I work in a charity shop and for several months have been trying to get permission to do a Eurovision-themed window display.

We all love the spectacle, I love decorating the fun/silly holiday windows, and with an international customer base like ours, it can be fun to talk about it at work. We have just gotten three new full-body mannequins in addition to our beloved dressmakers’ dummies, and the finals are this week, so I am finally let loose!

The male mannequin, who we named George, gets dressed in a very cheap and shiny black and silver costume tracksuit and baseball cap, with one of the females, Gina, in a coordinating mini dress and holding a prop microphone. Gertie, mannequin #3, gets a very 1990s-style gold evening dress, red glitter heels, and a red feather fan held coyly over her face. I hang a sequin blazer with a tag marking it on hold for [Famous Irish Two-Time Winner], make some simple paper flags, and hang a disco ball over them all while prepping a poster in keeping with the theme. It’s not my finest work, but I’m satisfied with it, and my supervisor and my coworker (who also loves Eurovision and does our merchandising) approve.

The next day, I am working on the till with my back to the window displays. A coworker comes up to me in a rush.

Coworker: “Those ladies are undressing George! Look!”

This is less than ideal as George is very obviously presented as “masculine”, and he’s in a prominent window on a major street! I recognise them as regulars who really like sparkly clothes, and I trot around as fast as I can.

Me: “Sorry, those outfits are not for sale!”

One lady has George’s top half on the floor and his jacket on herself and is trying to pull the pants off. These mannequins are held up by a pole sticking into the back of one leg so, thankfully, she is struggling to lift his lower half off of it.

The rest of this conversation takes place over a translator app as I pull his pants back up.

Me: “Sorry, these outfits aren’t priced and are not for sale.”

Customer #1: “Why are they not for sale?”

Me: “They’re just being used for decoration.”

Customer #1: “When will they be for sale, then?”

I don’t get a chance to respond clearly that they’re Halloween costumes as I have to remove George’s arms to get him dressed again. The woman wanders off, clearly unhappy with the situation and obviously complaining about me to her friends.

My coworker and I laugh in disbelief for a minute when they leave. Even with [Major Fast Fashion Website]’s bad quality merchandise, this get-up is obviously not made for everyday wear!

Later on, as I am adding the final touches and hanging my poster, another customer walks in and stops at gold-and-red glamorous Gertie.

Customer #2: “Excuse me, I know the tag says, ‘Not for sale,’ but do you know how much this dress is?”

Me: *Flustered* “Ehm, no. I pulled it out of the rails before it was priced. I think it’s a [size], but I really won’t know about the price until my manager is in again.”

We don’t sell many evening dresses, so I didn’t even think to ask first and just grabbed the first dress that fit my idea from the back of a rail. To be honest, I didn’t expect anyone to even glance at it and assumed it’d end up either put back in storage or recycled.

Customer #2: “Will it be priced when the window gets changed? Do you know?”

Me: “Yeah, it wasn’t supposed to be going for sale yet, but I’ll pass it on to the manager next time she’s in.”

Customer #2: “Can I leave you my number or something? It’s absolutely gorgeous!”

Me: “Absolutely! If you just go around to [Supervisor] at the desk, she’ll take your details, and we’ll let you know about the size and the price as soon as we can.”

She also admired Gina’s very short-and-shiny costume dress, and we giggled over similar outfits on people we knew before walking on toward the desk. 

I always get some amused compliments on my tacky windows, but I’ve never had a customer walk in and try to strip one! But on the bright side, thanks to [Customer #2], we now have some ideas for a vintage formalwear display, too.

I regularly use the same chain garage for any work I need on my car. Their building is squeezed into an oddly-shaped site in a busy part of the city that isn’t very practical, but they make it work.

Customers aren’t allowed past a certain point, so we drive our cars into a small area with several marked parking spaces, park, walk into the office to register our car, confirm what we brought it in for, and hand over the keys. Then, a member of staff drives the car back when they are ready for it. Once the work is finished on the car, because there are never enough parking spaces at the front, they put the cars in a yard behind the building until the owner arrives, and then a staff member drives it out to us at the front.

