I start working seasonal retail at a large store that is known to be “better” than some other retail establishments and has a fancy nickname to some people.

This particular store is located in a city that is gradually being taken over by a large, conservative Christian college, and some of the parents that come to visit their college-age children can be a lot to handle. They are pushy and entitled, and they tend to make a scene about the tiniest things.

I have naturally light brown hair and decide one day to dye my hair a darker shade of brown. I pick out a really nice cola-brown color and go home and dye my hair myself. It looks great and I absolutely love it!

When I return to work the next day, I am busily refolding the sweaters when I hear a loud, horrified gasp. I turn, thinking something is wrong, and see a short woman in a fur coat and overly-permed hair gaping at me. Standing next to her is her confused-looking daughter who attends the nearby college. I have seen this woman and her daughter before and have even served them on the registers when we get super busy. She is extremely religious but is always polite to me, telling me to have a “blessed day” at the end of our transactions.

I smile and wave, and before I can even open my mouth to greet her, she suddenly says loudly:

Customer: “She dyed her hair! She gave up her God-given hair color! She is the antichrist! She is the spawn of Satan!“

I gape at her, and her poor daughter looks like she wants to crawl under the clothing racks and die, but the mom continues:

Customer: “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ, sinner! Beg for forgiveness or He shall smite you where you stand!”

I lose it. I unapologetically burst out laughing and walk away — I need to take my break anyway — and laugh my way to the break room. My coworkers ask me what’s funny.

Me: “I hope you guys don’t mind that [Store] hired the Spawn of Satan!”

I recounted the interaction with the guest. We all had a good laugh, even the store manager thought it was funny, and I didn’t get in trouble for walking away from a guest!

I pull into the petrol station which is quite busy. The pump I am aiming to pull up to happens to be near the entrance door. As the pump is currently busy, I pull up behind the car using it but leave room for the people who are walking toward the door to enter the station and pay. They do that little dance you do when you’re not sure if a car is stopping for you, so to clarify, I wave them through.

Two of the people about to cross seem to be together. The first man walks on as I wave him through, but the other man stops to wave me forward. I’m a bit confused because I can’t move forward as there is a car at that pump, something that he’d notice if he turned his head even slightly. I give him another friendly (albeit a bit confused) wave to go ahead and he absolutely loses his mind!

Man #1: “GO, C***!”

He has his chest forward like he intends to come at me. I’m utterly in shock. Part of my brain wants to wind my window down to calmly explain that I can’t move forward, but luckily, my shock keeps me motionless. He eventually walks toward the door, still ranting and raving, and the guy he is with physically turns him around.

Man #2: “Walk back to the car.”

I was still sitting in my car in shock. Another customer, an older man, had been watching the scene unfold as if he was going to jump in if need be. He walked past my car window and gave me a sympathetic and confused look. That made me feel a bit safer about the situation, but I spent the rest of the day wondering how someone could become so angry so quickly about someone giving them the right of way that they’d scream, swear, and physically threaten a mum sitting in her car with her toddler. And it was only 9:00 am. I’d hate to see how the rest of his day played out.

I’m living on my own and have no car, so when I get a great offer for kitty litter from a new online platform for pets in my email, I go to the online shop. Everything seems legit and shipping costs are reasonable, so I order six big bags of kitty litter, twenty-five litres a bag. Everything goes fine. I receive two big boxes with two bags of kitty litter in the first and second one but only one bag in the third.

I call customer service and they are very friendly.

Me: “I only got five bags of [kitty litter] instead of the six I ordered.”

Customer Service: “Oh! We’ll send you another bag free of charge.”

Only a few days later, a big box arrives on my doorstep. It has two more bags of kitty litter.

I call the shop again.

Me: “I needed one more bag of kitty litter and you sent two. Just bill me for the extra bag, since I’ll need it sooner or later.”

Customer Service: “Okay, we can do that.”

I think nothing of it, waiting for the new bill. Instead, a few days later, I get another box with, again, two bags of kitty litter and no bill.

I call again.

Me: “This is ridiculous. Now my flat, which is not too big, is now full of kitty litter!”

The five of six bags I ordered would have just fitted in the back of my closet and one would have gone in the box I had to use daily, but I had no idea where to put the extra bags.

Customer Service: “We’re sorry about that. Just keep the extra bags, no bill.”

I think, “Okay, fine. Now I will not need to buy more kitty litter for a long time. Well, I wanted some reserve, just not that much.”

A few days passed and another box came with another pair of bags with kitty litter. This time, I didn’t dare to call. For anyone keeping count, I had now received eleven bags of kitty litter. I had paid for six and only owned one cat! I packed the box aside and waited to see what would happen. 

A few months later, I looked at their online shop again and read that they were closed now.

