(A coworker and I are restocking greeting cards by section. I am working on the “love” cards.)
Me: *holding up a card and reading the text aloud* “‘True love is life’s greatest adventure!’”
Coworker: “Nah, true love is s***ting with the door open.”
(Dear greeting card companies, I’ve got a pitch for you!)
(A customer comes in with an oil burner he bought the previous week, which he wants to return as he says it is faulty. Our store will accept returns only in the case of goods being faulty.)
Me: “No problem. Let’s have a look… What’s wrong with it?”
Customer: “The bowl isn’t deep enough. The oil dried up before the tea-light finished burning, and now there’s a stain on the inside of the bowl. It’s shoddy.”
Me: “Erm. You need to top it up with oil now and again to make sure it doesn’t burn dry—“
Customer: “No! It’s faulty! It’s not fit for purpose! The bowl should be deeper so that the oil lasts the same time as the tea-light!”
Me: “I’m sorry, but there isn’t a standard rule for oil burner bowl sizes. I can’t give you a refund for a product you’ve used if it’s not fa—“
Customer: “IT IS FAULTY!”
Me: “It’s not faulty. You shouldn’t leave a burning candle unattended—“
Customer: “This is fraud! You are fraudulent! It’s £5! Give me my money back. You’ve conned me. You may have a nice face, but you have a dark soul. A dark soul!”
(My manager escorted the customer out of the shop.)
(I work at a gift shop for a zoo. Today, a young boy, probably around four or five, enters with his parents. The mother tells him he can get one thing, and after a little bit of looking around, the boy reaches for a plush mermaid.)
Boy: “I want this one!”
Mom: “No, you’re a boy. Pick something for boys.”
Boy: “But I want a mermaid!”
Mom: “I said no. You’re a boy. Pick something else!”
(The boy is clearly upset, and his mother is starting to look angry. The boy looks down at the mermaid in his hands again.)
Boy: “But I want this one…”
(The mother takes the mermaid out of his hands, throws it on the shelf, and grabs him by the arm.)
Mom: “Fine. You’re not getting anything, then!”
(She drags the young boy out of the gift shop, and he’s now starting to cry. The father, who was watching all of this in silence with an equally angry look on his face, waits for the mother to get out of view, picks the mermaid up, and comes to my register to pay for it. Before I can say anything, he whispers quietly enough that none of the other children in the shop can hear him.)
Dad: “I’ve had it with that b****. If my son wants a mermaid, my son’s getting a f****** mermaid.”
(He apologized for his wife causing a scene, and I gave him my employee discount for being such an awesome father.)
(I observe this couple in a gift shop.)
Wife: *picks up a realistic stuffed narwhal toy* “Aww, honey, look at this!”
Husband: “What is that?! Is that, like, one of them platypuses?”
Wife: “No, it’s a narwhal!”
Husband: “A what?”
Wife: “A narwhal. It’s a whale with a horn that lives in the Arctic.”
Husband: “And… it’s real?”
Wife: “Yes, it’s real! Have you seriously never heard of a narwhal?!”
Husband: “Never. That thing looks like a f****** unicorn-manatee or something!”
(I’m not sure what’s stranger — that this guy had never heard of a narwhal, or that he had apparently heard of a platypus but thinks it looks like a whale!)
(I am from the USA, visiting the UK. Every single place I visit asks to see my ID since I don’t have a signature on the back of my credit card.)
Employee: “May I please see your ID?”
Me: “It’s amazing! Everywhere I’ve been in the UK, they’ve checked my ID!”
Employee: “Well, it’s law. We have to check to see if your signature matches.”
Me: “It’s law in America, too, but that doesn’t stop every single place I’ve worked from allowing people to check out after saying they were using their boyfriend’s/mom’s/whoever’s card!”
Employee: “That’s credit card fraud!”
Me: “To an American business, that’s a sale!”
