About a decade ago, I was working as an extra on a film set. I’m a woman, and I was in my mid-thirties at the time. I was working with a couple of men who were friends of mine (and they still are). They’re really good folks; I’ve never seen them be anything but kind and respectful.

We were waiting to go on set, having a snack between scenes. I was eating a banana, and my friends and I were laughing about something — who knows what.

The costume lady came over and gestured for me to follow her. I went, thinking there was an issue with my costume. Nope. She wanted to talk to me privately. She whispered that she was concerned about me, and she warned me about the way I was eating my banana. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember she said something about me “getting the other extras too excited”.

Even though I wasn’t all that young, I was a little insecure, and I was quite worried about offending. Also, this happened before #MeToo. Being a woman on a film set could be pretty precarious. I ducked into the washroom to finish my banana quietly and then went back to holding.

It never occurred to me that she was being ridiculous and that eating a banana was a perfectly normal, non-provocative thing to do. I just felt really embarrassed and a bit ashamed all day long.

To this day, I can’t eat a banana without feeling self-conscious if anyone else is around.

I worked in retail for over twenty years, but nothing in that period beats the time when I was a teenager at a grocery store and the most amazing coincidence happened.

I am bringing some shopping carts back to the corrals at the front of the store. I see an older gentleman waiting patiently for a parking space close to the store entrance as someone else pulls out. As soon as the space is free, another car pulls in super-fast and a bunch of women get out.

The gentleman winds down his window and calls to them from his car.

Gentleman: “Excuse me, I was waiting for that space. I have trouble walking, y’see—”

Customer: “I don’t see your name on it.”

And with that, they stroll inside the store, and I am left feeling sorry for the man as he finds a spot a little further away and goes into the store.

I complete some other duties, and then I am back to corralling another set of carts to the front when I see both sets of customers exiting the store.

The women load up their items, and the driver takes her keys out of her pocket. As she does so, a $100 bill falls to the floor and is blown a few feet away from them toward the store. None of them notice.

The gentleman does.

He picks it up and looks at it, then at the car full of the women as they are pulling out, then back at the bill, and then at me. He realizes I have seen the whole thing.

Gentleman: “I don’t see their name on it.”

He walked away. The women pulled out. I said nothing.

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I work at a popular dollar store chain in small-town Texas. We have an old computer system that occasionally needs to be reset due to its glitching. We’ve had a problem with some coupons that wouldn’t ring up properly, which has caused a small bit of a line to pile up at my register, the only open register at the moment. Most of the customers have been super understanding and kind — they usually are — but this one particular person isn’t the most friendly. That’s okay. I can deal with grumpy or impatient; I’m almost always in a good mood and happy to help out. It may sound surprising, but I really love my job and my customers.

This grumpy lady sets down five of those candy packages with five pieces of brand chocolate inside a rectangular cardboard strip on the counter. We have a sale of five for $5.00 for candy of the same brand. This is where things immediately get rocky.

I begin scanning, and as I am telling the customer before her to have a nice day, this lady cuts me off.

Customer: “I need you to total those candies to see if you will actually apply this coupon.”

Me: *Smiling* “Of course. We can absolutely check that for you.”

I total the candies, and the discount doesn’t apply.

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. It didn’t apply.”

The lady gets huffy and rolls her eyes.

Customer: “Yeah, y’all did this to me last time! You’re shorting me of my discount.”

I check the packages to see if they should work with the discount, and I notice immediately that they aren’t all made by the same brand/company.

Customer: *Loudly* “They’re made by Hershey chocolate! I already checked!”

I don’t wish to argue with her, and I think that maybe our system made an error again.

Me: “All righty, ma’am. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll go check with my associate to see if we can figure out the issue.”

Customer: “Yeah, okay.”

I walk behind a shelf to find my coworker. Meanwhile, the grumpy lady crosses her arms and begins talking to the nice man behind her, who has a full cart and has been waiting patiently. I hear her loudly ranting to the man.

Customer: “This is why I don’t come here. They are slow, and they’re always on their phones!”

I don’t know what she means; we tend to keep off phones unless in the break room. I come back after telling my coworker, an absolute saint of a woman, that I need her assistance.

Me: “All righty! She’s on her way.”

I smile at the man and the grumpy lady.

Me: “We can go ahead and scan the rest of your items, ma’am, while we wait for her.”

I begin scanning the items. Before I get to one of the last bags of candy, the lady stops me.

Customer: “Don’t scan that one.”

Me: *Caught off-guard* “What?”

