I am eating at a restaurant with friends and get up to use the loo. It’s locked, so I wait. At roughly the five-minute mark, I consider gently trying the door to let whoever is in there know there’s someone waiting when a waitress walks past.

Waitress: “Oh, our toilets are out of order. Have been for a couple of days.”

Me: *Looking around and just seeing nothing to indicate they’re out of service.* “Oh, sorry; there’s no sign?”

Waitress: “They’re out of order. You should have asked someone.”

Me: “I just assumed there was someone in there.”

Waitress: *With a clear “this person is an idiot” look.* “They’re. Out. Of. Order.”

She walks off before I can ask if there’s another one I can use.

Cut to two days later, I’m at a café with my family and get up to use the toilet. Again, it’s locked, and again, at the five-minute mark, I decide to gently try the handle. Another few minutes pass with me not hearing any movement inside, so I head over to the counter to flag down a member of staff.

Me: “Hi, are your toilets in use at the moment? The ladies’ has been locked for about ten minutes, so I thought I’d check.”

Barista: “The toilet’s locked?”

Me: “Yes, I just wanted to check they were in service since I’d been waiting a while.”

Barista: *Laughing.* “Locked toilet usually means someone’s in there, mate. We’d have put a sign up otherwise.”

I just nod and head back to my seat since they have a view of the toilet doors. At the twenty-minute mark, a woman with a kid and a baby finally comes out. 

I really wouldn’t have thought much of either of these stories, but the fact that they happened within days of each other gave me a bit of a laugh.

I work at a hobby and toy shop that specializes in high-end action figures and models. A man enters holding a premium, £150 superhero figure he bought an hour ago.

Customer: “I have a problem with this figure. I took it out of the box, and the articulation is terrible. The cape doesn’t even flow when I move him.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. These are usually top-tier quality. Is a joint stuck?”

Customer: “No, it just feels… fake. It’s too light. For this price, I expected it to be made of real material.”

Me: “It’s made of high-grade PVC and ABS plastic, which is the industry standard for these details.”

Customer: “Exactly! Plastic! The character in the movie wears a titanium-alloy suit with carbon fibre plating. Why isn’t the toy made of that?”

Me: “Because if we sold a six-inch figure made of aerospace-grade titanium and actual carbon fibre, it would cost a little more than £150.”

Customer: “Well, I just think for ‘collector grade,’ you shouldn’t be using cheap substitutes. It’s a matter of authenticity.”

Me: “While I’m calling the manufacturer, shall I also tell them that their Tony Stark model needs to contain traces of Vibranium and contain a real Arc Reactor?”

Customer: “I know Vibranium is super rare outside of Wakanda! I’m not stupid!”

I often work on the self-serve tills in our supermarket, overseeing the customers scanning their items and checking out.

It is not uncommon for occasional customers to be unnerved by the process and expect there to be problems before they even start the transaction.

During a busy period, one Saturday afternoon, one such customer is becoming frustrated at the machine. I had already intervened a couple of times for very normal reasons; the customer’s bags had triggered a weight alert on the till, and I then had to authorise that the customer was old enough to buy alcohol.

Both of these had caused the customer to become a little flustered by the process, blaming the till for the inconvenience.

The fun really started, however, when it came to paying…

I was manning eight tills at this point, so although I was giving the customer my attention, I was also busy elsewhere.

Customer: “You’ll have to do something here, it won’t let me use my card.”

Me: “No problem, I’ll just reset the card machine, and you can try it again.”

A few moments later…

Customer: “This machine isn’t having it at all. I knew I should have gone to a real till.”

Me: “Okay, no problem. I’ll reset it again. Just make sure you’ve pressed all four numbers of your PIN before pressing enter.”

A few moments later:

Customer: “It’s done it again. I don’t know what’s going on here.”

Me: “Okay, let me watch what you’re doing, and we’ll see where it’s going wrong.”

I avert my gaze as he’s entering his PIN, but look back as he’s pressing the red cancel button.

Customer: “See, it’s done it again!”

Me: “Right, I think I might know what the problem is here…”

In Manchester, the two main rail termini are Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria. Mostly, they serve different areas, but for some destinations, you can go from either. It’s convenient as our workplace was around a ten-minute walk from each one.

By arrangement, I met someone at Piccadilly off his train from Leeds and walked him round to our workplace. A few hours later, I started to walk him back from our workplace, and it happened that the next suitable train was going to be from Victoria.

After a few minutes’ walk:

Visitor: *Stopping.* “Hold on, we’re going the wrong way. The station was back that way.”

Me: “Actually, your train’s going from Victoria, which is this way.”

Visitor: “But why? My train arrived in Piccadilly.”

Me: “The trains to Leeds can go from either Piccadilly or Victoria.”

After another few minutes’ walk:

Visitor: *Stopping again.* “But why would they do that? What is the point of bringing the train round from Piccadilly?”

It then dawned on me that he assumed the same PHYSICAL train he arrived in would be the one taking him back to Leeds, and would simply have been waiting around for several hours. A bit like a chauffeur-driven vehicle (which is what a train is, I suppose).

I was then getting worried that with all these stops, he was going to miss his train.

Me: “Look, you’ll really have to trust me on this. Your train is definitely going from Victoria, and there are only a few minutes before it leaves. We have to keep moving!”

We shortly arrived at Victoria and I pointed up at the departure board.

Me: “Right, there’s your train, it’s on platform [number], in fact, I see it’s just sitting there right now. Well, thanks very much for coming, I hope you found your visit instructive, bye!”

And I just turned around and walked off quickly.

I used to work in an office block doing online estate agency work — real estate for the people over the pond! — and we took a full floor out of the building.

One day, the entire floor’s Internet went down, which was horrendous as absolutely everything was done online — booking valuations, viewings, taking offers… everything.

The building management couldn’t understand why it was just our floor, and in the end, our management team ended up handing out the company credit cards, and a few of us went and cleared out the local tech stores for wireless Internet dongles, so at least a few of us from each department could get back online. It was not cheap.

A few hours later, the Internet finally came back online after our main tech guy (the best guy I’ve worked with, funny, nerdy, but a hard worker) discovered that one of the Ethernet cables had been put into the wrong port in the server room.

All was well, except nobody could work out why it was in the wrong place, it had been working fine for the hundred months before that. Cue security coming up from the main desk and going into a meeting room with the management team and the tech guy’s assistant, who was escorted off-site.

Rumours abounded, but we eventually found out that the tech guy’s assistant had deliberately sabotaged the wiring so that he could play the “hero” and restore the Internet later — only to bugger it up and end up potentially costing the company a bucketload of money. 

Apparently, he had been angling for a pay rise, and this was his last attempt at proving his worth. I can only say it backfired completely.