(I am working after school at my family’s pizza place during the winter of 2016. I am working at the counter and have just helped a few other students from my high school, one of whom is wearing a red hat with the text “Make Eorzea Great Again” on it. Eorzea is a fictional land from a popular online video game. The hat is essentially a meme, poking fun at the MAGA hats of the current presidential campaign. I smile at the kids from my school and tell them I’ll bring their slices over to them when they’re ready then begin helping my next customer.)

Me: “Hello! What can I get started for you?”

(Nothing but visible anger and grumbling.)

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t catch that.”

(She walks over to the booth the prior customers sat down in and grabs the red hat off of the one student’s head.)

Angry Customer: “How can you even serve these people here? It’s f****** disgusting!”

(I see where this is going. I’ve certainly got political beliefs of my own, especially for a sixteen-year-old, but I wouldn’t dream of bringing them to my family’s restaurant. I stifle a giggle and can’t quite suppress the accompanying smile as she cuts me off before I can point out her mistake.)

Angry Customer: “How can you be laughing about this? Trump wants to send you all back to Mexico!”

(I’m Italian; my entire family is Italian. We have perhaps slightly darker skin than your run-of-the-mill northern European along with dark hair and eyes. I can’t say I’m so much insulted by the idea that she thinks I’m Hispanic — since there’s nothing bad about being Hispanic — but more just perplexed by it since, after all, we are literally in my family’s pizza place. Can you get more Italian than that? My mom peeks at me from deeper in the kitchen; she’s a very shy person, though, and despite her willingness to step in I don’t want her to have to.)

Me: “I’m genuinely sorry that you’re upset. For what it’s worth, my family immigrated here more than ninety years ago from Italy, so we won’t be going anywhere and you don’t have to worry about us—”

(I see her face drop as she realizes her mistake but then she seems to refocus her anger on the hat. She interrupts me.)

Angry Customer: “That doesn’t matter! You still shouldn’t be serving these scum!”

(She takes the hat over to the soda pump and soaks it in cola. I mentally prepare for having to pay for this kid’s hat now.)

Me: “Ma’am, just look at the d*** hat.” *rubs the bridge of my nose, done with her, and grabs the slices that are ready for the students along with some drink cups* “What does it say?”

(I set down their stuff at their table. Thankfully, they’re good sports and are just cracking up at this rather than escalating the situation.)

Angry Customer: “I know what it says! So do you! It’s racist!”

(I take the hat from her and turn it around, dripping soda onto the floor in the process, and point out the entirely fictitious place listed instead of America.)

Me: “Do you know where that is? It’s in a video game. You ripped a hat off a student from [High School] and drenched it in soda all because you got angry at what you mistakenly thought it said. At this point, I don’t even want to serve you. I think it’s best if you leave.”

Angry Customer: “That’s not the point! Why are you defending them?! It’s still furthering his agenda! Are you people here racists, too?”

(My mom has apparently gone to grab my dad who is… certainly not shy. He’s also not thrilled that he’s overheard someone calling his daughter a racist.)

Dad: “You need to leave. Now.”

(He comes around the counter and the lady yells, yanks the students’ pizza off the table and onto the floor, and takes off out the door. Dad shakes his head, smiles at me, and goes back into the restaurant, presumably to grab something to clean up the mess.)

Me: “I’m sorry about your hat and the wait, guys. I’m sure I’ll be able to comp your meal and we can pay for a new hat or something.”

Customer With The Hat: *still laughing to the point of crying* “Don’t worry about any of that! It’s all good; we don’t mind waiting as long as I can rinse this out somewhere… but did it occur to you to tell her you’re the president of the Young Conservatives at school?”

(We all shared a good laugh at that and I made some friends. I still play that online game with those guys!)

(For a short while, the shop I work at has four workers — including me — who have similar distinguishing features. This kind of interaction happens often, but only once when all of us are working at the same time.)

Customer: “Hi. I’m here to proof an order. I can’t remember the person who helped me, but she wears glasses and has long brown hair.”

Me: “Well, that could be any of us. If you let me know what name your order is under, I could complete it for you.”

Customer: “Umm, I’d rather continue working with the person I placed the order with. There are some details I wanted to make sure were done correctly and we had already started talking about that.”

Me: “Okay. Was there anything else that would help let me know who it was?”

Customer: “I think she had tattoos.”

Me: “Well, that eliminates one of us. It can’t be [Coworker #1].”

