(It’s been a slow week, and we haven’t made our sales goal. To try to minimize the loss, managers start picking people to go home early or miss shifts later in the week. I’m sitting with my manager one evening, discussing store things.)

Manager: “We’re barely halfway to our goal, and we’ve only got a few hours left. There’s no way we’re making sales.”

Me: “So, we cut hours again?”

Manager: “Yeah. Let’s see…”

Me: *dramatic sigh* “I’ll take one for the team and volunteer. It’s a hard decision but—”

Manager: “[My Name], you just want to go home and play video games.”

Me: “Absolutely.”

(She laughed and sent me home. I came in the next day to find out that a coworker single-handedly managed to get us to our sales goal in the last hour.)

(I am relatively fluent in American Sign Language. I am the only one at the donut/coffee shop I work at that is, and as a result, I often get asked to assist deaf customers. I am on my break and have stepped out of the back of the store to eat my lunch and relax in the sun, when my manager comes charging through the back door and runs up to me.)

Manager: “[My Name]! We have a deaf customer; is there any way you can assist? I’ll clock you in and you can take an extra five minutes on your break either way.”

Me: “Of course!” *runs back to the front of the store*

Me: *signing to the customer* “What can I help you with?”

(The customer looks very confused and a little panicked. He says something and makes hand motions which I don’t recognize as any ASL I’ve ever learned, but it does sound familiar. I try to repeat in ASL one more time, slower, and spelling it out as opposed to actually using signs. The customer responds in a louder and more flustered voice, but very clearly in an incredibly Spanish accent:)

Customer: “Spa-nnnnnishhh?”

Me: *turns to my manager as I, my manager, and my coworker all realize what’s happening* “Yeah, he’s definitely not deaf, he’s asking for Spanish, not Sign.”

(My manager turned red and ducked into the back with an apologetic look to me. Thankfully, I speak enough broken Spanish that I could explain to the customer what had happened — when he used hand gestures and drew out the N in “Spanish,” my manager mistook it as drawing out the N in “Sign” — and the customer had a giant laugh! In Spanish, he explained that he was confused about why the manager had brought up a deaf cashier to help him! He then also asked me to grab my manager so he could assure him that he wasn’t offended at all, and that this situation made him laugh. The customer even corrected me a little bit on my bad Spanish, and left a $5 tip on a $10 order! All of us were still chuckling when he left the store with his donut and coffee.)

(We recently had new signage and accents installed in the store. The associate taking over for me comes in ten minutes before her shift and my supervisor asks her what she thinks of the new looks.)

Associate #1: “It’s nice. I like the grey.”

Supervisor: “Grey? What’s grey?”

Associate #1: “The border around the wall there.”

Supervisor: “That’s black.”

Me: “That’s definitely grey.”

Supervisor: “No, but it’s the same colour as that sign there!”

Me & Associate #1: “Yeah, that’s grey, too.”

Supervisor: “No way! No, there’s no way!”

Me: *pointing to a black frame* “That frame around that sign there, that’s black.”

Supervisor: “They’re the same colour! I think you guys are playing with me! Ask a customer what colour it is!”

(There are no customers at the front of the store so I go onto the headset.)

Me: *on headset* “Hey, what colour is the new border around the front of the store that used to be blue?”

Associate #2: *on headset* “Um, grey? Why?”

Me: *on headset* “[Supervisor] thinks it’s black.”

Associate #3: *on headset* “It’s definitely grey.”

Supervisor: “No way! I can’t believe this! It’s BLACK!” *steps back, farther away from it, and looks at it from a distance* “Okay, I think I see it now. It’s like a light black.”

Me & Associate #1: “So… grey.”

Supervisor: “No! It’s black!”

(A customer comes up to the front.)

Customer: “What are you looking at?”

Me: “We’re just deciding what colour we think that border is.”

Customer: “It’s grey.”

(I tell the story to my boyfriend. The next day, he comes into the store and goes up to my supervisor with an item.)

Boyfriend: “Excuse me. Do you know if you carry this item in light black?”

(I am in a small beach town in the south of France vacationing with my husband and my son. The first night there, we go to an all-you-can-eat buffet near the beach. I have never tried most of the seafood they have in the buffet so I decide to take just a little bit of the things I want to try so I will not be wasting food in case I do not like it. I next go back to the buffet to get a full plate this time. After putting some rice, vegetables, and a few seafoods on it, I decide that I also want to take some mussels. The waiter is checking the trays to see what needs to be refilled. I am about to grab the spoon to take mussels when he grabs it instead and tells me:)

Waiter: *in French* “Since you already had mussels, you cannot take any more.”

Me: “Is this not an all-you-can-eat buffet, like the sign says in front of the restaurant?”

Waiter: “It is, but for the mussels, it’s only one serving per meal.”

(He stayed there, in front of the platter with the serving spoon in hand, looking angry. I was starting to feel really uncomfortable and the guy was not budging so I decided to go back to my table. I immediately told my husband what had just happened. The waiter heard me and quickly disappeared into the kitchen. A good ten minutes later, another waiter came to replace him. My husband told him what his colleague had told me earlier and he did not understand why he would have said something like that. He added that it must have been a misunderstanding but I know it was not — French is my mother tongue. My son and my husband had quite a few more plates before we paid and left, but since I had knots in my stomach, because of the rude waiter, I barely touched my plate. We saw him come out of hiding when we left the restaurant.)

Cashier: “What’s that?” *picking up the artichoke I have picked out*

Me: “It’s an artichoke.”

Cashier: “Ew! I don’t like artichokes.”

Me: “Literally ten seconds ago you didn’t know what it was. How would you know you don’t like them?”

Cashier: “I…” *pauses to try to come up with a plausible excuse* “…I don’t like green food.”

(I didn’t comment further, but I was thinking, “You have issues with lettuce and lime jello?”)