(It’s been a very slow week at work. My manager tells me to go ahead and take a specific day off, since they don’t expect it to be suddenly busy. That day, I’m at home and get a call from work.)

Manager: “[My Name], is everything okay?”

Me: “Uh, yeah, why?”

Manager: “You didn’t come in on time. Did you write down the wrong time?”

Me: “You told me not to worry about coming in today.”

Manager: “You know what? I did. Sorry about that! Have a great day!”

(She apologized when I came in for my next shift. At least she was worried instead of upset!)

(It’s been a slow week, and we haven’t made our sales goal. To try to minimize the loss, managers start picking people to go home early or miss shifts later in the week. I’m sitting with my manager one evening, discussing store things.)

Manager: “We’re barely halfway to our goal, and we’ve only got a few hours left. There’s no way we’re making sales.”

Me: “So, we cut hours again?”

Manager: “Yeah. Let’s see…”

Me: *dramatic sigh* “I’ll take one for the team and volunteer. It’s a hard decision but—”

Manager: “[My Name], you just want to go home and play video games.”

Me: “Absolutely.”

(She laughed and sent me home. I came in the next day to find out that a coworker single-handedly managed to get us to our sales goal in the last hour.)

(I work at a local used video game store chain. Since we deal in every console, we receive a lot of cool things sometimes. However, it also brings a lot of questionable material. For instance, today a customer walks in and doesn’t even look at me.)

Customer: “Hey, man, I need 30 bucks for this unopened Kinect.”

Me: “Well, normally, I’d be happy to take it, but this location already has two of them and it has to be open. Also, I don’t really have any spare cash avail–“

(He cuts me off.)

Customer: *in a pitiful tone* “Dude, I’ll take 25; just please give me some money!”

(At this point I have no intention of dealing with this man, so I tell him we aren’t able to do it. He walks quickly back to the door, opens it, and shouts:)

Customer: “This place sucks; they never give me money!”

(He then exited the store and ran off. He forgot his Kinect. Upon closer inspection, the box was opened, and instead of a Kinect, it had a few DVDs and a PlayStation 2 controller.)

(A woman calls the hotel asking for directions.)

Caller: “I’m on [highway] and I can’t find your hotel.

Me: *looking at a map* “Okay, ma’am, you’re about 30 minutes from the hotel. Just stay on the freeway and—“

Caller: “Uh-oh, a police officer just turned on his lights behind me. What should I do?”

Me: “I would pull over, ma’am.”

Caller: “I don’t know. How do I know it’s a real cop?”

Me: “Well, if he has blue and red lights flashing or any variation of that, it is very likely a cop. I would pull to the side of the road, ma’am.”

Caller: “I’m from out of town and I don’t know what the police in this area look like. This area doesn’t look very safe, anyway. I’m going to keep driving. Will you stay on the phone with me?”

Me: “Yes, I will, ma’am, but I advise you to pull over.”

(About ten or fifteen minutes go by, and the woman is still driving with the police car, sirens blaring, behind her. I finally convince her to pull over.)

Police Officer: *in the background of her phone* “Shut your vehicle off and get out of the car with your hands up!”

Caller: “I’m not getting out of the car. How do I know you’re a real cop?”

Police Officer: “Shut off your vehicle and exit the vehicle now!”

(She refuses, a struggle ensues and the caller starts pleading with me to call the police to help her. They have a brief conversation and she asks the officer to talk to me on the phone. I explain to the cop that she wasn’t trying to evade but she was afraid to pull over and I plead for him to not take her to jail. The cop agrees not to jail her and tells me he’s going to follow her to the hotel to make sure arrives safely. She arrives at the hotel about 45 minutes later with the cop.)

Caller: “Are you the one I was speaking to on the phone?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am.”

Caller: “I got a speeding ticket. Thanks a lot.” *storms off*

Police Officer: *with a look of bewilderment towards me* “Jeez, I’m glad I don’t have your job.”

On a snowy January day, I decided to go to a popular fast-casual restaurant known for their soup because that sounded like the perfect meal for the weather. There was no one else in line, and there were four employees working behind the counter. They all looked like they were stocking the food, with two on the bakery side and two on the cafe side.

As I stood at the register, about three feet from the closest employee, no one looked at me or spoke to me. After about thirty seconds had passed, the employee closest to me shouted for someone else to come “ring.” Still, no one told me it might be a minute or even looked at me.

The person the employee called for never came up to ring. At this point, I just wanted to see if anyone would actually acknowledge me, so I stayed quiet. They all went on working for about a minute or so when the employee closest to me who had shouted for help started complaining about the person she called for. She talked about how “lazy” and “stupid” he was because he couldn’t make it up to the front to the register.

I completely understand complaining about coworkers, but not in front of customers, especially when you haven’t even looked at them! Finally, I checked my phone and realized it had been more than three minutes since I first got to the register. Three minutes isn’t a long time, but it sure felt like it when all I wanted was them to scoop some soup into a bowl for me! By now, I wanted to make sure I was still corporeal, so I left the restaurant and got food at a different fast-casual chain. I had my food from the second restaurant in about a minute and was much happier with my meal.