(I’m one of the two managers on duty at a pet store, and I have just stepped out of the office near the registers. The other manager is nearby and talking with one of our groomers, but I glance up when I see a male customer leave the building and suddenly come stomping back in.)

Customer: *yelling at my male cashier* “Did you just whistle at me?”

Cashier: “No?”

(The customer barges into my cashier’s space at the register, getting inches from his face, yelling about his attitude, and I rush in to intervene. Though I’m female and far smaller than my cashier, I try to step in between them.)

Me: “Is there a problem?”

Customer: *ignores me and keeps yelling at my cashier* “Where’s your manager?”

Me: “I’m a manager. What’s the problem?”

Customer: *finally directs his anger at me* “Do you let all your employees behave like that?”

Me: “Behave like what? What happened?”

(The customer seems to realize that he actually doesn’t have an answer to my question, and he storms back out of the store. At first, I’m glad to see him leave, but then my cashier decides to be really stupid.)

Cashier: *cheerfully and loudly* “Good-BYE!”

(I groan inwardly. Sure enough, the customer comes storming back in again.)

Customer: *at me* “Do you seriously let your employees behave like this? Being all smarta**?”

(I just want the guy out of my store so I don’t have to explain to the police why he and my cashier got into a fistfight. By now, the other manager has reached the register and seems to silently agree with me.)

Me: “No, sir.”

Other Manager: “Not at all, sir.”

Cashier: *cheerfully* “What did I do?”

Customer: *making wild and threatening gestures at my cashier* “You! Stop talking! I’ve had it with your attitude!”

Cashier: *still smiling* “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Me: “[Cashier], shut up.”

Other Manager: “We’ll deal with [Cashier], sir.”

(The customer continues to rant about our cashier’s attitude, the other manager and I keep attempting to placate him, and our cashier continues to butt into the conversation, which riles the customer up and starts the cycle all over. After a few rounds of back-and-forth, the other manager and I win out. The customer finally leaves.)

Me: *spinning to practically snarl at my cashier* “The guy was a huge jerk, but you were not helping!”

(Right on cue, the work phone rang. I was the unlucky one who answered, and sure enough, I had to endure another earful from the same customer about “that kid with the attitude.” The cashier ended up quitting for unrelated reasons a few weeks later to sell home security systems. We heard he nearly got in another fist fight on one of his first days. Also, that “whistle” the customer heard? We puzzled out later that it wasn’t the cashier; it was the other manager’s ringtone.)

(Overheard between two employees at a popular fast food place:)

Employee: “[Coworker], can you stop eating the chicken nuggets long enough for me to fill this order?”

(A crowdfunding website which allows you to organize communal funds has a bug. Anyone can change the description of all the communal funds on the website. Obviously, some Internet users take the opportunity to replace communal funds descriptions with sexist, racist, homophobic, and/or transphobic descriptions. Since no one answers on their Twitter, I call customer service.)

Me: “Hello. I wanted to know if you were aware that your site has a bug.”

Customer Service: “No, what bug?”

Me: “Anyone can change the description of all the communal funds.”

Customer Service: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yes.”

Customer Service: “You are sure you do not have permission to modify the description of this communal fund?”

Me: “You need an account with a password to modify normally, right?”

Customer Service: “Yes.”

Me: “So, yes, I’m sure I don’t have the nickname and the password of all the members of this website…”

My dad was a police officer back when local “bobbies”’ were given houses with outpost offices attached to them so they could technically work 24/7 and serve the community. This meant that the house was rent-free — just bills to pay — but if anything needed work it had to go through the police and their repair request system. When we discovered a leak in the upstairs toilet, it was reported, and they sent two plumbers over the course of a month to fix it.

Just before we were due to go away on a family holiday, we discovered a leak in the upstairs toilet that we thought had been fixed a week previously. Another plumber was sent, and as I was at home from college for the summer holiday, and I’m nosy, I got chatting with the plumber whilst he was working. I mentioned how many times this leak had happened and he replied that he was “the guy who gets sent out when everyone else has failed.” He sorted the issue, showed me there was no leak, and left. We were happy, no more leaks happened, and a week or so later we headed out for our holiday.

