While cashiering, I have a break in customers and work on some straightening. When I next look up, I see a couple going over their items with a woman cradling her substantial amount of fabric. Then, I see something that looks like a tiny paw reach out. I am too far away to be sure, but I assume it has to be a kitten to be that small. 

They soon come up to my register as I’m the only cashier open, and I ask for the fabric ticket to scan, as well as the usual customer service questions. Just as I’m asking them how their evening is going, the woman sets down the fabric and it rustles. She asks me if I want to see their new baby and starts to uncover the top of this vague fabric nest.

A hedgehog perks up and, within a moment, attempts to dash across my register!

The woman catches her pet before it can get too far away or come to any harm, and thankfully, she holds on to it in the fabric for the rest of the short transaction, both her and her partner pleased and friendly the whole time. It is hardly a bad experience but decidedly one of the stranger things to have ever crossed my register.

I used to work for an office supply store a few years ago. This has always been one of the most amusing and confusing things that happened to me there.

I was working the register when a man came in with his young daughter. He was carrying a decently large box full of printer ink and wanted to return it all. Now, printer ink is expensive enough that we are extra cautious with returns — it can’t be open, etc. — but for any kind of returns at this store, we need a receipt. I asked him for one and he said he didn’t have one.

After some back and forth and attempting to explain that I couldn’t make the return without a receipt, I expected the next step to be him angrily demanding to see my manager, who also would have refused to return multiple hundreds of dollars’ worth of ink with no proof of purchase. Instead, he picked up the box and told his daughter they were leaving. 

Over his shoulder, as he went out the door, he told me, “If you won’t let me return this here, I’ll just go return it to [Competitor Store]!”

I’m still confused as to why he thought that was a good final word to have in this.

I am a customer at a grocery store waiting to check out. There are three lanes open: one regular checkout, one express checkout, and the self-service checkout, which has six registers. There are lines at all three but things are moving fairly quickly and smoothly.

A woman carrying around five items, [Customer #1], walks up and looks over the lines. Rather than simply get in a line, she walks to the checkout next to the open express line. The light indicating which lines are open is between the actually open one and the one she chooses, both express. [Customer #1] dumps her items on the belt, even though it clearly isn’t manned, and proceeds to glare at the back of the head of the cashier at the open express line who is currently in the middle of another customer’s order. Once the cashier rings everything through and is waiting on the computer she turns and politely apologizes and tells [Customer #1] that the light is for the other register and indicates where the line is.

[Customer #1] huffily picks her items back up and walks to the end of the belt of the open express line. The next few customers in the express line, though, step up, essentially blocking her access to the belt — note that everyone in the express line has the appropriate number of items. [Customer #1] glares at them and surveys the three lines again. She sees that the couple currently unloading at the regular checkout are just finishing putting their items on the belt. So, she walks over and stands next to the next guy in line, [Customer #2]. He does have a full cart but is in a regular line, has been waiting, and clearly saw what [Customer #1] just did.

[Customer #2] turns his back to [Customer #1], putting himself between her and the belt, picks up a couple of his items, and begins unloading immediately when there is room. [Customer #1] pretends to almost drop a couple of her items — she has not seemed to have any difficulty holding everything before this — and sends a death glare at [Customer #2]’s back. When he doesn’t turn around and completely ignores her, [Customer #1] turns to survey the three lines again.

[Customer #1] apparently decides to try the self-checkout line next. There is a line of around five people off to one side so none of the aisles are blocked. The woman at the front of the self-checkout line, [Customer #3], has a full cart — again, nothing improper as the self-checkout lines at this location have no item limit. I am second with six items and there are another few people behind me with varying numbers of items. [Customer #1] approaches the self-checkout from the side opposite where the line-up is and tries to walk into the middle of the area. [Customer #3], in front, casually steps into the middle and uses her cart to block the opposite side. I actually admire the move as [Customer #3] does it with much ease and nonchalance, never even actually looking at [Customer #1]. The rest of us in the line also move up and toward the middle, making sure [Customer #1] isn’t able to step between anyone in line.

The employee monitoring the self-checkout — who is actually standing right next to where [Customer #1] tried to push in — very politely informs [Customer #1] that the line goes the other way, apologizes for the wait, and indicates where the back of the line is. [Customer #1] glares at the employee and pretends to almost drop her items again. She then glares at everyone in the self-checkout line, and then at everyone in the express line — a couple of people have left and a couple more have joined the line — and then at the two people now in the regular checkout line. When everyone ignores her and she can’t catch anyone’s eye, she finally goes to the end of the express checkout line.

It was satisfying to be part of a group effort to stop this woman from getting her way. She was just so clearly trying to bully her way to the front of a line. It was amusing to watch her be stymied as pretty much everyone ignored her. While I kind of wish the cashiers had been able to tell her off for trying to cut, watching her get extremely frustrated by their polite, feigned ignorance was also funny. And bottom line, she probably would have been done faster if she had just gotten into the express line in the first place.

At fifteen, I am socially anxious and do not really get along with most of my classmates. We have a math lesson; everyone has to solve an equation in front of the class and then name the person to come and solve the next one. I am good at math and have no problem solving mine; however, as the equations are fairly difficult and the teacher is known for being stern, I hesitate to name the next classmate in fear that they might get upset.

Suddenly, a boy who sits near me yells, “Pick me!”

He has no clue how to solve the equation and earns some strong words from the teacher. 

However, twenty years later I am still grateful that he possibly saved me from at least some hostility and bullying.

About ten years ago, I got my first job in a local pub right on the seafront. It was — and still is — a beautiful location, and my best friend also worked there behind the bar. I thought I had scored the perfect job, but due to the actions of a few terrible people, it became a living nightmare. There were many things that went on that you probably wouldn’t believe, but today I’m just going to tell you about one of the milder instances.

The big boss, a giant of a man almost as wide as he was tall, wanted to train me up on coffees. Along with the usual instructions, he told me to just put the jugs of hot steamed milk back into the fridge after we were done with them. They were large pitchers, so the same batch of milk would be constantly heated, cooled, and reheated throughout the day. After the boss had walked away, my best friend quietly told me that it wasn’t safe to do that, and we should throw the old milk away as soon as the coast was clear.

Concerned, I did some research that night and found that, yeah, it’s not safe to keep steaming hot liquids in the fridge, as the repeated cooling and heating keeps the milk in the “danger zone” temperature range too often, which could lead to the growth of bacteria, as well as potentially affecting the temperature of everything else in the fridge.

Being young, naive, and on the autistic spectrum, I innocently assumed that my manager was simply unaware of these facts, and that surely he would be glad to know the truth. I printed off my findings and took them to him the next morning.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t go well. 

He shooed me into the kitchen, physically backed me up into a corner, and began threatening me that — in his own words — “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” and that he had been thinking of giving me a promotion but now he “didn’t think he could trust me.”

I had my hours cut, and of course I never got that promotion, which honestly I don’t think ever existed. If we were ever caught throwing the milk away, it was taken out of our pay. It was a good lesson in never trusting the bosses to do the right thing, a lesson that has been backed up time and time again in every place I’ve worked since.