(I am one of few girls who work at my depot, and sometimes my male coworkers like to tease me. It’s all in good fun, and I give as good as I get. On this particular day, I am the only girl working.)

Customer: “You go, girl! Stand up to those bullying guys!”

Me: “Oh, you bet. It’s hard being the only girl sometimes, y’know?” *obviously joking*

Customer: “You know what you should do?”

Me: “What, sir?”

Customer: “You should get them really drunk, wait until they fall asleep…” *dramatic pause*

Me: “…and?”

Customer: “Nail their foreskins to the floor!”

Me: “Umm…”

Customer: “Trust me; it’ll work!”

Me: “Ha… hahaha.”

Customer: “Nah, I’m just joking with you… or am I?” *leaves*

(A few minutes later, my coworker comes up to me and asks why I look so horrified. I tell him what happened, and he responds with:)

Coworker: “So, would that make them floorskins?”

There’s a particular music cruise I’d really like to go on, but there are no single cabins and none of my friends have the money to join me. Thinking it’s worth a try, I post a personal ad online, asking if anyone out there might be interested in also going on this cruise and splitting the cost. I post it in the non-romantic, women-seeking-women section of the website.

The next day, I receive an email that reads, “This is totally absurd. It’ll cost you $2000 to fly to Florida for this one thing! What a waste of money.” The email signature contains a decidedly male given name. 

It’s a slow day at work, so I write back, “Dear [Emailer], you’re getting ripped off on flights if you’re paying $2000 for Vancouver to Miami six months in advance.”

He emails back almost instantly, “You’re wrong!”

I respond, “Nope! See attached screenshot of a flight for less than a quarter of that. Also, why are you creeping around a personals website reading the W4W/platonic ads? Do you get off on giving women unsolicited financial advice or something?”

The email I receive back calls me a number of unflattering names, though perhaps the most baffling one is “dunce.”

(Reader, I blocked him. And yes, I did find someone to go on the cruise with me, and we had a great time.)

(I am working at the customer service desk when a woman comes up to me carrying a light fixture that is not in a box and has obviously been installed.)

Customer: “I’m looking for a light fixture. This one. You need to replace it; it doesn’t work anymore!”

Me: “All right, let me see what I can do about that. I just need to make sure it’s something we have in stock.”

(The woman has neither the packaging, nor the receipt, so it takes some doing to find the item, but I eventually locate it in the computer. Unfortunately, I’m on my own and can’t leave the desk to go get it for her.)

Me: “I found the light for you, ma’am. It’s down aisle 49, bay number 1. It will be at the front of the aisle on the left.”

Customer: “What does that mean, bay 1?”

Me: *pointing down an aisle near us* “Do you see how the aisles are divided up into sections? There are signs labeling where the sections are divided, and we call those sections ‘bays.’ You can see the signs here. You want the very first bay on the left-hand side, which will be labeled with a number 1.”

(The woman seems to understand and goes on her way. Sometime later she returns with her light fixture, absolutely fuming.)

Customer: “Your numbering system is stupid!”

Me: “Did you have a problem?”

Customer: “I looked for the label like you said, but there was a tag with a one, and there was a tag with two ones! I didn’t know where to look!”

Me: “Ma’am… the two ones would be an eleven.”

(I’ve been selling phones for about four years at this point and have never had an experience like this before. Don’t get me wrong; when you work retail you will eventually have dim customers, but this is a gem to me. This also happens a little before Black Friday so we are starting to get really busy.)

Customer: “Do you guys sell phones outright?”

Me: “Unfortunately, no. You’ll have to go to [Electronics Retail] or buy them online.”

Customer: “On what?”

Me: “Online.”

Customer: “On what?”

Me: “Online.”

Customer: “Clothesline?”

(I mentally take five seconds to breathe.)

Me: “On the Internet.”

Customer: “Oh, I don’t have that.” *walks off*

(My coworkers and even the customers they are helping start laughing. I then glance at my manager, who’s covering his mouth trying not to laugh.)

Manager: “Yeah, go eat. I got you covered.”

I’ve been at my current office for coming up two years now and I like the environment. I suffer from dyslexia but have purchased a dyslexic-friendly font, a font converter, and a specific reader so my disability is barely noticeable as I work.

The only annoyance I really suffer is one coworker who prints out everything she emails me and puts it on my desk. I have hit close to twenty times telling her that I have great difficulty reading normal font on normal paper. I have shown her her email in my reader, too, so that she can see I have it. I have sent her the font so that she could print what she wants me to have in a text I can read, but nothing. 

Today, I picked up the sheet as she put it on my desk and dropped it straight into the recycle bin behind me, barely breaking eye contact as I did. She was shocked and annoyed, but I told her that that’s what would happen to every sheet of paper she put on my desk from now on.

I can’t wait to see what happens when I get my next email from her.