I work in an old-time five-and-ten-cent store. I have left for the day and am walking to my car.

Customer: “Are you still open?”

Me: “No, ma’am, we have closed.”

Customer: “Is it a soft close or hard close?”

Me: “I’m sorry but we’re closed!”

Customer: “Yes, but is it a hard close or soft close?”

Me: *Thinking* “CLOSED is CLOSED!”

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, the manager is grabbing her stuff to leave for the night!”

I’d never heard of a soft close before.

I work for a construction company as a secretary. Twice a week, the heads of both the construction company and the customers will meet to go over progress. For the last few meetings, [Manager] has been asking for access to the air conditioning system. I haven’t seen the control panel myself, but from what I gather, it is under lock and key to avoid running up an electric bill for the customer.

Manager: “As you know, it’s been very hot here lately.”

Customer: “Oh, I know! I’ve had my AC down to sixty-five for a week!”

Manager: “Right, so the guys are out there building in the heat and—”

Customer: “I would hate that. More power to them, though!” *Laughs*

[Manager] is still polite and even-toned, but I can see he’s getting annoyed.

Manager: “So, the air conditioning units—”

Customer: *Angry* “I don’t know why you keep bringing up these air conditioners. You do not have access; you will not have access. What is so hard to understand? You have fans, you have water, and there is shade along the building. Do we need to go over the contract?”

[Manager] calmly pulls a copy out of the folder in front of him and points to a specific section.

Manager: “Right here, it states that you will allow us to use the air conditioner if the building exceeds eighty degrees. It has been over ninety-five for the last week. We have documented the conditions using thermometers at various places every hour of the workday. You are in breach of your contract and, as such, we have every right to pull our employees off this project today.”

Customer: *Blushing furiously* “I… Well… How was I… When was this changed?!”

She snatches the contract and glares at it.

Manager: “It was never changed. You signed it.”

Customer: *Meekly, still blushing* “We will provide access codes at the end of the meeting.”

The workers got their air conditioning within the hour.

My store has a survey that customers can fill out on their receipt, with a one-to-ten scoring system. Everyone in the store gets punished if we get a score under eight because seven and below is considered a zero.

A customer comes up to the queue with her mask pulled under her chin and gets directly behind the other customer in line. It’s part of my job to enforce social distancing, and I ask her to step back and give the customer space.

Customer: “My God, is this the third f****** Reich?”

Me: “I’m just trying to make sure we stay open safely, ma’am.”

Customer: “The black b**** at the fabric counter was a Nazi; now you’re a f****** Nazi!”

Me: “There are children here, ma’am, so I need you to not shout.”

This includes her child in the cart. She has now arrived at my register, her mask still around her chin.

As I really don’t appreciate her comments, I decide to be as slightly antagonistic as store policy will permit. If I am confident that she’s leaving a negative survey, and a seven and a zero are the same thing, why bother trying to raise the score from zero up to four? I step as far back from the counter as I can.

Me: “Can you please pull up your mask?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “I can’t ring your items until you pull your mask up.”

Customer: “Get the manager.”

Me: “I’m the manager.”

She pulls it over her mouth. I scan her one item. The fabric counter employee — the black employee who she called a b**** — has given her a hefty discount.

Me: “Okay, with the 75% off that my coworker gave you, your $39.95 item comes out to $10.76 with tax.”

By sheer luck, the phone rings. There is a timer on the phone, and if it’s not picked up before the third ring, it counts as a negative survey. I have to turn around to answer the phone.

Me: “[Craft Store], please hold.”

I radio to my coworkers that whoever is able needs to pick up the hold. This is the standard operating procedure when there’s only one cashier. The entire process takes a few seconds. Before I can turn around, something small and hard hits my back. The customer has taken $10.76 cents out of her wallet, slammed the bills on the table, and thrown the coins at me. She storms out before I can put the money in the till.

Me: *Very cheerfully and loudly* “Have a nice day, ma’am!”

I put the money in the drawer and the next customer comes up as the receipt is printing. I’m genuinely smiling at this point.

Customer: “I’m impressed that you’re not upset by her.”

Me: “The only feedback that the store reads is the receipt survey. I have her receipt, so she can say whatever she wants on Yelp or Google Maps, and my store won’t care. But, when the next cashier comes in half an hour, I’m going to go find her face on the security cameras and send it to all our sister stores, so we can ban her from all the stores in our entire region. Normally, we couldn’t do this, but since she wouldn’t pull up her mask, we have a clear shot of her face. Would you like to buy a reusable bag for 99¢?”

My teacher, while we were reviewing a test in class:

Teacher: “Some of you are just guessing, but that’s okay. There are four options, so you have a 25% chance of getting it right. Next time I can do six options so you don’t know.”

Classmate: “We do a course evaluation at the end of this class, right?”

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