At the grocery store where I work, we offer motorized scooters with attached baskets for shoppers who have limited mobility. Whenever a customer finishes shopping and drives the scooter out into the parking lot, it is required that one of the courtesy clerks — fancy name for baggers — has to accompany them and drive the cart back in.

I was bagging for a rather infamous duo. These two regulars, father and son, have the reputation for being the smelliest customers to ever shop at our store. To be fair, they both are senior citizens, so I shouldn’t bash them for personal hygiene — I have firsthand experience through helping my grandparents that bathing is not an easy task — but these two rivaled a clogged truck stop gas station toilet on a hot and humid summer day.

As the cashier finished up the transaction, I tried to breathe as little as possible while loading their groceries into their scooter’s basket. The father usually rides it as the son helps grab things off the shelf.

For some odd reason, though, today, the father insisted that his son drive the scooter to the car while he hoofed it with his cane. As the dad slowly picked himself up off the chair, he bent over just far enough to reveal his adult diaper sticking out of the top of his britches. Like a train wreck, I knew I should look away, but my eyes were drawn to it. I saw, much to my abject horror, a brown skid-mark neatly drawn down the middle.

As we started our slow, agonizing walk to their vehicle, I began to dread what would come next. We reached it, and I helped load the groceries into the trunk as the son helped his father into the passenger seat. After I finished, the son turned and thanked me, to which I smiled and nodded as my eyes watered from both the stench that surrounded me and the knowledge of what I was about to do. A final surprise waited for me, however. As the son stepped into the driver’s side, his shirt rose just enough to reveal that he, too, wore an adult diaper, sporting — you guessed it — a wonderful brown line right back and center. My eyes turned to the cart’s seat, which for the past hour or so had been occupied by both men.

Now, you must understand that our carts were designed with “safety first” in mind. In the padding of the chair is a simple pressure switch. It acts as a fail-safe, immediately shutting down the scooter if it doesn’t have a rump placed firmly on top of it.

I cursed the designer of that safety measure with every fiber of my being as I rode that foul scooter back to the store.

(My older sister is playing with my young brother, who is around six or seven years old. My older sister decides they should race together across the field, so they hold hands and run. Somehow my brother trips very awkwardly and dislocates his shoulder. Since neither my sister or mother know how to set it, they take my brother, crying in pain, to the hospital, where they quickly put it back. However, since my brother is quite young, they need to ascertain, as per usual, whether there is the possibility there has been child abuse. They ask him repeatedly how he hurt his shoulder. He tells them what happened, but somehow they keep pressing the matter, as “I was running and I fell” probably sounds like a dubious answer. They ask him, talk for a bit, and then ask him again. Finally, he gets fed up with the whole thing.)

Medical Staff: “So, tell me again: how did you hurt your arm?”

Brother: “A crocodile bit it!“

(They stopped asking him after that.)

(I’m a cook at a popular casual dining restaurant known for its baby back ribs. A waitress rings up a ticket with big red “ALLERGY! SPEAK TO SERVER!” notes on it. Allergy notes typically go to me before anyone else because I have almost all of the ingredients in the kitchen memorized.)

Waitress: “Uh, the woman at table 33 has an allergy to peppers.”

Me: “Table 33 with the spicy shrimp taco? That dish is literally nothing but peppers.”

Waitress: “Is there any way you can make it without peppers?”

Me: “Honestly? No. Try talking to the table again; suggest the [other shrimp taco]. Or, I can make a custom taco no problem, but there’s no way she can have it like it appears on the menu. If she’s really allergic, that’s one thing, but if she’s just worried about it being too spicy, I can easily tone it down.”

(The server returns after speaking with the table.)

Waitress: “She says she’s allergic to all peppers. Like, green peppers, red peppers, chili peppers, jalapeño peppers, black pepper—”

Me: “Ah, geez.”

Waitress: “—and she still wants the spicy shrimp taco.”

Me: “I’ll see what I can do, but ask if she wants a different side dish. The beans are seasoned with pepper. And the rice has black pepper in the seasoned salt we use. Try suggesting some substitutions for the toppings on that taco, because I can’t put any of the current toppings on it.”

Waitress: “I already tried. I suggested, like, cheese, or lettuce, or tomatoes, but she said no. And she was insistent that she’ll have anaphylaxis if it’s made wrong. She started waving an Epi-pen at me. [Manager] is coming back to the kitchen to make the taco. She doesn’t want any substitutions; just make it without peppers.”

Me: “F***.”

Manager: “Okay, the shrimp is ready from the grill. Hey, there’s no seasoning on it; these are plain!”

Me: “Yeah, they are allergic to pepper, so I can’t use the cayenne on it.”

