(I work at a boat rental. It’s spring. The lake is around 60 degrees, and it’s around 70 degrees.)

Me: “And do you need a swim ladder?”

(Pause.)

Me: “You know, probably not.”

Guy: “Nah, if we throw somebody off, we want to make sure they can’t get back on.”

(Two customers are looking at me and nudging each other. They are a man and a woman. Eventually, they bring their purchases to my counter and I ring them up. I have a bit of an odd name for a girl.)

Man: “Is that your real name?” *indicates my name tag*

Me: “Yep!”

(The man pulls a face and hands the woman a $5 bill. They leave.)

Coworker: “What just happened?”

(I work at a very popular thrift store. One day, our Wi-Fi goes out so we can’t use our computers. This means that while we wait for the Internet providers to fix it, we have to write up all the receipts by hand and can only take cash. There are signs on the door when you walk in, on each register, and all over the store. My manager makes announcements every 15 minutes, and I apologize to each customer for the inconvenience. But even with all that, this happens multiple times.)

Me: “All right, now that I’ve added in the tax, your total will be [amount].”

Customer: *pulls out a card and tries to hand it to me*

Me: “Um, we can only take cash right now.”

Customer: “Really? Are you sure?”

Me: “Positive.”

Customer: “Well, I really wish someone would’ve told me beforehand.”

Me: “…”

(Also, while most customers are very understanding, patient, and nice about the situation, I still have a couple of these.)

Customer: “Well, this is just very bad business. You need to fix this immediately.” *leaves in an angry huff*

Me: “Oh, sure. Let me just grab my trusty screwdriver and fix the Wi-Fi. I’ll have it up and running in no time.”

(At my store, if a customer wants to do a return, we have to pay them back the way they originally paid for it. A woman and her daughter come in to return a bra.)

Customer: “I’d like to return this.”

Me: “All right.” *scans receipt and bra* “You’ll be getting back $5.18, and you paid with card, so that’s how we’ll give it back. Please insert your card when it asks.”

Customer: “But I don’t have the card.”

Me: “Well… I’m not supposed to do the return without the card—”

Customer: *cuts me off before I can tell her I’ll still do cashback* “WELL, Y’ALL ARE GONNA GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK! WHERE IS YOUR MANAGER?!”

Me: *signals to the manager to come over* “We may still be able to give it back in cash since it’s a small amount. But next time, please try to have your card so that we can do the return properly.”

Customer: “NEXT TIME Y’ALL ARE JUST GONNA GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK REGARDLESS OF IF I HAVE MY CARD OR NOT BECAUSE I BROUGHT IT IN WITH THE RECEIPT!”

Me: *ignores her yelling to ask for the go-ahead from my manager, though now I have an attitude, as well*

Manager: “It’s fine.”

(My manager tries to calm the woman down because she’s still yelling through the whole thing and even stays after I’ve handed her the money to give us “a piece of her mind” so we’ll “know how to properly run a business.”)

Customer: “…and you’d better not ever try to take my money again! You need to change that policy because it’s bulls***! And next time—”

Me: *fed up after hearing her rant for the past five minutes and slams my hand on the counter* “LOOK! We don’t make the rules, so you continuously yelling at us over five dollars isn’t going to change what corporate decided.”

Customer: “I didn’t say anything about you making the rules! I’m just saying—”

Manager: *cuts her off, sighing* “Ma’am, it’s just store policy. You’ve been shouting for well over five minutes now. We went against store policy and gave you the money back. Can you just drop it?”

Customer: *walks to the toy section with her daughter still loudly going on about how she hates our policy*

Customer #2: *walks up and sets her stuff down rolling her eyes* “I promise I won’t be difficult like that.”

Me: *smiles* “Thank you.”

(Yes, I admit I could’ve handled that better; I lost my temper, and raised my voice. But after dealing with customers like her for nearly a year and getting yelled at earlier that day because our computers shut down, I just had little patience for getting yelled at for five minutes straight over a policy I didn’t make, especially after I had already broken the rules for her.)

When I’m in high school, my school undergoes a campus change due to various issues with the current campus, mainly size. The change from the fifty-year-old original campus to the brand new campus occurs partway through my sophomore year, but we are still at the old campus for the first half of my sophomore year.

I’m taking a test in World History class around November when the fire alarm blares. My class dutifully leaves their tests and we exit the building. A fair bit of us are grumbling, since it’s pretty cold and breezy out and most of us are just in jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts. After a few minutes, we get the okay from the teachers to go back inside. We return to our tests and assume that’s the end of it.

We’ve barely warmed up when the fire alarm rings again. We grumble at getting interrupted again — most of us really just want to finish the test — leave the classroom, and go sit outside again until we get the okay to go back inside.

After we get back inside, it’s not five minutes before the fire alarm rings again.

We complain and go to leave the building, but fewer than half of us are out the classroom door before one of the other teachers calls out, “For goodness’ sake, go back to class!”

Everyone finishes the test on time and we get the fire alarm fixed so we won’t have drills every five minutes.