I work in a grocery store, but I go to another fancier grocery store on my day off as I am hosting a nice dinner and I need some more “up-market” ingredients. An older customer approaches me.

Customer: “Oh, you work here, too?”

I recognize her as a customer from where I work.

Me: “Oh, hello! No, it’s my day off. I’m just shopping today, like you!”

Customer: “You… you can afford this place?”

Honestly, no, I usually can’t, but the assumption still hurts.

Me: “Well… I—”

Customer: “If you can afford [Fancier Grocery Store], then you’re getting paid too much!”

Me: “I’m on minimum wage, ma’am.”

Customer: “Then the minimum isn’t minimum enough! I’ll be writing to the senator about this!”

She stalks off before I can recover and reply. I look down at my basket, which contains some nicer grapes and avocado oil. Another customer who witnessed the exchange comes up to me.

Customer #2: “Don’t worry. Her generation always gets upset when we can afford avocados for some reason, even in liquid form!”

My meal ended up being delicious, and I have yet to hear of our senator banning millennials from buying avocados.

Related:
Avocado-No-No

I work in a grocery store.

Customer: “Do you have Italian cookies?”

I showed her a tin of cookies called “Italian cookie collection” and a tin of Amaretti cookies. She turned up her nose and sighed at me dramatically.

Customer: “Oh, you probably haven’t heard of them. They’re called biscotti.”

She said “biscotti” in an exaggerated Italian accent.

Sure, lady. You’re so knowledgeable and worldly. A lowly grocery store employee could never know what a biscotti is. You would have gotten them right away if that’s what you had asked for!

During the health crisis, I was working as a cashier at a discount retailer doing both purchases and returns. As per policy, after doing a return, all clothes and items must be immediately hung up or separated from everything else to be sprayed later and counters must be wiped between customers.

I just completed doing a return and was following the cleaning procedures while an impatient couple was next in line. While I assured them that I would be with them shortly, they quickly became irate and threw their single item to purchase at me, a bag of potato chips costing no more than $2 or $3, and stormed out with one of the pair exclaiming loudly:

Customer: “TOO BAD! YOU WEREN’T READY!”

Customer: “Oh, can you make something as a special order for me? It’s important for me to stay within the limits of my dietary restrictions and no other bakery offers to help me.”

Boss: “Well, we do offer several adaptions for dietary needs — for example, sugar alternatives and low fat — but we are a very small bakery. We can’t accommodate allergies as we don’t have a separate space to keep the ingredients.”

Customer: “That’s okay, I’m not allergic. I just want fat-free puff pastries. That shouldn’t be a problem!”

Boss: “I’m sorry, but that definitely is a problem. It is impossible to make puff pastry without fat! The texture of puff pastry can only be made by layering fat and dough.”

The boss tries to explain how puff pastry is made and why it’s impossible to do fat-free puff pastries, but the customer interrupts.

Customer: “I know how puff pastry is made. I know it’s evaporating water from the dough during baking that makes the layers rise! Just layer the dough without the fat and it’ll rise!”

Boss: “That’s impossible. If we layer the dough without the fat the dough will just mend together again. There won’t be any layers that way. It’s the fat that separates the layers and traps the water so the layers will rise. And there is nothing else to separate those layers during the baking so they puff up and have the effect you want. We could do sweet pastries with a nice yeast dough for you. That we can make at least mostly fat-free.”

Customer: “No, that won’t do. I need it to be completely fat-free! Just make the layers one by one, then, and put them together after baking.”

Boss: “That’s also impossible. The layers are far too thin for that. A regular sheet of puff pastry has more than 100 layers already. We cannot bake them individually. Also, they would get really hard without the fat. It’s impossible. We could do other alternatives for you, for example—”

Customer: “That’s ridiculous. Everyone just tells me that! Why do all of you insist on making this difficult? I’ll just go home and do it myself! It can’t be that hard! I know how that works!”

With that, she storms out with a huff, and my boss and I can only stare after her in disbelief.

Boss: “Is there anything nicer than a customer with some half-baked knowledge explaining to you how to do your job first thing in the morning?”

Me: “I really appreciate the no-sugar crowd now. They’re difficult, too, but their demands are at least mostly possible to fulfill, even if it sometimes tastes bland.”

I deliver a website to a client, and after one month, he starts sending me angry emails that the contact form on his website doesn’t seem to work.

I check the contact form, I test it again and again, and I don’t find any problem. I send them an email through the contact form.

Client: “Thank you! Now it works!”

The very next day, they sent me again another angry email that the form had stopped working again. I ran a bunch of tests but could not find any problem, much less a solution. The form seemed to be working with all the different emails I tested it with.

Long story short, the form had always worked. They hadn’t tested it and assumed that, because no new clients came in through it, it was broken.