([Coworker #2] walks by with a stack of paper in their arms.)

Me: “[Coworker #2], did you happen to help this gentleman with his order?”

Coworker #2: *takes a moment to jog her memory* “I’m sorry, but I don’t think so. Did you check with [Coworker #1]? She was working yesterday.”

Me: “No, he says it was a woman wearing glasses with long brown hair and tattoos.” *addressing the customer* “Excuse me for a moment and let me check with [Coworker #3].”

(I head into the back and ask [Coworker #3] to take a glance and see if this was their customer. They, too, do not recognize the customer and I’m starting to be at a loss. As a last resort, I go into the break room where [Coworker #1] is eating their lunch and ask them to take a glance at the customer through the break room’s door.)

Coworker #1: *sighs* “Yeah, that’s him. I can take care of it now.”

Me: “Don’t worry. I’ll let him know that you’re on break and that if it’s absolutely necessary that he can either wait for you or I can complete the order.” *whispering* “He seems dense enough that I could convince him that I’m you.”

(I head back to the front where the customer has been waiting while mentally face-palming about this whole interaction. I show them the proof, and he reviews the spelling, for which I have to point to each item and ask if it is correct because he only seems to be glancing at the text and saying it looks fine. He also becomes very dismissive of the details he was fretting over previously. I mark down the corrections and complete the transaction.)

Me: “I’ll have [Coworker #1] finish up your order, but—” *out of morbid curiosity* “—do you mind me asking why you said that the person who started your order has tattoos? She actually abhors them.”

Customer: “All of your coworkers, and yourself, have tattoos, so I just assumed she did.”

Me: *pause* “Okay, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

(When my coworker came back from break and I told her about the interaction, we joked about having to do a police line-up for future customers like that.)

(We aren’t fast food; we are casual dining, which means we make every sandwich from scratch and pour soups. Usually, we plan our work schedules around expected rush periods. Occasionally, though, some rushes happen outside of those hours and we don’t have the staff to handle them quickly. During that time, we get drive-offs — people tired of waiting who just drive off instead of stopping to pay and get their food. To make sure we get the right food to the right people we read back the orders at the window. Today, we lost a customer.)

Coworker: “Okay, so, you’re my bowl of chicken noodle soup?” *only thing in the order on her screen*

Customer: “Yup, that’s us.”

(My coworker then puts the soup into a bag, adds some napkins, and hands it off to them as they start to hand over their payment.)

Customer: “Wait. Where is the rest of our order?”

Coworker: “Uh, this is the bowl of chicken noodle soup; you confirmed this was your order.”

Customer: “Well, yes, but what about our sandwiches? Didn’t you write our order down?”

(Seeing that this is quickly going south, I jump over and offer help.)

Me: “We’re sorry about that. You confirmed that this soup order was yours and—”

(I am about to mention that it appears that the next order — a bowl of chicken noodle and the sandwiches they ordered — is their order, not the one they confirmed. I am being nice and apologizing even though it was their mistake and not ours. However, they decide not to let me finish.)

Customer: “Screw this; we are never coming back here! This is bulls***! You should have written our order down!”

(They then drove off without even the soup, only pausing long enough to snatch back their card. On the plus side, I got a free lunch. It boggles my mind that people will confirm food as being theirs when it clearly isn’t.)

I will be the first to admit that I’m not the most observant person. The office manager asks me to bring the trash cans in, so I go up to the front. I walk past several men in work clothes fiddling with a ladder and bring the trash cans inside. 

I notice that it seems darker than usual in the lobby, so I ask my coworker if she sees it, too. She looks at me like I have two heads, and then I hear laughter behind me.

Turns out, those men with the ladder were changing out a bunch of the light bulbs. I had seen this with my own two eyes and didn’t make the connection. They got a good chuckle at my expense but I think I deserved it.

I work in a large metropolitan hospital, and today I’m on the medical emergency team. We get a call from the café downstairs, mostly run by elderly volunteers. A young man was just about to pay when he keeled over backward, hitting his head very hard on the floor.

We’re attending to him right in front of the counter; he is lying on the floor, barely conscious. By this time there is a security guard, two orderlies with a stretcher, two nurses, three doctors, and a crash cart. I’m measuring his blood pressure when suddenly a woman steps right over the unconscious man and goes to ask the horrified café volunteer for a latte, who frantically points at the man.

The security guard has to physically pull her back and ask her to leave. She says, “Oh, okay. Where do I get a coffee, then?”