Many moons ago, my mother used to own and work in a cafe. She had a waitress working for her who was an older lady — in her mid-sixties at the time, I believe — and an absolute sweetheart — quiet, polite, great with the customers, and just generally lovely.

Around the same time, my mother’s main cook left, and she took on a chap who was (once upon a time) a chef. He was a nice guy most of the time but had a drinking problem and was quick to lose his temper — think Gordon Ramsay, but a bit less fiery and much less sweary.

One day, he got very angry with the waitress over something trivial and stormed out the back of the cafe to calm down with a cigarette. The lovely waitress decided to make him a coffee to help chill him out and took it outside to him.

About five minutes later, my mother heard a scream followed by a crash and legged it out the back, fearing some sort of awful altercation between chef and waitress.

Instead of blood and carnage, she was met with the sight of chef and waitress both leaning against the wall in fits of laughter, with a broken mug and coffee all around their feet.

The waitress, this lovely old lady who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, had secretly taken her spare glass eye and popped it into the angry chef’s coffee cup as a little revenge prank. When he finally drank down that far, he saw this eye peering up at him from the bottom of the cup, screamed, and dropped the cup in his terror.

At least he forgot about whatever it was he’d been angry about!

This is a story that was recently brought up again by my mom when she was recounting some really s***ty racism she encountered when she first came to the United States.

It was the late 1980s in Los Angeles, California. By this time, my mom, a Japanese immigrant, had been living in the United States for ten years. Although she could speak English well, she wasn’t fluent and preferred to speak Japanese with others from the local Japanese-American community.

One day, she and a friend were waiting to be seated at a restaurant. As they chattered away in Japanese, a shadow cast down upon them. Looking up, they found a woman leering down at them.

Woman: “You two! This is America! Speak English.”

Startled, my mom and her friend made eye contact, unsure of what to do. Encounters like this were, sadly, ones they had run into many times since they came to live in the USA. They were not ones for confrontation. Before, they couldn’t do anything while their bullies marched off, unpunished. But then, as they made eye contact, a brilliant thing happened.

Mom likened the moment to their thought processes coming in sync together. They had a shared idea that didn’t need any further elaboration or explanation.

Mom chimed in the poshest English accent she could muster:

Mom: “[Friend], my dear, I do think the waiter ought to have shown up to escort us to our table by now. It’s frightfully rude to keep us waiting like this!”

Her friend replied, invoking her best impersonation of the Princess of Wales:

Friend: “Yes, darling, it is frightfully rude, indeed!”

As they continued to twitter away in their fake English accents, the woman began to slowly back away. Her face reddened and twisted itself in a visage as hideous as the Furies. Realizing that she had just been outsmarted by two young women obsessed with British culture and celebrity, all she could do was storm off down the street a defeated bully.

While there was no direct punishment, it was a story that my mom would continue to retell thirty years later. It has always made me chuckle to myself, and I hope you enjoyed it, too.

I’m working as a floor manager at a restaurant. A server comes up to me, saying her table of four teenage boys wants to send two businessmen a round… of milk.

Me: “Do they know them?”

Server: “No, they just said they look like they could use something to take the edge off.”

Me: *Laughs* “Okay, seems harmless enough. Sure, bring them a round.”

The boys get a round for themselves, and the server takes two tall glasses of frothy moo juice to the suits sitting by the door. Now a collection of servers has joined me watching the confusion on the suits’ faces. One of them raises the glass and looks at the boys, toasting them, and takes a sip. The other suit, extremely confused, doesn’t touch his glass.

The boys finish their meal (and milk). As they approach the suits, all of us are staring at the group, expecting some s*** to go down. One of the boys points at the full glass of milk.

Boy: “Are you gonna finish that?”

The guy shakes his head, and then the boy picks up the glass, chugs it, and walks out.

I rush over to apologize for the bizarre experience, and the milk-drinking suit just laughs.

Suit: “Kids. What are you gonna do?”

I work from home. My husband is a forester and works for his oldest brother. One day, he calls me on his way home from work in the next town over.

