I just ordered a pizza through a food ordering service. As my intercom is being repaired at the moment, I write everywhere I can that I can be contacted by the delivery man on my phone. Until now, I’ve had no problem and every delivery man has called me, and there have been a lot of instances with the current quarantine.

I am waiting patiently for the phone to ring when I hear a knock on the door.

Delivery Man: “Hello, sweetie. I tried so many times to call the intercom but you would not pick up.”

Me: “I am so sorry. I specified that it is not working.”

He throws me a sarcastic look.

Delivery Man: “How am I supposed to contact you, then?”

Me: “As I wrote in the app, you could’ve called me on my phone.”

Delivery Man: *Getting slightly annoyed* “Well, my phone was out of battery. You are lucky that your neighbors opened the front door. Otherwise, I couldn’t have brought you the order, as you were not picking up the intercom.”

Me: “Well, I am sorry again. But I do not have an intercom at the moment. As you can see, it is only a cable here. And you could’ve called me on my phone, as specified in the instructions I gave.”

He gives me the pizza. And I tip him, as I always do.

Delivery Man: *While leaving* “Well, you are lucky that your neighbors opened the door. But next time, I am not so sure.”

I just slowly closed the door, not knowing what else to say anymore. How about next time you read the instructions and also charge your phone?

We have an employee-only app to allow us to locate items in store and check stock levels, in case a customer has a query we don’t know the answer to. With the current health crisis, we’ve stopped getting some of the more superfluous, specialised items in stock, so we’re getting more questions.

After already discovering that one of his queried items is out of stock, this customer has one last request while I have the app out.

Customer: “And I know your counters are closed, but could you possibly check for jellied eels for me?”

Me: “As you said, I doubt we’ll have any, but I’ll have a look…”

The app is almost overeager, for want of a better word, on figuring out typos, so sometimes it overshoots.

Me: “J-e-l-l-i-e-d e-e-l-s…”

The app’s search results come back… with nothing but an abundance of various lubes.

Me: “Oh, uhh…”

Customer: *Seemingly oblivious* “No, none of those look right. Thanks for looking, anyway!”

I wrote this story about my father-in-law’s cousin who is a B-list actor.

Things get MUCH weirder during the global outbreak. My mother-in-law decides to write a bunch of bathroom songs for people to sing while they are washing their hands and she wants my father-in-law’s cousin to promote those songs.

My mother-in-law has always written songs and sung them badly. She is a self-taught musician who has absolutely ZERO understanding of proper music composition. She taught herself how to play the piano and she sounds so bad that a cat walking across piano keys would sound much better.

She decided to release a CD of her bathroom songs. This means that she hooked up a computer microphone to her piano and sang her songs into recording software on her five-year-old desktop computer. Unfortunately, she, my father-in-law, AND my husband are oblivious to the fact that she is a horrible musician.

Mother-In-Law: “I just sent a CD of my music to [Actor]’s mother. She is going to give it to [Actor] and he is going to get me on Oprah!”

Me: “You do know that the Oprah show ended a bunch of years ago, right? I also don’t think that Oprah is going to be interested in a preschool administrator’s CD of bathroom songs.”

Mother-In-Law: “I know that Oprah hasn’t been on TV in years, but [Actor] will make her start her show again so I can go on it to promote my music!”

Me: “Are you delusional? There is no way that Oprah is going to restart her show just because a B-list movie actor tells her to promote his cousin-in-law’s CD of bathroom songs!”

Mother-In-Law: “But I know that [Actor] is going to get me my big break in the music business! I am a fantastic musician and I have just had some bad breaks while trying to get my music published.”

Me: “You wrote songs for adults to sing in the bathroom while they are washing their hands. No sane adult is going to buy a CD of that!”

Mother-In-Law: “It is a new concept and people aren’t familiar with it, but they will understand it after I go on Oprah and show the world how much they need bathroom songs!”

Me: “Why are you even bothering [Actor]’s ninety-five-year-old mother with your bathroom songs, anyway? She is old; please don’t bother her.”

Mother-In-Law: “[Actor] is going to love my bathroom songs! I need him to get my break in the music business!”

I dropped it after that, but my in-laws STILL don’t see how horrible a musician my mother-in-law is and that no sane person is going to give her a break in the music business.

Related:
I’m Related To A Celebrity! Get Me Out Of Here!

Because of the current health crisis, barriers between customers and cashiers are common. Apparently, not only do they block hearing, but thinking, too!

Me: “I’d like the combo on special with pork. Is there an upcharge for beef brisket? If so, instead I’ll have…”

Cashier: “So, that’s the two-meat combo with pork and brisket? $12.71, please.”

I hand over $13. The receipt prints and I see that there is, indeed, a $1 upcharge for the brisket; if the cashier hadn’t cut me off, I would have changed to chicken.

Me: “I asked whether there was an upcharge and I would like to have chicken, instead.”

Cashier: “Well, I can’t hear with this barrier.”

She gets a manager, who tells her to refund me the $1.06 for the upcharge and tax. The cashier puts my twenty-nine cents change back in the drawer and hands me the $1.06

Me: “And my twenty-nine cents?”

Cashier: “The manager told me to give you back $1.06.”

Me: “Yes, but you still owe me the twenty-nine cents change from the original transaction.”

Cashier: “No, it’s $1.06 because we refunded you the upcharge.”

We went around in circles until the manager finally came back up front and told her that yes, I was still owed twenty-nine cents. I know both the $1 upcharge and twenty-nine cents change were small amounts to bicker over, but it was the principle of the matter.

Sadly, by the time I finally got my change, my food had already been made and had gone cold because the place had the AC cranked, but I didn’t feel like dealing with that cashier any longer.

My mother had me at thirty-five years old. Even though she’s retiring in a few months, she’s still working her long-term job at sixty-seven years old, but is taking full advantage of her right to do it remotely. She’s one of the lucky ones, as people past their mid-fifties are notoriously under-employed.

I, meanwhile, am at an age where most people have started their own household, but doing so has ended up not being in my stars. It’s a workday and new neighbors doing construction work have driven my mother to a small room and headphones blasting relaxing music.

The phone rings and I pick it up.

Representative: “Hi, I’m from [Place that makes sure people know they can get their homes insulated for cheap due to a government program].”

That program has been one of our recurring cold-callers who come back despite various “not interested” answers, but my mother has very recently been considering getting some work done that would technically count as heat insulation, and my own work is slow so I’m more in the mood to speak with one of their representatives than usual. The discussion quickly reaches the point where I have informed the representative that she’s not actually speaking to the house’s owner and mentioned my mother’s age.

Representative: “And where’s your mother right now?”

Me: “In the house, but she’s busy with her job.”

Representative: *In disbelief* “Is your mother really busy with her job at age sixty-seven?”

In the time it took for me to process that answer, my brain also pointed out that the questions had gotten a little too personal and that hanging up was probably the best course of action. With our government both considering adding financial penalties to early retirement and expecting my generation to retire a few years later than our parents did, a sixty-seven-year-old having a job shouldn’t be treated as something difficult to believe.