I work at a gift shop at a museum. A little boy with his grandma is deliberating between a toy lizard and a toy dragon.

Grandma: “Pick which one you want; you can only have one today.”

Boy: “But I want both!”

Grandma: “I know you do, sweetie. We can get another one next time. But just one for today, okay?”

Coworker: “They’re both really cool. But you have to make sure you pick one you really, really love. So, take a look at them and figure out which one you love the most.”

Grandma: “Which one do you love more? I think it might be the dragon.”

Boy: “I think it might be the dragon… and the lizard!”

Grandma: “No, just one.”

Boy: “I WANT TWO TOP PREDATORS!”

In the end, neither the boy nor his grandma would relent, so he ended up with zero top predators.

In high school, my friend and I worked at a fast food burger place. The sandwiches were made to order, where the customer could select any combination of eight different condiments. The register employee would call out the type of sandwich followed by the list of condiments. The order receipt would also detail the condiments. Since this was the 1980s, the receipt had a limit of characters it could print. A single cheese with catsup, pickle, and mustard would be listed as: “SC, C, P, M,” with each condiment listed on a separate line.

On nights we were closing, we would be assigned to the dining room and/or salad bar duty. But on school nights, we’d be on the front line: he’d be on the grill and I’d be the sandwich maker. Our duties often included having to walk off the line to get supplies. So, if an order came in, standard practice was to go to the counter and read the receipt. We found that time-consuming, so we would help each other by telling the other the order when we returned to the line. Being geeks, as well, we would just rattle off the abbreviations. A typical interaction:

Friend: “DC, MA, P, M.”

Me: “Okay.”

He’d then give me two patties with cheese in between, and I’d have the mayonnaise and pickles on the top bun. He’d place the patties on the bottom bun, then I’d swipe some mustard on top of the meat, put on the top, and then wrap it.

Our manager always gave us an odd look whenever we’d have one of these exchanges. But we were efficient.

I work in a tax office. It is the “first peak” when people start getting their W2s. We get about half of all of our clients during the first peak and about a third of all of our clients during the second peak in April — the last week of filing season.

We’re being swarmed by clients, but corporate refuses to authorize overtime. But clients keep walking through the door, and tax pros who are on their way out the door keep sticking around to prep their taxes. By Wednesday, most of our office, and all of our most experienced tax professionals, have hit or exceeded forty hours.

The district general manager comes down on me. He demands that I fix the schedule so that no one is getting more than forty hours.

Me: “That would leave us with no tax professionals capable of doing the American Opportunity Credit, Retirement Income, or Investment Income on Thursday and Friday. We would not be able to service our clients.”

[Manager] doesn’t care; convert them into drop-offs! Have the tax pros work on them at home.

Me: “You are, uh, aware that working from home is supposed to be on the clock, right?”

[Manager] doesn’t care; have them work from home DURING SOME WEEK THAT’S LESS BUSY!

Me: “That’s not happening until late February, and a lot of people are going to be very angry about us not getting to them by then. We’re going to lose a lot of clients.”

[Manager] doesn’t care; make it work somehow. He doesn’t care how.

Me: “Well… can I have that in writing?”

[Manager] is magnanimously willing to put it in writing.

So, I take all of our experienced tax pros off of the schedule for Thursday and Friday. Some of them are put off by it, but most are accepting — it’s good to have a two-day vacation mid-peak — and I’m attempting to set up [Manager] to take the fall.

Thursday and Friday are rough. It’s just me (I don’t get overtime; I’m salaried) and a handful of tax pros who are either very new or experienced but very responsibility-shy. (They don’t want to take on complicated clients and refuse to take the exams that would permit them to do so.)

But I do two things. One, I direct every complaint from a customer to [Manager]’s email. And two, I record exactly how much less money we made Thursday and Friday compared to the rest of the week. I also email the market manager with details of what happened and a comparison of how much we’re making before and after this policy.

The market manager calls [Manager], and [Manager] authorizes overtime for all tax preparers once more… and complains to me about “betraying” him by getting the market manager involved.

Me: “You told me to solve the problem any way I could. The only way I could solve the problem was by getting the market manager involved.”

I’d been having a bad day, and I had ridden with my daughter to the store. I’d finished my shopping and was sitting on a bench by the registers waiting for her to check out, and while I was waiting, I was coloring a picture of a dragon on a color-by-number app on my phone. I glanced up as a young boy, I’d guess to be four or five, approached me. I have a large facial birthmark and it’s not unusual for youngsters to ask about it, so that’s what I was expecting.

Boy: “Whatcha doing?”

Me: *Turning my phone so he can see* “Coloring. Do you want to see?”

Boy: “Oh, a dragon! But it’s not real, you know.”

Me: “I know, it’s a drawing of what someone thought one would look like if it was.”

Boy: “But it’s wrong; dragons aren’t blue!”

Me: “Oh, they aren’t? I didn’t know that! What color are dragons?”

Boy: “Red and green, and they have fire coming out of their mouths.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for the correction!”

Boy: “You know, I have one of those.” *Points to my face* “It’s right here!”

He lifted his shirt to show me a red mark on his belly.

Boy: “My mama says it’s a birthmark. I really like yours; it’s pretty!”

The woman he was with — I assume his mother — who was checking out at the closest register to where I was sitting, came to collect him and apologized for him bothering me. I assured her that he was not bothering me — in fact, he was quite delightful — and thanked her for sharing him with me for a moment.

It still wasn’t my best day, but I was still smiling a few minutes later when my daughter came to collect me.

Our little used bookstore is actually an offshoot of when we sold solely online; we still do! Our top crazy complaint came from a man who bought a used copy of a Stephen King book from us. He actually filled out the customer feedback.

Customer: “This book is FULL of profanity! You shouldn’t let the author use words like that!”

I had a lot of fun picturing me jumping on the phone and saying, “Hey, Steve, you’ve got to tone down your language, dude!”