I meet up with a friend after a busy day at work. We decide to grab a bite to eat and go to a pub just a couple of minutes away from my store. As we enter, there are signs advertising that a big football match is on tonight, starting in about an hour’s time. The pub is already full, except for the table directly beneath the (currently muted) big-screen television as you can’t really see the television from there. Neither of us is interested in football, and we are pretty sure we’ll be long gone before the match actually starts, so we take the table and place our orders.

After a while, our drinks have still not shown up. I’m quite thirsty after dealing with customers all day and eventually go to the bar to ask where the drinks are.

Barman: “I’ll bring them over.”

Another ten minutes go by and I have to chase them up again. The drinks finally arrive, but now we are waiting for our food. By this point, we have been there nearly an hour and suddenly, the television is unmuted as the buildup to the football match begins. As we are directly below it, all we can hear is the very loud audio from the television. We can’t hear each other speak.

I go to the bar.

Me: “Excuse me, but we have been waiting a long time for our food. Is it going to be ready soon?”

The barman is clearly annoyed that I am interrupting him watching the match.

Barman: “Yeah, sure.”

Minutes later, my friend’s meal arrives, but mine doesn’t. I tell my friend to begin eating and he has nearly finished by the time my meal arrives. I put a few chips into my mouth and they are cold! My meal was obviously left on the counter and forgotten about. I go to the bar once more and this time I ask for the manager.

Me: *To the manager* “Look, I really don’t want to complain. I work with the public myself—” *points at my work uniform* “—so I know what customers can be like, but we waited ages for our food and then my meal was cold. It’s inedible. I would like a new meal, please.”

The manager huffily says he will refund the entire order. After the refund has gone through…

Manager: “Do you still want your food?”

The temptation to just leave is great, but I have been waiting too long for this and as it is now free, why not?!

Me: “Yes, thank you.”

My new meal arrived, and it was warm, but by this point, the football match was at halftime and the fans in the pub were getting louder. Once I finished my meal, my friend and I left, and we haven’t returned. The pub itself closed a few months later.

My dad and mom are out to dinner. The waitress takes their drink orders, but when my dad orders his drink, she makes an alternative offer.

Waitress: “Why don’t you try [specialty drink]? It even comes in a souvenir cup.”

Dad: “Sure, why not?”

A few minutes later, she brings the drinks, but my dad’s drink is in a regular glass.

Dad: “Excuse me. I thought you said this came in a souvenir cup?”

Waitress: “Oh, we don’t have any more of those cups.”

And then she just walked away. I wonder if she knew that when she sold him the drink and just upsold on autopilot, or if she really didn’t know, but my dad was so confused why she didn’t let him know that key detail.

I am waiting in line at the university bookshop. I just gave blood an hour ago and, despite never having had any previous problems donating blood, and having had ample to eat and drink today, I start to feel a little woozy.

And then, I wake up on the floor.

The other customer who was in line is standing over me, while the staff member behind the desk calls out, “Are you okay?”

As I wake up a bit more, I can explain that I gave blood earlier.

The staff member finishes serving the customer, who leaves. Then, the staff member calls out to me, “You can go and sit on the stairs outside if you want to rest a bit.”

The staff member then turns away and continues their work at the desk. I am still lying on the floor, but, having never fainted in public before, and seeing that neither the staff member or the other customer seem remotely concerned, I just feel embarrassed and silly lying on the floor in a public place. As quickly as physically able, I get up, pick up my bag, leave the purchase I was going to make on a shelf, and go and sit on the stairs outside for about thirty minutes until my head stops spinning and my legs will hold me up, before I — slowly, with several stops — head home.

Once at home, I call the blood bank — they tell you to contact them if you have any adverse reactions — and the nurse on the end goes berko.

“Oh, my God! Did you bang anything when you landed? How are you feeling now? I need you to see a doctor in the next twenty-four hours for a review. Don’t do any strenuous activity for the rest of the day. Drink something. Eat something. Have you got a family member or friend with you?” And so on.

I am only a young, inexperienced, not very world-wise person when this all happens, and I really don’t know what the correct reaction is when someone loses consciousness in the middle of a store, but I know that it is not to just ignore them and go about your work.

During the lockdown, I’ve been making fabric face coverings and offering them to friends and family. Today, I had two parcels of them that I needed to send to people, and I walked up to the post office and got in line. There was only one window open, attended by a woman, and she was helping a male customer when I arrived, so I expected I wouldn’t be there long.

After a couple of minutes of mental woolgathering, I noticed that the assistant had taken the items that the customer was posting and they were just chatting, which annoyed me a bit, but I thought maybe she didn’t consider only one other person in line enough reason to rush. Almost as soon as I thought this, an elderly couple got in line behind me. The assistant showed no sign of noticing, so I decided to ease the rules of good manners and spend my waiting time listening in on their conversation.

The assistant was telling the man that she and her family all got the spreading illness — she described it as sore throat and sneezing — last year, but they took down and washed all the curtains and shampooed the carpets and were fine after that.

