Customer: “You have a beautiful accent! What country are you from?”
Me: “Oh, haha. Thanks, ma’am, but it’s the same country as you. I’m from New England.”
Customer: *Disappointed* “Oh… is anyone here from Old England?”
Me: “Uh…”
Customer: “I just love watching The Crown!”
Me: “Well, I—”
Customer: “Does New England have a Queen, too?”
I work as a maintenance person at an office building and a while ago we had an incident involving a lot of flooding. The main road outside our building, our external parking lots, and our basement flooded.
Situated outside our building was a city project which required the redirection of traffic through the use of cones and upright mobile parking bollards similar to what we used in our own parking areas.
Prior to the flood, our building only had ten of these upright parking barriers and maybe twenty cones, but after it, we had more than thirty barriers and forty-five or so cones which had obviously washed in from the main road when our basement had consumed all of the water coming in. Of course, once we made this determination, I called the contractor responsible for the project outside.
Reception: “Hello? [Contract Company], how may I direct your call?”
Me: “Hi. I am looking for the person supervising the project over on [Roadway] and [Cross Street] about some company equipment that was pushed onto our property by the storms a few days ago.”
Reception: “Oh, no! We are so sorry about the inconvenience. Of course, we would like to retrieve anything that may have been sent your way. Let me connect you to [Foreman] so you can arrange that.”
There was a very clear line switch.
Foreman: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi. I am the facilities manager at [Business Center]. I just wanted to let you know that we have your cones and things that are missing.”
Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones.”
Me: “Sorry, is this the project at [Roadway] and [Cross Street]?”
Foreman: “Yes.”
Me: “Then yes, we have your cones; they have your company name on them.”
Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones.”
Me: “I… Maybe you haven’t noticed yet—”
Foreman: “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”
Me: “Uhh… no?”
Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones, and we aren’t going to take responsibility for your trash.”
Me: “No, these are… these are obviously yours.”
Foreman: “We aren’t missing any cones.”
Me: “But you are, though.”
Foreman: “No, we aren’t.”
Me: “But you are. You’re probably missing a lot of them; we have almos—”
Foreman: “We. Aren’t. Missing. Any. Cones.”
Me: “Yes. You. Are.”
Foreman: “If you want to file a complaint, then file a complaint, but we aren’t going to take the blame for garbage near our sites.”
Me: “What is even happening right now?”
Foreman: “Sounds like you have a problem you are too lazy to solve yourself, so you’re blaming us for your lack of organization.”
Me: “And what assembly of words that I have said during this conversation brought you to that conclusion?”
Foreman: “We aren’t miss—”
I hung up the phone at this point and called the main office back.
Reception: “Hello?”
I filled the receptionist in on the conversation I had had with her foreman, and she was just as confused as I was. She decides to contact their safety guy and send him to the site, and she informed me that he would be at our building within the hour.
A short time later, I was watching the roads from our building and having a cup of coffee when I suddenly saw five or six police cars pulling up to the worksite. They appeared to talk to a number of people on the site and then led a man away from the worksite in handcuffs. Once the police were gone, a man separated himself from the construction site and started walking down our driveway.
I put my coffee down and took the building stairs two at a time on my way down to the lobby where security had already let the individual in.
Safety Man: “Are you [My Name]?”
Me: “Yes.”
Safety Man: “We gotta thank you for your call, man. Some serious s*** could have gone down if they hadn’t sent me over today.”
Me: “I saw the police cars. What happened?”
Safety Man: “He was drunk! Blew three times the legal limit to drive. The guys tell me he drove in sloshed and drank even more on site. We found open containers in the company truck and everything.”
Me: “Oh.”
Safety Man: “He threatened the crew; he told them he would file false reports against them if they called anyone.”
Me: “Oh, there are all kinds of problems here, huh?”
Safety Man: “You’re telling me. Now, what was your original call about?”
Me: “Oh, right, we have all of your missing cones.”
Safety Man: “We aren’t missing any cones.”
I found out that the cones had been replaced under the radar by another employee who thought he would be held responsible for not securing them. He didn’t tell his foreman about it because he was new and didn’t want to get into trouble. He got into considerably more trouble than he would have initially.
I’m outside in my store’s garden center. I am the only cashier out there — and sometimes the only employee out there at all. I have a small line, but it’s nothing too serious until the woman I’m serving speaks up.
Woman: “You need to call security. The woman behind me has been stealing.”
Startled, I look to the woman behind her, who thrusts her cart forward abruptly, nearly hitting the woman who called her a thief.
Woman: “Can I have six feet distance, please?! That is not six feet!”
Of course, I want to report her if she’s been stealing, but because I haven’t caught her at it, I can’t. The two women begin arguing as I continue to ring the woman out, and I try to figure out if it would actually make things worse to call a manager. I’m worried things may get physical.
Finally, I finish ringing the woman out, but instead of leaving, she merely moves forward enough for the “thief” to push her cart up to the register. Now I’m VERY worried, as I consider a physical confrontation almost inevitable, but I’m still scared of “involving” myself by acting to stop them.
They continue to snap at each other for a few minutes, and then both give each other a haughty glare before falling silent. I continue ringing out the second woman quietly, nearly having an anxiety attack, when the first woman turns around again and holds her purse out to her adversary.
Woman: “Did you want to use my card, mom?”
I almost broke down right then. I’d been terrified that I’d have to intervene in a fight, assuming I didn’t start it myself by calling a manager on them, and it had been a joke the whole time! Once I’d calmed down — long after they had gone — I was furious.
I’m overseeing the self-checkout, but as it is usually a very mundane post, I’m a little zoned out. I hear a register beep as an item is scanned.
Register: “Would you like to continue?”
One beep, then another.
Register: “Would you like to continue?”
One beep, then another.
On the third repetition, it breaks through my brain fog, and I see a frustrated man at one of the card-only registers. He scans an item, the card-only message comes up, and he presses the “no” button.
Me: “Did you need help, sir?”
Customer: “Yes, please. I keep telling the register I don’t want to pay by card, but then it deletes my item and I have to start over!”
Me: “Sir, this register only takes cards. The registers on the other side can take cash if that’s how you want to pay.”
Customer: “Oh, thank you! I thought it was strange that this one wouldn’t!”
He paid at one of the cash checkouts and left with his items. I have no idea why he thought rejecting the card-only message would make that register accept cash.
This is my grandmother’s story that happened about fifteen or so years ago now. For some context, my grandmother ended up adopting a Chihuahua puppy from my uncle, her son, after his stupidity about refusing to get his dogs fixed led to an “oopsie” litter (for the record, though, he did get them all fixed after this incident because this litter was inbred, and it definitely showed).
This puppy immediately took to my grandmother like a baby duckling and tottled along after her everywhere.
Now, my grandmother is and always has been an active and rather mischievous person, so she decided to mess with the pup a bit only a month or so after bringing her home. She darted ahead and hid around a corner waiting for the pup to follow her. The moment she came up to the corner, my grandmother jumped out and made a mock roaring sound. The pup just sat her butt down and promptly peed all over herself and the floor.
Whenever my grandmother retold this story, she always said that she absolutely deserved the punishment of having to clean that mess up and never tried to mess with the pup like that again!
