I have a coworker who is willfully ignorant. He has honestly said that looking anything up for your own information or curiosity’s sake is stupid and doesn’t serve any reason. “I mean, why would you want extra homework?” Here are a few instances of conversations with him.

Coworker: “I haven’t eaten pork in years!”

I look at what he is eating and then look back up at him.

Me: “Isn’t that a bacon cheeseburger?”

Coworker: *Confused* “Yeah.”

Me: “You do know bacon is pork, right?”

Coworker: “No, it’s not!”

Me: “Ummm… Unless a bacon product specifically says it’s beef, poultry, or other, it’s from a pig and thus pork.”

He looks at me in horror and suspicion.

Me: “Look it up!”

He eats his burger, and I see him eat other pork repeatedly from then on. He never says anything about it again.

The second conversation:

Coworker: “I hate getting eggs from the store. I’m always afraid that I’m going to find a baby chick in one or they’ll hatch in my fridge.”

Me: “Ummm… okay. There are three things wrong with that statement. One, chickens ovulate and lay eggs no matter what, whether they’ve been with a rooster or not. Two, chickens used for store eggs are not kept with roosters so the eggs are not — nor will they ever be — fertilized. And three, eggs can’t hatch in cold places like the fridge.”

Coworker: “I just don’t like them.”

The third conversation:

Me: “l wish I had the money to travel. I would love to go to the Mediterranean, Italy, or even Japan and Europe.”

Coworker: “It’s not worth it. It’s just a waste of money.”

Me: “Says the man who’s lived on three different continents in his twenty years of life.”

Coworker: “They’re all tourist traps! Waste of money! Too many people!”

I’m a bit upset at his condescending tone of voice.

Me: “See, here’s the thing. I have only been on a small portion of the west coast of this continent and one city in the Midwest. I have never really had much of a chance to travel, so it is something I would like to experience. I would love to experience different cultures and see the history of the world. If that is stupid to you, fine, but don’t call something I want to experience stupid.”

The fourth conversation:

Coworker: “Coffee is a gateway drug.”

Another coworker who is drinking coffee pipes up sarcastically.

Coworker #2: “Oh, yeah. I’m totally going to be shooting up the next time you see me.”

My first job is cashiering for [Big Box Chain]. I’m fairly non-social, so I have had to pick up the little intricacies of smiling, nodding along, and small talk. In many ways, I am awfully, extremely, undoubtedly street-dumb, and this is one example of such that arguably worked in my favor. I’m eager to keep my minimum-wage paycheck and not get fired, so I do my best to learn the ropes.

A few months in, I’m starting to get the hang of some things. I’m confident with my register, have picked up a good rhythm for scanning and bagging, and have honed the fine art of keeping the average customer satisfied. But other things haven’t quite absorbed, two of which are relevant here. One, when my register is full of too much cash, the excessive amount needs to be “picked up” and whisked to the accounting office. And two, sometimes the dreaded “quick-change artist” makes their rounds to dupe us hurried, distracted cashiers out of our register money.

It’s a busy shift, I’ve accumulated Too Much Money in my register, and I’m doing my best to get customers’ purchases scanned, bagged, and paid for efficiently. A couple of hours before shift end, a man comes through my till with just a tiny two-pack of chapstick, which he goes to pay for with a $100 bill. For normal people, that’s a probable red flag, but naive me plugs it into the till and the register opens.

The man waves his arm to grab my attention and wants the $100 back, offering to pay with smaller bills. Present-day me knows he is trying to get the $100 back plus the $90-some-odd change.

Naive past me finds this a little odd, but without really thinking too hard, says the first thing that comes to my mind:

Me: “Oh, no, no, it’s okay! I know how hard it can be to break big bills like this. Don’t worry, I can do that for you.”

I don’t know if my genuine desire to be helpful stunned him or if he just figured that I was too foolish to fool, but he said nothing as I counted out and handed him his $90-something change like any other sale. He didn’t say anything and skulked out when I wished him a lovely day.

A couple of days after this, I was finally told what a quick-change artist is, and I got one step closer to being street-average.

