When I was in sixth grade, I played the flute in band. We didn’t have lockers at the school, but the band room did have cubbies, so we’d usually leave our instruments in our cubbies and get them after school so it was one less thing to cart around.

One day, a friend and I stayed after for a club and we stopped in the band room on the way out to get our instruments. We ended up running into another friend and started a conversation. Then, he got a message that his mom was waiting outside.

Friend: “Hey, [My Name], my mom’s outside. We gotta go.”

Me: “Okay, just let me get my flute.”

I went back to my cubby and my flute was missing.

Me: “Hey, [Friend], have you seen my flute?”

Friend: “…[My Name]?”

Me: “No, seriously, we’ve got to find my flute.” *Starting to panic* “Oh, my God, if it got stolen… It’s not even mine yet!”

Friend: “[My Name].”

Me: “Crap. Where’s my flute? Where’s [Teacher]?”

Friend: “[My Name].”

Me: “No, I’m serious! My parents are still paying this off! It’s not my flute yet! If it got stolen, I’m—”

Friend: *Grabbing my arm* “[My Name]!”

Me: “What?”

Friend: *Lifts my hand* “Is this what you were looking for?”

Yes, I had in fact been holding my flute the entire time. Both my friends were laughing at me; I kind of started to laugh at it, too.

Friend: “I was surprised it took you so long. You looked right at it like five times.”

Me: “Let’s just go. Never tell anyone about this.”

Of course, being the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds that we were, it kind of became a running joke for him to remind me to make sure I had my flute.

My car is out of commission, so I decide to order enough food from a nearby donut shop/breakfast place to last me through the weekend. My order is one latte, three bagel sandwiches, four donuts, and six orders of hash browns. Their hash browns are little medallions, so a single order of hash browns consists of a little paper baggie of five or six pieces each.

I decide to order on the mobile app as it’s a large order. About fifteen minutes after making the order, I arrive at the shop. There are only two workers: one making food and the other running the drive-thru, manning the cash register, and making drinks. My latte and donuts are ready in the pickup area with my receipt and name next to them. Everything listed on the receipt is correct, so I grab the finished items and sit at a table to wait for the rest of my order to get done.

Ten minutes pass and there is no sign of progress on my order, so I walk up to the counter. I was under the impression they were working on the rest of my order since someone obviously finished about a quarter of it, but boy, was I wrong.

Worker #1: “Are you waiting for something, ma’am?”

Me: *Confused* “Yes, I’m waiting for the rest of my order. I only got the latte and donuts.” 

I show my receipt.

Worker #1: “Sorry, I’ll get right on that.”

Another ten minutes pass as I idle by on my phone. [Worker #1] comes up to me with a bag. From the look and weight of it, I’m certain it’s not my whole order. Sure enough, when I open it, there are only two bagel sandwiches and just one baggie of hash browns. I go back up to the counter again.

Me: “Hi, sorry, my order still isn’t done.”

Worker #1: “What’s missing?”

Me: “There’s a bagel sandwich missing, and this bag only has one of the hash browns. I ordered six.”

Again, I motion toward the receipt, which correctly lists everything in my order. [Worker #1] looks as annoyed as I’m starting to feel.

Worker #1: “Sorry, I’ll fix that.”

I wait another ten minutes. If you’re keeping track, it has been forty-five minutes since I made the order on the app and thirty minutes since I showed up in the shop. The other worker, who has been busy with other duties, comes up to me.

Worker #2: “Sorry, ma’am. I’m making your bagel sandwich now. Would you like something as compensation for the wait? More donuts or hash browns?”

Me: *Like a fool* “More hash browns would be nice, I guess.”

Worker #2: “Got it!”

Five more minutes pass, and [Worker #2] hands me another bag. It has the third bagel sandwich and two more baggies of hash brown medallions, which are the “compensation.” I am still missing the complete six orders of hash browns I ordered from the very beginning. At this point, I think the universe is punishing me for wanting to eat unhealthy food from a donut shop. It’s a sign, but I’m in too deep; it’s been fifty minutes!

Me: *Finally losing my patience* “I’m sorry, my order is still wrong.”

Worker #1: *Angry* “What’s wrong with it?”

Me: “I’m still missing five hash browns.”

Worker #1: *Defensive* “I already gave you that!”

Me: “No, you didn’t.”

Worker #1: “Show me your food!”

I’m floored. I have been in sight of the counter sitting at a table the entire time on my phone and haven’t touched the food, nor do I have any place to put it. I start taking out the items from the order and passive-aggressively counting the contents as I pull them out of the bags.

