(It is almost Christmas Eve, so there are a lot of “special meats” available, like lobster or lamb, specially made for fondue or gourmet. There’s a customer who’s asking for my help.)
Customer: “Hi. What’s the price on the lamb?”
Me: “It’s [total] per kg so it’s [grand total] in total for this one.”
Customer: “Oh, okay. Um, I have another question. What’s the lamb made out of? I mean, from which animal is it, like cow or chicken?”
(I’m at a family get together and we are discussing gifts. It turns to a kind of clay, safe for children and non-toxic.)
Brother: “Nope, not for [His Three-Year-Old Daughter]. No. Njet. I don’t want it.”
Me: *ready to launch into a spiel about stimulating creativity, etc.*
Brother: “No, I’m not having it. [Dog] isn’t going to s*** rainbows again.”
(Apparently, his Jack Russel finds the dough irresistible and gobbles it up. Brother wins.)
(I’ve been working as an assistant store manager for over six years but am in the middle of my 13-week’s notice to start a new job out of retail. I already jokingly tell my coworkers I can talk back to our sales manager, who oversees five stores. What’s he gonna do, fire me faster? This week he is on vacation, and we have been appointed a replacement. In our store, we have a clearance rack for discounted food-action items located at the entrance of our store. We can discount most items ourselves. A man, who I believe is the replacement, comes up to me while I’m stocking it with newly discounted items.)
Sales Manager: *with an attitude* “Can you stop filling the clearance rack and put it in the back?”
Me: “No. I need room for the new food action starting tomorrow.”
Sales Manager: “It draws attention away from our main action for this week.” *twelve bottles of two-liter soda for a lower price*
Me: “People aren’t going to buy that here; they are too heavy. We are in the middle of the town center and don’t have a parking lot. The closest paid parking garage is too expensive so people don’t really use it. The next one is cheaper but it’s about a ten-minute walk, so it’s too far to carry twenty-four liters. We sold about ten packs in three days.”
Sales Manager: “The clearance rack is commercially not viable.”
Me: “Whenever we fill it to the brim, it sells out within a week. It keeps the flow of goods going for stuff that normally sits on the shelves for weeks. How is that not viable? Besides that, our regular sales manager says we can keep it, because corporate changes its mind about every month whether or not we can display it.”
(He decided to drop the conversation and talk to my store manager. Afterward, she told me two things: he wasn’t the replacement, but rather our sales manager’s boss, our regional director. I didn’t know what he looked like because we only see him once or twice a year, and he is fairly new to our region. Also, he caved in, because he couldn’t think of a decent reply to my arguments. Felt like a win!)
(One of my sons is divorced, another one married. Whilst shopping, I run into a neighbour. After some small talk, I get this gem:)
Elderly Neighbour: “I’m so sorry that [Married Son] got divorced, too.”
Me: “Excuse me? I saw both [Married Son] and [Daughter-In-Law] yesterday and they are still happily married, devoted to their daughter.”
Elderly Neighbour: “But, but he is seen with this blonde woman all over the neighbourhood.”
(It was then that I realized that my daughter-in-law had recently lost a lot of weight — as my son put it: she’s only half the woman he married — and had her hairstyle changed — badly, I might add — and had changed from dark to blonde. We had a good laugh about it when I told my son he should me tell me when something important happens in his life.)
I was attending a funeral. The elderly mother of a friend had died, and close family members were reading personal messages. A granddaughter, about fifth or sixth grade, declared that it wasn’t so problematic that Grandmother had dementia:
It meant she sometimes forgot whether she had dealt sweets or not and they walked away with two pieces of candy.
