(At this cafe, we sell coffee beans that we can grind as well as drinks. A regular comes in for his morning coffee.)

Regular: “Hey, do you have a bag of Kama Sutra?”

Coworker: *pauses* “What?”

Regular: “Kama Sutra.”

Coworker: “Do you mean Sumatra?”

Regular: “Yeah, that. What did I say?”

(A bit later, while the regular was drinking his coffee, his brother came in and we shared the story. I have a feeling he’s not going to hear the end of it for a while.)

(An old lady enters the store.)

Customer: “I have calls on my phone and I’m not able to delete them!”

Me: “You want to delete calls?”

Customer: “Yes! They are on my phone and I can’t remove them.”

(I look at her phone.)

Me: “Oh, I understand! You have voicemails.”

(I show her how to access her voicemail and she begins to listen to it.)

Customer: “Oh! Hello! Yes! Okay!”

Me: “Excuse me, ma’am. You know it’s only a voicemail. The person that left it on your phone cannot hear you.”

Customer: *to me* “Yes, yes!” *to the phone* “Okay! See you later. Bye!”

Me: “You know the person couldn’t hear you, right? It’s only a voicemail. It was recorded.”

Customer: “Yes, I know. Thank you very much!”

(She went out happily.)

(I work in a cell phone store. A young client comes in with what I later learn is her legal guardian.)

Client: “Hey, you need to send this s*** to be repaired. It’s not working.”

Me: “What seems to be the problem?”

Client: “Well, it was really cold outside, and all I did was touch the screen and it exploded.”

(I take a look at the phone.)

Me: “Unfortunately, this is not covered, as it would be considered ‘user damage.’”

Client: “What? It’s not my fault; it was the cold and this s*** phone!”

Me: “First of all, glass is non-insulating, so it is not possible that winter breaks your glass. Furthermore, you can clearly see bite marks along the edge of the phone, as well as these scuffs indicating fall damage.”

Client: “But the glass is not the problem! I have trouble touching icons and sometimes it calls on its own!”

Me: “The digitizer—” *pane which registers touch* “—is basically glued to the glass, so yeah, you’d have trouble with it if the glass is broken.”

Client: “But this s*** phone still calls on its own in the middle of the night, even when I turn it off! I turn it off and it calls on its own! That’s why my bill is so high!”

Me: “Let me get this straight. You shut your phone down and it calls on its own, in the middle of the night?”

(Incredulous, I took a look at her bill. Not only was she over her minutes by a large amount, but the calls were all placed during the day. All in all, I ended up finding a plan that better suited her needs, despite her constantly spitting out insults about my person and the phones, my favourite being, “Pawn shops don’t accept your phones because they are crap!” We deal in high-end devices.)

My dad told me this story. When I was born, my dad had to file paperwork to get me my citizenship certificate. Unfortunately, he made a mistake in the filing process. Either he misread the filing fee, was looking at an older form, or accidentally wrote down the wrong amount, or something, but whatever it was, somehow the amount he paid ended up being short by fifty cents.

Sometime later, he got a letter from the embassy requesting a cheque for the additional fifty cents. My dad sent in the fifty-cent cheque as requested, but couldn’t help his amusement as he noticed the cost of the stamp on the envelope they had sent to him.

It was a one-dollar stamp.

(I’m a bartender at a small bar that’s kind of a dive, but that has sixteen different beers on tap, eight of which change every month, none of which are any of the main brands people tend to know from commercials, etc. We also do not carry bottled beer. This happens at least once a day: a customer walks in, walks up to the bar, looks at all the taps and the menu above the taps which lists what they all are, then picks up a menu from the stand and looks it over for a few minutes.)

Customer: “What kind of beer do you have?” *alternatively, I get a lot of* “I’ll have a beer.”

Me: “O… kay. What kind of beer?”

Customer: “Just whatever’s on tap.”

Me: “We have sixteen kinds of beer on tap. You’ll have to be more specific? Is there any kind of beer that you like generally? Maybe I can push you into a certain direction there.”

Customer: “Actually, I’ll just have a bottle of Budweiser, thanks.”

Me: “We don’t actually have Budweiser, or any bottled beer for that matter, sorry!”

Customer: “Oh, okay, a bottle of Corona, then.”

Me: “Still don’t have bottles. No Corona, either…”

Customer: “Well, what kind of bar is this?! What do you have?”

(At this point, I usually step aside and gesticulate exaggeratedly at the row of sixteen taps behind me, wherein they either laugh or get angry and just say, “Give me a beer,” again.)