Here in New Zealand, taxes are included in the shelf price unless there’s a really good reason for them not doing so. We have one area in the store that this applies to, but it is kept physically separated from the normal areas and is treated rather differently so people know what they’re about. BUT the store also prints receipts with the price listed without the tax on it since they sell to a lot of restaurants that need that information for their own tax reasons.

Tax is still on the signs and still added at the end; it just doesn’t appear on this tiny little piece of text in the middle of the receipt.

Me: *Finishing up a sale* “Thank you for shopping here. Here are your strawberries and your receipt. Enjoy!”

The customer takes the receipt but does not move away — not great at the express lane in the middle of the rush. The next customer is trying to politely reach me as this woman examines her receipt like it holds the secret to life itself.

Customer: “Why this?”

I glance at my current customer, get the nod to try and figure out this odd question, and turn to look at her.

Me: “I beg your pardon?”

She pushes the receipt at me and points to the tax-less price.

Customer: “This is less. Sign say [price]; why am I pay [lower price]?”

Me: *Pauses* “That is showing the price without tax. The tax is automatically added on here, see, and you did pay [price], here, see?”

Customer: “But sign say [price]; why is price lower? Why is not [price]?”

Me: “It… it is, ma’am. You paid [price]; that is the same as [lower price] plus the tax.”

Customer: “But sign says [price]! Why am I not paying [price]?!”

She definitely keeps quoting the higher price, so as far as I can tell, she’s not getting mad about not getting a lower price, but I also cannot seem to explain to her about the tax and the way our receipts work. I will remind everyone this is during the evening rush and at the express checkouts. I ring for a manager and the gods smile; it’s our produce manager, the one who wrote the sign that she’s quoting.

Manager: “What’s up?”

Me: *Straight-faced* “This customer has some questions about the prices she’s just paid. I’ve tried explaining about tax, but I don’t think she’s quite following me about it.”

Customer: “Yes! Why it say [price] but I only am paying [lower price]? It is [price]!”

With that, the manager took her away from the checkouts and guided her to the signs. I didn’t see her again, so hopefully, she understood. I also hope I didn’t misunderstand her asking me why she didn’t get the lower price. She definitely seemed insistent that it was the higher one and her receipt was wrong. Maybe she wanted me to make those receipts read more normally? I don’t know, but it’s not my problem anymore.

I’m on a bus on my way home from work. My stop is near the end of the line and in a residential area, so there are not many passengers coming onto the bus at that point. I hit the button for my stop, but the driver keeps on driving right past it.

Me: *Calling out* “Hey, you missed my stop!”

Driver: “What?”

Me: “You missed my stop, back there!”

The driver pulls over in a safe spot, and I go up front to swipe my card. He hasn’t opened the door for me at this point.

Driver: *Belligerently* “Next time, press the button.”

Me: “Excuse me? I did press it.”

Driver: “I didn’t hear anything.”

The other passenger and I both heard it.

Me: “Well, I did, and the light went on, so I know the button isn’t broken.”

Driver: *Suddenly, more belligerently* “Do you think I can see the f****** light from here?”

This is a fair point, as the light is behind him as he’s looking at the road. However:

Driver: “You sit down there—” *indicating his seat* “—and tell me if you can see it. Huh?”

Now a bit taken aback, I just stutter.

Driver: “Go on. Sit down there.”

He then grabs me and shoves me down into the driver’s seat. I’m not too strong and I’ve had a long day anyway, so he easily gets me sitting down.

Driver: “Can you see it? Can you see that light from there?”

Of course, I can’t, but at this point, I’m pretty fed up.

Me: *Standing up* “Look, mate, you know that I can’t see it. And I know I heard the buzzer, so either something’s not working up here or you need your hearing checked. Which one is it?”

The driver shrinks a little and opens the door. I start to tag off. The driver speaks a bit more meekly but still tries to be belligerent.

Driver: “I’ll put in a request to get it looked at.”

Me: “Smart move.”

And then I simply turned around and walked off the bus. I started using a different bus route the next day.

Dogs aren’t supremely common where I was living at the time of this story. Most properties were more or less built into vertical cliffs, so having a fenced-in space for a dog was difficult at best.

It’s not a law outside of required areas, but it’s generally accepted that when you walk your dog, you keep it on a leash. The only times I saw someone with a dog not doing this is because the dog was so old that “racing into the road” was less likely than “being able to make it through the walk”

Enter a neighbor and their Keeshond (basically, a labrador-sized ball of fluff and speed) and his love of chasing cats. My cat hated the road but would always follow me up the steps to it when I left for work, and often sat on the stairs waiting for me.

Turned out this dog did not have a leash and loved to chase cats. We found this out when my flatmate heard awful barking and the cat screeching before lunging into the safety of my room. His owner casually stood at the top of the stairs (almost three stories up from our house, five from the garden the dog was now in) calling for him to come back. It took about half an hour to round up the wayward dog.

That’s it, lesson learned, right?

NO!

This started to happen every week until my cat learned the beast’s routine and hid. While as far as I can tell the fluff-beast will not run out into the road, but if you go walking at the same time as him, you WILL be part of his territory now.

I work in a tattoo shop based in New Zealand, and we have a law making it illegal to tattoo anyone under the age of sixteen.

A girl who looks about fourteen walks in.

Girl: “I would like a consult, please.”

Me: “Can I see your ID, please?”

She gets super defensive.

Girl: “What?! This is age discrimination! I should call the police!”

I called my manager over and she called the police. The cop station is two minutes away from the shop, so they turned up in a matter of minutes. The girl was promptly taken away and questioned by police who then questioned me and my manager. We both got off with no punishment because we were abiding by the law.

The girl came back in after a few weeks and continued to berate us, so my manager and I banned her from the store and all other stores in the area.

I have an immune system the equivalent of dunking a teabag in a bath and pretending it’s the same as in a teacup. It’s a mess with my medication, but that’s what keeps me alive. You can imagine, a global health crisis has not been a fun time for me. I’ve been super careful and lost out on two years of my “best years” of life.

Local rules have eased up the lockdown and the holidays are coming. I’ve tried my best to order online and avoid… humans… but I have one package I need to collect in person at a mall. The store is near the entrance, so I decide to chance plague central. I live life on the edge. 

Most people are over the lockdown and all over the place. Luckily, I’m shopping in a store that’s quite quiet when I go in. I timed super early to avoid people. It’s practically empty, so I take my first chance in months to actually look at the merchandise in a store. So many shinies I pick up to buy.

There is one woman nearby, though. I think she is just interested in the specific merch like me… but as I get my new purchases and pull my personal hand gel from my handbag, I hear a voice right next to my ear at the counter.

Woman: “Oh, that smells amazing! Where did you get it?”

I jump out of my skin!

Me: “I ordered it from [Store]. Back off from my shoulder!”

She looks like I just threw her prized kitten into a pack of rabid wolves.

Woman: “I was only asking. I have a son with the same taste! I thought I might be able to ask…”

Me: “Back up first!”

Woman: “You are the rudest young woman I’ve ever met! I’m so at risk being out in the open like this.”

And then, with her mask at half-mast under her nose, she flounced away with the grace of a distressed jellyfish. 

Luckily, I did not catch the yuckies from her.