I’m the manager in this story, which takes place during a normally very busy time on a Saturday. This cashier has only been working at our store for about a month.

Customer: “Hi. I came through the drive-thru and came inside to pay for my order.”

Cashier: “Um… hang on, let me get a manager.”

The cashier finds me.

Cashier: “Hey, this lady at my register said she came through the drive-thru but came inside to pay?”

Me: “I’m sorry, what?”

Cashier: “She came inside to pay and I didn’t know what to do.”

Me: *Sighing* “I’ll have to take her card to the back booth to pay for it and get her out of here.”

I approach the customer.

Customer: “Yeah, I came through the drive-thru but came inside to pay.”

I take her card without a word. I go to the back to cash out her order, return her card, and give her her food since, by this point, it’s ready. I turn to the cashier after she leaves.

Me: “Did she really just… Why?!”

At my fast food restaurant, the drive-thru is timed, and these times reflect on manager and restaurant performance, so we’re pushed to go as fast as possible. Our times are averaged, and our goal is 1:15 at the speaker, 1:30 in line, and 1:15 at the window when we’re not in rush times.

This occurs an hour or so after the dinner rush. I’ve taken the customer’s order: two relatively cheap combo boxes with several modifications, some of which add to the price. One of these modifications is to add two freezes instead of drinks, adding $0.80 per combo. The line is long, so by the time they get to the window, their drinks are done and their food is nearly so.

They hand me their debit card, and I put it in the chip reader and wait a bit. The point of sale system says, ‘Insufficient funds,’ and requests another form of payment for the remaining $1.51. I ask the customer, and they ask for a fountain drink instead of one of their freezes. By now, they’ve received their food, and we’re deep into the two-minute mark at the window, but I do my best to smile, pour the drink, and rerun the card, foolishly assuming that they’ll pay the difference now that I’ve lowered it.

Shockingly, they still only wanted to pay with the card. Their bud next to them is already drinking out of their other freeze, so I can’t swap that one out for a fountain drink; they’re eating their food, so I can’t swap it out, either. My partner’s getting annoyed; we’re well into four minutes and the customers are rifling around for loose change.

After we reach five and a half minutes, I give up. Someone has given me their change as a tip, $2.92. It is the largest tip I’ve ever gotten from a customer, and I was proud of earning it. I wave the car on, put 92 cents in the register, and try very hard not to scream as I look out the window to see the line of cars wrapping around the building. I almost cry. 

I can comprehend not having a ton of cash, but if you’re unable to pay for your food, don’t order extra expensive modifications! I’m disappointed that I had to give up part of my tip, but it just wasn’t practical to keep the customer there anymore, and my managers were getting more and more irked at the holdup. Oh, and our averages were ruined for the next two hours of my shift. I wish I could say this was the only irritating customer that night, but that would be lying.

During the health crisis, my high school has both in-person schooling and online schooling available, except when the state government prohibits in-person classes. We only have one and a half days in our last “week” before holiday break, so almost everyone is online for those couple days, even though we’ve recently received the okay to go back to in-person schooling.

My AP English teacher, who has gone into the digital age kicking and screaming, is quite put out that everyone showed up in his video call and no one is in his classroom.

Teacher: “Why are you all staying home, anyway? Wear two or three masks if you’re scared!”

Me: “Because when I do online I get an extra half-hour of sleep.”

Teacher: “That’s a sucky priority.”

My boyfriend works at the IT Help Desk for a university unlocking accounts, resetting passwords, and that sort of thing. Today, he is working from home, so I hear his side of this conversation. The first thing he always has to do is get the user’s university ID code so he can start putting together a ticket and to make sure he is looking at the correct person’s account.

Boyfriend: “Thank you for calling [University] help desk; may I please have your [University] ID?”

He looks up the account.

Boyfriend: “Okay, [First Name]?”

The user confirms their name and then tells my boyfriend the issue; it sounds like she is having trouble getting into some university system.

Boyfriend: “Okay, and you said your ID is [ID]? So, looking at your information, some places are saying you are still a student, which might be the reason you’re having trouble.”

The user apparently says that this isn’t right.

Boyfriend: “Okay, and you said your ID is [ID]? Oh, [similar-sounding ID]? Okay, one moment.”

He retypes the information.

Boyfriend: “Oh, so, your name is actually [Totally Different First Name]? Okay. Because when I asked if you were [First Name], you said yes…”

I understand mishearing the ID confirmation since the two IDs contained similar-sounding letters and neither of them was spelling the ID phonetically, but the names were totally different. The user just wasn’t listening.

Related:
Named And Shamed, Part 9
Named And Shamed, Part 8
Named And Shamed, Part 7
Named And Shamed, Part 6
Named And Shamed, Part 5

In winter, I wear an extremely warm hat. It is a nice, fur-lined leather hat with a two- or three-inch wide band of fluffy fur around the edge. It happens to have a band of brown fur similar to my own hair color. This happens while I am at the store and sadly happens quite often.

Complete Stranger: “Oh! That’s a hat! I approve of that. At first, I thought it was your haircut, but since it’s your hat, it’s good.”

I didn’t realize I needed complete strangers’ approval for hairstyles.