Manager: “Okay, next is the chili lime sauce—”

Me: “Nope.”

Manager: “…okay, then I’ve got the taco slaw—”

Me: “Nope. It’s made with chopped jalapeños.”

Manager: “F***. Okay, the pico—”

Me: “Green and jalapeño peppers, and seasoned salt.”

Manager: “And the garnish drizzle—”

Me: “Just checked. White pepper.”

Manager: “So, that leaves…”

Me: “Plain, flavorless shrimp on a plain, unseasoned tortilla, with a slice of avocado garnish.”

Manager: “Did they want lettuce or plain tomatoes, instead?”

Me: “[Waitress] said no.”

Manager: “Sides are rice—”

Me: “Seasoned salt.”

Manager: “—and beans—”

Me: “Salsa, peppers, and seasoned salt.”

Manager: “Well, I give up. Send it out.”

(The server takes the sad-looking plate out to the table, and returns five minutes later.)

Waitress: “She said she wants pico and chili lime sauce on the side because the tacos are bland.”

Me: “So, now she suddenly doesn’t care about her allergy?”

Waitress: “I tried. She insisted. I reminded her. She’s pissed off because it looks nothing like the photo in the menu.”

Manager: “Somebody’s living on the edge today.”

Me: “Okay. Fine. Pico and chili lime. What side dish did she want instead of the rice and beans?”

Waitress: “…”

Me: “Well?”

Waitress: “She picked southwest mac and cheese.”

Me: “THAT. HAS. JALAPEÑOS!”

Waitress: “I KNOW. I TOLD HER.”

(Apparently we haven’t killed her yet, because she returns at least once a month to flirt with death. She orders the same thing every time.)

(I’m having recess with friends. Our school has students ranging from 13 to 18 in age, since it’s a combined middle and high school — or the closest Finnish equivalent. I’m a 16-year-old girl with friends mostly my age, but a 13-year-old boy we’ve met through a hobby has started tagging along. He’s a sweet kid, but his energy levels are super high and he can be socially awkward, so we sometimes have to tell him off and ask him to calm down.)

Me: “You really shouldn’t do that.”

(Our young friend takes my hand by the wrist and starts slapping himself in the face with it lightly, as mock-punishment. He gets a few slaps in before my nose suddenly starts bleeding.)

Another Friend: “Oh, [My Name], you’ve got this all wrong! The one being hit in the face should be the one who bleeds!”

I work for a very small, in-state pet store chain. All of us employees are major animal lovers and have pet experience of some kind or another; it’s pretty much a requirement if you want to get a job there. We offer, among other things, nail clippings. Most of the animals we see come in are obviously loved and well-cared for, especially if their owners are regulars. However, that’s not always the case.

A customer came in with a year-old male rabbit of an unidentified breed for a nail clipping. Rabbits don’t come in too often, but things seem fairly normal. Things started to get weird — in hindsight, anyway — when the customer asked us for any vets in the area that took rabbits. Apparently, the rabbit hadn’t been eating for three months — later corrected to three weeks — and she felt that something was wrong. Oh, boy, she had no idea.

According to my coworker who clipped the rabbit, he yawned during the clipping, revealing some very overgrown incisors. How overgrown, you may ask? So overgrown that the lower teeth were starting to poke into the poor bunny’s nostrils. Worse, he had matted fur on his butt, consistent with sitting in a cage for long periods of time. Even worse than that, the nails themselves turned out to be nearly an inch long. And considering he hadn’t been eating for so long, it was a wonder that he was still alive and not emaciated. The rabbit was also a total sweetheart, further adding to the heartbreak.

To make matters worse, the customer left the store for nearly an hour. We practically ceased all operations looking for her and figuring out what to do with the rabbit, since, as time ticked by, we gave up hope of her ever coming back for it. Thankfully, the customer did come back; it turned out she just stopped by the dollar store nearby. Once we told her the condition of her rabbit, she was genuinely shocked, especially when we showed her his teeth. It turns out that not only was she not getting his teeth trimmed, but she only gave him paper towel tubes to chew on, because, “That’s what Google said,” hence the overgrown lower incisors. And yet she wondered why he wasn’t eating!

We finally managed to give her the address of the nearest 24-hour emergency vet clinic to get the rabbit some fluids and grind down his teeth. We also gave her tips on how to get rid of the mats safely and recommended getting the rabbit out of the cage more often. She thanked us deeply, paid for the clipping, and left with the rabbit in tow, hopefully to the vet. I sincerely hope the owner learned from this experience and will start taking better care of the sweet little thing, but at the same time just thinking about it still pisses me off. No matter how understanding the lady was, I will never get over how much she neglected that poor little rabbit.

Moral of the story? Some people really should not own pets, and those who do should do their research before getting it.