Customer: “Don’t scan that one. It’s a dollar difference, which is what you owe me for that candy. That way, you won’t be shorting me.”

Me: *Hesitating* “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I can’t legally do that.”

She scoffs, and I try to explain.

Me: “We can scan all these items, and at the end, when my coworker gets here, we can figure out if it’s the system and see if we can’t fix the discount for you—”

Customer: *Cutting me off* “Okay, do what you need to do.”

I force a smile and finish the item.

Customer: *To the nice man behind her* “This is too much trouble.”

The nice man responds with something with humor to lighten the situation.

Customer: “This is why I’ve stopped coming here! She is taking forever because she is back there playing on her phone!”

She is referring to my coworker who has been on break, inside our break room, eating and scrolling on her phone.

I speak before I can think.

Me: “She’s actually on her break.”

To my surprise, this makes the grumpy lady stop talking, and then my coworker arrives to save the day. Thank God!

She puts her key in the system and asks what the problem is.

Me: “The candy—”

Customer: *Cutting me off again* “This is five for five. And it’s not giving me my discount. Y’all owe me a dollar discount!”

Coworker: “Let’s see… We can do this.”

My coworker does some magic with the system and sets it right to get this lady her precious discount.

Me: “All righty! There we go!”

I total her items again.

Customer: “Finally!” *Pays* “Thanks.”

She storms off quickly with her items.

Me: “You’re welcome.” *To the next customer* “Sorry for the wait, sir.”

Nice Man: “Aw, it’s okay.”

He chuckled and cracked a few jokes, relieving me of my stress.

IT TURNS OUT that the lady was wrong about the discount, and I had been right to check the candy because it was, in fact, not applicable to the discount. We went to check because it was strange even for the system to mess up like that. My coworker just added a discount to defuse the situation from getting any worse than it already was.

I am working at a coffee shop in London, and I am serving a customer with a US accent.

Customer: “Can I have some half-and-half with that?”

Me: “We don’t have half-and-half over here, but I know what you’re asking for. In the UK, the half-and-half equivalent is two-thirds single cream and one-third milk; will that be okay?”

Customer: “No! I want half-and-half!”

Me: “That’s a product of the USA, not the UK, so I can’t—”

Customer: *Narrows her eyes and focuses on my accent* “Where are you from?”

Me: “Argentina, madam.”

Customer: “Then what would you know about what we have in America?“

Me: “Well, I know that you and I are both Americans.”

Customer: “No, I am the American!“

Me: “My country is in South America. It’s literally in the name. Canadians, Argentinians, Mexicans — we’re all Americans.”

Customer: “There’s only one America, and it’s where I am from!”

Our coffee shop luckily has a giant cork world map on the wall, where small bills of foreign currency are folded into little flags and placed on the countries they came from.

Me: “Madam, please tell me the names of the large continents you see here on the left of the map.”

The customer sees, clear as day, in all caps: “NORTH AMERICA” and “SOUTH AMERICA”.

Customer: “Well… only my America counts!”

Me: “At least I know the true definition of American, and that what you were trying to say was you’re from the United States Of America. Now, would you like me to pour you something that is almost indistinguishable from half-and-half?”

Customer: “I’m going to go find a place that knows how to serve an American!”

Me: “I’m an American offering you a solution.”

Customer: “You’re not a real American!”

I point to the southern tip of Argentina (just north of Antarctica on the scale of the world map) and then slide my finger all the way north to Alaska.

Me: “That’s 15,000 km — literally all of it America. Have a great day!”

Related:
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 19
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 18
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 17
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 16
No Fortitude For Longitude, Part 15

I order delivery one night from a popular delivery app. The restaurant is only about a mile from my house, and I typically have my food within half an hour of ordering. Not tonight.

I watch the delivery guy leave the restaurant with my order, start toward me… and then go past my neighborhood. I think maybe he missed the turn-in, as sometimes the GPS acts up, and drivers are only human. Instead, he goes three neighborhoods over, presumably for another delivery.

After twenty minutes for what should have been a five-minute drive, he finally starts toward my neighborhood. I watch him make the now-correct turn onto my street… and drive past my house.

By this time, it has started pouring. I have my door open so I can meet the driver at my door, and I see nothing on the porch. I see him parked about four houses down… and he doesn’t get out.

I wait another ten minutes before I message him. I note there’s been no dropoff confirmation, and he replies that the food was dropped off. I peek out onto my porch to check, and I see the bag of food… sitting on the first step, in the rain. I get it inside, and to no surprise, it’s cold.

At least I got a refund.