Last year, I was lucky enough to get some money, which meant I could buy myself an electric scooter. As I don’t drive, being able to get around town on my own was quite the experience.

One day, I decided to take my scooter out to a fast food place so I wouldn’t have to pay for delivery. I ordered on my phone, drove over, and went inside to get my food. It was in the middle of the health crisis, so there was nobody else inside.

I told the cashier that I was there to pick up an order. Without any more information, she went to the back and put some stuff into a bag. Maybe I was their only pickup? Then, while I watched, she put the bag on a counter and left.

Thinking she was just getting something from a part of the kitchen I couldn’t see, I waited… and waited… and waited. During this time nobody else came in, and it didn’t sound like they were busy. Finally, she came back out, grabbed the bag — without adding anything to it — and put it on the counter in front of me. Then, she tried to hand me a piece of paper.

Employee: “Here’s the address.”

Suddenly, I realized what happened. I’d taken my helmet in with me so it wouldn’t be stolen. 

Apparently, she saw it and assumed that anyone coming in on a scooter or bike must be a third-party delivery person. Why she made me wait so long if I was meant to be delivering, I’ll never know.

After I shyly pointed out the issue, she was very apologetic and got me my proper food. Thanking her, I went back out to my bike and checked that I had everything… and realized she didn’t give me any of my dips.

I am in a city with a fair amount of tourists-in-motorhomes summer traffic. The following conversation, with minor variations, happens more often than I care to think about.

Customer: “Can you help me? I’m looking for a 5/8-inch by four-inch dingus, but all I can find is metric ones.”

I accompany the customer to the dingus aisle and go directly to the bin in question.

Me: “Here you go, sir. 5/8-inch diameter, four-inch-long dinguses.”

Note that sizes are given in both metric and SAE; however, our labelling system uses decimal, not fractional notation, so “5/8” is given as “0.625.”

Customer: “No, those are metric!”

Me: “Oh, sorry, no. Both the SAE and metric sizes are given, but in decimals. 0.625-inch or 15.8-mm.”

Customer: “I don’t want 0.625-inch, I want 5/8-inch!”

Me: “Sir… 0.625 inch is 5/8-inch.”

Customer: “No, it isn’t! It’s in decimals, and decimals are metric!”

Related:
Dumb By Any Metric, Part 3
Dumb By Any Metric, Part 2
Dumb By Any Metric

I work for an orthopaedic surgeon and the number of patients who don’t know their medications or allergies is staggering! This patient just called in and we’re concerned about an infection after her surgery.

Me: “The doctor wants to get you on a general antibiotic to be safe. Can you tell me if you have any allergies?”

Patient: “I think I have a few, but I’m not sure. I will give you a call back.”

This isn’t a problem, and the patient calls back to give me a list of five or so allergies. The medication that the doctor wanted to give her is a derivative of one of her allergies, so we need to know what happens.

Me: “Can you tell me what happens when you take that antibiotic, please?” 

Patient: “I can’t recall anything happening. I don’t think I’m even allergic. Let me ask my husband.”

I wait. The patient’s husband says he doesn’t know, so the patient is going to call a friend and get back to me. This is now the third time we’ve gone over this.

Patient: “I think you can go ahead and send that prescription. I don’t think I’m even allergic to it.”

Me: “So, just to be perfectly clear, you really don’t remember what happened the last time you took this medication?”

Patient: “Well, you know, I think the issue was that my throat started to close up.”

Cue me hitting my head on my desk.

Customer: “I’d like my hamburger with extra onions.”

She receives her hamburger with extra onions but returns a minute later.

Customer: “There aren’t enough extra onions on it. I really want a lot.”

I dispose of the hamburger, as we can’t return an item to the kitchen if it has been touched, and I ask the kitchen staff to put extra, extra onions on it. I then need to use the washroom, and as I am not on break and the public ones are closer, I go to the ladies’ room.

As I’m in a stall, sitting on the toilet, I hear the door open.

Customer: “There still aren’t enough onions.”

Late at night, my brother pulls up a third-party delivery app and orders a meal from a nearby fast food place.

When the order comes, he takes the burger and drink, handing some fries to me. A few seconds later:

Brother: “What the f***?!”

He showed me that his burger had no patty; it was just cheese and bun.

Thinking it was a mistake in the kitchen, I offered to help him get it fixed because he didn’t know how, but I soon discovered that it was actually a mistake on his part; he’d somehow hit the option for no meat by accident and didn’t read his receipt before accepting.

Nevertheless, I both called the restaurant and went to customer support on the third-party app, but both agreed that since he’d already gotten the food as ordered, they couldn’t refund or replace it.

This would have just been an unfortunate and funny story, except that next, my brother called up our parents, who were out on a drive at the time.

I overheard him speaking very loudly to them, complaining that the restaurant didn’t give him what he ordered and refused to fix it. I tried to speak loud enough to correct him, but they couldn’t hear me, and eventually, they told him that they’d call the restaurant and ask for a manager when they got home. I was so upset thinking about that poor manager who would have to listen to my mother complaining about something that wasn’t their employee’s fault.

Luckily, when they got home, I managed to explain what had actually happened before they got to that point. My brother still doesn’t understand why it’s his fault — he insists that the app he used somehow changed his order after he paid — but my parents knew it was his fault and saw the humour in him making such an obvious mistake.