I am at Copenhagen central train station, waiting for my train to Sweden. A well-dressed lady approaches me.

Lady: “Can you help me get to the airport?”

Me: “The train bound for Sweden will stop at the airport.”

This train is running on time and is scheduled to arrive in five minutes.

Lady: “No, no, my flight leaves in thirty minutes! That’s too late; you have to get me to the airport faster than that!” 

Lady, I have no control over neither the trains, the planes, or the automobile traffic. I’m just trying to catch my train and go home.

A friend of mine was at a local bar all evening and finally left shortly after two o’clock in the morning.

He went to the only local pizza place that was still open. At the pizza place, he ordered a pizza and asked for it to be delivered, gave his address, and paid.

He then waited outside for the delivery guy to come out. When he got there, my friend asked him:

Friend: “You’re taking that pizza to [address]?”

The driver said that he was.

Friend: “Well, that pizza is for me. As you’re going there anyway, can I hitch a ride?”

He was taken home and got his pizza for something similar to the price of a taxi.

One of my coworkers was talking about wanting to get eye surgery done because she was fed up with wearing glasses and didn’t like the feel of contact lenses. However, she was a bit wary of the procedure; she found that it sounded kind of scary.

I told her about when I had it done. I too had been wary and thought that even with the thingy keeping my eye open, it would be difficult to keep my eye open, but the light didn’t actually look that bright and I didn’t realize the doctor had started until I could smell it. I told her how happy I was about the operation. 

Another coworker jumped into the discussion to scold me with a very harsh voice.

Coworker: “I can’t believe you would be so vain as to get your eyes done! I really didn’t think you were someone who was shallow enough to get a cosmetic operation!”

Me: “What do you mean ‘cosmetic’? I had minus ten on both eyes!”

I am closing up at work, almost done cleaning, and very ready to go home. The café itself closed almost twenty minutes ago.

I hear the front door open despite the fact that the sign is flipped to “closed” and our hours are clearly listed on the door. Three kids, probably around ten to fourteen, enter.

Me: “Oh, sorry, the café is closed.”

Oldest Child: “No. You close at 19:30. We called ahead and confirmed.”

I’m confused now. She sounds so sure and assertive in her statement that I’m slightly panicked I might have missed an update about us closing later at the moment.

Me: “I’ve cleaned out everything; I literally do not have anything to serve you. It’s cleaned and ready for tomorrow. I’m almost done for the day.”

Oldest Child: “But we’re regulars. We came all the way from [City forty-five minutes away]. That’s so far away. And we called ahead.”

Me: “I didn’t receive any calls all day. Who did you call?”

Oldest Child: “It was a man. He said you close at 7:30 pm.”

Now I’m thinking they might have somehow managed to get a hold of my boss’s number, but I have no clue how.

Me: “Did he confirm it was here? This place? Not [Café with a similar name], [Café with a slightly similar name], or [Café with the same concept but not named at all like us]?”

Oldest Child: “He did. We said [Our Café] and even asked if it was the right address here.”

I want to stress that her tone during this entire conversation is very demanding and slightly condescending. The dissonance of a child acting like this is completely throwing me off.

I quickly check my schedule on my phone, confirming that my shift ends in ten minutes. I relay this information to them.

Middle Child: “But we’re regulars!”

Oldest Child: “And we came from so far away! Just for you! Can’t you make an exception?”

Once again, I reiterate that I am quite literally out of product to sell them and that everything is turned off.

The conversation keeps looping; I tell them I’m closed and don’t know what they’re talking about, and they insist they called ahead and that I should make an exception for them because they’re regulars from so far away.

Me: “Okay, who did you call? Did you get a name?”

Oldest Child: “No. It was some guy. Look, here’s the number. I’m gonna call again.”

She puts it on speaker phone, and sure enough, some guy whose voice I don’t recognize picks up.

Oldest Child: “Hi. You close at 19:30, right?”

Man On The Phone: “Yes.”

Oldest Child: “And you’re [Our Café], right?”

Man On The Phone: “No, we’re [Café with a similar name].”

Oldest Child: “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

She hangs up, and the atmosphere is suddenly very awkward. I’m trying not to laugh a little.

Youngest Child: “But… but they don’t have the [specific thing] that we want.”

Me: *Kindly* “They do. I know for sure they do.”

Youngest Child: “Oh. Okay.”

Oldest Child: *Still trying to find somewhere to direct her weirdly intense energy* “But then we have to hurry to make it.”

Me: “You really don’t; you’ve got over an hour to get there, and it’s five minutes away. I’ve walked past them many times; it’s right by [Station close by]. You can’t miss it.”

The youngest child confirms that she knows where I’m talking about and that they’ve also passed it. The oldest is avoiding eye contact.

Oldest Child: “Well. I guess we should go, then.”

Me: “I hope they have what you want. Have a nice evening.”

And with that, they left. I stood in my empty shop for a moment, baffled. Never have I thus been lectured by a child.

In the mid-1990s, when I was still a graphic design student, my classmate and I answered a call from a publishing company that wanted to publish a beautiful and creative illustrated cookbook with recipes from celebrities. My classmate got hired as an illustrator, and I got a job as a designer and art director.

The company had an in-house designer who became my contact. He was really, really old. (He was probably the age I am now or younger.) I remember that he had a computer with 2 GB of hard disk space. I had never heard of GB; it was absolutely mind-blowing!

Now, I was a young woman going to a higher education design school, and at the time, I had absolutely no practical industry experience (apart from a band flyer or two).

[Designer] was “old school print trade”, was originally a typographer, and was educated from within the industry.

I have since thought of all the ways this working relationship could have gone wrong.

But [Designer] became a wonderful mentor. He was always respectful of me and what I was. He would sometimes roll his eyes and say, “How come you don’t know this?” but it was always in a way that meant, “How come they don’t teach this?”, not in a way that was putting me down.

After the book project — where he gave me completely free rein to create a layout I am still proud of to this day — he hired me for other projects, as well. I designed the logo and packaging for a kids’ DVD set! And I did a range of advertisements for their books. Everything was a first for me, and everything felt exciting and gave me tons of valuable experience.

It was only later that I understood just how confidence-building this was. The nineties were a very different time, and as a young, female designer, I have since certainly experienced my share of grumpy and/or condescending older men. Not letting them get to me was easier because of my self-confidence.

I could have gotten a lot more work from [Designer], but in my final year, I decided to stop working for the company. I think now that it was the wrong decision, but I was also in a band and working in a restaurant. By the time I was out of school and starting to understand how important that client relationship was, [Designer] was no longer working there. 

I don’t even remember his name! But I think of him with gratitude for all the trust and faith he had in me, and I always try to “pay it forward” when I work with young or inexperienced people of our trade.