A friend and I are waiting at a bus stop, talking about the day we both had at work that day.

Me: “…She’s the goated rep in the sales department and the one to beat.”

A stranger at the bus stop next to us, an older lady, throws her hands up in the air and looks at us.

Stranger: “Ugh, stop making up words!”

My friend and I both turn to the stranger.

Me: “Pardon me?”

Stranger: “You young people and your annoying slang! It’s juvenile! Goated is not a word!”

Me: “I could make up words all day, what business is that of yours?”

Stranger: “You’re talking loudly at a bus stop and forcing me to hear your junk talk!”

My friend has opened his phone and is now showing a screen on his Merriam-Webster dictionary app.

Friend: “Goated is a word, as recognized by the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Language evolves, lady.”

Stranger: “Ugh, even the dictionary is being ruined by your generation!”

Me: “Okay, well, we’re going to go back to our conversation now.”

Stranger: “And a stupid conversation it is, too!”

My friend has opened something else on his phone and holds it out to the stranger.

Friend: “Can you read that?”

Stranger: *Squinting.* “What’s that crap?”

Friend: “That’s Beowulf. A poem from over a thousand years ago… written in English. At least, that is what English looked like at the time.”

The stranger looks at the first line, “Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,” and rolls her eyes.

Stranger: “You wouldn’t be so smart if you didn’t always use your phone.”

Friend: “Yes, but I do know how to use my words, old and new.”

The stranger just harrumphed, and we continued our conversation, maybe a little louder this time, and I might have thrown in the occasional ‘skibidi’ for good measure just to p*** off the crazy stranger, even though I have no idea what it means…

I work in a small, affordable hotel in the middle of tourist-town Manhattan. A guest has come down in the middle of the night on a weekend to complain about the sounds of people, garbage trucks, trains, cars, basically everything outside being too noisy to let her fall asleep. As her ranting begins to slow, I show her a bucket of small plastic packages.

Guest: “What are those?!”

Me: “Earplugs, ma’am.”

Guest: *Screeching.* “You expect your guests to have to cater to the noise outside, instead of doing something about it?!”

Me: “I can’t stop the noises coming from the city, ma’am.”

Guest: *Screeching louder.* “This is unacceptable! We’re paying over a hundred dollars a night!”

Me: “Which, for a location in central Manhattan, ma’am, is a bargain. We’re walking distance to Times Square, it is Saturday night, and we state clearly on our website that we are an old building without sound insulation from the outside. Please be appreciative that we have free earplugs.”

Guest: *Screeching louder still.* “I expect you to do something about all this noise!”

Me: “I am. I am trying to send it back to its room!”

I admit, I shouldn’t have said that. It was late, I was tired, and I let the impulsive thoughts win. For a few seconds, I was convinced I was going to be handing in my staff ID to my manager the next day.

Instead, the guest just… blinked. She stopped her noise, silently took a set of earplugs, and simply went back to her room. I didn’t hear anything else from her for the rest of the weekend she was staying there.

I have never made a habit of talking back to a customer like that; it was a once-only thing. I mainly don’t want to repeat it because I don’t want to risk losing my 100% success rate!

I overhear two tourists talking on the New York subway.

Tourist #1: “Wow, these trains have so much graffiti on them.”

Tourist #2: “How is there so much graffiti on trains if they never stop moving?”

Tourist #1: “The New York graffiti artists must be able to do it super-fast. Maybe that’s what a New York minute is.”

I work in a juice place. I’m serving a customer, with another one waiting.

Customer: “What’s in your freshly pressed apple juice?”

Me: “Just apples.”

Customer: “Oh, what does that taste like?”

Me: “…Just apples.”

Customer: “Can you make it taste like strawberries?”

Me: “Ma’am, would you like a strawberry juice?”

Customer: “No, I want an apple juice, but I want it to taste like strawberries.”

Me: “I can do an apple and strawberry juice mix, ma’am?”

Customer: “No, I want only apple juice, but I want it to taste like strawberries.”

Me: “I can’t do that, ma’am.”

Customer: “Well then, I’ll go somewhere that can! What do you think of that?!”

Before I can answer, the next customer helps me out.

Next Customer: “Oh, you should go to St. Joseph’s!”

Customer: “That sounds like a church.”

Next Customer: “It is! I heard they got a guy who can turn water into wine, so maybe you can hit him up about turning apples into strawberries?”

The customer was not amused and walked out. That next customer had a request that didn’t defy Heaven and Earth and got a 10% discount.

I worked as a bartender for many years. When you’re working at an established place in Manhattan, you don’t have to put up with any customer bull s***, and you also learn very quickly when said bull s*** is about to happen. We are given carte blanche by the managers to deal with that s*** quickly and efficiently, as we don’t have time to waste.

Customer: “Dirty martini. On a tab.” *Hands his card over.*

Me: “Gin or vodka?”

Customer: “Vodka, obviously!”

Whatever. I make it for him.

Customer: “Why are there olives in my martini?! Are you an idiot?”

Me: “Listen, pal, we’re four deep and I’m not wasting my time on some bull s***. I cancelled your tab. F*** off.”

I had exactly half a second to enjoy his Surprised Pikachu Face before I moved on to the next customer. I could just tell he was looking to be an a**hole all night long and I just saved us all a night of suffering.