My parents are the type of people who grew up poor and kept a lot of frugal habits but made enough that they had property investments, stocks in several large companies, two holiday homes, and enough bad art to make me hate the sight of bronze. Even so, they’d cook with gone-off food. (I still gag at the smell of fish, fresh or otherwise.) They refuse to spend on necessities. (The radiator in your bedroom broke and it’s below freezing? Live with it!) And they refuse to spend on actual doctors, opting instead to attempt to treat the symptoms of my ADHD with quack treatments like acupuncture and something I’m pretty sure was thinly veiled hypnosis. 

Basically, they do everything they can to appear rich while acting like misers to do so. 

This all becomes relevant due to my wildly different nature as someone who finds friends in all sorts of places. Some have criminal backgrounds, some have neurodivergent traits, and some have the audacity to be from other nations! 

My mother is the worst offender by far. I could tell tale after tale about her abuse, bigotry, and delusions, but the two that I’ll stick to are as follows.

My first romantic partner was a girl I met in a mathematics grind. She was tomboyish, practical, and well-cultured, and her parents actually were wealthy, but they appeared poor due to living to save up for a country house and grounds that they’ve since bought.

She was also from Poland.

As I talked about her to my mother and said I was head over heels, she accepted that my crush was tomboyish, praised her practicality, and then did a complete about-face when I mentioned that I think she said that she was from Poland. Why?

Mother: “You never know what kind of people they’ll turn out to be, so be careful.”

I don’t think she ever got over that, to be honest, and she’s still upset that our break-up was easy and clean so we’re best friends to the day. 

You’d think that would be bad, but my current boyfriend got it worse. 

Somehow, my mother got it into her head that this poor man wasn’t good enough for me, and she desperately needed to prove that there was something wrong with him — something, anything to justify splitting us apart.

First, there came:

Mother: “Well, you know his parents work in the public sector.”

As if I cared in the slightest what his parents did! Then, there was:

Mother: “It’s so nice of us to treat him to dinners and a week in the countryside since he can’t afford holidays and pizza!”

Like he’d never left his city and only ate porridge and stew. And then, there was:

Mother: “Are you sure he doesn’t hang around with the wrong crowd?”

That was the strangest one to my mind since the only crowd [Boyfriend] hung around with was me and my (by that point) ex, to whom I’d introduced him. 

In her crazed lust for vindication, my mother finally crossed a line. She invited us both to holiday with her and my father down on an island I still dream about. She also invited her sister who’s a special needs teacher to join us, too.

This was all so that, without telling us, my mother could get [Boyfriend] diagnosed with autism. Upon finding out, my mother’s sister balked and told us flatly what my mother had tried to do before conveniently cutting her holiday short three days early!

Somehow, having lived with all the other things that my mother did that were far worse than this, I didn’t cut off contact with her. I did move out that year to move in with [Boyfriend], into a crappy flat with what little money I can save and earn with my hobbies and not enough space to hide a cat, much less swing one. Surprise, surprise, I’ve felt happier, healthier, and wealthier than I ever did under my parents’ roof.

I count my blessings that the few upsides of the childhood they gave me meant that I spent time abroad to learn about other cultures, that I learned hobbies and skills I could never have afforded living as I am, and that I’m not racist, abusive, or crazy like they are!

I am shopping in a small store. They are selling flower seeds to support a charity. To get these, you must ask at the till — no idea why. I am patiently waiting for the elderly man in front of me at the checkout.

Man: “I couldn’t find everything I was looking for. Could you help me?”

Cashier: “Sure thing! What were you looking for?”

Man: “Some of those flowers for the [Charity] effort.”

Cashier: “Oh, those are here at the till. How many bags did you want?”

The cashier holds up a bag.

Man: “Bags?! I wanted flowers!”

Cashier: “These are flower seeds: you plant them and flowers grow.”

Man: “This is bulls***! I’ve never heard of such a thing! You advertise flowers! Why won’t you give me g**d*** flowers?!”

The cashier starts calling the manager, but I interrupt.

Me: “Those are baby flowers, sir.”

The manager ended up coming over, but the man seemed to have finally caught on. He bought one bag and left. I heard he later got blacklisted from the store because of the way he shouted at that poor employee. Good riddance!

I work for a tech company that provides consumer cloud services (to store photos, calendars, that sort of thing). It’s not unusual for customers to get confused and create a new account instead of signing in to an existing one. For privacy reasons, we are not allowed to volunteer any information.

Customer: “You guys lost all my photos!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll do my best to help you! What happened before you noticed photos were missing?”

Customer: “I just signed in on my new phone.”

I guide the customer to the account details to find the account creation date.

Customer: “There’s a mistake; it says the account was created today!”

Me: “It sounds like you created a new account, but the photos are on the previous one.”

Customer: “What? Who do you think I am? You’d have to be a big dum-dum to go around creating new accounts.”

I look at my computer and see four related accounts.

Me: “Yes. Yes, you would have to be that, sir.”

I moved countries — UK to Ireland — and then moved again, and I needed to change the address with my bank, so I rang them up. They refused to change my address because I didn’t have a telephone banking number, and they helpfully suggested I pop into my nearest branch — which was in Wales, across the Irish Sea.