I have brought my car in for its MOT (an annual roadworthiness test). I drop it off in the morning and come back to the garage after work to pick it up. I drive a Fiat 500, a small model with a fairly distinctive appearance, in pastel green. I’ve been in the office to pay and pick up the paperwork, and the staff member behind the counter tells me that a mechanic is bringing the car around right now, so I step out the door of the office into the front area to wait.

As I step out, a woman who looks to already be in a huff walks in from the street and looks around, frowning. She spots me, hesitates, and then walks over and stands next to me, looking in the same direction as me but never at me. I have the sneaking suspicion that she has decided I look like I know what I’m doing and so is going to copy me. (I don’t know what it is about me, but this happens a lot.)

A few moments later, one of the mechanics drives my car around the corner from the workshop area. He’s going very slowly due to the awkward layout, and I start to move to the spot where I assume he is going to pull up. As soon as I take a step, the woman takes off running toward my car. Before the mechanic has even stopped it, she is alongside it and trying to open the driver’s door. I rush over, just as the mechanic opens the door to get out. I see he’s about to hand her the key.

Me: “Wait! That’s my car!”

Woman: “Nnno! Nnno!”

She yells this at me like she’s trying to stop a dog from jumping up at her. The mechanic pauses and holds onto the keys.

Mechanic: *To me* “What’s the registration of your car?”

Me: “It’s [correct registration].”

Mechanic: “Okay.” *To the woman* “This is this lady’s car. I’ll bring yours out next. What was the registration?”

Woman: “This is my car! The registration is [something similar to what I said but with the characters in the wrong order].”

Realising she got it wrong, she walks around to the front of my car to look at the plate and starts reading it off. Meanwhile, I show the mechanic the paperwork for the car which I am still holding, and he hands me the keys. The staff member from the office has come out to see what’s happening, and I think that I’d better speak with him, so I surreptitiously lock the car and put the keys in my bag.

As the guy from the office approaches, the mechanic points at the woman and says to him:

Mechanic: “I think she was trying to steal this car.”

The woman goes off like a rocket, stamping, swearing up a storm, and screaming that the garage has messed up and is sending her precious, beloved car off with a thieving w****! She then throws herself onto the bonnet — at least, she attempts to, but she misjudges it and slides onto the ground, thankfully without denting the car.

A manager then comes out of the office and approaches. The mechanic explains to her what has happened while the woman picks herself up off the floor, now loudly complaining about it being dirty. (It’s a garage, love.) To my surprise, the manager says this to the woman:

Manager: “Mrs. [Woman], we spoke about this last time. Just because a car is brought out while you are standing here, it doesn’t mean it’s your car. Please go into the office. I will deal with your paperwork and call for your car, and then you can leave.”

The way she says “leave” sounds very final, but I don’t think the woman notices. The fight goes out of her a bit, and she follows the manager and the office staff member back to the office while the mechanic looks over the bonnet of my car to make sure it hasn’t been damaged

We are still standing there when the woman’s car is brought out. It is a large, dark grey SUV, quite new but covered in scratches and dents. The mechanic and I both look from that car to mine, and I’m sure we are both wondering how she could possibly have mistaken my car for hers. It strikes me that she might be drunk or something.

Me: “Do you think that woman should actually be driving?”

Mechanic: “No. I think the manager is probably calling the police on her, though. That’ll be fireworks.”

Having had enough drama for the afternoon, I thanked him and left.

Related:
People Who Make You Think “How Are You Allowed To Drive?”

While working at a thrift store, we would have all kinds of customers, from the usual normal plain John/Jane to the truly bizarre. This is one of the latter.

I was on registers and the day was about as usual when, all of a sudden, the flow of customers completely stopped like someone had turned off the faucet. Normally, I have enough awareness to see the next customer’s cart to determine if another register would need to be opened, but one of my faster coworkers was already open, so I was hyper-focused on the items themselves. Once the customer was finished, I saw the next customer.

This customer was about six feet tall (maybe taller) so they had a fairly intimidating presence, they were wearing a sundress, and behind their hair, which was covering their face, they were wearing what I could best describe as a mask that was a combination of Mankind and Kane (wrestlers). Every movement was like Jason/Michael Myers in that it was slow, yet methodical.

