A woman keeps walking out of the fitting room while she’s in the middle of getting undressed between outfits.

Me: “I’m sorry, could I ask you to step inside the fitting room while you’re undressed, please?”

Customer: “I need to see what my friend is wearing.”

Me: “I understand, but I’d like to provide some privacy. Would you two like to move into the larger fitting room together?”

Note: against policy, but this is a common-sense occasion.

Customer: “There is no problem, this is a ladies’ store.”

Except her husband is literally sitting there looking at them both. Sincerely not my concern, here, but f****** weird.

Me: “Oh, there’s no problem at all! I’m only asking that we make sure we come out of the fitting rooms with our top and bottom underwear covered in clothes.”

Customer: “So we can’t try on clothes?”

Me: *Drawing a line under it.* “Of course you can try on clothes, in the fitting room. You may not come out of the fitting room unless you are fully dressed. Can I help you with anything else?

They left; I was happy, and other customers were happy. Get your boobs and a** out of my face!

We are wholesale distributors of leisure and sports goods (active leisure, fishing equipment, etc). We are having an online meeting with a potential new client in a small region. We already have some clients in this region.

Client: “Well, I could think of buying from you guys only on one condition, if you do not sell to my competitors.”

He then lists his competitors in the region, and more than half of them are already our clients.

Me: “So, you would like to be exclusive to our product list in the region, am I correct?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “Sure, we have several exclusive partnerships in some regions. But in order for this to happen, we need to establish a contract and outline requirements: for us, the delivery and product requirements, and for you, the buying frequency and minimum amounts.”

Client: “Minimum amounts? No, I do not want to oblige. I will buy as long as I think I need, and without minimum amounts.”

Me: “I am sorry, but we already have a yearly turnover in this region of about 500,000 Euros, and it is increasing between five to ten percent every year. If you want us to make you an exclusive buyer of our product list, you need to match those numbers. We are not going to cancel 500,000 euros per year just to have some random orders.”

Client: “Oh, I see. I can’t afford 500,000 a year. I was thinking like a 500 or 1000 a month tops.”

I thanked him for his time. He is our non-exclusive client now, and makes a 10,000 euro turnover a year in that region.

A family acquaintance invites my kid, last minute, to a Halloween party in town. I’m told to bring food and be in costume, and I don’t have much in either department.

I manage to bake a tray of cookies. As for the costume, I don a very creepy-looking gas mask and some heavy-duty hooded coveralls. Did I say the mask was creepy? It does not have any straps to tighten; to ensure a good seal, it goes over the entire head.

So, we’re off to the party, my kid as a witch and post-atomic me, carefully lurching around (I can’t see a cursed thing through the tiny lenses) with a tray of cookies.

My arrival upsets the smallest kids, who bunch up in the farthest corner and stare at me. They are creeped out by this walk-on from Chornobyl, but at the same time, they know it’s just a costume, right? To reassure them, I start by taking off my hood…

…and reveal a head that’s devoid of any human features, a greenish blob with empty holes for eyes, and a bug-like snout instead of a mouth.

The kids run away shrieking.

Best Halloween ever.

I live in a German-speaking country, and we are known to be very strict about closing times and time limits at our government offices.

I work as some sort of engineer and went to an office that deals with formal requests regarding government-issued assignments. If you want to get such an assignment, you have to bring in paperwork in person up to a specific date. Because of the form and many things that happen in my industry, it is quite common to bring in the paperwork on the last possible day.

It was close to closing time, and I was waiting for someone when a woman entered the room, obviously in a rush, heading to the counter where paperwork had to be put in. The counter was empty at the time.

While she rushes across the waiting area, her paperwork slides out of her arms and falls to the ground, spreading all over. As she is trying to put all together, a man, who looked Middle Eastern, tried to help her, but when he touched her forms, she let out a shriek and told him to go back to where he came from and not to touch her paperwork. (Obviously, a racist remark, telling him to get to his country of origin, a quite common statement here.)

Without a word, he gets up and goes behind the counter the woman was heading for. She finally finished picking up her papers she heads to the counter, realising that he is in there. Just as she reaches him, he puts up a sign saying “closed” and points to the clock, which had just reached closing time.

Her face went blank as she stammered to please make an exception, but she surely knew from the beginning this was a pointless request. If she had let him help her, I’m sure she would have been able to put in the paperwork.

I just can make an assumption that she either wasn’t able to put in the paperwork at all, or at least had to come in again the next day. Surely not what her boss was expecting.

When I was working in this company, I had a colleague who suffered from very heavy PMS. Every other month, she would have to take sick leave during those days because she wasn’t even able to stand.

Our (male) boss, though acting supportive and understanding in her face, would always turn to macho and dismissive talk when alone with other males, spouting the usual nonsense about weak women, convenient days off, and so on.

One day, after [Female Colleague] was back from her sick leave for the above reason, we were all at the coffee machine, also with [Boss].

[Boss] asked [Female Colleague] if she was feeling better now and then said, “Well, in my experience, the women who have stronger PMS are also the ones who experience the strongest orgasms”.

I have never experienced PMS myself, but I don’t think a woman wants to publicly discuss her orgasms and PMS at the same time, even more so if a man is trying to turn that into bragging about how manly he is.

So, fed up with his nonsense, I just murmured, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Maybe because they are used to pretending that they are feeling good.”

[Female Colleague] and another woman at the coffee machine snickered while drinking their coffee, [Boss] took the jab without knowing what to answer.