My wife and I are with some friends at a local bookstore’s trivia night. It’s been fun, but the emcee running the game has made some… odd choices. The one I remember best is this.

Emcee: “Okay, last question, three points. What song by Prince shares its name with a number?”

My team confers quietly, and we answer, “1999,” which is the full title of the song you’ve probably heard of. Later, the emcee is reviewing the responses out loud.

Emcee: “And the answer to the last question… is Seven.”

Me: “What about 1999?”

Emcee: “Nope, sorry, it’s Seven.”

Me: “But 1999 is also a Prince song that shares its name with a number.”

Emcee: “Yeah, but it doesn’t count because it’s not the one I was thinking of.”

We didn’t go back.

I overheard this at my local game retailer.

Customer #1: “Why would you play [Game]?”

Customer #2: “For the same reason anyone plays any game; they enjoy it.”

Customer #1: “But it’s rated E!”

Customer #2: “Which stands for EVERYONE. What, you think that just because something is family-friendly, that means that adults can’t enjoy it?”

I worked in a store during a big console launch. Our store had only gotten enough to fulfill preorders, so they were all locked in the office, bagged, with the customer’s details taped to them so that the customers’ copies of the paperwork could be matched up to their orders. All staff attended a training where this was made very clear, and they were reminded about it afterward.

A customer asked for a console.

Cashier: “I’ll go grab you one.”

I stopped them and turned to the customer.

Me: “Can I see your preorder slip?”

Customer: “Oh, I didn’t preorder it.”

Cashier: “It’s fine; we’ve got plenty.”

Me: “No, we don’t.”

Cashier: “Yeah, there’s loads in the office. I’ve already sold six!”

They’d been asking other managers for access to the office. Those managers were assuming no one could be that stupid. They assumed wrong; the cashier was tearing the paperwork off and binning it.

In the mid- to late 1980s, my older brother and I were big in going to card shows. We collected sports cards, mainly MLB and NFL, but we also had NHL, NBA, and we even collected sets of cards from Garbage Pail Kids, TMNT, X-Men, and so on. My older brother also worked hard at building a collection of comic books and he went out of his way to get a few decent ones into his collection like the first X-Men and the first Wolverine and the first Batman. Our collection was tens of thousands of cards and a lot of different sports memorabilia — such things as signed rookie cards of Mike Singletary, Walter Payton, Ken Griffy Jr., Robin Yount, and so on.

I was more into video games then, as well. My older brother wasn’t as much, but he liked the idea of trying to collect and build up a video game collection, as well.

The years went on, and in the early 1990s, we had a massive collection of game consoles, games to go with them, and our sports cards. We had tables we’d set up at card shows and we’d sell, trade, and buy. At the time, we had probably amassed over $50,000 in merchandise.

I was about thirteen years old, and I came home one day and everything was gone aside from my Sega Genesis, a controller for it, and a couple of games.

My older brother cleaned us out — all of our sports cards aside from a handful that I had secretly stashed that I really liked, all our sports memorabilia, all his comic books, and all of our video games and consoles… along with $600 I had in my room, hidden away (clearly not well enough).

He took the following game consoles:

• Three NES systems, along with the NES Power Pad, Power Glove, six controllers, and over a hundred games
• Two SNES systems, four controllers, and nearly a hundred games
• One SNES Famicom system, one controller, and maybe half a dozen games we had for it
• One Atari 2600 and every single game
• One TurboGrafx 16, the two controllers, and about a dozen games
• One Gameboy and around fifty games
• One Sega Genesis 32X adapter and the dozen games I had for it

The police got involved, and since I couldn’t officially prove it was my older brother that took all this stuff, I could at least prove that he only took $600 out of my room because he also knew where it was stashed — stupid me for letting him know. The police gave him twenty-four hours to return the $600; otherwise, he was going to be arrested. The very next day, the $600 was returned.

I never did see any of the other merchandise returned. Apparently, my older brother, who was sixteen when this all took place, wanted a start-up fund to get into the weed business.

The store I work at sells popular trading card games: think Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and the like. The store is set up so there are glass-fronted cases with the more expensive product in them, with the cheaper stuff on the countertops.

In the Pokémon section, there are a couple of boxes on the countertop with cheaper cards in them. Each card is in its own color-coordinated sleeve, and each box clearly indicates prices per colored sleeve. For example, each card in a green sleeve is $1, each card in a purple sleeve is $2, each card in an orange sleeve is $3, etc.

A regular comes in one evening, and we all dislike this kid. Sadly, I pull the short straw as I’m the one manning the front counter, and it’s quiet enough we don’t need too many people up front. I say my hello spiel as the kid comes in, continue what I’m doing, and watch him out of the corner of my eye.

This kid pulls at least fifty sleeves from the Pokémon boxes and lays them all out on the counter. It’s fine; this isn’t the first time this has happened, it’s a slow night, and I don’t need the countertop at this time.

This kid spends a good ten minutes hemming and hawing, pulls out twenty or so of the cards that he wants, and puts the rest back. He lays all his chosen cards out on the counter, one by one.

Kid: “What’s the total for all of these?”

I ring him up, and his total (with tax) is over fifty dollars.

The kid stares at me, slack-jawed and bug-eyed.

Kid: “How could it be this much?! I only pulled, like, twenty cards!”

He pulled twenty cards of various prices, each CLEARLY INDICATED BY THE BOXES THEY ARE IN, and wanted the total to be UNDER $10.

The kid takes the cards back, goes through them again, and removes a single card

Kid: “Okay, how much is my total now?”

The total was now roughly fifty dollars. The kid took the cards back, went through them again, and removed another single card.

This went on for a good fifteen minutes. He finally, FINALLY made his purchase… of three cards.

The worst part is that this happened not once, not twice, but THRICE, the last time with him arguing with me that one of the cards was a dollar because he found it in the dollar box.

The card was in a purple sleeve, making it $2. It was a $2 card. I know it was because I put it there. It may have gotten misplaced, but there is a reason the cards are in color-coordinated sleeves: because of things like this.

This kid clearly does not know how this process works.

Related:
Here We Pokémon Go Again, Part 44
Here We Pokémon Go Again, Part 43
Here We Pokémon Go Again, Part 42
Here We Pokémon Go Again, Part 41
Here We Pokémon Go Again, Part 40