A woman came in and asked for a $2 lottery ticket. Without thinking, I printed one that included a bonus lottery for an extra dollar bringing the cost to $3. I realized I made a mistake and asked her if she would still like to buy the ticket. She launched into a tirade about my incompetence, today’s society, lazy youth, etc., and stormed out of the store. A man standing behind her said, “I’ll take that,” put down $3, and walked out.

A few days later, that man walked into the store, checked his ticket, and found out that he’d won $250. That same day, the disgruntled woman came into the store, checked her ticket, saw that she’d won $10, and proceeded to tell me that I almost cost her $10 and that I should make more of an effort to listen and use my brain.

I just nodded and smiled.

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Years ago, my brother was working as an accountant for a small chain of mini-marts. Since he was considered management, he was not eligible for overtime, but they wanted him weekly to be on call and to come in on his day off to some task that was not part of his job and not a management task. California law indicated he might be eligible to collect overtime for that after all.

So, he requested about $10,000 to cover the unpaid overtime. The company refused, so he took them to the Labor Board.

He lost his suit with the Labor Board, but as part of the investigation, the Labor Board discovered that the company was shorting the overtime for other employees. The company was forced to pay the overtime and close to $100,000 in fines.

In addition, the investigator discovered that the company had official inventory taken, but then fudged the numbers on the tax returns and kept both the correct and the fraudulent inventories. So, the investigator turned them into the IRS. They were audited and ended up paying close to $500,000 in back taxes and fines.

This put a major crimp in the savings and income of the partners. Whether it was because she didn’t have enough spending money or because she did not want to be associated with the cheats, one of the partner’s wives filed for divorce and in the community property state, she ended up with a quarter of the business, which she insisted on taking in cash.

This resulted in the company going bankrupt. And it all could have been avoided for $10,000.

My father-in-law has a saying regarding breast size: “More than a mouthful is a waste.”

My sister-in-law had just told me about it. Curious, I asked my husband to open his mouth as big as he could. He was puzzled but complied.

Shrugging, I turned to my sister-in-law and said, “So I’m wasteful.”

Knowing about his father’s saying, my husband doubled over in laughter.

A customer contacted us to tell us that he hadn’t received his order. I checked the tracker, which said it was delivered to his address, gave him the link, described our packaging, and told him to go and look for it and to check with his neighbours, just in case it was delivered to them by mistake. He then came back to us, said he had already spoken to USPS, who had apparently left it on his doorstep where anyone could have taken it, and that we needed to resolve this and resend it for him.

So, I gave him the usual spiel: “Sorry to hear that. That is not what we would expect from any delivery company. You should contact them to try and claim compensation, as our terms and conditions clearly state that we are not responsible for stuff like this if the tracker says it has been delivered.”

The guy came back and told us that this wasn’t the first time it had happened, and that he has had multiple packages stolen from him before, so we would need to resend it ASAP. If we did not — and this was phrased in the most horrible and callous way possible — he would do a chargeback, knowing that it would hurt us financially and hopefully cause issues with our payment provider, and would do everything he could to damage our business online.

We are quite stereotypical British folks; we actually went and got a fresh round of tea for ourselves. We were fuming that much over his response. We spent a while discussing why he did not think to get a mailbox or contact USPS about the thefts, or even contact us to ask if we could send it signed for before purchasing — which was another gripe in his email. With immense displeasure, we agreed it was in the company’s best interest to resend it to protect our online reputation and chargeback stats and fees, and make it clear to him that this was a one-off, and then put him on a special status so that we would never accept orders from him again.

Just as I was about to ask for his order to be resent, I realised that he did not pay by card, and therefore could not chargeback us, and we had one of the best Friday afternoons ever!

My fiancée is shopping for a fancy women’s suit for our upcoming wedding. To save money, she, her brother, and their mom go to a department store. My fiancée finds a great suit that she looks amazing and comfortable in, but now she will need a tie for it. She goes to an associate, an older woman, for help.

The associate gives my fiancée — who does have a butch hairstyle — and her women’s suit a dirty look and tells her that women’s scarves, but not ties, are nearby and men’s ties are upstairs.

My fiancée still got the suit.