Worker 1: “Give me the bags!”

Fed up, I hand them to her. At this point, [Worker #2] comes over and starts counting the baggies of hash browns.

Worker #2: “Ma’am, there are three orders of hash browns here.”

Me: “That’s not all of the hash browns. I only got one from my original order. There’s supposed to be six.”

Worker #1: “I gave you six!”

I stare at her. It finally dawns on me: she literally put six medallion PIECES of hash browns in the first baggie she gave me and didn’t realize I wanted six ORDERS of hash browns.

Worker #2: “Ma’am, we’re going to have you charge you for those if you want extra.”

Flabbergasted, I pull up the receipt of the order on the shop’s mobile app and hold it up, barely keeping myself from shoving it in her face.

Me: “I wanted six orders of hash browns. I only got one.”

From the food now spread out on the counter, it is now obvious what has happened.

Worker #2: *Long pause* “Sorry, ma’am. [Worker #1] didn’t tell me that. I’ll start on them right away.”

[Worker #1] has gone silent. I don’t even look in her direction anymore.

Five more minutes later, [Worker #2] gives me four more baggies of hash browns. I sigh, but I’ll take it.

Worker #2: “I’m really sorry, ma’am. She really did mess that up.”

I murmured a half-hearted thanks and finally got out of there almost a whole hour after I’d ordered the food. When I get home, I gorged myself on the hash browns and donuts. Was it worth the hassle? Debatable, but d*** if those things weren’t delicious.

It’s senior day, which means, of course, we’re slammed.

Customer: “What’s the senior discount on?”

Me: “Ten percent on corporate brand food items, and on home and apparel items.”

After I’ve finished her order and handed her the receipt:

Customer: “Can you show me where I got my discount?”

I’ve already started the next order, so I have to stop.

Me: “Okay, so it shows it here on your receipt. Only corporate brand items get the discount.”

I think that’s the end of it, but no, she sticks around until I’m done, staring at her receipt.

Customer: *Huffily* “Can you wait before starting the next order so you can explain it to me?”

Me: “…”

Fortunately, there was a manager nearby I was able to flag down to help her. Sure, just let me hold up the whole line because you didn’t listen to me the first time. That’ll end well.

I work in internal IT for a retail company. Lately, a big portion of my job has been password resets. We have an SSO (single sign-on) system which means almost everything uses the same password. We have the ability to check the status of their accounts — is it locked/unlocked, how long until it expires, etc. We can’t see the password itself or what the user might be entering. I have a user call asking for a password.

User: “I need to set up my password so I can sign onto the computer.”

I check the account and see that there was a password set about a week ago. With the SSO, for some reason, everyone half knows what to call it, but most of the employees don’t seem to understand what it actually means or entails.

Me: “I’m showing that your password was just reset last week. It’s the same password you use for [System].”

User: “I’m not trying to sign into [System]. This is my first time, and I’m trying to sign onto the computer, but there’s nothing that says [System] on the screen.”

Me: “You use the same credentials that you use to sign into [System] to access the computer.”

User: “I don’t see anything that says [System] here. I’m trying to sign onto this computer for the first time.”

Me: “I understand that, but you still use your [System] credentials to sign in. I show a password was set on [date], so that’s what you’ll want to use.”

User: “Today’s my first day. I have no idea what that is.”

Me: *Headdesk*

I realize that I’m going to get nowhere with her, so I go through the process to verify her identity and get her a temporary password. Meanwhile, a manager or someone walks in, and the user kind of lowers the phone and starts half-whispering.

User: “Oh, yeah, Service Desk is helping me get signed in. She keeps saying that I set a password on [date], but I never did.”

Manager: “Yeah, you did. That was when you did [various pieces of paperwork].”

User: “I never did that.”

Manager: “Yes, you did. We filled out [various pieces of paperwork] so you could start.”

User: “No, I never did that.”

I finally got her signed on and everything, but I felt sorry for that manager. I hope it was just a case of early morning/no coffee versus the user actively forgetting doing paperwork, but who knows?

During my customer service days, one customer was being extremely verbally abusive to me, interrupting me when I attempted to answer her questions, and yelling at me for interrupting her — I thought she was done blabbering at me.

I finally snapped and muted my mic until:

Customer: “Are you still there?!”

I unmuted my mic.

Me: “Yes. I was simply doing as I was raised to do and waiting for you to finish speaking so I could answer the many questions you have. It is the polite thing to do.”

I used this same tactic on her six times during the call before she realized I would say that and start over until she let me actually finish talking. Quality and my bosses never said a thing about it.