I work in a big box store. We do not allow pets in, apart from service animals. A woman wants to bring in her dog.
Me: “Ma’am, we do not allow dogs in the store.”
Customer: “That’s ridiculous! You sell pet products, so I should be allowed to bring my dog in the store.”
Me: “We also sell cigarettes and condoms, and you can’t use those in the store, either.”
My manager was called, I was fake-scolded, and then we laughed about it later.
A customer’s child knocks over a display, some of which falls on a coworker. [Coworker] is getting up while the customer is acting like nothing has happened. I rush over.
Me: “You okay?!”
Coworker: “I’m okay. My whole life flashed before my eyes for a little bit.”
Me: “What was that like?”
Coworker: “It was like a second of Legos, and then the rest of it was working retail with heartless customers.”
We both make a pointed look at the customer, who looks down and scuttles off.
Me: “What if she complains?”
Coworker: “I suppose I could be concussed?”
My husband and I have decided to “practice” house-hunting to get an idea of what we should look out for when we really do decide to move out of the house we’re living in now.
We contact a realtor and set up an appointment, and on the given date, we meet up and begin checking out houses. We’re standing outside one of the houses, and the realtor is going over a few details before we go inside. My attention drifts a little as I look around, and I spot an anole on the wall.
Me: *Delighted gasp* “Small friend!”
Realtor: *Not skipping a beat* “And if you sign today, we’ll throw the lizard in for free.”
When you use the voice-to-text feature on a phone, it usually gets some words wrong in an understandable way. This is the story of the best (and worst) voice-to-text error I’ve ever seen.
I used to take classes at the University of Washington, or UW. People would commonly pronounce the name “U-Dub” rather than saying the whole thing. One day, I was just leaving a class at a secondary campus in a smaller town called Bothell.
I texted my husband to tell him where to meet me. He was already driving, so his phone read out my text to him, and he replied using voice-to-text.
Husband: *To his phone* “Okay, I’m coming to pick you up at U-dub Bothell.”
Text I Received: “Okay, I’m coming to pick you up and you are awful.”
Fortunately, I knew right away it was a mistake, and we had a great laugh about it when he got there and I showed him how the text had turned out!
During a summer session at the university I attended, one of the students organized a trip to nearby Lassen Volcanic National Park. The park is at a relatively high elevation, and the organizer did not realize that this meant that, even in late June, much of the snow would still not be melted.
When we attempted to visit the geothermally active area called “Bumpass Hell,” which features mud pots, boiling springs, and fumaroles, we found that the trailhead was inaccessible, blocked by about a foot and a half of snow.
When we returned to the school, we were able to report, in all honesty, “We tried to go to Hell, but it was closed because it had frozen over.”
