I’m in the drive-thru taking money, while a coworker is taking orders on a lane beside me. One car drives up to my window.

Me: “Hi! You had the two double cheeseburgers, one set of McGriddle cakes, and two Cokes?”

McGriddle cakes are just the bread pieces of our McGriddle sandwiches.

Driver: “Yeah… can you add another McGriddle?”

Me: “The set of McGriddle cakes?”

The driver kind of stares at me as his passenger gets money ready.

Me: “So, you wanted two sets of McGriddle cakes, right? Just the bread?”

Driver: “Yeah.”

The passenger hands him money, and he holds it out to me. I ring up the second set of McGriddle cakes and briefly tell him his new total before cashing out the order. They drive off, and I keep taking money.

About half an hour or so later, they return to my window. They say they got nothing on their McGriddles, and they wanted sausage on them. I tell them that I asked them repeatedly if they just wanted the bread, and he said yes.

Driver: “But we wanted sausage.”

My coworker, who took their order, steps forward to face them.

Coworker: “I asked if you had wanted the sausage McGriddle or just the plain McGriddles, sir. You said plain.”

Passenger: “Whatever. Just fix it!”

Coworker: “Go up front, and they’ll get it straightened up.”

My coworker told them on the headset about the issue and that we had asked if they meant the plain McGriddle cakes or the sausage McGriddle. My fellow manager ended up charging them for the sausages, as they hadn’t asked for them originally.

I am the author of this story. In September of 2020, I get another cat — a kitten, actually — and she was recently spayed. When she gets home, she keeps taking the cone off, so I get the idea to use safety pins to tighten the fabric around her neck. Unfortunately, I do not keep safety pins in the house, so I call Nana.

Me: “Do you have any safety pins? Pumpkin keeps taking off her cone, and I need to stick her.”

Nana: *Pause* “I don’t think you want to do that. That might hurt her.”

Me: “I meant, stick the fabric around the cone and tighten it so she can’t take it off anymore!”

Nana: “That makes more sense than sticking her.”

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Could Be Worse; You Could Be Bronze

I’m working in the fitting room at a big box store where we wear blue vests with the store logo on the back. A customer is trying on clothes, and her friend is waiting for her outside. The friend is wearing a skirt, a Christmas sweater, and reindeer antlers. Another customer approaches her.

Customer #1: “Do you know where [item] is?”

Customer #2: “I don’t know. I don’t work here.” *Gestures to me* “Perhaps she can help you?”

The only thing I can figure out is that the customer looked a bit like one of the front end supervisors.

I completely understand that not everyone is great with computers. Sometimes, it’s just simple stuff, but as long as they’re willing to learn, I’m happy to go over it with them. This one woman, however, drives me to insanity. She’s maybe in her late thirties.

She has come in multiple times and has asked me to show her how to do the same thing each time: to save and print her document. I get the overall impression that she isn’t listening to me.

Up until the most recent encounter with her, it appeared that she was knowledgeable with Word as she had a full paper done in the seemingly correct format, double-spaced, and indented properly.

Patron: “Hey, can you help me indent this paragraph? It’s giving me issues.”

Me: “Sure! Okay, just press Enter to get that to the new paragraph, then press Tab to… Oh.”

It turns out that instead of using the easy Select All and double-space feature on Word, she had pressed enter after each line to make the document double-spaced.

Me: “Oh, hey, I have a super easy trick to double-space everything at once that will solve your formatting issue. Just go up here to—”

Patron: “—and click that and press 2.0 to double-space. Yeah, I know. It’s fine; I’ll just print it this way. Now how do I save and print?”

I showed her, yet again, and then walked away, extremely bewildered. I dread when she comes in because she always asks for help and I know she won’t listen to anything I say.

I’m eating celery when my dog sees that I’m eating something and comes up to me begging.

Me: “You don’t like celery.”

Dog continues begging.

Me: “No.”

Dog whines.

Me: “You don’t like celery.”

Dog continues whining and begging.

Me: “Fine.”

I give him a piece and he spits it out.

Me: “I told you.”

Dog sees me eating and starts begging.

Me: “It’s still celery.”