I work at a small cinema in a small town that belongs to a bigger cinema company here in Germany. Our last movie ends at 10:00 pm. It is about 9:30 pm when this happens, and the caller’s first language is not German.

The phone rings.

Me: “This is cinema [Company], [Town], good evening.”

Caller: “Is this [Company], [Town]?”

Me: “Yes. How can I help you?”

Caller: “Do you have spring rolls?”

Me: “No, sir… we do not have spring rolls here.”

Caller: “Can I come over now and buy spring rolls?”

Me: “We don’t have spring rolls, and the register is already closed for today, so no.”

Caller: “Well, what do you have?”

Me: “Popcorn, nachos, and snacks, like M&Ms or gummy bears.”

Caller: “And do you have spring rolls?”

Me: “This is a cinema; we don’t serve spring rolls.”

Caller: “A cinema… That’s where you can watch movies right?”

Me: “Yes. You can watch movies here.”

Caller: “What can I watch tonight?”

Me: “Nothing anymore tonight; we close in half an hour. But tomorrow, you could watch Der Pfau.”

This is a German production intended for adults but PG-13 rated.

Caller: “What is that about?

I tell him about the plot I saw in the teaser.

Caller: “Is it compelling?”

Translation here is a bit fuzzy; he could have also mean “scary”. I couldn’t tell you which one he meant, but I would lean toward “compelling”. For the German readers, he said, “Spannend.”

Me: “I guess so. I don’t know; I haven’t seen the movie.”

Caller: “Could I bring my child?”

Me: “Depends on how old the child is, but for children about ten and up, we’d have The Three ???.”

Caller: “Is that compelling, or about maths?”

Me: “Well, it’s about three teenagers who solve crimes, so you could watch it as an adult or older child.”

Caller: “Can I bring my son? He’s four.”

Me: “No, he’s definitely too young, but tomorrow morning, we have a movie for young children.”

Caller: “Which one?”

Me: “The Small Mole.”

This is a very popular German TV show for young kids which has been famous for quite a few decades now.

Caller: “Moles… they can fly, right?”

Honest to God, he said it exactly like that. I have to hold back laughter. I’ve already been on the phone with him for about five minutes by now.

Me: “No, moles cannot fly. They’re like… rats with fur.”

In retrospect, I know it’s a s***ty explanation, but I couldn’t think of anything in easy vocabulary.

Caller: “Oh, moles. They live under the earth, right?”

Me: “Yes, exactly.”

Caller: “Is the movie compelling? Will there be any shooting?”

Me: “Sir, it is a children’s movie. There won’t be shooting, and it’ll be interesting enough for your child.”

Caller: “Can I watch Spider-Man in your cinema?”

Me: “No, there is no Spider-Man movie in the cinemas right now, but [Company] cinema in [Big Town close by] has Ant-Man.”

Caller: “Can I watch that now?”

Me: “No, the last movie started at 8:00 pm, and they wouldn’t let you watch that with your child at this time, anyway.”

Caller: “Is Spider-Man on Netflix?”

Me: *Pulling up Netflix on my phone* “Yes, you can watch Spider-Man on Netflix.”

Caller: “And would you know where I can get spring rolls at this hour?”

Me: “You could call [Local Asian Food Delivery Service].”

Caller: “Ah, I see. Well, this call was pointless.”

Then, he hung up on me. The entire call took about ten minutes!

I live in a quiet rural area in a small apartment building in the middle of an area of family homes. As such, my bedroom window is directly opposite and slightly above the neighboring house’s terrace. The family owning said house has two very young children — about two or three years old at max — and evidently, neither they nor their children have any concept of volume.

For the past months, ever since the weather outside started being nice and warm, the neighbors have decided to simply not deal with their children anymore and let them out in the garden or onto the terrace at all hours of the day. On the off chance that the parents are outside with them, they will simply ignore their children, no matter how loud they are. Those two banshees-in-training will screech all day, and the neighborhood simply has to live with the cacophony.

It all reached a new extreme recently when I got woken up in the morning by more screeching and the sound of the neighbor’s children ramming their bobby cars into the balcony railings, next to which a jet engine would have been considered quiet — directly below my bedroom window. Entirely fed up after an exhausting week of work and also weeks of not getting any proper sleep due to the neighboring children, I got up and opened the window just in time to see the two children’s mom trying to sneak off the balcony back into her house.

