(I am six years old. My father is working full time on collecting funds for charity. One of the persuasion tools they use is a scratch card, as a sort of appeal to a “gambling sense” or a “leave it to faith” kind of thing. This would convince some to give apparently, anyway. One day, the little six-year-old curious and enthusiastic learner I am, I decide to ask about the scratch card and how it works. I go to see my father.)

Me: *holding the card* “Dad, what’s this?”

Father: “This card? I’ll show you.”

(He takes it from me and points on it.)

Father: “So, this is to raise funds for [Charity]; all you have to do is pick one little circle on the card and scratch it. Give it a try; just scratch one.”

Me: “You want me to scratch one for real?”

Father: “Yes, yes for real. Go for it.”

(I scratch one circle, it says $1.70.)

Father: “All right, that will be $1.70, miss.”

(I proceed to pretend to give him money, but he gives me a stern look.)

Father: “No, you have to give me a real $1.70. You scratched it; now you have to pay it. That’s how it works.”

(I’m stunned into silence, and start panicking! I’m just a kid; I don’t have any money! I believed we were just pretending for the sake of explaining. Since he said to scratch it for real, I thought it did not matter and that we could just use it as a meaningless demonstration. I was certainly not aware we were making an actual transaction. After five seconds that are an eternity for me…)

Father: “It’s okay. I’m your father; I’ll pay it for you.”

(He went away with the card like everything was perfectly fine. Up to this day, I have no idea why he made me do it for real, knowing real money would have to be involved, and without a warning, or, why he could not simply explain with words only. But I swear I still have trust issues from the experience!)

(I am working on the service desk. We normally don’t have this particular register open, but when it’s really busy, somebody stays around there to serve customers only wanting to buy cigarettes. I have just served several customers from a long line of people when this happens.)

Customer: “Do you sell cigarettes here?”

Me: “Yes, we do. We sell have all the major brands.”

Customer: “Oh, all right. I wasn’t sure if the people in front of me were your friends or something and you were showing them what you smoke.”

(The customer turned and left without buying anything. I still have no idea how to process this.)

(I work for a small chain of stores for a big supermarket in England. I get to work at 5:30 am to open at 6:00 with my manager, and have been doing this for the past two weeks because of overtime. Every morning, at about 6:30, a ninety-year-old man comes in to collect two of the same papers and always makes the same joke about needing one for each eye. Today is different though because the papers are late so he ends up waiting in front of my till talking to me. I have to ask customers to come up to my till so I can serve them. He is showing me pictures of his wife before she died. I think it is sweet so I just leave him alone as I am working stock. He then looked very thoughtful for a moment and then looks up at me.)

Customer: “Do you know anything about erectile dysfunction?”

Me: “No, I don’t, sorry. That more like a thing to talk to your doctor about.”

Customer: “Well, I just can’t seem to get it up. My girlfriend doesn’t appreciate it.”

Me: “Yeah, but that is something to talk to a doctor about, not a shop worker; isn’t it?”

(After that the papers came in and he left. I didn’t want to do any morning shifts anymore.)

(I work at a full-service hotel; we do it all for our guests, no matter the request. However, one day an elderly woman asked me to turn off the cameras in her room.)

Me: “What cameras, ma’am?”

Guest: “They’re stealing my soul! You must turn off the cameras in my room!”

Me: “Ma’am, there aren’t any cameras in your room. It is illegal for us to do such a thing.”

(She continued to insist there were cameras stealing her soul, and it was becoming too much. So, I eventually agreed to just deactivate any cameras to her room number. She smiled and said a grateful thank you, then went on to eat her breakfast.)

(Whenever the restaurant where I used to work received a letter of complaint, the manager used to hang it up with the important points highlighted. In one case, this was understandable. Although several points of the writer were right, the letter was written very poorly and made us more laugh than take it seriously.)

Letter: ‘Dear sir. A while ago I visited your restaurant and ate a wok-cooked meal. After that I had intestinal complaints for a while. I won’t go over the quality of the meal.’

(All right, but why is this our fault? If it is, please explain and how did you find out? If there is no explanation, for all we know it might be a coincidence.)

Letter: *continued* “About nine pm I went back into the buffet. The restaurant was still open, but that doesn’t keep the young [female form of workers] from screaming at each other, while the floor was wet, and to throw with the cutlery.”

(So… apparently shouting is okay as long as the floor isn’t wet? I also wondered why he used a female form of “workers,”  since the behaviour more sounded like some male coworkers I knew. I guess the guy wrote down “workers” in a quite literal sense (instead of “employees”), which his autocorrect turned into a female form, meaning as much as “cleaning ladies”.)

Letter: *cont.* “A few weeks later I came here again. I had a foreign guest with me. He had a pizza and a plate of salad, and I had a chicken breast. He says that the salad wasn’t fresh and he didn’t like his pizza and left half of it untouched.”

(The salad was made fresh every day, and concerning the pizza: again, why would this be our fault? Especially since you didn’t mention it to us back then.)

Letter: ‘When later, I walked back into the buffet, I saw that people were already cleaning part of the metal plates, while there was still meat on the plates. I don’t think this is hygienic behaviour [sic] and this is why I want to make a complaint.’

(Oh, wait. THAT was the complaint. So all the other grumbling was just… decoration?)