(It is about 2 am, and I have been driving for about nine hours. I am about two hours from my destination and am now traveling on backroads. I have rolled all of my windows down, as the night air is very cool. This happens after I had pumped some gasoline.)

Me: “Do you have any five-hour Energy shots?”

Female Employee: *stares at me wide-eyed*

Me: “Do you know what five-hour Energy is?”

Female Employee: *eyes widen* “Bug!”

Me: “Bug?”

Female Employee: “BUG!” *points at the collar of my shirt*

(I look down and see the biggest moth I have ever witnessed in my life. I shriek like a little girl, knock it off my shirt onto the floor, and step on it.)

Me: “That thing was huge!”

Female Employee: “And it was one of God’s creatures… and you killed it!”

(A customer has just bought a cellphone. She wants me to show her how to insert the SIM card. I open the cover on the phone and reach for the SIM card when she shouts, startling me.)

Customer: “No! Don’t touch it!”

Me: “But I have to put the SIM card in—”

Customer: “No! You can’t touch it!”

Me: “I have to touch it to insert the SIM Card into the cellphone.”

Customer: “But I don’t want you to touch it! It will get viruses on it! I’ve heard it can happen! Just show me how to do it, and I’ll do it myself!”

Me: “Ma’am, the viruses you’ve heard about are digital programs, and can not be transmitted from a person touching the SIM card. But if you absolutely don’t want me touching it, you may insert the SIM card yourself.”

Customer: “I don’t want viruses in my cellphone! I’ll do it myself, thank you.”

(At this point the customer takes out a bottle of window cleaner spray and towel, sprays it on her hands, and dries them off. Then, she very carefully grabs the SIM card on the edges and slides it inside the cellphone.)

Customer: “See?! No viruses!”

Me: “Well done, ma’am. Have a nice day.”

(It’s the late 1990s, and I’m the lone IT guy for a small company. I support two branch offices with about six employees each. In addition to the standard IT duties, I also do nightly, weekly, and quarterly backups on tape. Because we are so small and can’t afford to pay for off-site data storage/disaster recovery, I also keep duplicates of the backup tapes off-site in a fire safe at my home. This happens one day after I’d been working there about two years.)

Boss: “We’re letting you go. We’ve decided that you know too much about how our computer systems work. If you ever got mad at us, you could crash our whole network. Also, I need you to go home and bring back the tape backups that you keep off-site.”

Me: *stunned* “Um. Okay.”

(I drive home, get the backup tapes, bring them back, and hand them to my boss.)

Me: “You know, anyone who knows enough to keep the computers running is also going to know enough to bring them down. And, if I were really the vindictive type who would crash the network if I got mad at you, I never would have returned these backup tapes.”

Boss: “Hmmm… you’re right. Go sit in your office. Let me think for a bit.”

(I go sit in my office. About thirty minutes later, he comes back.)

Boss: “Okay, never mind. You’re not fired. But you are on probation for six months!”

(I got a new job as quickly as possible!)

(One day, a well-dressed customer walks into my camping store. She asks me for a pair of boots for a well-known hiking area.)

Me: “Well, these boots are light and flexible. They’re made with gore-tex to enable your feet to breathe.”

Customer: “How much do they cost?”

Me: “They are [price].”

Customer: “Do you have anything more expensive?”

Me: *shows her another pair* “Well, these are our most expensive pair at [price].”

Customer: “They’re not expensive enough! My friend’s pair cost MUCH more than that, and I MUST have a pair more expensive than her!” *turns and storms out the door*

This story is part of the snobby customers roundup!

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(I am a customer at a very popular superstore in my town. This is in 2012, not long after an incident has been reported in the news of someone attacking a homeless man in Florida. I have my five-year-old daughter in line with me. An elderly customer is in front of me talking to the cashier.)

Cashier: “Hello, how can I help—”

Customer: “How dare you.”

Cashier: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “How dare you wear that keychain!”

Cashier: “I don’t understand.”

Customer: “That!”

(The customer points at the cashier’s keychain, which has a zombie on it.)

Customer: “How could you support that man in Florida? He ate another man’s face while he was naked! How dare you!”

(The cashier is completely stunned, but my daughter suddenly steps up to the aggravated woman.)

My Daughter: “Lady, that man wasn’t a zombie. He was just crazy. Zombie’s aren’t real! You should know that. You’re about a hundred!”