I’m a male nurse and work in the emergency room. My shift ended a little late today (like always) and I really wasn’t in the mood for bulls***. I headed to the changing rooms to shower and change. The locker rooms are in a separate building, so normally, I have to leave the building the ER is in, cross the main building, and then enter the separate building. But there are some shortcuts in the hospital and really, no one cares. If you wear scrubs or a lab coat, no one will bother you.

I was wearing dark blue scrubs. Only the ER and ICU staff wear dark blue; most bedside nurses wear white.

As always, I walked through the hospital, greeted some other nurses or doctors I knew, and then I stopped to look at my phone. And then, it started.

Woman: “Umm, excuse me?”

Me: “Huh? Me?”

Woman: “Yes, you! Is there anyone else here? I’ve been searching for a d*** nurse for, like, ever, and the unit clerk couldn’t help me.”

Me: “Okay. Maybe I can help. What’s the problem?”

Woman: “In which room is [Patient]? The clerk wouldn’t tell me.”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t work here.”

Woman: “I don’t believe you! You’re wearing scrubs, so you’re a nurse! Now, where is [Patient]? I’m his wife and want to visit him.”

Me: “As I said, I don’t work in this station. You’ll have to just ask one of the nurses around here.”

Woman: “Ugh, you’re just lazy!”

At this point, I was really annoyed, so I basically detached my ID card from my scrubs and showed it to her. It said clearly, “RN OP — Emergency Room”. She looked at it, then at me, and then again at the ID card.

The woman apologized and then she flagged down another nurse who actually worked there.

A customer thought that just because he owned a Porsche, he was entitled to have a CEO or other executive call him to get one of the dashboard services configured properly even though there were technicians who were more than willing to help him. He kept saying:

Customer: “Why is it such a large request to have an executive or the CEO help me out? Okay, is there anyone on the board of directors that can get in touch with me about this and help me set it up?”

Yeah, I’m having a problem with my Windows system. Can Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates get in touch with me? Why is it such a big ask? I asked for Steve Jobs to help me configure my iPhone when it first came out and they all laughed at me!

I work in a hotel. Recently, our management changed, and the old manager had a lot of these “regulars” who would never have to pre-authorize their credit cards and would just pay for the rooms at checkout. Our new general manager is pretty stern about always taking pre-authorization no matter who the guest is, which is pretty fair.

A lady comes in claiming to be a regular. She tells us she used to work with the previous manager, and she is being nice, so we also check her in politely while making some small talk.

Me: “Can I please see your credit card and ID for pre-authorization?”

Her entire expression changes and turns into a scowl.

Guest: “You’ve never done that before!”

Me: *Politely* “It’s a standard process, so I need to do it.”

She quickly hands me her ID and credit card. I put in the pre-authorization amount.

Me: “Can you put in your PIN, please?”

Guest: “I don’t remember my PIN; I never use it.”

I offer to manually put in the credit card details to process the pre-authorization for her, and she agrees and lets me do it for her while standing right there the entire time.

We then finish the check-in and I hand her the form to put in her car details. She doesn’t remember them, so she goes outside to put that in and comes back. We hand her the keys and it’s all good until the next day. We receive a call from the guest’s daughter yelling at us for noting down her credit card PIN in our “notebook”.

This confuses the h*** out of me because I vividly remember what happened.

Me: “Ma’am, your mom didn’t even know her PIN, so there was no way for us to note it down if she didn’t have it in the first place. I manually entered the details into the credit card machine, and your mom was there the entire time, so there was no way for me to write in any notebook so that isn’t true.”

Daughter: “This is ridiculous! You’re just trying to scam my mother!”

This incident happened a month ago. Yesterday, the guest left a review on our website stating that we noted down her PIN — which she didn’t even know — and scammed her! Oh, well. I guess we are magicians because we can put in her PIN even though she herself didn’t know what it was.

I work at a grocery store, but there’s a much cheaper store across the street where I do most of my shopping. Sometimes when I run into regular customers across the street at the cheap store, they’ll laugh and call me a traitor.

Only once did anyone mistake me for an employee of the cheaper store. She shouted at me from like four aisles away:

Customer: “HEY! WHERE ARE THE CHIPS?!”

I just rolled my eyes. If she’d asked me like I was a human being, I’d have helped her. I don’t work there, but I know where the chips are. But if you’re going to yell at me, h*** no.

I work in a thrift shop. The majority of our customers are senior citizens, so I’m pretty used to having to explain what certain things we have for sale are used for.

One day, an older woman comes up to me holding a knife sharpener.

Customer: “Do you know what this is?”

I start to explain what it is, and she shakes her head.

Customer: “I know what it is. I’m asking if you know.”

I’m a little confused at this point, but I nod.

Me: “Yes, I know what a knife sharpener is.”

She closes her eyes and nods again.

Customer: “Sharp knives are good. You’re going to need one soon.”

And she just walked off. That was the single most cryptic thing anyone had ever said to me and I think about it quite often. Why am I gonna need a sharp knife soon? Why was she concerned about whether I knew what a knife sharpener was? To this day, I’m convinced she’s a witch.