I work in a store that asks if you’d like to donate to a charity on checkout. An adult customer and his mother see the prompt.

Customer: “What’s this charity thing? Who do they help?”

Me: “The charity donates to a scholarship fund that allows children from low-income households to go to college.”

Customer: “But I had to pay for my degree. Why should I pay for theirs?”

Customer’s Mother: “Your father paid for your degree, and he paid again when you dropped out in your first year because it was too hard for you! Give them your twenty-one cents! They’ll do more with it than you will!”

He donated… but fumed.

The ice cream shop where I work is doing a promotion for a childhood cancer awareness foundation. For a month, we are required to ask every customer if they want to donate.

Me: “Would you like to donate a dollar for childhood cancer?”

Customer: “Noooo! I don’t want to give children cancer! That would be horrible! Why would someone donate to that?”

I once had the pleasure of having this regular customer who was the most… grumpy nice person I had ever met. I know some older Scottish ladies can be eccentric, but even to this day, I can’t figure her out. At first, you’d be shocked at her attitude, but as you got used to it, you kinda… leaned into it.

A regular interaction would go like this.

Customer: *Paying at the end of a transaction* “And I suppose you’ll be wanting me to round up my total for charity or some crap like that? Who are you collecting for this week?”

Me: “It’s the same as it always is, ma’am: [Children’s Charity].”

Customer: “Ugh, fine. Add an extra twenty to the total. Might as well invest in the children in the hope they come out better than your generation with all its TikTok and what-not.”

The next time:

Customer: *Paying at the end of a transaction* “And why do you look so glum? Is it that depressing serving me?”

Me: “Oh, no! I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

Customer: “Ugh! You kids and your inability to handle these normal days at work! When do you finish?”

Me: “In half an hour.”

Customer: “And you can’t hold on for half an hour, eh? Typical. I suppose you’ll be wanting a pat on the back for surviving another day at work?”

Me: “Just a [burger meal] from across the street is usually enough to keep me going.”

After that, she took her shopping to her car, and then she went across the street and actually brought me back one of those burger meals!

Customer: “Can’t have you wasting away and complaining now! You look too thin already!”

The next time she’s paying at the end of the transaction, extra grumpy this time:

Me: “How are you doing today?”

Customer: “Terrible! Some cat just came up to me in my garden and just… sat on me! Like I was some kind of cushion! I tried to tell the bloody thing to go away, but it wouldn’t listen! Now it just… sits there, meowing, like some kind of stubborn pile of fur!”

Me: “Haha! Well, cats do have a habit of choosing people.”

Customer: “It’s terrible, I tell you! What made it worse is now I have to buy bloody cat food and a cat basket and toys and all this other crap, and would you believe how much you crooks sell it for?! Daylight robbery, I tell you!”

Me: “Oh, wow! It sounds like you’re already a cat person!”

Customer: “And don’t get me started on the vet bills! They told me how much to get it checked over and spayed, and I thought, for that much, you might as well give it a soap bath and set it up in a suite for a month with limitless tuna and a catnip carpet!”

Me: “Well, I am sure the cat appreciates all that you’re doing.”

Customer: “Who asks if I’m ready to be a cat person?! No one! Yet who got chosen?! Me! This world, honestly, I tell you…”

I always look forward to when she comes in.

She named the cat Fleabag McS**tstain, and she is always grumpily buying it the best cat food we sell.

About fifteen years ago, I got a job as an English teacher at a German high school. It took me some time to realise that the other English teachers weren’t really that good at speaking or teaching English. This is the story of one event that made me lose all respect for their abilities.

The school had a charity drive to collect money for an orphanage in India. One year, some of the nuns who ran the orphanage came to visit the school. There was going to be a big event, with all students attending, where the nuns would talk about what that money was used for. The principal asked me to translate their answers to the assembly. The students had prepared some questions in their English classes to ask, and I was supposed to translate the answers.

To my horror, every single one of the questions was in something that might have resembled English but was utterly incomprehensible. Of course, the nuns didn’t understand a word they were saying, so I just made something up, based on one or two nouns I thought might have been part of the question.

Unfortunately, the nuns had very thick Indian accents that I wasn’t familiar with, so when I translated the answers to the questions I had made up, I also had to improvise. Basically, I had a conversation with myself. In the end, the students learned that the money they raised was used for building toilets (I think) and that the Indian kids’ favourite food was chicken.

About twenty years ago, I was in a small middle school — I’d say 400 students. Those in charge decided to donate to an environmental charity and made it into a game for the students. One class per grade got to go on a field trip if their class brought in the most cans for recycling. There was only one rule: no deliberate wastage of content.

I had quite a massive advantage with this. As luck would have it, my grandfather was a restaurant owner, and their main source of drinks was out of cans. Another bit of luck: my cousin had a wedding with hundreds of guests, with plenty of canned beverages. Not to mention lots of older relatives who just simply liked to party. So, word got around, and we gathered up the cans.

All in all, I brought in around 9,000 cans. My class even had to get permission to use the spare storage room for all those extra cans. I alone outperformed every single other class combined. Without me, the average number of cans per person was only fifteen, I think, during a two-week period. The person who brought the second most number of cans had around 200.

That was fun and very memorable.