I yelled out the window over the sound of her children:

Me: “IT IS 7:00 AM ON A SUNDAY! GET YOUR HELLSPAWN TO SHUT THE F*** UP OR SO HELP ME!”

It has been almost two weeks since then. I haven’t had an issue sleeping anymore, and the neighbors haven’t let their children out of the house before 9:00 or 10:00 am on the weekends anymore. They still scream and rampage during the day, but that’s okay with me. They’re kids; they gotta play. I simply value my sleep on the few days that I actually CAN sleep in.

I hope this blissful quiet lasts.

The bakery I work at has a large self-service cafe. There are a few tables we cannot see from the counter, and we have an outside patio, which is beyond the invisible area. Dogs aren’t allowed inside the cafe, but we allow them to go through onto the patio and sit outside there.

Two women enter; one of them has a medium-sized dog on a leash.

Me: “I’m sorry, but the dog has to stay outside.”

Younger Woman: “We’re going to go through and sit in the back. We were there last time, too!”

Me: “Yes, you may go outside onto the patio, but not inside. I cannot allow it; this is a corporate rule.”

Younger Woman: “But we sat there last time!”

Me: “Then you were lucky that no one saw your dog that time, but I’ve seen it today, and I cannot allow you inside.”

They grumble but agree and head into the back.

I’ve been doing this job for the past eight years and am not stupid, so I give them a few minutes to settle down and then go grab a dishcloth for pretending and head into the back to “wipe down the tables”. Of course, I find the older woman sitting inside with her dog next to her, while the younger woman has gone up front to order. 

Me: “So, when I said ‘outside’, I actually meant outside.”

I point to the patio.

The older woman sighs in defeat, gets up, and sits down outside. I head back behind the counter and actually end up serving the younger woman. She’s unfriendly and impatient, and I just know what’s about to happen. When she leaves with her tray, I again give her a few minutes and then follow her, another “pretending” dishcloth in my hand. Of course, I again find her sitting inside with the dog. My customer-friendly voice drops; I’ve had it.

Me: “Okay. I’m going to say this for the last time. Your dog is going to stay outside. You can take a seat on the patio, or I can give you to-go cups, but you will not be sitting there.”

The younger woman explodes. 

Younger Woman: “This is an outrage! Every other restaurant allows dogs! This has never been a problem before! He will just stay under the table and not bother anyone. I’m close to just dropping everything right here and leaving!”

While she has her tirade, the dog jumps onto the bench.

Me: “That’s okay with me, seeing as you‘ve already paid and it’s your money. I’d still be happy to give you to-go cups; you can ask at the counter.”

Younger Woman: *Sarcastically* “Oh, thank you! You’re very friendly!”

But she is actually taking her tray back outside, so I leave it at that and head back to the front. A coworker taking his break tells me that the women are staying outside a few minutes later, so that’s that. But to leave, they have to go by the counter where I am serving customers.

Younger Woman: *Sarcastically* “Thanks again for your kind service!”

Me: *With a friendly smile* “Oh, no problem! See you next time!”

My coworker snort-laughed, and the customer looked as if she’d bitten into a lemon. I don’t think they’ll ever be back, but I don’t care. I hate customers that think they can just trick me and I won’t notice.

Sometimes, you wonder if customers live under a rock — or in a fairytale castle with invisible, magical servants, completely separated from the real world.

We are installing private photovoltaic (solar) systems and batteries. The customer can order from us, and we do everything possible to make the whole process as easy as possible for them. But it is still a construction project. You need the delivery and installment of the modules on the roof and the whole electrical equipment, and then you need to register it as is the law to do so. And, you know, you need to respect the laws of physics and nature, as well as transport through the real world, which is inhabited by other people.

Today, I had a lengthy discussion with a customer — and she is not the first one — concerning time slots. She wanted an exact time frame — a fixed time, like 9:00 am, for the start and a fixed time for it to be finished, like a guaranteed finish time of 4:00 pm, to plan her day. For delivery and installation! And no, she didn’t mean it should finish somewhere before that time; finishing earlier was also an outrageous idea to her! She wanted fixed times to the minute!

After much back and forth, she asked for the umpteenth time:

Customer: “I still can’t understand why you can’t just give me a time! Everyone else does. I think you should at least offer me compensation if I have to waste my time on this!”

I was exhausted by her unreasonable demands and attitude.

