I was only around for about half of this occurrence, but I later learned the full story from my manager. My manager received a call from a customer asking if we had a certain item. We did, so the customer requested that the manager ship it to her, which is a service we offer. Now here’s where things get tricky: the customer had a loyalty account with us, so we had her address in our system, but she wanted this item sent to a different address. We are located in Washington state; the address she wanted it shipped to was in California.

Normally, this would be no problem, but when the manager tried to enter the California address, she got an error message saying the address was wrong. She double- and triple-checked her spelling against the note she took when she was on the phone with the customer, but she was still not able to put the address through.

She switched registers, as we’d been having trouble with them on and off for the past week or so and usually any problems could be solved by starting over at a different register. No such luck this time.

She called the customer back, confirmed the address, and tried again. Three times. She spelled out every word in the address, enunciating as clearly as she possibly could, to make sure she’d written it all down correctly. The customer confirmed that it was correct. The register still didn’t take it, saying that it was incorrect. It had now been a good half-hour since my manager had taken the first call.

This is about where I come in, because she asks me for help. She has me watch her while she tries, yet again, to order the item and ship it to this person. She does everything exactly correctly; I have no idea what’s wrong. We try spelling out, “North,” instead of just typing, “N,” and we try spelling out, “Drive,” instead of abbreviating it. Nothing works.

I have to step away for a minute to help another customer, and by the time I’m done, my manager has just gotten off the phone with the customer yet again. In desperation, the customer has given my manager her daughter’s address and asked us to ship it there, instead. It still doesn’t work.

Finally, even though technically we’re not allowed to have our phones out on the sales floor with us, my manager goes and gets her phone and types the address into Google Maps, just to see what happens. That’s when we find the problem. She had written the city down as “Los Alpos,” when it is, in fact, “Los Altos.”

At this point, it has been at least 45 minutes of repeatedly calling the customer back, trying to figure out what was wrong with the address. Not once has the customer corrected the spelling of the city name.

When she finally finishes the transaction, my manager jokes, “That was my last transaction of the day. I’m not doing any more. I refuse.”

(I go to the mail delivery office to pick up a parcel, and the police are there wanting to pick up a suspicious parcel they’ve asked Royal Mail to intercept, but Royal Mail has lost the parcel. I text this to my mum, who finds it funny so she shows my dad. He just gives her a blank look. It doesn’t come up again until two days later…)

Mum: “I’m going to phone [My Name] in a minute.”

Dad: “Was it something we sent?”

Mum: “Was what something we sent?”

Dad: “The parcel.”

Mum: “Which parcel?”

Dad: “The one which the police wanted.”

Mum: “No! It was nothing to do with [My Name]. She just happened to be there at the time.”

Dad: “Was she arrested?”

Mum: “No, it wasn’t her parcel.”

Dad: “So, what was in it?”

Mum: “I’ve no idea…”

Dad: “So, are the police going to speak to her?”

Mum: “It had nothing to do with her. She just overheard it.”

Dad: “What was she ordering that was suspicious?”

Mum: “She was just getting a book she’d ordered off eBay. It wasn’t her parcel that was suspicious.”

Dad: “So, why did the police think her book was suspicious?”

Mum: “I… I’m going to phone [My Name] now.”

(In order to not seem pushy or unwelcoming, I have learned certain phrases to use when serving customers at the cash. This is still a frequent problem, though, because most customers expect the ruder option:)

Me: “Was there anything else you were looking for today?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Oh, what else were you looking for?”

Customer: “Just this.”

Me: “…”

(A woman and her seven-year-old son come in. The woman is on the phone and visibly angry. She is short with her answers and she takes her food and leaves… without her son. I tell my manager and, due to being the newest employee, I get babysitting duty as I try and call the customer.)

Customer: *answering on the tenth time I call* “What?!”

Me: “Hi, this is [My Name] from [Pizza Place], are you [Customer]?”

Customer: “Obviously, since you have called me a million f****** times! What do you want? I’m f****** busy!”

Me: “Ma’am, I was trying to get ahold of you as you left—“

Customer: “Oh, so, I f****** left something? That’s not important. I’ll come to pick it up in a couple of days. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to call my lawyer back since you interrupted me—“

Me: “Ma’am, you left your son behind.”

Customer: *silence*

Me: *silence*

Customer: “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

(She arrived twenty minutes later with a fresh coffee and retrieved her son.)

Doctor: “This next test is very dangerous for fetuses, so we need to test and make sure you’re not pregnant first.”

Me: “I’m not pregnant.”

Doctor: “Well, sometimes people don’t know that they are.”

Me: “Didn’t we just establish that I have a birth control insert in place to control my period?”

Doctor: “Those aren’t 100% reliable. We need a test.”

Me: “I’m not sexually active. At all. Ever.”

Doctor: *suddenly perplexed* “But you have an insert.”

Me: “Because without it I bled for ten weeks straight out of every twelve for two years. Because I have POCS. Which is why we just spent half this appointment reviewing my last blood results.”

Doctor: “Oh. Right. I forgot.”

Me: “So, can we move onto that test now?”

Doctor: “Which test were you thinking of?”

Me: “…”

Doctor: “…”

Me: “I’m your last appointment at the end of your shift, aren’t I?”

Doctor: *surprised* “How could you possibly know that?”