I let out a small “Oh” and got ready. I asked how they were doing and got no response. Okay, so the silent customer. I sped through the purchase and announced the total. Still without a word, the customer slowly paid for their purchase, slowly grabbed their bags, and slowly left.

Customers started to fill my line after the customer left, and they were all talking about the customer like it was a horror movie.

My only thought was, “Another wonderful day at [Store].”

This is the time I was either featured on some obscure “gotcha” video show without my consent or possibly narrowly avoided being drugged and dismembered by a serial killer in rural America. I’m still trying to figure out which possibility is more likely.

I’m driving across a few states by myself. It’s getting late, and I’m getting hungry.

I find a small town just off the highway and pull over into it. I quickly find a cute little restaurant with white linen tablecloths and prairie décor. The only things it’s missing are an ox-skull on the wall and several large wagon wheels.

I enter the restaurant and am greeted by a young man. There are no other diners in the restaurant. In retrospect, that should have been my hint to leave.

Employee: “Hello, sir, ma’am… Sir? Ma’am?”

He’s likely confused by my gender presentation.

Me: “Whichever.”

Employee: “Let me, um, get you a table? And a menu?”

Me: “That would be nice, thank you.”

Employee: “Can I get you a drink while you wait?”

Me: “Coffee, please.”

Employee: “Gotcha.”

And he disappears into the back. I read the menu some and decide what I want.

I hear some… strange noises: some thumps, a grinding sound, maybe a strangled shout?

The young man comes out from the back, and I can’t help but notice that he now has a bandage on his hand.

Employee: “The coffee will be a little longer.”

Me: “That’s, uh… fine?”

He turns around to leave.

Me: “Can I give you my order?”

He darts out before I can finish.

I pull out my eBook reader to relax. My reading is interrupted by more thumps and other strange sounds. What in tarnation is going on back there?

The young man comes out again. Now he has a very obvious-looking scald mark on his other hand. His hair is damp and sticking to his head.

Employee: “Your coffee will be a little longer.”

Me: “Before you go, I’d like to make an order.”

Employee: “What would you like?”

Me: “The shepherd’s pie, please.”

Employee: “Okay.”

And he’s gone again. Slightly suspicious, I stand up after he leaves and pull out my phone. I start shining a light at things, looking for hidden cameras.

The young man returns with the coffee. He is now walking with a bit of a limp and has more bandages on his hand.

Employee: “Your shepherd’s pie is on the way.”

I sip the coffee, and it tastes wrong. It’s very gritty and full of grounds and just… generally wrong. I have been here for too long and still have not yet been fed. I slide a five under the coffee to cover the bill and start to leave.

The young man darts out from the back to block me from leaving.

Employee: “Please stay! This is my uncle’s restaurant! He’s sick with cancer! I’m just filling in for him! I don’t want it to go under!”

Me: *Pushing past him* “I’m going.”

Employee: “Please at least give us a good review on Google!”

Me: “I’ll consider it.”

I ran to my car, turned it on, and left. I was paranoid after leaving. Several times, I thought a car was following me, only for it to turn out not to be. Finally, I made it to a fast food place and got a quick hamburger. I was very hungry.

That night in the hotel room, when I searched for the place on Google Maps, I could not find it. I stayed up all night too frightened by the encounter to go to sleep.

My mother is one of the most hardworking, responsible people I know — to a fault. After decades in the medical malpractice legal world, she finally retired and was looking forward to her very well-deserved future of relaxation and self-care. However, just two months after she retired, her parents (my grandparents) were stricken with so many collective health problems that they were moved into an assisted living facility, and from that point on, my mom essentially became their full-time caretaker.

Why did she need to be, you may be wondering, if they were in a facility that should already be providing care? Well, between my basically blind grandmother’s dialysis requirements (transport needed to another location three times a week), all of their major logistical, medical, and financial needs, and the fact that both of my grandparents are quite comfortable getting my mom to do everything instead of asking the staff for help, the woman basically never stops. She does their laundry, handles their doctor’s appointments, files their taxes, fetches and carries for them, and spends a ton of time just staying on top of all the staff at the various facilities they’re in and out of, triple-checking that everyone involved is doing their job and picking up the slack or raising her voice when they don’t.