Somehow, I’m not surprised. I also never got a bill for those extra bags of kitty litter.

Well, at least it was pretty good quality and I really got my money’s worth. On the bad side, my visitors stared at bags with kitty litter piled beside my sofa until I finally managed to use it up. Some made jokes about me being really afraid of floods in my own home and feeling the urge to build a bunker from kitty litter.

I have an overgrown piece of land that I haven’t touched in many many years, partly as I’ve never had a use for it and partly the cost of a skip or hiring a van. A friend offers the use of his dad’s old landscaping tools, so I figure I should at least cut it back, even if I have to figure out how to get rid of it later.

I start with the dead trees, cutting them down and then into smaller logs. I sit them around the front, well out of the way of the path still. Then, I head round back to tackle some of the bushes and thorny vines. It takes a few days. Then, I have another small tree I can now reach to cut up, again into small, movable pieces. I bring them round front and go to stack them with the rest, but they’re missing.

I search around to make sure they haven’t rolled away or some kids haven’t kicked them down the road. But no, gone.

Good job, as I didn’t want them, I suppose. I stack the rest of the wood, slightly closer to the path, to lure my wood thief into unwittingly doing me another favour. Sure enough, a few days later, the wood is gone. I get on with the rest of the weeding and digging.

I get a knock on the door. A middle-aged guy is stood there.

Man: “Got any more wood?”

Me: “Oh, no, sorry.”

Man: “What about them?”

He points to the neighbours’ garden and two ornamental trees.

Me: “No, they belong to the neighbours.”

Man: “That one?”

He points behind himself.

Me: “That would be the council’s tree.”

Man: “Oh, can I borrow your saw?”

Images of several missing telegraph poles going missing flash to mind.

Me: “Sorry, no. Try the DIY store up the road.”

I shut the door but kept a watch. He tried looking through to the back anyway, hoping no doubt for some hidden forest, but then he dejectedly loped off. It was that very day I put up some cameras and hid all my wooden spoons, just in case he returned.

I work as a security guard for a winery. The winery also owns the hotel across the street, which always seems strange because it’s a pure production winery, not a tourist winery. Regardless, during my shifts, I am the sole security guard for both the hotel and the winery, but my guard shack and 95% of my job happens at the winery. One Saturday during the off-season, when the winery is completely dead, I get this phone call from the hotel receptionist.

Me: “Hello, what can I do for you?”

Receptionist: “Hi, I wanted to call and report a suspicious car in our parking lot.”

Me: “Okay, please describe the car and why it’s suspicious.”

Receptionist: “The car looks like [description] and it’s suspicious because it’s been parked there for two days without moving.”

Me: “Oooookay, does it belong to a guest?”

Receptionist: “Actually, yes, I think I saw the people in room number [something] get out of it.”

Me: “All right, are those guests still there?”

Receptionist: “Yes, they are, but the car has been there for a really long time. Do you think I should call the police?”

Me: “I think that’s a bad idea, since it sounds like the guests just haven’t gone anywhere while you were there, but let me talk to my supervisor so I know what he wants to do about this situation.”

I hang up as she continues trying to explain why it is so weird that the car hasn’t moved.

Getting my boss’s opinion is really just an excuse to loop my boss in on the exchange I had just had in case the receptionist tries to do something crazy like call a tow truck and act as if I supported the decision. After calling her a moron, my boss asks me to call her back and get more information.

When I call, it’s clearly still the receptionist’s voice, but now with a bad Spanish accent. She gives a different name.

I’m very confused but I roll with it.

Me: “Hi, I just wanted to follow up with [Receptionist] and gather some more info about her concerns. Could you put her on the phone, please?”

Receptionist: “I’m sorry, she went to the kitchen area; she could be anywhere right now, I don’t think I could find her.”

This is not a giant hotel complex. The entire hotel has about ten guest rooms in a two-story building plus a manor house area with a kitchen, a bar, and a few miscellaneous rooms. The idea that anyone could disappear in this place is absurd.

I’m 95% sure that I’m actually just talking to the receptionist but not quite at the point of calling her out.

Me: “All right, well, could you give me [details] for my incident report?”

Receptionist: “Oh, yes.”

She gives the exact same details to the point that my 95% surety increases to 98%. I try to contain my laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

Me: “Okay, thank you.”

I have rarely heard a voice more filled with abject despair and exasperation with the absurdity of the world than my boss listening to the details of my second exchange. For my part, I spent the next thirty minutes bursting into random bouts of uncontrollable giggles as I struggled to force the inanity of it all into a professional format in my incident report.

Related:
Very Bad Reception, Part 22
Very Bad Reception, Part 21
Very Bad Reception, Part 20
Very Bad Reception, Part 19