(I work at a sandwich shop that’s on the way to a national park. We get some pretty interesting orders and we have some good laughs, but this one takes the cake.)

Customer: “Hello, I would like a veggie delight.”

Me: “Okay, would you like any cheese on that?”

Customer: “Yes, pepperjack, please.”

Me: “And would you like that toasted?”

Customer: “No, thank you.”

Me: “Okay, let’s move on to the veggies.”

Customer: “Oh, I wanted turkey on that.”

Me: “So, would you like a turkey sandwich, instead?”

Customer: “No, I want a veggie delight.”

Me: “Sir, if you order a turkey sandwich, it comes with veggies. If you order a veggie delight and add turkey, I will have to charge you extra.”

Customer: “Okay.”

Me: “So, would you like me to make it a turkey sandwich?”

Customer: “No, I want a ham.”

(My coworkers were dying in the backroom. We had never had anyone change their sandwich three times within one order.)

(It is summer break and I am in middle school. I am laying on the floor reading a book and eating shredded wheat cereal. My brother, unbeknownst to me, is on the couch reading a horror book about a vampire. I am getting to the bottom of my bowl and decide to drink up the milk by sucking on one of the squares, making a very wet slurping sound. Apparently, he has just gotten to the point where a vampire is feeding just as I start slurping my milk, and looks up from his book to see if he can pinpoint the sound right when I stop. Just as he settles back into his book and starts to reread up to that point, I start again, repeating the cycle a few times before he verbally freaks out.)

Brother: “Did you hear that?”

Me: “Hear what?”

Brother: “That wet, slurping sound?”

Me: “You mean this?”

(I proceed to suck milk through my cereal again.)

Brother: “That! That! What is it?”

Me: “I’m just drinking my milk through my cereal. Why?”

(He explains what has been going on, and I just start laughing my a** off.)

Brother: “I don’t need sound effects for my books; my imagination does just fine!”

(I work for a local farm that raises pastured meat to sell frozen at farmer’s markets. We also offer a CSA membership program. Members get a custom basket each month. Because they’re paying for a premium product, we try to be flexible with requests and changes. One customer consistently takes this a little too far, popping in at markets to pass along her latest specifications. My boss, the farm’s co-owner, recounts the latest episode to me…)

Customer: “I need to talk about my CSA.”

Owner: “What seems to be the problem?”

Customer: “I don’t want chickens where the legs are put straight like this–” *motions for two parallel lines sticking up, how the legs roughly sit on a standard packaged small whole chicken*

Owner: “May I ask why you weren’t happy with the other birds?”

Customer: “Chickens like that take too long to cook. I always cook a chicken for thirty-five minutes, but I cooked those chickens for two hours and they still were not done! I don’t want any more with the legs like that.”

(We have already had chickens specially processed at a smaller weight for her, a long compromise after she was displeased with several other products.)

Owner: “Are you sure the legs are what’s causing the problem? We could look but—”

Customer: “No, no, no more chickens with the legs like that. Thank you!”

(She quickly walked away from our stand. That is how we later found ourselves staring at frozen poultry, trying to determine how else one can direct a butcher to package an exceptionally scrawny chicken, and in what world leg positioning affects cooking time. Her CSA basket is too large to risk losing.)

(I work as a cashier in Connecticut. Part of our job is to bag the purchase as we ring the items up. As usual, I bag up a middle-aged woman’s items and spin the turntable towards her so I can work on the next bag. Her eyes widen in awe.)

Customer: “Whoa… and you can take it off?”

Me: “Yes? You can take your bag whenever you’re ready.”

Customer: “And it spins?! That’s just so cool! I’m visiting from New Jersey and we don’t have these over there! It’s so handy; you can fill bags and spin them around and take them. That’s so cool! Everything is so different here; it’s like a whole different world.”

(She suddenly looks like she’s realized something.)

Customer: “I’m finally going to have to learn how to pump my own gas.”

(The rest of the transaction went normally, but I was in shock that this middle-aged woman had never seen a bagging turner before.)

(My cousin is Chinese-American and a single child, and has recently announced his engagement to a divorced white American with three girls. She kept her ex’s name to match her kids. My aunt and uncle aren’t very pleased that my cousin will have three step-daughters right off the bat, because that could deter them from more children, especially a boy.)

Fiancée: *hands my aunt and uncle an item that includes her maiden name*

Aunt: “‘Bell’ is your name?”

Fiancée: “Yes, it’s my maiden name.”

Aunt: *drags [Uncle] aside for a bit, then they smile and return*

Uncle: “Your name is Bell! I think our son chose you on his first birthday!”

(My aunt and uncle then proceeded to explain that in Chinese tradition there is a fortune-telling ceremony where objects are placed down for the baby to pick. They didn’t use the traditional set of items, and one of them was a bell. It was supposed to represent growing up to become a shop owner, because that was the bell my aunt and uncle used in theirs. Apparently it decided to come true in another way.)