My fiancé does all of his shopping for everyone on Christmas Eve. He gets in line, surrounded by people with carts full of gifts who are obviously stressing out. He hits the till and buys EVERYONE gift cards — like twenty of them, the same amount on each.
Fiancé: “All done!”
And it never fails that someone behind him sees this and just takes a long, wistful sigh.
CONTENT WARNING: Bugs/Insects
This happened about twenty-five years ago, back when I was engaged to the woman who would ultimately become my ex-wife.
I’m not sure where she picked up these parasitic follicle hitchhikers, but she got head lice. Nit at all funny. Still, these things happen.
I checked my hair, and whilst I didn’t think I had any, I still treated my hair with medicated shampoo and a special comb anyway. My fiancée also treated her hair, but her mother had advised against using the specialist shampoos, instead suggesting more natural remedies.
She advised the use of tea tree oil to kill the lice and banana conditioner to make the hair more slippery to aid in the removal of the lice and eggs.
So, after [Fiancée] dosed her hair up with the gunk, I brandished the comb and got to work. It quickly became apparent that we were in for a long evening. The first comb-through pulled out a lot — as did all the subsequent pulls. I carefully looked through her hair, and as well as a few lice, there were lots and lots of eggs.
But were they all eggs?
You know that conditioner we used? It turns out they make it by mashing up bananas. And you know what’s inside bananas? Banana seeds. Which are about the same size and shape as lice eggs.
Oh, I didn’t say how long [Fiancée]’s hair was. It was long — reaching the small of her back. And thick. And about the same shade as the eggs I was trying to find. It was clear that this ordeal was far from ova.
All in all, it took about three hours for me to go through [Fiancée]’s hair to remove every trace of lice, egg, and banana seed. (Conversely, it took her about ten minutes to go through my short banana-free hair.)
Afterward, I pleaded with her to never use that treatment again. Fortunately, she agreed, and that method of treatment was scratched.
Several recent stories reminded me of a tough point in my life. I’m lucky enough to have never been so broke as to be unable to eat. After Mom passed away, though, the family scattered, my then-fiancé lost his job around the same time, and the majority of my inheritance went toward helping pay off some bad debt — “class action lawsuit” levels of “bad” — but that was years later. We were definitely broke enough that the cabinets and fridge only had store-brand bare essentials like instant ramen, peanut butter, bread, etc. It wasn’t the healthiest way to eat, but between [Fiancé] being out of work and me earning JUST enough to not qualify for benefits, it was better than literally nothing; it also helped me kick my soda addiction.
One day, I saw that [Supermarket] was having a big pre-Thanksgiving sale. I knew there was no way we could do a proper dinner, but many of the things on sale were shelf-stable, and a few things like premade stuffing mix and fresh veggies that would normally be out of budget for the quality, so a lot of our meager saving was going into a big bulk purchase. We went, we stocked up as best we could, and we checked out.
Cashier: “Do you have a [Store] card?”
Me: “No.”
This was around when store cards were starting to be tied directly to sales rather than just reward programs, so I was used to not having my own. But then…
Fiancé: “Oh, actually, you have all of your Mom’s store cards now.”
Numbly taking out the big key ring I had actually forgotten was in my pocket, I flipped through until I found the right one. It eventually got scanned in — it was old and falling apart — I swiped my card, and our massive receipt started printing. At the bottom of it, the cashier circled something in pink highlighter. Still in my fog, I didn’t notice it, but [Fiancé] did.
Once we headed out to the car (the only part of my inheritance that wasn’t cash), I started loading everything into the trunk while [Fiancé] looked over the receipt to make sure all the sales were taken off correctly. He got to the bottom, and all I heard was, “OH, MY GOD!” before he broke down sobbing. Thinking we had gotten double-charged or something, I snatched the receipt from him, and he pointed to the big pink circle.
There was over $150 in rewards to be claimed. It turns out the store had a cash-back program, and my mom had just never bothered to go to the customer service desk to redeem the rewards.
It probably looked weird to some folks seeing two guys in the front seats of a sedan, hugging each other and crying their eyes out — being the early 2000s and certain forms of acceptance building slowly in our area — but after all the grief, stress, and general anxiety of the prior months, even the smallest bit of relief made us both explode like burst dams. It took almost ten minutes to calm down to where we could drive home safely and put our big pile of food away.
