(A sweet-looking elderly woman with a cane comes into the shop one night.)
Customer: “Excuse me, do you serve coffee?”
Me: “Yes, ma’am.”
Customer: “With liquor?”
Me: “Oh, no, we don’t have that.”
Customer: “I don’t think I want any, then. Thank you.”
(The customer left and the polite, little old lady that just wanted her coffee spiked made my night.)
(I’m visiting a cell phone store.)
Me: “I can’t get the location services to work.”
Clerk: “Let’s see… um… no… well… um…”
Me: *joking* “You know that all these devices are cats, right? I mean, they do what they want to do, in their own time, in their own way, and they don’t care if we like it.”
Clerk: *cheerfully* “I prefer to think of them as senior citizens. They do all the stuff you just said, and they’re really, really slow.”
Me: *gently* “You might want to be a little careful of whom you say that to. I’m 72.”
Clerk: *in shock* “Wow… you’re older than my dad!”
(I have just served an old lady who is now bagging her items. A teenager — about 16 to 19 years old — is next. The teenager is just buying a package of condoms. I scan them and put them beside the belt, far from the old lady’s groceries. The teenager is paying with his card and is about to finish the transaction. The old lady sees the lone packages of condoms beside the belt.)
Old Lady: “Are those mine?!”
(She grabs them.)
Old Lady: *shouting* “Did I pay for these? What is it?”
(She’s holding them high to get better light, in full view of everyone around.)
Old Lady: *loudly* “I can’t see. Can you tell me what this is?”
Me: “No. No, that item is not yours. It belongs to…” *looks at the distressed teenager* “…it belongs to someone else.”
Old Lady: “Oh, very well…”
(She put them down by the belt again. The teenager took them and left quickly. I still believe that the old lady did this on purpose.)
(A group of residents with varying stages of dementia is sitting around a table having coffee near my desk in the front lobby. One of them asks a question of the others…)
Resident #1: “What happened to my hand?”
(She has a bruise over her wrist and the back of her hand.)
Resident #2: “You fell out of your bed, remember? You landed on it.”
Resident #1: “Oh! I must have been having a good time in bed!”
(Both women cracked up laughing while the two men with them looked shocked. I managed to hold it together so they didn’t know I was listening in.)
(I am helping an old lady getting ready for bed one evening at the nursing home. A part of that includes assisting her with brushing her teeth. Some old people have dentures, and I can’t remember whether this lady has or not.)
Me: “Do you have your own teeth?”
Resident: “Yes, I do.”
Me: “Okay, then, here’s your toothbrush.”
(The lady then pops out her dentures.)
Me: “I thought you had your own teeth?”
Resident: “I do. I bought and paid for them myself.”
