The cake had a swirl of pink and purple hair with blue and white roses. Unfortunately, in cake decorating, the terms “boy cakes” and “girl cakes” get thrown around a lot. The dad said, “Okay, buddy! Ma’am, can we get the unicorn?”

Some people are garbage, but at least there some who restore my faith in humanity to balance it all out, unicorn cake in hand.

(I am trying to get access to an account I forgot the password for. I am on the phone with a very strange but very nice man.)

Employee: “Do you know the name of your first pet?”

Me: *tries several answers but none work*

Employee: “If I have your zip code, I can send you the answer.”

Me: *tries three zip codes until I finally get it*

Employee: “Okay, the answer should be sent in a text.”

Text Message: “Security answer is ‘yoda.’” *one of my guesses but he capitalized the Y*

Employee: “I’m just going to change it to a capital Y. The master’s name should be capitalized.”

(My parents named the cat Yoda before I was born. I never got into Star Wars but appreciated it anyway. Gave him a ten on his survey.)

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