When I was in my late teens, I was unlucky enough to come down with a nasty case of the flu. I was so weak that I could barely walk and it took me weeks to recover to something like normal. What I didn’t really realise at that point was that I had lost a lot of weight and had a bit of an unhealthy pallor to my skin. This led to several incidents in which people assumed I was an addict — a very humbling experience, believe me.

My girlfriend came to visit me at home and we decided to head into town and catch a movie. We stopped off at a local corner shop opposite our bus stop to get some snacks before catching our bus, but I could not make up my mind about what I wanted. Whilst she was waiting on me, my girlfriend looked at some comics, and whilst she had picked up an annual she was thinking of buying for her niece, the store clerk suddenly appeared in front of me.

Clerk: “Can I help you?”

Me: *Somewhat surprised* “No, thank you. I’m just trying to make my mind up.”

The clerk muttered something about being over there if we needed him and stomped off. My girlfriend and I exchanged a confused look, but I grabbed a few packets of sweets, she put the annual back, and we went over to the counter to pay for our stuff.

Clerk: “What about her magazine?”

Me: “What do you mean? She didn’t have a magazine.”

Clerk: “Yes, she did! She was holding a magazine when I spoke to you, and you didn’t go back to the magazine counter, so where is it?”

Girlfriend: “Excuse me. I was not holding any magazine! I took an annual from the display right next to where you spoke to us, and I put it back. I don’t like your insinuations!”

Clerk: “I am sure you were holding a magazine!”

Me: “Look, man. You are mistaken. What do you want us to do?”

He muttered something, sniffed, and rang us up. We left the shop and waited for our bus. We were talking about how ridiculous he had been when we looked up and saw him staring at us through the shop windows. We laughed at how absurd he was being, at which point he literally ran to the magazine rack, had a look through it, and then angrily left the shop and stomped over to us at the bus stop.

Clerk: “I don’t think what you have done is funny, and I don’t think you should be laughing at me! You definitely took one of those magazines and you didn’t put it back!”

Me: “What the h***, dude?! How many times do we need to tell you? We never had a magazine! There is an entire display case right by where you saw us; check your cameras! I can’t believe you have followed us like this!”

Clerk: “Your girlfriend must have taken it; it must be in her bag! Let me see her bag.”

Girlfriend: “F*** off! You have been told what happened. You have until our bus gets here to check your cameras or call the police. Do what you like.”

Clerk: “Oh, that’s nice language. Very good.”

He stormed back across the road and into the shop and watched us until our bus pulled up and we left. You’d think that would be the end of it, but I decided I wasn’t going to let it go. When I got home later, I looked for the area manager’s contact information online, couldn’t find it, and called the shop looking for it.

Guess who the assistant who answered passed the phone to?

Clerk: “I can’t believe you stole from me and now you’re phoning to complain!”

Me: “This behaviour is crazy. By now you must have checked your tapes and realised we were telling the truth.”

Clerk: “No! There is no camera covering where you were — as if you don’t know that.”

Me: “That’s unfortunate, but no, I did not know that, and it’s not my problem. Your behaviour has been erratic and outrageous. Please give me your name and your area manager’s contact information. In the meantime, I suggest you go do a stock count because you’ll find nothing missing!”

Clerk: “No! You give me your name! I want to make a complaint about you!”

Me: “You realise that makes absolutely no sense, right? Just give me the information I’m asking for.”

At that point, he scoffed and passed the phone back to the assistant who first answered, and they gave me the area manager’s information.

I spoke to the area manager later that night. They apologised but obviously said that they would need to speak with the clerk and review the tapes to see what had happened. They never got back to me, so I never went back to the shop.

One of my earliest jobs was working the checkout and floor in a branch of a popular DIY and homewares store in the UK. We had a pretty lax policy on returns: if the customer had a receipt, then they could return any goods for any reason within thirty days provided that they were in resellable condition. If customers were outside of that window or didn’t have their receipt, they could exchange the goods for a store credit for the lowest price within the last thirty days at the time of the return.

Some “customers” were notorious for scamming us on this policy. One family in particular would regularly wait for the shop to get busy, take an expensive item off the shelf when nobody was looking, and then “return it” at the customer service desk for a store credit. Everybody knew they did this, so I never did understand why they were allowed to get away with it.

I had given the shop my notice and was on one of my last days when I saw the scammers enter the shop empty-handed. I thought, “Screw it,” turned off my checkout, and followed them through the store at a discreet distance.

After watching them take a large boxed item from a shelf and then join the queue for the customer service desk, I swiftly moved over and had a hushed conversation with my colleague running it.

Me: “[Coworker], you have that family who keeps scamming us in the queue. I watched them take that box off the shelf; do not return it for them.”

Coworker: *Looking a bit worried* “Oh, okay. Can you go let the manager know that we need them, please?”

I quickly walked off and found the manager in their office and brought them up to speed on what was happening.

Manager: “Okay, thanks, [My Name]. I’m going to review the cameras for the last twenty minutes and confirm what you said.”

Me: “Okay, do you want me to tell [Coworker] to ask them to wait, or will you call them?”

Manager: “No, do nothing. I want to check the footage first.”

