A former acquaintance of mine was always very hard up for cash, despite earning a good living. He was constantly trying to get me to lend him money until payday, promising that he’d pay me back with “10% interest”. I always politely refused, saying (with complete honesty) that I never lend people money.

One day, he was in very good spirits. Our city was going to host the Grey Cup (Canada’s version of the Super Bowl), and getting tickets to this event was like finding gold dust. His workplace had a free draw for two tickets to the game, and he’d won! 

Me: “Wow, that’s so lucky! I hope you have a great time.”

Acquaintance: “Oh, I’m not going to go. I don’t even like football.”

Me: “Huh?”

Acquaintance: “I only entered the draw on the off chance that I’d win free tickets. Do you have any idea how much I can get for these? I’ll make bank!”

Me: “That’s kinda shabby, dude. There are probably people in your company who’d hoped to win so that they could, y’know, attend the game.”

Acquaintance: “Yeah, so? They can still attend the game if they offer me the highest bid.”

Me: “You’re going to auction the tickets to your colleagues? Don’t you think they’ll resent you for that?”

Acquaintance: “Hey, they’re my tickets. I can do whatever I want with them.”

And off he went, convinced that he was going to make a fortune. Two days later, I ran into him again, and this time he was very glum.

Acquaintance: “Turns out you were right. My coworkers were really pissed that I was auctioning off the tickets.”

Me: “So, what are you going to do?”

Acquaintance: “They pretty much shamed me into giving them back, and they did a redraw. It’s not fair.”

Me: “I think you did the right thing, though.”

Acquaintance: “Whatever. Say, payday isn’t for a couple more days… any chance that you could—?”

Me: “Gotta go.”

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I work in a small grocery store and it’s a day before Christmas. The store is full of people purchasing ingredients and dinner items. We are running out of stuff quickly. This old man approaches me.

Customer: *Aggressively* “EGGNOG.”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “YOU GOT EGGNOG?”

Me: “Looks like the shelf is empty, so I’ll check the back.”

I check the back and there’s nothing; we are all out of eggnog. I come back and he’s not where he was when I left him, so I decide to look for him. I see him at the registers getting checked out. As soon as I approach him, he yells at the cashier:

Customer: “STOP! STOP SCANNING!”

And he puts his hand up in her face. He turns to me.

Customer: “DID YOU FIND THE EGGNOG?!”

Me: “We’re all out.”

He just turned around, got checked out, paid, and left without saying a word.

Older Customer: “How much are your pizza slices?”

Me: “They’re $2.50 a slice.”

Older Customer: *Angrily* “I remember when they were fifty cents!”

And she stormed out.

It’s a couple of days before Christmas and, as expected, it’s busy. I’m working the self-checkout area and often have to deal with customers who will completely disregard the line that has formed and check out. The line is fifteen-plus customers deep.

I notice a customer cutting in line to use a register.

Me: “Excuse me, sir, but the line for this register starts back there.”

I point to the long line of patient patrons.

Customer: “YOU CAN KISS MY A**!”

Me: *Taken aback* ” Excuse me?”

Customer: “I’m not waiting in that long line!”

Me: “Then you’re not using this machine.”

I go to my station where I have access to all the machines and get ready to shut down this guy’s register if he tries to use it. I’m looking at him and he’s looking at me. Finally, he gives up and walks furiously toward me.

Customer: “Fine. Then you can put it back on the shelf, a**hole!” *Storms out*

Museum Visitor: “Eh, what’s that big deer-looking thing?”

Me: “That is an Irish Elk, sir.”

Museum Visitor: “Man, I’d like to bag one of those. They any good for steaks?”

Me: “Unfortunately, you can’t hunt them, as they died out a long time ago.”

Museum Visitor: “Any of them still around?”

Me: “No, sir. They’re extinct. They died thousands of years ago.”

Museum Visitor: “Where’d you get the skeleton, then?”

Me: “It was brought over for the museum to put on display— Sir! Please don’t touch the bones.”

Museum Visitor: “Why? It’s just a dumb animal.”

Me: “Yes, but as I said, it’s thousands of years old. If you were to touch it, you could damage it.”

Museum Visitor: “Well… you’re dumb, too!”

My coworker started snickering at that until I passed the visitor onto her for more information about the skeleton.