I am a deli clerk in a big chain grocery store in Canada. My job involves slicing meats behind a service counter, with our opened chubs in bags with their shelf life represented in orange stickers. Recently, all employees had to do a racial and discrimination course to ensure we were dealing with customers properly, and I am extremely wary of offending anybody. This is also during the health crisis, so a lot of customers are wearing masks. I have been wearing one myself every shift since the beginning of April. A customer comes up to my counter and pulls down his face mask.

Customer: “I have strong accent; maybe you cannot understand me.”

He sounds Russian but I have no issues with that at all and actually enjoy listening to certain accents.

Me: “Maybe, but I have no difficulties understanding you at all. What can I get for you?”

Customer: “I want 300 grams European Bologna sandwich sliced.”

Me: “Okay.”

I walk over to the case and dig for the correct product.

Customer: “That will not be enough. I don’t want tiny piece. You cut it from this one.”

He indicates the closed chub on display.

Me: “Sir, there is more than enough on this piece to fill your order without giving you the end piece. We are not allowed to open multiple chubs of one type of meat—”

Customer: “That isn’t enough. Cut it from the new one.”

Me: “Sir, if you’ll let me—”

The customer cuts me off and begins complaining to the other staff that I refuse to serve him his meat.

Customer: *To anybody near enough* “This lady refuses to give me product from my own country!”

Me: “Sir, I have no issues filling your order, but I could get in trouble for opening multiple meat chubs of the same thing.”

The customer continued to cut me off multiple times, the conversation going around and around like this. After a few moments, I realized that I was not going to get a word in edgewise. Even lifting my hand to signal him that I was trying to speak didn’t help.

In the end, he left without his meat, complaining to two colleagues of mine on the way out of my department. The next morning, I sliced that same exact piece for our case and it would have easily filled his request without the end piece being too small.

My family moved from a small, traditional island community to a bustling city when I was really young because my parents were offered an opportunity they couldn’t afford to miss. This meant changing schools, meeting new friends, etc.

It is the first day of secondary school for my older brother, and he is nervous, to say the least. His name is Natsei, pronounced “Nat-say,” but everyone calls him “Nat” or “Nats” to avoid the obvious. He is in his first class of the day, English, where the teacher is doing attendance.

Teacher: “Erm… Mr. [Our Last Name]?”

Brother: *Raises his hand* “Here.”

Teacher: “Could I ask, how do you pronounce your name?”

Brother: “You can call me Nat; a lot of people do to avoid what I know you’re thinking about.”

Teacher: “For future reference, however, how do you pronounce your name?”

Brother: “Nat-Say.”

Teacher: “I bet your parents didn’t think that one through, did they?”

Brother: “Considering that it’s a traditional name handed down through my family, I would say they did.”

The teacher ended up calling him by our last name for the rest of his time in school.

I used to take part in clinical trials for a little extra cash. The trials were easy; they usually involved visiting the clinic for about an hour a day over a week, testing different lotions on our legs to see how well they moisturized. Everyone who participated had to fill out a form at the very beginning. Apart from the usual disclaimers, it said that we were volunteers and we would be paid a certain amount of money for our time. As far as I was concerned, I was being paid grocery money to do next to nothing, and I was glad for the opportunity.

One day, about halfway through the trial, one of the other participants suddenly spoke up.

Participant: *Loudly* “You know what I just realized? We’re only being paid [total] for [time] hours. That’s not even minimum wage!”

She looked around the room with a self-satisfied expression, obviously expecting us to agree with her. No one said anything. In fact, we all pretty much pretended that we hadn’t heard her. Irritated by the lack of response, she said:

Participant: *Even more loudly* “They’re taking advantage of us! We should ask for more money!”

Along came a clinic employee, and I inwardly cringed. I’d done several of these trials, and I’d seen this lady before. She had NO tolerance for fools.

Employee: “I understand that you have a complaint?”

Participant: “Uh… Well, you’re not even paying us minimum wage.”

Employee: “That’s right. Remember that form you signed which said that you’re a volunteer? Volunteers, as a rule, don’t get paid, but we are paying you [total].”

Participant: “…”

Employee: “So. Do you still have a complaint?”

Participant: *Meekly* “No.”

Employee: “Good.”

She walked away, and I didn’t hear another peep from that participant.