Okay.

Another customer joined the queue. By this point, the assistant was telling the customer that she was the only person who had been working at the post office during lockdown because all of her colleagues had been too scared to come in, and she’d been doing seventy-hour weeks. I’d been to this post office several times during lockdown and had never seen her before; plus, it’s only open forty-five hours a week.

Another two customers joined the queue. The customer at the counter, having clearly spotted a sucker, started giving the assistant the sales pitch for some natural remedies, telling her that taking a spoonful of hemp oil three times a day would protect her from getting the illness. She was clearly buying this nonsense and started telling him about her experiences using some homemade concoction to treat a rash. The man clearly decided he had to call it a day at this point and said goodbye and left. 

Finally, I got up to the counter. I was wearing one of my fabric masks, but it’s one I kept because I made a mistake in sewing it, so the outfacing piece of fabric was the wrong way round, and you could only vaguely see the pattern on it. I told the lady how I wanted to send the parcels and placed the first one on the scale. She didn’t touch her computer — I could see from the reflection in her glasses that she had a social media site open in a small window on her screen next to the window telling her what it says on the scale — but immediately started telling me about how long she’d been at work and how she’d only had one break all day. 

I’m not normally rude, but I’d been standing in line for about ten minutes and my back hurt, so I didn’t respond and just asked her how much the parcel would cost. She didn’t answer; instead, she just told me to put the other one on the scale, and then to pass them both through the slot to her. I did so, and she asked me what was in them. I pointed to my own mask and said, “Some of these masks.”

Her eyes lit up and she started telling me about somebody she saw selling masks in a shop but he coughed so she didn’t buy any. Then, she asked me why the print on the fabric on mine was so pale, and I told her I’d made a mistake and it was inside out. She gave me a coy smile and started telling me that that was my inner self making artistic choices for me, and that actually it was my own form of self-expression. It took a couple of minutes of this before I got a chance to break in and say, “What is that going to cost?”

Again, I’m not normally rude, but I would have been there all d*** day if I hadn’t interrupted.

“I haven’t done that bit yet,” she said, obviously cross. She glared at me silently for about twenty seconds, then pressed a key on her computer and said, “£1.45. £2.76.”

One of the parcels was bigger than the other, so I assumed she’d told me the two prices individually. “What’s the total?” I asked.

“I just told you,” she replied.

“So, £2.76 for both?”

“No. Yes.”

“So… what is the total?”

“Yes.”

It took me four more times asking to get her to tell me — somehow it was £3.11 — and I paid and got out of there. I looked around as I left and there were now eleven people in the queue. Heaven help them all.

Recently, I have been getting a lot of calls from telemarketers. This one has called me a total of four times, every time early in the morning.

I’m sleeping and my phone starts to vibrate on my nightstand.

Me: “[My Name].”

The telemarketer starts his spiel. I hang up and try going back to sleep. My phone starts vibrating and it’s the same number, so I answer with the intention of giving him a piece of my mind, but instead, the telemarketer manages to speak first.

Telemarketer: “Hello again. It seems we got disconnected—”

Me: “Actually, I hung up as I want to sleep. I don’t want your magazine; don’t call again!”

I hang up.

The next morning, a Friday, my phone wakes me up again. I try to answer, but the caller hangs up immediately. I forget the call for the time being.

On Monday, my phone vibrates again.

Me: “[My Name].”

The telemarketer starts his spiel once again, not even bothering to check who he’s talking to.

I start raising my voice with every word after the second “No,” as the first two have no effect.

Me: “No, No, NO, NO, NO! NO! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!”

The telemarketer speaks with the most irritatingly sneering tone I have ever heard.

Telemarketer: “There’s no need to yell.”

Me: “I wouldn’t have had to had you just listened to when I first said, ‘No!’”

I give him a piece of my mind, asking why he won’t just leave me alone already. He replies that I can always end the call myself; note that this is definitely the same guy that immediately called me back the first time I hung up on him.

Me: “…also I was sleeping and I want to get back to sleep as soon as possible!”

Telemarketer: “Well, that’s your own fault for keeping your phone on!”

Me: “I want to talk to your supervisor.”

Telemarketer: “I am alone here.”

Me: “I hear someone’s voice in the background.”

Telemarketer: “That’s my coworker.”

Me: “So, you are telling me that you and your coworkers are working without a supervisor?”

Telemarketer: “Yes.”

Me: “What’s your name?”

Telemarketer: “[Telemarketer].”

Me: “You’ll be hearing from me very soon.”

The telemarketers used to hide their caller IDs but have since stopped doing it as people stopped answering calls with the ID hidden, meaning I was able to track down the company’s contact info. I also realised he had called me a total of four times over the course of three consecutive banking days. I managed to figure out which branch he worked at, and I called the branch manager.

The manager was not pleased when I recounted the events, mentioning how I’d made it quite clear the first time around that I did not want them to call me again. By calling four times in three days, they were, in fact, harassing me.

This was over a month ago now and they haven’t called me again.