I work at a sporting goods store. A mother and her two sons come up to my register. The oldest child, no more than six, places a junior bow-and-arrow set on the counter.

Child: “I’m going to pull my loose tooth with that!”

Mother: *Laughing* “He means that he’s going to tie a string to his tooth and fire the arrow. He was looking around on YouTube and was picking out ways to pull his tooth.”

I stare at the child.

Me: “Well… I wish you the best of luck.”

To the child who bought that toy, I honestly do hope you succeeded. Good luck, young man.

I’m a nurse, working with inmates that are detoxing from drugs and/or alcohol. This particular inmate is a pregnant female with very noticeable track marks from intravenous drug use on both her neck and arms. We have deputies that stand next to us at all times when passing out medications.

An inmate shows her identification wristband. I pour the patient’s medications — vitamins and anti-nausea — into her med cup.

Inmate: “What’s this s*** you’re giving me?!  I ain’t taking this crap! I ain’t going to take anything that’s gonna hurt my baby!! Y’all are trying to kill my baby!”

The deputy and I look at each other and then back at the inmate.

Deputy: “You’re in here because you’re shooting yourself up with illegal drugs, while pregnant, and you think this nurse is trying to kill you by giving you prenatal vitamins? Yeah, that makes sense. Your choice on taking the vitamins or not, but stop wasting the nurse’s time and go sit down.”

Me: *To the deputy* “You are my favorite person ever.”

The sad thing is, I get inmates like this at least once or twice a month.

A customer rushes in ten minutes before we close looking visibly distressed. She rushes right up to me and my manager.

Customer: “Okay, um, it’s okay if you guys can’t do this, but I left some coupons at home but I’m completely out of dog food. If I bring the food back with the receipt, can I get the money off?”

Manager: “No, sorry, we can’t do that. Coupons must be used at time of purchase.”

Customer: “Are you kidding me? I don’t have any dog food left! You’ve already made me come out here when I’m sick, and now I can’t get my money back?”

She storms off to get her dog food without waiting for a reply, the whole time coughing very loudly. My manager and I exchange confused looks while we wait for her. She slams her dog food on the table and coughs again.

Customer: “I’m not even supposed to be outside! I have whooping cough! I just want my dog food!”

Manager: “Ma’am, if you have whooping cough, why are you here? You could be spreading it to other people!”

She gave him a dirty look, grabbed her dog food, and stormed out of the store, coughing some more.

I work as a cashier at a department store. This elderly couple comes up to the register. They’re regulars and also happen to be the grandparents of my Person In Charge.

The woman writes a check, like she always does, and hands it to me when she’s finished. I do a quick once-over but then notice something strange. The date she has just written is wrong. And I don’t mean, oh, she put last month or the wrong day on. We are in August of 2018 and the date she wrote was December 13th… 1947. I have her correct it and off she goes.

I call my PIC over to my register.

Me: “Um, [PIC], I need to tell you something. Your grandma came through my line and wrote a check but she got the date wrong. Like… really really wrong.”

I pull the check out and show it to him.

Me: “I think you need to take her to the doctor as soon as possible. My brother is a fireman and I’ve heard of things like this happening. I don’t think it’s life-threatening at the moment; she seemed fine aside from the date. But something is wrong.”

The next day, he took her to the doctor to get checked out. It turned out she’d had a small stroke and had the onset of dementia.

(I am dealing with a heart condition that I’ve only just learned about. Anything that raises my heart rate or blood pressure too much can send me into a gasping fit as my heart tries to keep up. It should be noted that I have Asperger’s and can get unreasonably upset if I have to repeat the same answer multiple times. My boss is aware of this and working with me on how to handle it. I’m currently in a meeting with another team, retroactively discussing an issue we had.)

Other Manager: “Well, we just don’t understand how this even happened.”

Me: “According to the audit logs, someone logged into the account and performed [action]. That lead to the system recognizing that’s what the user wanted, so it did [other action] for it.”

Other Manager: “Well… can you guarantee this won’t happen again?”

Me: “Well… No…  can’t guarantee that someone won’t log into the account and perform [action] again.”

Other Manager: “Why doesn’t the system protect against that?”

Me: “Because it’s what is supposed to happen anytime someone performs [action]. Every other team uses it in that manner. It’s just that your team doesn’t need it; I’m not even sure why someone on your team needs to use that function.”

Other Manager: “Oh, they don’t. We didn’t even know that’s what it does.”

Me: “Well, then, it sounds like the solution is to tell your team to stop doing it.”

Other Manager: “Well, can you guarantee it won’t happen to us again?”

(That cycle repeats itself a few times. Around the fifth time we get to that question, I lose control of myself and throw my politeness out the window)

Me: *angrily* “NO! Can you guarantee that your team has more brains than you do?!” *starts gasping and slumps down onto the ground*

Other Manager: *oblivious* “I just don’t see how this even happened!”

My Boss: “[Other Manager], I’m going to stop you right there. First, we need to get [My Name] to the hospital.” *looks at other person in meeting, who is already calling 911* “Second, [My Name] has already answered that four times. He’s answered all of your questions four times and I’m satisfied with what he’s given you. Go figure out how to stop your team from being as stupid as you are because right now, your stupidity is literally killing one of my best.”