Then, the next day, when we cashed out the rewards and got three $50 store gift cards, the waterworks started all over again. It was the first year we could properly afford a little Thanksgiving meal of our own, though thankfully our finances improved over the next year.
We just found it funny that, in our toughest time, my mother’s thoughtlessness actually ended up saving us!
I used to work retail at a year-round costume store, and we would get some pretty interesting customers.
I was closing on a random Friday night. About an hour before we were going to close, a regular customer walked in with a guy. I happened to know from past experience that this customer was a lady of the night. The guy came in with this huge black duffel bag. The store was a mom-and-pop shop and had a strict policy about not carrying large bags or purses around the store to help curb shoplifting.
Me: “Sir, we have a policy against large bags in the store. Please either take it out to your car or leave it up front with me.”
He was kind of squirrely, but after some back and forth, he finally agreed to leave the bag up front.
Guy: “I have a lockbox in this bag with some loose diamonds in it. I don’t want to leave it unattended.”
He pulled out the lockbox to show me, and since it was small and would be cumbersome to get into, I told him it was fine to carry it around the store with him.
I then found out from the woman that they were going to be driving out of town to get married. They were stopping by the store so that he could buy her a wedding dress. We didn’t sell wedding dresses, but I told her that we had some really cool corseted dresses if she wanted to take a look at those.
She went to do that while the guy wandered around with his lockbox. He was constantly going on to me and all the other employees about how rich he was. He also told us that in addition to being a diamond dealer, he was an “astrologist” who worked for NASA.
After trying on a few dresses, the woman finally found one she liked and brought it up to check out. The dress rang up at about $180. When the dude saw the price he completely lost it, and an argument ensued.
After about ten minutes of arguing with him, the woman decided to go back and get a different dress, but she reminded him that they also needed a ring and that he should pick something from our costume jewelry while she found a new dress. I showed him some rings, and he picked one.
Me: “Okay, that one is $12.”
Guy: “Oh. Can you show me something cheaper?”
He finally settled on the $2 ring.
I told everyone to go ahead and start on closing duties while the couple finished shopping.
About twenty minutes after we closed, the woman came up with a $40 vintage-style dress. After a little more arguing, the guy finally agreed to pay for the dress. However, she also wanted a pair of shoes and flatly refused to leave without them. She was wearing a ratty pair of canvas tennis shoes. He kept insisting that they would “look great” with the dress and that she didn’t need shoes.
They continued to argue, and by that point, we were coming up on almost a half-hour after closing. My coworkers and I were supposed to be clocking out, and I still needed to close the drawer. Sick of listening to them argue — and wanting to make staying open later as worthwhile as I could — I told the guy:
Me: “Since you have a case full of diamonds, surely you can afford to pay for the shoes.”
The guy got angry, grabbed his bag, and stormed out. The woman ran out after him and dragged him back to pay for the dress and ring. She then bought the shoes herself.
I wished her the best of luck, and she was on her way.
After they were gone, I locked up and finished closing. About fifteen minutes later, when I was leaving, I noticed that they were still in the parking lot arguing. I’m fairly sure that wedding didn’t happen.
Six years ago, after my fiancé proposed, we decided to not waste time and get married at a courthouse. [Fiancé] was previously married and is from England, so he brought the original copy of his divorce papers that he’d had mailed to him. However, the papers weren’t very fancy-looking, so…
Clerk: “I can’t accept this. It looks like a Xerox copy.”
Fiancé: “No, it’s the original. I got it shipped from England.”
Clerk: “I’ll go ask one of the officials.”
She left and came back, shaking her head.
Clerk: “I’m sorry, but he says it just doesn’t look official enough.”
Fiancé: “Well, this is as official as it gets. I don’t understand.”
At that point, I was stressed out due to this and other unrelated reasons, and I excused myself to have a small meltdown. Oops.
The next part was related to me by my fiancé. The clerk looked sympathetic after I left crying.
Clerk: “Look, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have a raised seal or a wax stamp or anything…”
Fiancé: *Snaps* “Well, what am I going to do, FRAME IT?!”
The clerk went silent, and my fiancé left to join me, managing to get a laugh out of me with the story. The good news is that we managed to find a county clerk’s office forty-five minutes away that did accept his divorce papers, and later on, he got his friend who is a consulate to officially stamp it, so perhaps I’ll get him a frame as an anniversary gift!