Me: “Mrs. [Customer], the reason that I can’t give you that exact time you want is that you knowingly ordered from a company located in Berlin while living in Leipzig. Those deliveries have to travel on the road — where other people travel, too — a distance that will take several hours to get to you. Other people exist, and no one can control them. An installation is a dynamic process; we cannot know if everything will go exactly as planned. You need to accept that it might take the whole day or might take half a day. There are too many factors to be able to make a definite schedule.

“But I’ll make you an offer. You do some research, and if you manage to find any official company offering logistics for businesses that guarantees a fixed delivery time, I’ll have my logistics specialist make a contract with them and we’ll halve your bill. If you then find any company that’ll give you, in writing, a guarantee that they’ll finish the installation with a fixed start time and a definite end time exactly as you demanded here, we’ll hand over the contract to them, but you’ll get everything for free.”

She huffed and puffed and said I’d see; she’d get that. I even gave it to her in writing.

Today, I finished the project and sent her the finishing papers. She paid in full.

It’s really hard to catch a unicorn when they don’t exist, isn’t it?

I’m living in a small village in Germany.

We had the same woman bringing packages and the post for decades. Even before I moved in here together with my husband, [Carrier #1] was the one delivering the post.

Everyone knew her, everyone liked her. Yes, she wasn’t perfect. Sometimes, when she had too many packages, she’d take some home — which was totally illegal — and deliver them the next day. If she met anyone on her route, she’d latch onto them and talk up a storm. 

But we liked her. She was careful with the packages and never broke anything, and she knew exactly where everyone was living, so she was quick, too. She’d make sure your packages were left in a safe place where you could actually find them and they wouldn’t get too warm or wet. 

Then, [Carrier #1] retired. Oh, how we missed her after just a few weeks!

Her successor was nothing like her. Finding your packages on your property became an Easter egg hunt. Sometimes, [Carrier #2] would leave them right in front of your door in the most inconvenient way, so they’d block the door or get knocked over. He didn’t care about rain or blaring sun.

Some people have a front building, which is a small, roofed mini-room in front of your main entrance that’s common in Germany. It’s not like a porch, though; it’s really just a tiny roof right over the door or a very small room, often just enough to put your shoes on a rack or let an umbrella dry. Even if you had one of those, [Carrier #2] would ignore that and put the packages somewhere else, hiding them so you’d sometimes not even find them, or putting them right in front of the front building while it was raining.

He also wasn’t very careful. He’d throw the packages around in his car, and almost always the package would be damaged, and sometimes even the contents would be dinged, as well.

But I accidentally trained [Carrier #2] out of his rough handling of packaging, at least.

I ordered a large package with various items. When it was delivered, I happened to be outside in the gardens.

[Carrier #2], who had never introduced himself, drove up the hill to our house and stumbled out of his car. He looked sick. He held onto the car and wobbled to the back. I came closer and immediately knew he had damaged my package. And I also knew he deeply regretted everything that had led to it. He fumbled around in the back of the car and grabbed the package, which was soaked, and turned around, making a movement as if to throw it at the house, just to see me now standing right in front of him.

I grinned and said the magic words:

Me: “I refuse delivery. The package is broken.”

I saw his face fall. You can do that in Germany, and then they have to take it back to the sender; in Germany, the ownership of the package stays with the company sending it until it’s handed to the recipient, and it’s the customer’s right to deny delivery if the package is damaged. It then to be shipped back to the company, and they can make a claim to the delivery service for compensation of the broken package. 

[Carrier #2] had no choice. He had to fill out a damage slip, right in front of me, and take the package back into the car.

He looked quite resentful for having to do so, but there was nothing to be done.

But I knew he wouldn’t dare to risk breaking anything ever again.

Why? The package contained sixty-five flasks of essential oils I had ordered as a gift for my mother-in-law, who liked to put different oils on little sponges and use them as cupboard scents. 

It was a very hot day, and the package was soaked, which means he must have broken several flasks of essential oils. The stink of that had hit me although I stood several metres away. I could smell that the stink inside the warm interior of the car was overwhelming.

I heard later that [Carrier #2] couldn’t finish his tour; he had to drive back to the main distribution centre. I bet he got a stern talking-to.

I was contacted by the company when they got the package back, and I had a new one within a few days. And guess what? It was delivered in perfect condition. Delivery overall improved a lot. 

So, I guess that’s one thing essential oils are actually good for: they cure bad postmen of bad habits.