Me: “There were only two people ahead of them in the queue when I left. They might already be getting served now! I told you, I literally followed them. I am a witness to them stealing and I am happy to tell the police that. Can’t you check the footage afterward?”

Manager: “No, I need to do it now. Also, it’s getting busy; you should be on a checkout. Go back and start serving customers again.”

Me: “Well, okay, I’ll leave it with you.”

I left the office and started serving customers again as instructed. After about twenty minutes, it was the end of my shift, so I got ready to go and stopped by the customer service desk to find out what happened.

Me: “Hey, [Coworker], did we finally get those scammers, then?”

Coworker: “No, I processed their return.”

Me: “What?! Why?!”

Coworker: “Well, I never heard back from the manager until a few minutes ago. You were right; they didn’t come in with that box. But what else could I do? They were right in front of me asking for the return! I couldn’t say no without evidence!”

Me: “Yes, you could have! I was the evidence. I told you and [Manager] that I literally watched them take it off a shelf. How was that not enough?!”

As [Coworker] was getting upset I just said my goodbyes and left for the night. During my next and final shift, my manager told me that they watched the footage and I was right; they definitely had scammed us. Imagine my shock.

When my fiancée and I got engaged, her parents invited my parents and me to their house for a meal to celebrate and to try and get to know them a bit better.

I offered to drive my parents and noticed that they were fairly “merry” when I collected them, but unfortunately, I didn’t realise just how drunk they actually were until weeks later.

My wife and I hadn’t discussed any wedding costs with them at this point, and although her parents had offered to put something toward it, we had assumed that we would pay most of the cost ourselves. However, on the drive to my in-laws’ house, my parents grandly announced that they insisted on paying for half the wedding.

They refused to hear of it when I told them that their offer was far too generous, and then they made the same announcement to my fiancée and my future in-laws several times over the course of the night.

My fiancée and I ended up planning a relatively small event. In the course of planning, we both sent my parents some of the plan information and some initial estimates by email and messenger, which they typically made some polite but non-committal comments about.

Then, I visited them one weekend and had this conversation with my Dad.

Dad: “Why are you sending us all this information? It’s nice that you want to keep your Mum in the loop, but the financial stuff seems like it would be a bit personal.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Dad: “Well, why do we need to know what this is costing you?”

Me: *Laughs* “Good one.”

Dad: “I don’t see what’s so funny about this. You don’t actually expect us to pay for any of this, do you?”

Me: “Are you being serious right now? We didn’t ask you for a penny! You offered and actually insisted on paying for half! We’ve been actively trying to keep the price down to avoid asking you for too much.”

Dad: “Rubbish. If you can’t afford to get married, then you shouldn’t be getting married.”

My mum later insisted on giving us a gift toward the total cost, but I was told that since my sister had eloped without getting married, they would need to give her the same amount of money as anything they spent on us, so they couldn’t afford too much for that reason. 

From offering to pay for half the wedding, their gift was reduced to a small contribution, which they then later reduced further to paying a token toward the cost of the reception. They didn’t have any change in circumstances and are fairly well-off; they were just so drunk on the night of the meal that they made an extravagant offer but didn’t remember making it. My parents are alcoholics and I knew they were drunk, but this was the first time that either of them had done anything like this.

Whilst I was grateful for any gift, having to explain all of this to my fiancée and in-laws — specifically that my parents weren’t keeping their promise because they had been so drunk that they didn’t even remember making it — was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life.

I help manage a liquor store in Glasgow. As I’m stocking, a customer bursts through the doors in a bit of a fluster.

Customer: “Hello! Can you please help me? My friend has sent me out looking for a particular bottle of wine for their party tonight. This is the fourth shop I’ve been to, and nobody has it.”

Me: “Well, I can certainly try.”

Customer: “Thank you! It’s called Maison Rouge.”

Me: “Umm, that sounds familiar, but I don’t think we have it.”

I spend a few minutes checking our stock with something tickling the back of my mind but not quite passing the message through.

Me: “No, I’m sorry, but we definitely don’t have it. There’s something about the name, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Anyway, there’s a shop five minutes away you might want to try.”

Customer: “Oh, no. Well, hopefully, they will.”

She leaves and I stand and talk to myself for a minute.

Me: “Hmmm, Maison Rouge, Maison Rouge. Wait, she’s looking for a bottle of the House Red?!”

I’ve worked in a few call centres, and I’m well used to people outside of Scotland occasionally struggling with my accent — even when I make an effort to slow down and speak clearly — so if I’m giving out address information and postcodes, I always use the phonetic alphabet to avoid confusion. This usually works.

Me: “Okay, the postcode is A for Alpha, B for Bravo…”

Caller: “Wait, wait, wait, the postcode starts with Alpha? How do you spell that?”

Me: “Oh, sorry, I’m using the phonetic alphabet so it’s clear what Ietter I’m saying. I don’t literally want you to write ‘Alpha.'”

Caller: “Well, please stop it; it’s confusing me.”

Me: “I’m sorry. I’ll just say the letters and numbers as they should appear now. That’s AB1, 2CD—”

Caller: “What was that first character?”

Me: “A.”

Caller: “Can you spell that?”

Me: “Umm, no. I don’t think I can.”