(A friend and I are getting iced coffee when a customer interrupts the barista because she supposedly waited ten minutes in line at the pickup counter.)

Customer: *sounding exasperated* “Excuse me, where is the line to order?”

Employee: *gesturing to the woman’s right* “It starts where the ‘please enter here’ sign is.” *goes to give a drink to a customer*

Customer: *huffs and follows the employee down the counter* “Your line isn’t clearly marked; it’s confusing and I wasted all this time down here!”

(The employee apologizes for the confusion and repeats where the line starts.)

Customer: “Now I have to stand in line again even though I stood over here for ten minutes?!”

Me: “It’s not his fault you made a mistake!”

Customer: “This isn’t your business!”

Me: “You’re berating him for your mistake; I’m making it my business!”

(She got in the proper line and shot daggers at me the whole time.)

(I’m setting up my bar in the morning. On Sundays, we open at noon. I hate when the phone rings in the morning because I have a lot of prep work to do and it’s usually stupid questions or sales calls. The phone rings at 11:00 am.)

Me: “Hello, [Bar].”

Customer: “Hi, I was just wondering what time you open.”

Me: “We’ll be opening our doors at noon.”

Customer: “Thanks!”

(I continue setting up, doing the usual prep of making roll-ups and cutting a lot of fruit. At 11:55, the phone rings. It’s the same customer as before.)

Me: “Hello, [Bar].”

Customer: “Hi, I know you open at 12, but my family and I are outside now. Could you let us in?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to open the doors before our opening time.”

Customer: “But it’s just five minutes!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but the doors will be open at 12.”

(It’s finally noon, so I grab the keys and head towards the front door. Before I get there, the phone rings again, so I walk back to behind the bar to answer it.)

Me: “Hello, [Bar].”

Customer: “It’s 12; why aren’t the doors open?!”

(After doing a service for a thrift shop, I have the employee sign a hand-held device which then transmits the information to a wireless remote printer, which prints out the service ticket. The employee marvels at the technology.)

Employee: “That’s just amazing!”

Me: “Yes, it’s pretty sophisticated.”

Employee: “Like the phones everyone has now.”

Me: “I know. I should upgrade my phone, but I’m intimidated. They seem so complicated. The one I have now is old, but it does pretty much everything I need it to. I mean, I don’t need a phone that tells me the phases of the moon or what time it is in Tokyo.”

(We share a laugh over this and wait a bit while the ticket prints out. Just then, a customer approaches and interrupts us.)

Customer: “Excuse me, but does anyone know what time it is in Tokyo?”

(We laugh a bit more, and I say to the customer:)

Me: “All I know is that it’s five o’clock somewhere!”

(In the 1980s, there was an effort to assist Jews in the USSR who wanted to emigrate but were denied. Really, all a US citizen could do was write to them and tell them we were working for their release. It also served to annoy the Soviets. My mother joined the campaign and was given a family to write to. Part of the instructions were to mail the letter with a “return receipt postcard” attached. This was to be mailed back by the recipients so that she would know that they received her original letter. I’m not sure who paid for this return postage. One time, after a suitable waiting period, the return postcard did not arrive. My mother went to the local post office to register a complaint. This was not a complaint against the US Postal Service but a way of letting the Soviets know we were watching.)

Mom: “I wish to register a complaint that a letter I sent to the USSR was not received. I know this because I never received the return receipt postcard.”

Clerk: “We would need a letter from them telling us they didn’t receive your letter.”

Mom: “Wait, what? You want them to send me a letter telling me they didn’t get the letter I sent them?”

Clerk: “Yes.”

(Mom stares at the clerk and asks for a manager, please. A manager comes over.)

Manager: “What seems to be the problem?”

Clerk: “I was just telling her I can’t open a complaint form until she receives a letter telling her they didn’t receive her letter.”

(The manager stared at the clerk and told them to go work on [something]. The manager then filled out the complaint form for my mother.)

(I’m the operations manager at a department store. In an effort to cut costs, we’ve been directed to remove our registers from some outlying departments. Since I’m one of the more technologically proficient people in my store, I’m unplugging things and getting them sorted out onto carts to be moved to the stockroom where they’ll be fully wiped of information before they’re sent back to a central hub. Thus far, I’ve detached the card readers and screens from both registers, they’re already on a cart behind me, and all the cash has been removed from the tills. A well-dressed, uppity-looking woman sets two boxes of shoes down in front of me.)

Me: “Good morning! If you’d like to purchase these they’ll be able to—”

Customer: “Of course I want to purchase them.”

Me: “Great. As I was saying, they’ll be able to help you in the jewelry department right over there.”

Customer: “Why would I walk all the way over there?”

(The jewelry department is perhaps 100 feet away, towards the entrance to the mall where I presume the woman came in. Our only other entrance is in the tool department, quite a bit further away.)

Me: “Well, if you came in by the tools, they’ll be able to check you out over there, as well.”

Customer: “Do I look like I came in by the tools? Ring me up for the shoes now. I hate waiting like this; it’s stupid.”

(I look down in front of me at the wires I’m clearly detaching from the CPU of the register and then back at the cart behind me that’s got the screens and card readers on it. I turn back to the customer.)

Me: “If it’s not incredibly obvious, these registers aren’t functional right now. You’ll need to go to a department with a functioning register to check out; there are people ready to take care of you at either entrance.”

Customer: “Well, if they aren’t functioning, fix them.”

(It’s been a long day already and I’m apparently over her.)

Me: “I’m sorry? I’m not going to reassemble a register, get a cash drawer for it, and reboot the whole thing so that you’re able to cash out here. Jewelry or tools, please.”

Customer: “I can wait here all day; you will serve me.”

Me: “I encourage you to hold your breath.”

(I worked there for four more years. I noticed that woman shopping several other times, and I never helped her. Serve yourself, you entitled witch.)