It’s the day after a windstorm and a tree has decided to fall on my roof. After all the limbs are removed, there’s a hole that needs to be covered until roofers can come to repair it. I go to the local hardware store for a cover of some sort.

The hole is rather large, so even the biggest tarp they have won’t do. Instead, I find a roll of 20×100 plastic, and I also get various nails and wood strips to help hold it down.

When I get to the register, there are two other people in front of me. The first has a dozen items and the next has one small bag of screws. The cashier there is one that I have seen many times; she’s always smiling, usually recognizes me, and greets people cheerfully. She starts scanning the first customer’s items.

Every item gets a beep until the last item, a trowel… boop! A misread. She tries again… boop! She smooths the label really good… boop! She tries to find the trowel in the inventory and has no luck, so she calls over a manager.

The manager tries everything again and still has no luck.

Manager: *To the customer* “You can pay for your other items and leave.”

I think the cashier looks a little annoyed; she went to all this trouble and then didn’t sell it. The next customer steps up with their small bag of maybe four screws.

The cashier scans the bag… boop! She tries again… boop! She smooths the label really good… boop! She tries to find the screws in inventory and has no luck, so she calls over a manager. 

The manager tries everything again… no luck. They call hardware and after a couple of minutes are delivered a second baggie of the original screws and another baggie of different screws. The original item still doesn’t scan, but the different screws scan okay. The man pays.

The cashier sighs; I guess seven minutes for a thirty-two-cent sale can be a bit annoying.

By now, because of all the extra time taken to check out these two people, there are a few people behind me, and this is the “builders” line; they all have a large number of items and are starting to look impatient.

The cashier starts with my items. She asks me about the plastic and I tell her about the house as she checks me out.

Bottle of water… beep. Three bundles of wood strips, beep, beep, beep. Box of nails, beep. Finally, the LARGE, HEAVY roll of plastic sheeting! She drags it over to the scanner, and… boop!

The cashier’s eyes widen a bit. She snatches the bottle of water back up and scans it again — beep.

She totals the transaction, looks at me, and says with smile:

Cashier: “That’ll be $13.30.”

Me: “But that roll is like fifty dollars!”

She GLARES at me, BARES HER TEETH, and growls:

Cashier: “The total is $13.30!”

Knowing better than to poke the bear, I nodded, quickly paid, and left. Even now, years later, she always grins and asks if my house is still dry when I come in the store.

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I recently finished building a shelf and ended up with an extra piece of wood that had been untouched throughout the project, so I head to the store with my receipt to return it.

Me: “Good evening. I need to return this board. Turns out we had an extra piece of clear pine in the scrap wood by mistake. Here’s my receipt.”

Clerk #1: “No problem! We just need to measure the piece and then we can process the return.”

I blink for a moment in confusion.

Me: “Why would… Wait, do people actually just cut off what they need and try to return the rest? I’d never thought of that.”

A second clerk picked up the board and headed off.

Clerk #2: “Honest people never do.”

Either my genuine befuddlement was good enough proof, or I just threw the employees off their routine, because I walked out of there with my money without them ever actually checking the board length to make sure I wasn’t stealing. Whoops?

I answer the phones for the pest control company where I work. One day, I answered the phone and I said my company’s standard greeting. Apparently, this time, those words were said in the exact way needed to open the gates of Hell, as what came through the other end was the most maddening shrieking I’ve ever been subjected to.

The woman, or she-demon, on the line proceeded to unceasingly berate the company, our service technicians, our service itself, me for working there, and everything else under the sun for committing some horrible wrongdoing against her daughter, and she demanded that her daughter’s service be terminated and for us to never contact her family again.

I would have been happy to oblige, ringing ears aside; however, in the five or so minutes that her breathless tirade went on, she never once yelled out a name, address, street, city, type of service, approximate date of service, or any other form of identifying information. And her number didn’t show up on our ID, of course. Interjecting was also impossible.

Then, she hung up.

I never did find out who that woman was or if her daughter’s service was cancelled, but I don’t recall that particular banshee ever calling back, so who knows?

I have come over to the US from the UK to work in our Florida office for a while.

While I am there, a recurring — irritating but not debilitating — medical condition flares up, so I decide on my next Saturday — I don’t work on Saturdays — to go to the pharmacy to get some of the usual medication — available over the counter in the UK — that I know will alleviate the symptoms.

There is quite a line, each member of which seems to be elderly, loquacious, and an old friend of the worker behind the counter, so it takes me quite some time to get to the front of the line. No worries. I have nothing else planned for the morning.

“Yes?” is the brusque greeting of the person behind the counter. I have just opened my mouth to speak when another gabby old woman comes sailing past me right up to the counter and starts a conversation with the staff member, completely ignoring the fact that there is another transaction about to take place.

I do the polite thing and wait for them to finish, standing aside quietly. In due course, that conversation finishes and the staff member’s attention finally focuses upon me once more.

Staff: “You still here?”

Me: “Well, yes, er …”

Staff: *Snapping* “What do you want, then?”

Me: “Er, can I have some [medication], please?”

Staff: “No, you can’t.”

Me: “Pardon me?”

Staff: “You need a prescription. Next!”

And another of her dear old friends came up to the counter to barney away as though they hadn’t seen each other for absolutely HOURS.

I gave it up as a bad job and took my destined-to-remain-unmedicated self out of that place and down to the beach, instead.

I work at a franchise that serves food and beverages, so naturally, we had to watch a video explaining corporate’s new cleaning and hygiene policies in light of the 2020 health crisis. One line in particular stuck out at me.

Video: “Employees should wear gloves no matter what task they are doing because customers expect to see front-end employees wearing gloves.”

That was it. Nothing about germs, the importance of hand-washing, or contact with food; just a straight-up admission that the gloves are theater without even a recommendation to change them between tasks. Good to know the higher-ups are looking out for our customers’ health!