It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m eating dinner at a steakhouse. The waitress brings around a bunch of pink carnations and hands one out to each female diner. 

The man at the next table says something I can’t make out. His date replies: 

Woman: “No. You still have to. This flower isn’t from you; it’s from [Steakhouse]!”

I live in a rural area, and while I’ve never had my mailbox smashed, I did have a very lazy postal worker. I’m 99.9% positive she’d open our Netflix DVDs and watch them before we got them back when we first moved in. She’d bend people’s mailboxes back so she could more easily put in the mail from her car, but it would also let rain get in.

A few years ago, someone stole our mailbox. It was one of those plastic Rubbermaid ones,  and they pried it up and made off with it, leaving nails just sticking up from the base. For the new mailbox, we put rebar a good foot or so into the ground and whatever else my husband did. The end result was it gave the mailbox a nice recoil.

The postal worker tried bending back our mailbox, and it bounced right back — WHAMMO! — right into her car. She tried complaining, but our box was totally compliant with PO standards.

No more soaking wet mail.

Once at work, a jerk customer hid the ground beef they’d picked up in the diaper aisle of all places. It was almost literally as far away from the meat department as you could get, on the opposite side of the store, and it was stuffed all the way onto the back of the shelf.

Even worse? There was a freaking bite taken out of it!

I can’t even begin to think why someone would do either of those two things.

Me: “Hey, I’m trying to get your logo set up for embroidery, but I am missing some information. The notes say that the emblem should be hunter green and gold, but I need to know what color ‘gold’ you are referring to. We can do a metallic gold thread — which is not microwave-safe — or we can do a gold-colored thread — which looks gold and is microwave-safe, but it is not a metallic thread — or athletic gold thread — which is the golden rod color that sports teams use. Just let us know if you want metallic gold, gold-colored, or athletic gold. Thanks!”

Client: “Gold thread is fine.”

I work at a vape shop. An elderly woman comes in one day wanting a different tank.

Woman: “There’s nothing wrong with the one I’m using, but I was pressured into buying it at another shop. The employee there wouldn’t budge on showing me anything else! It’s way too big and powerful for me, and I loathe that. Other than that, I do like the quality.”

She has also brought in a very old model tank with missing glass.

Woman: “If you have replacement glass for this one, I’ll just go back to using it instead.”

Me: “I’ll check. We have tons of glass, but not that exact one, so it’ll take me a hot minute to see if we have a cross-compatible one.”

My coworker entertains her while I search, and I hear her say that she’s going to call her daughter to let her know she’s going to be late. I think she is going to complain that I am taking so long. I am searching as fast as I can, but finding replacement glass is a tedious process when you don’t have the exact one.

Instead, I hear her say:

Woman: “I’m so happy I found a shop where the employees will go above and beyond for me! I’ll be coming here from now on!”

After five or ten minutes of searching, I come back empty-handed, and she opts to just buy a new, smaller tank. As she’s looking through her options, I point out:

Me: “If you like everything about the one you have aside from the size, we have basically the half-sized ‘baby’ version.”

Her face lights up when I pull it out.

Woman: “That’s the one that originally came with mine! It’s the one I was looking for, but I don’t know enough about them to ask for it by name. The only reason I was stuck with the giant version was that I pointed it out at the other shop and said, ‘This is the one I want, only smaller,’ but the guy insisted that only the big ones exist.”

They didn’t even show her how to properly use it. She is dumbfounded at all the new information I am giving her about setting it up and using it. She leaves promising that she will only be stopping by our shop from now on, as will the rest of her family.

She returns today.

Customer: “The tank I bought is leaking. I’m not sure if it’s covered under the warranty.”

I look at the tank, and it is very solid.

Me: “Where is it leaking from?”

Customer: “From the inside. When I try to hit it, I suck up very hot liquid.”

Me: “What wattage have you been running it at?”

Customer: “I’ve been running it about ten watts lower than he recommended wattage. That’s what the guy at the other shop told me to do.”

Me: “That’s why you’re experiencing the hot splattering. You need to run your coils at least at the bare minimum recommended wattage. Otherwise, they’ll heat up the juice, but not enough to vaporize it, so you’ll just be sucking red-hot juice.”

I don’t understand why someone would tell a customer that. It’s baffling.