I work at a public library. The DMV has just moved next door due to their office being renovated. Since both they and the library belong to the city administration, we both have the city logo on our front door. This seems to confuse people, and they enter the library while looking for the DMV on a regular basis.

I’ve just closed the front door behind one of our maintenance guys as a woman with the stereotypical entitled look approaches. She stops right in front of the door when they won’t open and starts reading our opening hours, as well as the sign posted saying that you need to call ahead before visiting because of visitor limitations due to the current health crisis.

Foolishly, I think she’ll recognize that we won’t open until almost an hour later, but she spots me and starts knocking on the glass. We usually just point to the opening hours and wait for them to go, but then I remember that my boss told me about a phone call she had earlier that day and that she’s waiting for some kind of inspector, so I open the door.

Woman: “Finally! I need to deregister my car since I’m moving next week.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry but this is the wrong building. The DMV is—”

Woman: *Interrupting* “—next door, I know. I’ve just been there. But they gave me this ticket and said it’ll be about an hour wait! Can you believe that? So I wanted to stay here until I can go back and sort this out.”

This isn’t an unreasonable request… if we were already open.

Me: “I’m sorry, but we’re not open for another hour today.”

Woman: “Oh, that’s not a problem. I can stay here, right?”

Me: “Unfortunately, I can’t allow you to be in the building as long as we’re still closed. You’d need to call ahead anyway due to the heal—”

Woman: *Huffs* “Well, where the f*** am I supposed to go, then? I thought this was a library!

Me: “There is a nice café just down the road. Maybe you’d like to wait there?”

Woman: *Huffs again* “How useless. At least you could give me some of those papers to make up for that!”

She gestures to our magazine rack.

Me: “I’m sorry, but those are for loan only. I can’t give them to you if you aren’t a registered member of the library, and especially not for free.”

Woman: “Oh, my God!”

She storms off.

Woman: “How useless!”

I locked the doors behind her and escaped to my office, out of sight from the front door. Well, at least she wore a mask?

Related:
Not Very Closed Minded, Part 41
Not Very Closed Minded, Part 40
Not Very Closed Minded, Part 39
Not Very Closed Minded, Part 38
Not Very Closed Minded, Part 37

We are in the middle of the current health crisis, and I haven’t gotten to see my best friend or her young daughters since February. One day, in the middle of August, my friend calls me over messenger, and she sounds a little mad.

Friend: “So. Guess what your niece did today in [Store].”

Me: “Oooh, you never call her that unless it was something good. What is it?”

Friend: “So, we’re getting groceries, and my mom shows up. We stand there for a minute, talking, and Mom coughs. Suddenly, [Niece] shouts for the whole store to hear, ‘Nana! You got [The Disease]!’”

For clarity, her mother is a smoker and has a smoker’s cough, which is what she was implying the coughing was caused by. She still sounds upset over what her five-year-old shouted, but I burst out laughing as hard as I can.

Me: “Oh, my God! Good child!”

Friend: “It’s not funny! I was so embarrassed! Mom had to get out of there before people started staring!”

Me: “Wanna know why I think this is so hilarious? Because she learned it from you! Either you or your boyfriend! So, I have no sympathy for you in this situation. Be careful what you say around your kid all the time, because she’ll think it’s normal to say.”

Friend: *Long pause* “Yeah, you’re right.”

I’ve been running around all day trying to get all my shopping done. It’s warm and having to wear a mask doesn’t make the warm and humid weather any more bearable.

The last place I have to go is the pharmacy.

I step through the door, tired, sweaty, stressed out, and far too warm beneath my mask. Luckily, I’m the only customer, so I step up to the pharmacist and look into her eyes… and my brain freezes.

Me: “I… I am so sorry, but I totally forgot what the stuff I came here for is called.”

I manage to ramble. She just looks at me a little strangely.

Pharmacist: “Maybe you could just describe what you need it for?”

After some awkward descriptions and lots of genius guesswork from a very calm and patient pharmacist who dealt willingly with my nearly useless brain and interpreted my babbling and awkward explaining just right, as well as a very shameful payment process where I tried to pay with a library card and my ID before finally swiping my card, I’m the proud owner of some over-the-counter painkillers, some Medigel, and an ointment against sunburn. The pharmacist wishes me a good day.

Me: “I really wish you a good day, too! Thank you for putting up with me, and I hope your other customers are less stupid than me.”

The pharmacist smiles at me behind her plastic screen and replies:

Pharmacist: “If they are as nice as you, they can be as confused as they want. It was a pleasure to help you out.”

Dear Lady Pharmacist, queen of encouragement on bad days, you made my day. Thank you for being so patient.

This story is part of our Feel Good roundup for November 2020!

Read the next Feel Good roundup story!

Read the Feel Good roundup for November 2020!

I work in a food hall, and with restrictions in place when I’m on a till ringing up customers’ products, I ask the next customer to wait at the end to keep an appropriate distance. 

The customer I’m serving is a lovely elderly lady who is clearly uncomfortable with how close the woman behind her is getting.

Me: “Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m gonna have to ask you to wait at the end of the till until I’ve finished serving.”

The woman takes the tiniest step back and then proceeds to be rude towards the elderly lady who is having trouble packing. I take her spare bag and begin packing while the other customer is loudly proclaiming: 

Customer: “I’m wearing a mask; what more do you both want? It’s not as if I’m going to infect her or anything.”

A moment later:

Customer: “If she’s so bothered, maybe she shouldn’t be out in public.”

I ignore her. The elderly woman thanks me and I serve the rude lady in silence before she goes to the customer service desk to pick up a parcel.

We’re short-staffed at this moment in time, all spare staff are on tills or are on their breaks, and there’s a queue of around eight people waiting for parcels or to return them. I serve a few more before quickly jumping off to help out with parcels while our manager is dealing with a customer having some sort of issue with online ordering from our website.

Lo and behold, the rude woman tries pushing to the front. She bluntly gets told to get to the back since she left her position in the queue to try to get ahead. I rush through the customers and get their parcels as quickly as possible, since I can see I’m needed back on the till, and then there she is. The final customer waiting for a parcel.

Customer: “My name is [Customer] and my postcode is [postcode], then I’m picking up parcels for my daughter, [Daughter]… and [postcode]…”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite catch that. I’ll sort out your parcels first; could you repeat your surname and postcode for me?”

I get through hers and her daughter’s orders, taking my time just to be a bit petty, I’ll admit, holding them at arm’s length for her to grab. I’m thinking this will be the last of it, but she then gets super close to the customer my manager is dealing with, pulls her mask down, spits all over the desk, and exclaims at my manager.

Customer: “You’ve got customers to deal with! They should be more important than whatever her issue is.”

She stormed off, and my manager looked like she was ready to punch this woman; she was probably the most annoyed I’ve seen her.

I understand being annoyed at waiting but literally all of the other customers that were in that queue said they had no issue waiting because they knew that as soon as someone was available, they’d be assisted. That woman just had a bee in her bonnet and a stick up her a**, in my opinion.

She is now a joke amongst us staff whenever a member of staff is busy on the front desk and has a queue building up.

A customer approaches me quickly, showing no signs of slowing down to maintain social distancing.

Me: *Putting up a hand* “Sorry—”

Customer: *Finally stops and rolls eyes* “Oh, relax! That’s 1.5, hun.”

Me: “Not if you were to keep approaching at that speed, ‘hun’!”