(I’m shopping at a superstore in the clearance section and find a cold brew coffee maker. I pick it up thinking it would be an awesome gift for my husband and see the price is listed as $89.99. I think this must be a fancy electronic version at that price and look it up on my phone. It’s literally just a plastic pitcher with a metal filter and is listed for $10 on the store’s website. I’m sure this must just be a mistyped decimal point so I go find a nearby associate.)

Me: “I found this pitcher in clearance and I think it was mispriced.” *shows her the website price and the item* “What should I do?”

Associate: “Yeah, that’s weird. If you go up front and ask for a manager they should be able to look it up in the system and fix it.”

(I go up to a register and ask the cashier to call a manager. He’s very friendly and we chat a bit while we wait until the manager comes up.)

Manager: “What’s the issue?”

Cashier: “She found this item in clearance and we think it was mispriced.”

Me: “Yeah, on your website it says it’s $10.” *shows my phone to the manager*

Manager: *looks at my phone for a while and then hands it back* “Well, sometimes items on the website are a different price and that one is talking about free shipping after you spend $35, as well.”

Me: “I’m not concerned about the shipping cost; it’s the big price difference. I would get if it was a few dollars different, but a $79 price gap is big. Can you look it up in your system to see if the item was mislabeled in the store?”

Manager: “It is the price it is in the store; you can order it online if you want.”

Me: “You won’t match your own price or look it up?”

Manager: “It is the price it is in the store.”

Me: “Fine, I guess I’ll not buy it, then, and get it somewhere else. I feel bad if someone wastes their money spending $89 on a $10 item, though.”

(The manager walked off and the cashier and I had a laugh about how ridiculous that was. I got a nice cold brew pitcher from another store for the correct price later.)

(I frequent a store that sells pet food and farm supplies. Because I have only one dog, I buy food less than once a month. My family members are also customers occasionally, but much less often than I am. I lug my $40 bag of dog food to the counter.)

Cashier: “Your mom was just here!”

Me: *confusedly because my mom works much later than me and lives in a different state* “Really?”

Cashier: “Yeah! Why didn’t you have her buy your dog food?”

Me: “Well, we don’t live together.”

Cashier: “Okay! Your total is $40.”

Me: “Okay. Wait, don’t you need my phone number for the rewards program?”

Cashier: “I already put the number in!”

Me: *even more confusedly because they never remember my number* “Okay.”

Cashier: “You know what, I mistook you for someone else.”

(I took my $40 bag of food, sans rewards for all the cash I had just dropped, and left the store.)

(I work at an adult store. It’s pretty quiet and I spend most of my time watching YouTube videos or surfing the Internet. I just had a customer walk in and after 30 minutes of her walking around she finally comes up to talk to me.)

Me: “Hi. How may I help you?”

Woman: “I’m confused. What do you do with all these toys?”

Me: “Anything really. But mostly you just find a hole and stick it in.”

Woman: “What about this?” *holds up a battery-operated toy*

Me: “Find a hole and stick it in.”

Woman: “And this one?” *battery-less toy* 

Me: “Find a hole and stick it in; you may start to see a pattern here.”

(My husband gets a new coworker who was supposed to be of higher qualification, but this guy is consistently behind and incomplete on his work, so my husband has to pick up after him. Thankfully, the coworker transfers to another job at a different company — for a while. I get this text from my beloved while we are both at work.)

Husband: “So, that incompetent guy is back. His other job ‘fell through,’ which I’m guessing means he sucked there, too. Now I get to find ways to keep him occupied while I’m busy.”

Me: *texting back* “Sorry, hun. By ‘fell through,’ I’m imagining someone cutting the floor out from under him Looney-Tunes style.”

Husband: “Yeah, but he’s holding the saw.”

(Our company does plans to show where a house will be built on the property. Naturally, these plans are given to the county for review and approval to help get a building permit. If a house is over 5,000 square feet of disturbance, then the county will treat it as major construction work and cause a host of other plans to be done. If the house is under 5,000 square feet, then the project is exempt from the other plans. Doing a house under 5,000 square feet is easier to get a permit for in both time and cost. A client is trying to build a house under the 5,000 square feet so he can sell it later on. We have worked with him and he hates the ones over 5,000 square feet. We do the plan and have come up with around 4,900 square feet of disturbance. He is happy and we have it submitted to the permit office. About two weeks later, we get an email from a county reviewer about the project. Comments happen all the time so this is not unexpected. A few are minor, but two catch our eye.)

Reviewer: “1. Make the driveway pad at the front into a square and revise the plan. 2. Submit a [document saying the house is a major plan for projects over 5,000 square feet].”

(I print the email off and deliver it to my boss, who worked on the plan.)

Boss: “This doesn’t seem right. Why does she want to make the driveway pad like that? There is no rule I can find saying she can do that. If we do what she wants, we will be over 5,000. You know [Client] is not going to like that.”

(My boss and I go through all the requirements for driveways and can’t find anything saying that we have to do that. My boss writes back a detailed message about why we won’t do that and asking what the requirement is that says we have to do that. A few days later, we get this message.)

Reviewer: “[Department Head] is requiring it. Please update the plans.”

(We have worked with [Department Head] before in the past and know him to be a reasonable person. We try to call the reviewer and all but one time we get an answering machine. The one time we get through, she says:)

Reviewer: “The message I sent you is enough.”

(We try to talk with [Department Head] directly, but he is extremely busy and typically out of the office. After sending messages and phone calls, we call his office to set up a meeting with him in person. Two weeks later, [Department Head], [Reviewer], my boss, and I meet at the department head’s office.)

Boss: “So, this is about [Project] that you reviewed.”

Department Head: “What project? I don’t recall any project like this.”

(This isn’t unusual; he is only second to the head of the whole agency, who is appointed by the county counsel, and has hundreds of jobs. My boss gives him the email with the original comments from the reviewer and shows him the plan.)

Department Head: “I don’t understand. This doesn’t appear to be any comment I made. These comments make no sense to me.”

(This is the first time my boss or I have heard of this.)

Me: *turning to reviewer* “So whose comments are these?”

Reviewer: “[Supervisor]. She is the one who requested it. I don’t know why we are in this meeting with [Department Head].”

(The supervisor and the department head are not even close to being mixed up. The supervisor is a blonde, 30-year-old woman who has a common name, while the department head is a black, 60-year-old man with a very uncommon name that is hard to pronounce.)

Me: “You said yourself for weeks that [Department Head] was the one asking for these comments.”

Reviewer: “I never said that.”

Me: “I have your email right here.” *passes it over to [Department Head]*

Reviewer: “That isn’t my email. You must have changed it.”

(The department head facepalms.)

Department Head: “Let me look at the comments.”

(He took a quick look at the comments and removed the comments about the driveway and forcing us to go over 5,000 square feet. The reviewer is still there, but every time we get her, she delays our jobs almost as a revenge for catching her in a lie.)