It’s about 3:00 am, and I am on a night tube (metro) train home. I have been working a long weekend shift, but everyone else is out partying, so I think the train driver and I are the only ones on the train not drunk.

I hear the train driver say the following over the speakers for about a minute.

Train Driver: “Doors are closing. Please stand away from the closing doors.”

Train Driver: “I said the doors are closing! The doors will not close if you are in the way.”

I look around to check my carriage, but no one is blocking the doors; it must be a passenger somewhere else on the train.

Train Driver: “The train can’t move unless you move away from the doors.”

The doors finally close.

Train Driver: “Thank you to the passenger that pushed them out of the train.”

This story is part of our Editors’-Favorite-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup! This is the last story in the roundup, but we have plenty of others you might enjoy!

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I work for a printing company that mostly prints custom signs. Customers can either pay to have somebody design a custom sign, buy a premade one, or use our website to create their own sign using various templates and assets. A customer can add one symbol and add their own text. Before a customer submits the design, it shows them digital proofs, and then the customer ticks a box to say they have looked at it and approved it. Once the customer checks that box and submits it, the designs come to me and my team.

When we get a design, if anything looks a little off, such as an obvious typo, we can call to confirm with the customer at our discretion. We are not required to do this as the customer has already approved the proofs, but most of the time, we do call and check.

It’s a quiet day, and I get a design through for a hazard sign which has the symbol for a slippery floor, but the text reads, “Warning: surface wet when wet.” I figure this is an error, so I call up the customer.

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name] from [Printing Company]. I’m just starting on your order, but I wanted to check—”

Customer: “Why the h*** are you calling me?! Just get on with it. I need the signs now!“

Me: “I am going to get right on them, but I just wanted to check because I think there might have been a mistake—”

Customer: “I put that order together myself! I don’t make mistakes!”

Me: “Okay, so to confirm, your sign should say, ‘Wet when wet’?”

Customer: “Yes!”

Me: “Not ‘Slippery when wet’?”

Customer: “No!”

I confirmed several times that his sign currently said, “Wet when wet,” and asked if it should be “Slippery when wet.” The customer confirmed the sign was correct as it was and repeated that he didn’t make mistakes. I thanked him for his time. The customer screamed at me to get the job done or he was going to sue and then hung up.

I made a note on his account and went to work.

A few weeks later, my manager approached me to say we’d had a complaint. You guessed it: it was the same customer screaming at us that the signs were wrong. They should have said, “Slippery when wet.” The customer was demanding a full refund and wanted them remade and sent out free of charge. The manager had seen my note and asked me for more details. The call recording and signed proofs showed that we were not at fault, so the customer was denied a refund because it was his error and we wouldn’t be able to resell the signs.

The customer insisted we had messed up, not him, and his complaint got escalated up to the highest point it could, but he still didn’t get his refund because we could prove he was the one who made a mistake.

Two weeks later, we received another order from him, this time with the correct wording, but the customer included a passive-aggressive note warning us not to “mess up again”. My manager and I had a good laugh about that one.

I wonder what he did with the fifty “wet when wet” signs?

It is the day before the “Avatar” sequel, “Avatar: The Way Of Water”, is released, so our cinema is very quiet, having had no big new releases for a while. This allows a coworker and me the rare opportunity to have a quick chat between tasks.

In London at this time, there is a show called “ABBA Voyage”. It’s a concert of ABBA songs, using clever technology to recreate what the band members looked like in the late seventies, employing virtual recreations using motion capture. My coworker attended this concert last night and I am asking them about it.

A customer is also in our lobby reviewing the film times.

Coworker: “It was amazing! Gotta love those songs!”

Me: “And how did they look?”

Coworker: “The technology is really clever! You’d think they were really there. They call them virtual Avatars, but apparently, everyone calls them ABBAtars.”

Me: “What was your favourite song?”

Coworker: “It’s a toss-up between Thank You For The Music and Dancing Queen.”

The customer approaches us.

Customer: “Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help overhearing. Did they turn Avatar into a musical?!”

Coworker: “What… No! We’re talking about—”

Customer: “Because if they did, then they’ve ruined it! Why does everything have to be a musical these days?!”

Coworker: “No, sir, it’s not the movie Avatar—”

Customer: “It was bad enough the first movie made the humans the bad guys, but now they’ve put songs in it? It’s becoming a happy-clappy hippie movie!”