Husband: “[Brother-In-Law] wants to pick up a pizza from [Local Pizza Place] to take to Grandma’s house, and I agreed to pay for it, but I can’t get the phone number on their website to work. Could you put the order in online?”

The order is simple — one medium combination pizza — so I quickly pull up [Pizza Place]’s website and place the order for pick-up through [Third-Party Ordering Service].

Me: “Okay, it’s under my name, it’s paid for, and it should be ready in about forty minutes.”

Husband: “Okay, thank you! By the way, do you want to just order our usual from [Pizza Place] on [Delivery App]?”

Me: “That does sound good! And theoretically…” *checks the app* “…it should get here just after you do!”

We hang up, and I order our usual — one extra-large Hawaiian and one medium pepperoni special — using [Delivery App].

About thirty minutes later, my husband comes home. We chat about our days, and after a bit, we’re interrupted by [Brother-In-Law] calling [Husband]. He’s at [Pizza Place], and the employees there are confused by the two separate orders under my name. I clarify the different services I ordered through and quickly shoot [Brother-In-Law] a text with the order number for his pizza, he hangs up, and we think that should be the end of it.

About a minute later, I get a notification that the driver for [Delivery App] has picked up my order and is on her way to my house. A minute after that, [Brother-In-Law] calls [Husband] again. As he listens, [Husband] face-palms, laughs, and apologizes several times.

At one point, I hear him say:

Husband: “So, are you coming over here, then, or are you just going to order a new one?”

I can see where this is going. They hang up.

Me: “So… they sent all three pizzas with the [Delivery App] driver and [Brother-In-Law] is going to meet her here?”

Husband: “Yup!”

We share a laugh and then start to get out paper plates and napkins and such.

Now, MY phone rings, and I look down at the caller ID.

Me: “Oh, boy. Now [Pizza Place] is calling me.”

I answer, and it’s the owner. (My husband and I went to high school with him, but as I’ve since married and changed my name, I’m not sure he knows who he’s talking to.)

Owner: “Hi, is this [My Name]?”

Me: “Yes, it is.”

Owner: “Hi. This is [Owner] at [Pizza Place]. Your brother was just here picking up a pizza, and we had some confusion with the two separate orders, and I think we told him the [Delivery App] driver had taken his pizza, but… we just found it. We thought it had already gone out, but we had two medium combinations, and one of those went out with a [Delivery App] driver. Your brother’s pizza is sitting here on top of the oven keeping warm. I think you’ll need to call him and let him know it’s here.”

The owner then begins showering me with apologies and explaining how the mix-up occurred. I’m doing a terrible job at holding in the giggles. [Husband] comes over, a case of the giggles threatening to overwhelm him, too.

Husband: “Do I need to call [Brother-In-Law] and send him back?”

I just nodded helplessly, feeling my face turn red as I tried not to die of laughter.

After assuring [Owner] that it was totally okay — and apologizing myself for not realizing the confusion the two separate orders could cause — I hung up the phone. [Husband] completed his final call to his brother at the same time, and we collapsed into gales of laughter together.

Then, we went to the kitchen window to watch for our [Delivery App] driver; we were curious whether the second medium combination pizza had been swept up with our two pizzas.

It hadn’t, so we can only assume all FOUR pizzas got to where they needed to go!

It is just before Christmas. A man comes in and grabs the first “Happy Holidays to my wife” card he sees. He then spends the next few minutes looking around the shelves at the rest of the Christmas cards, looking increasingly frustrated.

Me: “Can I offer you any help?”

Customer: “Yeah, I’m trying to find a Christmas card for my cat.”

Not what I was expecting.

Me: “I see. Well, I can imagine that could be difficult because—”

Customer: “—there are just so many options, I know!”

He settles on a Christmas card that has a painting of a wintry scene with a pond.

Customer: “I’ll take this one.”

Me: *Not knowing what else to say* “Good choice!”

Customer: “Can I bring it back if she doesn’t like it?”

Me: “As long as it’s not written on, you’ll be fine.”

He nodded and made the purchases, and to this day, I don’t know if he was talking about his wife or his cat.