It seems excessive, right? She’s constantly burnt out by it all. I’ve tried to insist on her setting some healthier boundaries for herself and getting her brother to help out more, but she insists that if she doesn’t constantly handle everything, then things just won’t get done. She despairs to me that “no one knows how to think anymore” and “no one knows how to do their jobs”, and she worries constantly that something important will be missed and that whatever medical catastrophe that follows will be all her fault. 

Knowing my mother as I do, and living several states away as all this is going on, it’s hard not to think that everyone else’s alleged incompetence is mostly in her head, or that she’s just so quick to do things herself that she never gives anyone a chance to prove that she doesn’t need to. However, I’ve recently spent a week with her, following her around and witnessing all her interactions with staff, all her phone calls with doctors and nurses and receptionists ad nauseam, and I was saddened to learn just how right she might be.

There were several examples I witnessed of staff being unobservant, clueless, or seemingly incapable of thinking past the exact parameters of their job description. These were not cut-rate facilities, by the way! Everything looked very nice, and the people were always very pleasant, but that did not mean they necessarily used their brains for anything else. I came to see that Mom’s terrible luck with systems or employees functioning as they should was really not her imagination after all. Here’s just one example.

Three weeks before, my grandfather had been tested for a UTI (urinary tract infection). These can be extremely worrying, as we found out last year when he suffered a major one. For those who don’t know, UTIs (in elderly men especially) can cause alarming symptoms that mimic dementia. These symptoms can also include auditory hallucinations, and my grandfather was reporting to us — in the present day — that he was beginning to hear women singing in the style of the 1940s, as if in the next room — the EXACT auditory hallucination he’d had the last time — so, clearly, we were concerned about the possible UTI! But only in the week I was visiting did the doctor finally call my mother, telling her he’d prescribed an antibiotic for my grandfather and suddenly being very insistent that he begin taking it right away! As my mother pointed out, it was obvious that no one had looked at the results of the test until just now, and the UTI was sure to be worse after three weeks. But some relief at last, right? The prescription had been ordered!

Not exactly. A day later, my mom got a call from the assisted living facility.

Facility: “Hi, Ms. [Mom]. We have these antibiotics here. For your father?”

Yes, a lot of these people spoke in a questioning tone, as if unsure of what they were saying. Mom keeps her phone volume loud, and I could always hear every word.

Mom: “Yes, those should be for his UTI. [Doctor] just prescribed them.”

Facility: “Oh, well… we can’t give them to him without an order from the doctor.”

Mom: *Briefly stumped* “What do you mean? The doctor prescribed them.”

Facility: “Yes, but we can’t administer them without an order. You’re going to need to call the doctor and have him give us the order.”

Mom: “Okay, but why do I have to call him? Can’t you call him yourself? He’ll tell you—”

Facility: “No, we can’t do that. We don’t call doctors. You have to call him and tell him to give us an order.”

Mom: “I don’t understand. Why can’t you just—”

Facility: “That’s not what we do.”

My mother said, “Fine,” did as instructed, and called the doctor. 

Doctor: “What do you mean, they haven’t given it to him yet? He needs to be on those antibiotics!”

Mom: “Yes, I’m well aware! They need an order from you. They said you have to call them and—”

Doctor: “He’s at [Facility], right?”

Mom: “Right—”

Doctor: “Don’t they have their own doctors there?!”

Mom: “Yes, they do.”

Doctor: “They should know how these things work! This is ridiculous! Your father should have been on medication weeks ago! Why do I have to call them and tell them how to do their jobs?!”

I’m sure my mother was wondering the same thing — but with the added bonus of having the doctor yell at her, too.

A day later, she confirmed that the order had been sent. Another day later, we learned that the antibiotics had still not been given. I think it was another two days of similar nonsense after that before the pills finally, actually changed hands and made it to my grandfather. If my mom hadn’t been on top of it — or any of the thousand other things she handles — I honestly don’t know what would have happened.

I used to think many of my mother’s problems were something she brought upon herself, but I’ve seen enough to believe her now. I only wish there was something to be done about it!