(I work evenings, especially Saturdays. 99% of the employees are 16 to 25 and the atmosphere is pretty relaxed. If your shift is long enough, employees are allowed to take dinner from the store up to about €8 worth. Many coworkers opt to get a pizza and bake those in our ovens. This is completely fine as long as we still have room to bake bread if we have to and so long as they clean up. It’s the cleaning up bit that quite a few have trouble with. They take their pizzas from the oven and drop the hot baking plates wherever on our tabletop. Quite often this is on top of plastic bags that melt and stick to the plate. It’s a waste of bags and product, and a horrible smell, if we don’t notice and use the plate to bake again. Also, we bakers have a system of putting hot plates in kind of half-enclosed trolleys to the side so anything laying on the tabletops should be warm at worst. One evening, I AGAIN remind a coworker as she is putting in her pizza to properly clean up her hot plate. As she comes back from the lunchroom, we have the following exchange:)

Me: “[Coworker], could you come over here, please?”

Coworker: “Sure, what’s up?”

Me: “Could you put your hand in the oven, please?”

Coworker: “What?”

Me: “Just for a second or two, place your hand in the oven; just lay it in there.”

Coworker: “Are you mad? No way!”

Me: “Then how about putting away your hot plates?”

(The penny dropped, and after that, she always put them in the right place. Word must have spread, as well, as the number of hot plates on the tabletops dropped significantly.)

(I am craving Rangoon, which is cream cheese and sometimes spices or meat, wrapped in a thin dough and fried. I go to a locally-owned restaurant I’ve never been to before. It could be Chinese-themed, but I am not sure. The menu says, “cream cheese wontons plate,” which is a very similar dish. Good enough, I figure. When I receive the order, instead of the delicious little treat I wanted, I’m given a plate of flat, fried dough, like a plate of homemade potato chips basically.)

Me: “Excuse me, I didn’t order chips. I ordered the wontons.”

Server: *walks away without answering or saying anything*

(A manager is sent over.)

Manager: *surprisingly aggressive* “What do you want?!”

Me: *startled, gesturing to the plate* “Uh, I ordered wontons, not chips.”

Manager: *raises his voice* “Well, too bad! Those are our wontons!” 

Me: *confused but getting tired of his attitude* “Uh, well, no, they’re not wontons. These are chips. Wontons have filling.”

Manager: *still unusually aggressive, and leaning over me as though to threaten or intimidate me* “Well, that’s how we do wontons! What now?!”

Me: *blunt, but speaking calmly and quietly* “You can’t sell fried duck made from chicken. This is the same. The menu said, ‘cream cheese wontons.’ Where is the cream cheese?”

Manager: *grabs the plate and slams it violently onto the ground, shattering it, then shrieks* “Well, now it’s not a problem!”

(He stormed into the kitchen and started shouting in another language. The lady at the cash register was apologetic and told me to leave without paying for either the “wontons” or my soda. A friend said that they used to make proper wontons and they didn’t know what the reason for the change could be. I haven’t been back since. The business is still there, shockingly, despite never having customers inside.)

(I go to a home improvement store as I need a ⅝-inch drill bit. I look at the display, and the largest I see is a ½-inch. I finally find three young employees talking to each other. I interrupt, asking for help. One looks at me with disgust that I have interrupted their football discussion.)

Employee: “Whaddya want?”

Me: “I’m looking for a ⅝-inch drill bit.”

Employee: “They’re over there.” *generally pointing*

Me: “I looked over there and the largest I saw was a 1⁄2-inch.”

Employee: *loud sigh* “Okay.”

(He takes me back to the display rack and starts looking at the tiny drill bits.)

Me: “Not the little ones; ⅝-is bigger than 1⁄2, and 1⁄2 seems to be the largest I can find.”

Employee: “NO, IT’S NOT! I learned in school that if the big number is on the bottom that makes the fraction real little!”

Me: “…”

(I have neither the time nor the patience to educate stupidity.)

(I’ve lived in Seattle all my life. I speak coffee even though I’m allergic to the stuff. I like tea, though, and when I moved into my current apartment a bit over ten years ago, I went looking for a place to buy hot tea in the neighborhood. There was one place that seemed perfect. They had nice seating, they made their own masala chai in-house rather than using concentrate, their prices were reasonable, and they had other teas on the menu. The way ordering worked, you said what you wanted — masala chai, drip coffee, hot chocolate, whatever — then added qualifiers like large, small, add espresso shot, latte, etc. But, for some reason, ordering a “chai latte” always resulted in a cafe — coffee — latte no matter how you phrased it. This is how things went with my final attempt, right before I was banned for life for “harassing” the barista:)

Me: “Large hot chai latte, please.”

Barista: *gives me cafe latte*

Me: “No, I don’t want coffee with milk; I want spiced tea with milk”

Barista: *adds a teabag to my already-made coffee*

Me: “No, no coffee. No espresso shots. I want tea!”

Barista: *pours out the dirty chai, makes a plain chai*

Me: “No, again, that’s wrong. I want chai tea with milk, not any kind of coffee or coffee shots, just tea.”

Barista: *pours out plain chai instead of simply adding steamed milk, then makes new iced dirty chai latte with two espresso shots*

Me: *wanting to facepalm* “No, that’s an iced dirty chai latte. I ordered a hot chai latte; don’t add anything to it but steamed milk.”

Barista: *makes me a steamed milk, no coffee OR tea in it*

Me: “I suppose that’s better than giving me coffee, but I want some tea in my milk, not just milk. Let’s start over. I want a hot chai tea latte, just like the menu says. Do not put any kind of coffee in it!”

Barista: *makes a hot cafe latte*

Me: “I want tea, not coffee. Would it help if I said I was allergic to coffee and that’s why I don’t want any coffee in my drink?”

Barista: *calls owner*

Owner: “I think you’ve harassed my workers long enough. Take your coffee, on the house, and leave. Don’t come back.”

Me: “I am just trying to get hot tea with steamed milk; they keep adding coffee to it. I am allergic to coffee.”

Owner: “Don’t make me call the police. Out. Now.”

(And that is why I never go to what was, at the time, the closest good tea and coffee shop to where I live. Since then, two chain coffee shops have moved in closer to me, but they’re both more expensive and not as good.)

(I am female, and this interaction happens when I am a teenager. I am at a bookstore and the cashier ringing up my order is a middle-aged man who is being generally creepy throughout the entire transaction.)

Cashier: “Okay, your total is $19.99.”

Me: *pays with $20 and starts to walk away without the change, as I am in a hurry to get away from the cashier, who is making me uncomfortable*

Cashier: “Wait, what about your change?”

Me: “Oh, it’s okay. I don‘t need it.” *still trying to walk away*

Cashier: “But what if you die and go to Hell, and Satan is holding you over a pit of fire and he says, ‘Give me a penny, and I’ll let you go!’ but you don‘t have a penny, because you left it here? What then?”

Me: “Umm…?”