I’m a cashier in a grocery store that gets its fair share of scammers. Their latest innovation is the “cash card” strategy, where the scammer will say that their card has to be processed as cash, leaving their purchase verified and our drawers short. My managers instruct us to call them IMMEDIATELY the second we suspect someone is pulling this.

One morning, one such scammer comes through my lane with a few pieces of candy and two gift cards that total $900 altogether. I’ve been a cashier long enough that weird item combinations and high totals don’t faze me anymore, but then we start talking about payment.

Scammer: “Oh, it’s a cash card, go ahead and run it as cash.”

Me: “No problem. Just let me call my manager for a moment; these cards are still so new that the managers want to oversee these transactions.”

I then pick up the phone and punch in the extension for the manager, who is behind the customer service desk about twenty feet away. I see her pick up the phone and answer.

Me: *Perfectly calm.* “This is [My Name] at register seventeen; I have a cash card transaction.”

I use the exact same tone of voice I use for any other manager call, so I have the delight of watching the split second of calm before she suddenly processes my words and scrambles to get to my register.

The scammer realized the jig was up and left without a fight when my manager asked her to, and I got some heavy congratulations for catching her!

This story reminds me of my own.

I was working for Walmart at the time. I needed my manager to sign and approve my time off request. He was on the phone with a client. The conversation went something like this:

Manager: “Hello? Yes. I heard that you’ve been making voodoo dolls of the workers who are refusing your out-of-date refunds?”

Manager: “We have you on camera telling each employee which doll is theirs.”

Manager: “I’m pretty sure that there actually is a law against it, but that’s not the point of this conversation.”

Manager: “Well, I was feeling left out and thought next time you should make one of me.”

Manager: “Please calm down your language, ma’am.”

Manager: “Yes, I agree that shopping elsewhere in the future may be a good solution.”

Manager: “That language isn’t called for. Have a nice day.”

Then he hung up and got my vacation signed for.

I’m opening the store with some coworkers on New Year’s Day. My Coworker is a new hire, originally from Australia.

Me: “Happy New Year!”

Coworker: “Is it? So bloody cold!”

Me: “Oh yeah, it’s normally summer for you guys, isn’t it? What’s an Australian New Year’s like?”

Before he can answer, a customer approaches.

Customer: “Summer for New Year’s? Did you two drink too much last night or something?”

Coworker: “Haha, no. We were just saying that in Australia, where I’m from, New Year’s is in the middle of our summer. Usually, we’d be doing the cliched thing of having a BBQ.”

Customer: “What the h*** are you talking about?! New Year’s is always Jan 1.”

Coworker: “Yeah… and it’s summer in the South.”

Customer: “I’m from The South, and it’s winter in Georgia right now just as it is up here.”

Coworker: “Southern Hemisphere, ma’am.”

Customer: “What’s a hemisphere?”

Coworker: “You know what? Happy New Year! Brrr, sure is cold, isn’t it? Anything I can help you find?”

New Year’s Resolution: Choose your battles!

I’m the author of this story. My grandmother is afflicted with the hoarding curse but has been slowly decluttering with help from my aunts and uncles.

My mother’s side of the family has gotten together for Christmas. Usually, each grandparent sets aside a certain amount of money for each parent to use to purchase gifts for their children on the grandparents’ behalf, but my grandmother has broken the mold a bit this year by personally getting two gifts for my cousin’s toddler daughters. No one knows what they are, but her kids figure that if the gifts are a flop, they’ll just dispose of them quietly.

When the other presents have been opened, my grandmother gives the two toddlers their final gifts. They gleefully rip off the paper to find two matching pink Care Bear dolls that they promptly squeal over. My grandmother looks very pleased with herself, but every adult in the room is looking at either the dolls or my grandmother, slack-jawed.

Aunt: *Quietly* “Didn’t you have a doll that looked like that as a kid?”

Mom: “Yeah, forty years ago! But I only ever had one, and it definitely wasn’t either of those!”

My grandmother had managed to pull two identical, forty-year-old Care Bears in perfect condition out of her basement hoard to give to her great-granddaughters. If not for the dated design, you wouldn’t be able to tell that they were older than half the party’s attendees.

The hoarding curse is set to skip those girls’ generation, but if either of them has kids, maybe the dolls will get another forty years in THEIR toy chests!

Related:
Great-Great-Grandpa’s Grand Gathering Of Garbage And Goodies

I’m not allowed to touch crock pots.

When I was a kid, I broke one. It was my night for dishes, and a heavy ceramic pot plus wet child-sized hands meant it slipped and broke. For Christmas, my grandmother bought my mum a new one, because my mum used her crock pot a lot.

I broke that one, too. Same exact scenario. My night for dishes. Heavy ceramic pot. Wet hands. Grandma bought it for Christmas.

Repeat for like five years straight. Obviously, my hands got bigger, but I was still clumsy, and it was still heavy.

One year, miraculously, I didn’t break the crock pot. I don’t know if my mum watched the chore list and made sure the crock pot wasn’t used on my nights, or if it was luck. But I managed to get a whole year without breaking the crock pot. Only, no one told my grandmother, and by that point, it was a tradition, so she got my mum a crock pot for Christmas.

The following year, I broke both crock pots. At that point, I was banned from touching the crock pot ever again.

Even now, I’m thirty-one, and I refuse to touch my mother’s crock pot.