To get around this, I had to apply for telephone banking and get it sent to my (now old) Irish address, so it could be forwarded by the mail service to my new address, so I would have it in my hand to quote the number they demanded to be able to change my address by phone.

I complained about how time-consuming and stupid this was, but they simply replied that as I had found the solution to the problem they had created, there was no longer a problem, so the matter was closed satisfactorily.

That’s still better than my mortgage company. I moved addresses and sent them a change of address letter, but I forgot to sign it, so they failed to change my address. I realised a while later, at my new address, that I’d not had anything from them for a while, so I rang them up to ask what had happened. They explained that to “protect my data,” they needed a signed letter. So, I was forced to again send them a letter; this time it was signed, but this time, it also never arrived (they claimed).

More time later, still nothing from the bank, only by now I should have received the annual mortgage statement, so I rang them again. They said again that I needed to send a signed letter to change my address to “protect my data”. No, they had not received the letter I’d sent. So, having notified them twice that I was changing address, they decided to ignore it — to call them, I had to give around ten points of personal data in a call! — and send the mortgage statement to my old address, in order to “protect my data”? For f***’s sake.

I sent them yet another letter, complaining about all of this, and asking them to verify the change of address had been done. Silence. I rang them up and asked why they had ignored my request. “We didn’t think we had to” was the attitude. But they said they would. And they promptly sent me my mortgage statement (which they had already sent to someone else), only this time they included the mortgage statements of eight other customers.

Protecting their other customers’ data by sending it to me? Cue yet another complaint, this time to their data protection people.

If anyone wonders why [Bank] is a complete and utter mess — and why I’m happy to see the back of its subsidiary, [Mortgage Bank] — look no further than the many stupidities they forced me to deal with — along with [Bank #2], for whose staff the fires of Hell cannot possibly burn hot enough given the runaround I got from them after my wife died.

I work in a charity shop and for several months have been trying to get permission to do a Eurovision-themed window display.

We all love the spectacle, I love decorating the fun/silly holiday windows, and with an international customer base like ours, it can be fun to talk about it at work. We have just gotten three new full-body mannequins in addition to our beloved dressmakers’ dummies, and the finals are this week, so I am finally let loose!

The male mannequin, who we named George, gets dressed in a very cheap and shiny black and silver costume tracksuit and baseball cap, with one of the females, Gina, in a coordinating mini dress and holding a prop microphone. Gertie, mannequin #3, gets a very 1990s-style gold evening dress, red glitter heels, and a red feather fan held coyly over her face. I hang a sequin blazer with a tag marking it on hold for [Famous Irish Two-Time Winner], make some simple paper flags, and hang a disco ball over them all while prepping a poster in keeping with the theme. It’s not my finest work, but I’m satisfied with it, and my supervisor and my coworker (who also loves Eurovision and does our merchandising) approve.

The next day, I am working on the till with my back to the window displays. A coworker comes up to me in a rush.

Coworker: “Those ladies are undressing George! Look!”

This is less than ideal as George is very obviously presented as “masculine”, and he’s in a prominent window on a major street! I recognise them as regulars who really like sparkly clothes, and I trot around as fast as I can.

Me: “Sorry, those outfits are not for sale!”

One lady has George’s top half on the floor and his jacket on herself and is trying to pull the pants off. These mannequins are held up by a pole sticking into the back of one leg so, thankfully, she is struggling to lift his lower half off of it.

The rest of this conversation takes place over a translator app as I pull his pants back up.

Me: “Sorry, these outfits aren’t priced and are not for sale.”

Customer #1: “Why are they not for sale?”

Me: “They’re just being used for decoration.”

Customer #1: “When will they be for sale, then?”

I don’t get a chance to respond clearly that they’re Halloween costumes as I have to remove George’s arms to get him dressed again. The woman wanders off, clearly unhappy with the situation and obviously complaining about me to her friends.

My coworker and I laugh in disbelief for a minute when they leave. Even with [Major Fast Fashion Website]’s bad quality merchandise, this get-up is obviously not made for everyday wear!

Later on, as I am adding the final touches and hanging my poster, another customer walks in and stops at gold-and-red glamorous Gertie.

Customer #2: “Excuse me, I know the tag says, ‘Not for sale,’ but do you know how much this dress is?”

Me: *Flustered* “Ehm, no. I pulled it out of the rails before it was priced. I think it’s a [size], but I really won’t know about the price until my manager is in again.”

We don’t sell many evening dresses, so I didn’t even think to ask first and just grabbed the first dress that fit my idea from the back of a rail. To be honest, I didn’t expect anyone to even glance at it and assumed it’d end up either put back in storage or recycled.

Customer #2: “Will it be priced when the window gets changed? Do you know?”

Me: “Yeah, it wasn’t supposed to be going for sale yet, but I’ll pass it on to the manager next time she’s in.”

Customer #2: “Can I leave you my number or something? It’s absolutely gorgeous!”

Me: “Absolutely! If you just go around to [Supervisor] at the desk, she’ll take your details, and we’ll let you know about the size and the price as soon as we can.”

She also admired Gina’s very short-and-shiny costume dress, and we giggled over similar outfits on people we knew before walking on toward the desk. 

I always get some amused compliments on my tacky windows, but I’ve never had a customer walk in and try to strip one! But on the bright side, thanks to [Customer #2], we now have some ideas for a vintage formalwear display, too.