Two weeks later, we arrived home around ten or eleven pm. My parents were tired as they had been driving for almost twelve hours at that point — we had driven back from a very rural part of France — and my sister and I were tired as we hadn’t been able to sleep properly in the car, which is why none of us could believe that we were hearing a weird noise coming from the house. My dad opened the door and water spilled out!

The entire ground floor was flooded, our post was bobbing around the place like ducks on a pond, there were tide marks on the wall over one foot high, there was a massive hole in the kitchen ceiling — below our bathroom, in case you hadn’t guessed where this was going — and a half-decent waterfall was pouring through it.

After much swearing and freaking out, my mum found a way to shut the water off and Dad phoned the police residential management people on their emergency number and after clarifying that no, this was not a joke, they sent someone out. That someone was some guy that suggested seeing if we could find a way to turn the power on so we could “at least have a cup of tea”!

Eventually, it was agreed that we couldn’t stay there, so we had to find a hotel, and by this time it is almost midnight on a Thursday. My dad later explained that before we found our holy grail of a hotel, the four others we went to first claimed there was no room at the inn and they had conferences. There weren’t conferences, just to clarify; I think they just didn’t want to deal with my tired, upset, and irked dad that late at night.

The next day a plumber came out to sort the toilet. My dad is a chatty guy, and so naturally got talking to the plumber, expressing his amazement that this had happened. Before he even looked at the toilet he tried to blame us by saying it was because we had used one of those bleach blocks you could clip onto the toilet bowl. My dad had to show him that we didn’t have any of those before he’d let it go.

The plumber then got to work and explained that, in a nutshell, whoever was there last dropped a part down the toilet — he eventually fished it out and showed my dad — and that they either didn’t realise or didn’t tell anyone. This caused a blockage, which in turn caused the pipe to burst.

At that point, I came out of my room, stopped by to see what they’re talking about, saw the guy, and grabbed my dad. I recognised him as the plumber who had come out in the first place! I quietly told my dad who the man was, and what he had said to me previously. Dad let the guy fix the issue and leave before calling the company up to check that he was the same person who had been sent out last — he was — and then went to town on them. I’m pretty sure the guy got sacked.

In the end, it took three months to make the house liveable again. In that time, my sister and I had to live with our nan some seventy miles away for the remainder of the school holidays, with our parents visiting us on the weekend. The hotel my parents had been paid to stay in was too far away from any travel links and our friends, and my parents didn’t think it was fair to make us stay in a hotel all day on our own whilst they worked. I ended up losing my part-time job because they didn’t understand why I couldn’t take a train to work — even when I explained it would have cost about £60 when I made minimum wage.

When school started back up, my dad had to argue and fight to get somewhere that was close to my college and my sister’s school because the area was quite expensive and the police didn’t want to pay for it.

Despite how stressful the whole situation ended up being — I could write a book on what happened! — my parents never let it show, which amazes me to this day.

I’ll never get over how we had to go through it at all just because one plumber got butterfingers.

(My jacket’s zipper has started misbehaving; most days it refuses to zip up, and even when it does, it “splits” at the bottom. I’ve taken it to a sewing place at the mall.)

Employee: *takes the jacket, zips it up with some effort, hands it back to me* “It’s fine. It doesn’t need to be fixed.”

Me: “It’s not fine. I’m having more and more trouble with it. I’d like a replacement zipper, please.” *hands jacket to her*

Employee: “That would cost [amount].” *hands jacket back*

Me: “That’s okay.” *hands jacket to her*

Employee: “It’ll take a week.” *tries to hand jacket back*

Me: “I don’t care! I’ll pay what it costs, and I’ll wait as long as it takes! Just please fix it!”

Employee: “FINE.” *writes up the order in silence and takes my payment while glaring at me*

(I’ve never had so much trouble convincing someone to take my money before.)