With that, he storms off, apparently satisfied that his rant was heard, ignoring our attempts to explain the difference. My coworker looks at me with a “Did that just happen?” face.

Me: “You know, I’d love to see a tribe of super tall blue cat people put on a performance of Mamma Mia.”

I’m shopping at a local supermarket, reaching up to get some food from a higher shelf, when a really prim woman walks up to me and starts to ask if I can fetch a bunch of things for her.

Me: “I don’t work here, sorry.”

She turns her nose up at me. Knowing how this goes from reading this site, I’m bracing for this whole song and dance.

Woman: “Well, can you help me anyway?”

Me: “No, I’m sorry. I have to finish my shopping and get to an appointment.”

She looks even angrier but drops it, and I breathe a sigh of relief at avoiding having a story to tell.

Or so I think, until about three days later when I’m at my job (working with insurance) and my manager gets a call complaint that cites me by name. My manager calls me in, laughing, to play the message back.

Woman: “You need to fire [My Name]! That [transphobic slur] refused to help me with my groceries!”

This is especially confusing because I’m cis male and look it.

Woman: “How you can allow anyone like that to work at an establishment like yours if they can’t practice good customer service even at a job that isn’t their own?”

While we both laughed at it after hearing it, I paused to realize that this woman had somehow managed to find my name and my place of employment without me volunteering any of that information. And she seemed to take it personally, in a demented fashion, that I wouldn’t take time out of my day to spend fifteen to thirty minutes helping her shop.

She called back daily, getting more openly threatening and viler in her speech until we blocked her number. Somehow, she kept escalating it until she found the direct line to our CEO…

…who, not having any of the lady’s nonsense, proceeded to call the police on her for stalking his employees and harassing me and the business — without so much as a word of warning — and the calls stopped. I never saw her at that grocer again.

It is Christmas Day. I share a flat with three flatmates, hailing from Nigeria, Korea, and Spain. I am American, and we are all relatively new(ish) to London, and we were caught off-guard a few days earlier when we found out that London (well, the entire UK actually) completely shuts down on Christmas Day. No public transport, no shops, cinemas, restaurants, nothing. Unless you’re a hospital or a hotel you’re pretty much guaranteed to be closed.

Since none of us are going home for Christmas, we make our own plans. We all agree to make food from our respective cultures and have a nice Christmas Day meal together.

They are all talking among themselves.

Nigerian Flatmate: “I am making jollof rice, and some moimoi. It’s really flavourful and spicy!”

Korean Flatmate: “That’ll go well with my fried chicken, and we have some kimchi for sides.”

Spanish Flatmate: “I’m glad you’ve for the rice sorted [Nigerian Flatmate]! I’ve got some Iberico Ham from [Spanish convenience store] and [other items] that we can turn into a tapas.”

They all look at me expectantly:

Me: “I’ve prepped some roast beef with vegetable trimmings.”

All Flatmates: *Forlornly.* “Oh.”

Me: “What’s wrong? Is… is beef not good?”

Nigerian Flatmate: “I was hoping for something a bit more… American.”

Me: “A lot of Americans have roast beef at Christmas!”

Korean Flatmate: “Yeah, but…”

Me: “…but, what?”

Spanish Flatmate: *Stifling laughter.* “They wanted burgers [My Name!] They wanted fries, milkshakes, twinkies!”

Me: *Also stifling laughter.* “American food is more than just burgers and fast food!”

Nigerian Flatmate: “Yes, but… it’s Christmas!”

Me: “What does that mean?”

Korean Flatmate: “I was hoping to send pictures back to my family and make them laugh that I was having burgers with my Nigerian and Korean food.”

Me: “Well… we do have burger buns in the cupboard.”

Suddenly, there was a brainwave. Christmas dinner was served, and my flatmates were all laughing and enjoying the holiday spirit as they video-called families and make them laugh at their moimoi-kimchi-fried-chicken-iberico-ham-roast-beef burgers.

To clarify; they knew American food is way more than just burgers, I just hadn’t done a good job of convincing them otherwise since I had moved in (lots of Subway and Five Guys!). After New Year’s I made a better effort to cook at home more and introduce them to a much more varied selection of cuisine from the USA!

We all still live together and Christmas Day is approaching again, and circumstances mean we’re all here again. I can’t wait to see their faces when I present to them homemade Big Macs as my Christmas Day contribution!