(My husband and I go to a Chinese buffet restaurant for lunch. It’s the weekend and my husband, who is Japanese, is wearing cargo shorts and a nerdy t-shirt, while the staff is dressed in black slacks and white shirts. We are the only people at the buffet at the time and we are chatting as we fill our plates. A customer comes up on the other side of the buffet line. After a moment she comes over to our side and stops in front of my husband.)

Customer: “What’s that?” *she points to a dish on the buffet*

(My husband isn’t paying any attention to her.)

Customer: *louder* “Hey! I said, ‘What’s that?'”

(My husband looks up at the labels for the food on the buffet, but there isn’t one for that dish.)

Husband: “I don’t know.”

Customer: *condescending* “What do you mean, you don’t know?!”

Husband: “I don’t work here, obviously.” *he gestures to his clothes*

Customer: *stymied for a moment, then charges on* “Well, you should still know because you’re Chinese!”

Husband: “I’m not Chinese, and even if I was, I wouldn’t know every dish on a buffet.”

Customer: *glares at him as he stares back at her*

Me: *gesturing toward an employee not ten feet away* “Ask someone who works here!”

Customer: *hmphs at us then starts to walk away*

Husband: *murmurs under his breath* “I don’t know kung-fu, either.”

(I am working at the drive-thru.)

Customer: “Yes, I want a hamburger with pickles.”

(Our hamburgers already come with pickles; I’ve been working long enough to interpret this as asking for extra pickles.)

Me: “Okay, one hamburger with extra pickles.”

Customer: “No, I want a hamburger with pickles.”

Me: “Oh, so, you mean you want only pickles?”

Customer: “No, I want a hamburger with pickles.”

Me: *pause* “A hamburger with extra pickles.”

(This goes back and forth for a while, until finally the customer yells at me through the headset.)

Customer: “I JUST WANT A HAMBURGER WITH PICKLES. WHY IS THAT SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?!”

Me: *losing it* “BECAUSE THE HAMBURGER ALREADY COMES WITH PICKLES, SO YOU SAYING, ‘WITH PICKLES,’ MEANS NOTHING TO ME!”

(I can hear his realization and his passenger’s reaction.)

Customer: “Oh. Then just a regular hamburger.”

(The rest of the transaction went okay.)

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(Two of my employees come to me during a shift.)

Employee #1: “Hey, boss. [Employee #2] and I want to switch shifts on Tuesday.”

Me: “That looks like it will be fine; I’ll sign off on it.”

(The next Tuesday, [Employee #1] comes in for her switched shift. [Employee #2] doesn’t show up when his switched shift starts. His supervisor calls, and I get a note asking me to handle the write-up.)

Me: “You’ve had numerous tardy clock-ins, and you missed a shift.”

Employee #2: “I didn’t!”

Me: “Yes, you did. On Tuesday, you didn’t show up for the 4:00 to 11:00 shift.”

Employee #2: “That wasn’t my shift, though! That was [Employee #1]’s shift!”

Me: “You traded with her. I was the one who signed off on it.”

Employee #2: “Right! It was her shift! I can’t get written up for missing someone else’s shift! She should get in trouble!”

Me: “Ooooookay. You didn’t come in for your original morning shift, either.”

Employee #2: “Nah, [Employee #1] covered it, remember? You signed off on it.”

Me: “You know what? We aren’t doing this. You’re in trouble. Final write-up. You miss one more shift and you will be terminated. You are no longer allowed to switch shifts, because you obviously can’t be trusted with the responsibility.”

Employee #2: “Whoa. I didn’t think you’d buy that excuse, but there’s no reason to be like that!”

Me: “Get out of my office before I find another reason to write you up.”

(I’m the store manager, and I’m walking through the store when a part-time, seasonal employee points at me and calls me over. When I approach him to see what the problem is, he points at a mess of confetti and snow flocking that’s fallen from a Christmas display and is scattered across the floor. He shoves a broom towards me.)

Employee: “Clean that up.”

Me: “What?”

(At this point I see a shift supervisor come around the corner.)

Supervisor: “[Employee], I thought I told you to clean that mess up a half hour ago. Why haven’t you started?”

Employee: “I’m getting her to do it.”

Me: “Are you trying to give me your work?”

Employee: “You should sweep it up.”

Supervisor: “I’ll handle this.”

Me: “No, I’m curious now. Let’s make this clear: your shift supervisor reports to a department supervisor, who reports to the department head, who reports to the floor manager, who reports to me. Why would you think I would do something you were directly asked to handle?”

Employee: *with a sigh* “MEN don’t clean.”

Me: “I see. I’m going to head over to HR and get a print-out of your job description and duties. Your supervisor can include that cleaning is on there as part of your writeup.”

Employee: “Too late; I quit.”

Supervisor: “We won’t miss you!”

Coworker: “[Other Coworker] is probably retiring soon. I wonder how long he has worked here?”

Me: “He’s been here since 1978.”

Coworker: “How do you know?”

Me: “He’s excited to mark 40 years with the company in May; we plan to have a little party for him.”

Coworker: “Okay, but how do you know that’s 40 years?”

Me: “I just subtracted to figure it out.”

Coworker: *looking confused* “If you say so. That’s a long time. Do you know what day he started?”

Me: “No, just that he said it was in May.”

Coworker: “Can’t you just subtract to figure it out?”

Me: “Uh, no.”

Coworker: “Yeah. I’m bad at math, too.”