In my defence, this has been a long day full of very stupid questions, and I am at the end of my customer service tether.

Customer: “Where is the 0.5mm plastic?”

Me: “It is located in Wall Coverings.”

Customer: “What department is this?”

Me: “Floor Coverings.”

Customer: “There’s a difference?”

Me: “Only in houses based on Euclidian geometry.”

Customer: “In what now?”

Me: “Let me take you to Wall Coverings, sir.”

My family took in a lot of stray cats when I was a kid. One of my favorites was named Pete.

The first thing we noticed about Pete when he started hanging out on our porch at night was that only one of his eyes glowed. When we eventually got him to a vet, we learned that the non-glowing eye had been injured and he was blind in it. It didn’t seem to bother him, so we didn’t really think about it much beyond making sure he wasn’t in pain or danger because of the injury.

One day, I was sitting on the sofa with Pete laying next to me when, all of a sudden, he went crazy. He flipped onto his back and started flailing his paws around furiously. I had no idea what he was doing and was honestly starting to wonder whether he was having a seizure or something. Then, I realized three things.

1. I had been holding a CD in my hand when he started flailing.
2. A sunbeam had been reflecting off the CD and onto the ceiling, wiggling around quickly and randomly as the CD shifted in my hand.
3. Pete had no depth perception.

All that crazy flailing around was Pete trying desperately to catch the bright, moving spot he was sure he could see “right in front of him”, having no idea that it was actually a good seven or eight feet above him. 

That was just about the only time Pete’s missing eye ever inconvenienced him.A few months later, when we realized that the cats we already had hated him and we couldn’t convince them to get along, we gave him to some friends of ours. Despite living in a house with two humans and two dogs that were nearly as big as humans, Pete ruled with an iron paw until he died of old age a few years ago. And we did encourage them to shine a laser — on the floor — for him to chase every now and then!

This story reminded me of a conversation. I have a good friend in England, and he’s the friend in this story. I’ve been a guest in his home and he in mine in the USA. We have a lot in common, including having read many of Bill Bryson’s books. One day, we were chatting online.

Friend: “You Americans bowdlerize everything. Like ‘tidbit’. It’s supposed to be ‘titbit’, but Americans are too puritanical.”

I knew immediately that he got this from “Mother Tongue” by Bryson. At the time that I read it, I was suspicious of Bryson’s explanation, so I got a dictionary and found it was originally “tide-bit”, meaning a tiny bit from a feast. 

Me: “It was originally ‘tide-bit’. You Brits made it naughty.”

Friend: “What? Hold on!”

There was a long pause and I knew he was checking a dictionary himself.

Friend: “Well, I’m gobsmacked; you’re right.”

“Gobsmacked?” Well, I’m slowly learning to be fluent in British.

Along one wall of our store, we have a small display rack with common office supplies for sale — Post-It pads, pens, pencils, paper clips, and things like that. A woman in her fifties comes in to make a few copies and buys a stapler kit (a stapler and a box of staples) from the display.

The following morning, she returns to the shop very irate.

Customer: “My stapler is broken! I want a refund!”

I tested the stapler and found that it was out of staples. I figured she had removed the rest of the staples when she was trying to figure out what the problem was, so I opened it up, slid in a new brick, and gave it a go. It worked perfectly. I was about to tell the woman that I didn’t know what the problem was, but when I looked up, I found her gawking at me as if I had just pulled a live weasel out of my nose.

It was then that I realized she had used up the brick of staples that was in the stapler but never put another one in, and from the look on her face, she was unaware that such a thing was even possible.

Apparently, she thought the stapler would just, I don’t know, get smaller and smaller until all of its metal was turned into staples?

I work at a supplement shop. A customer is looking at some protein.

Customer: “If I buy this, do I still have to lift weights to get bigger and stronger, or does the protein do it all for me?”

Me: “Uh… no. You have to put the work in.”

Customer: “Ugh… gross.”

They put it back and left.