I was waiting in line behind two customers at a coffee shop. This first customer looked at her friend and said:

Customer #1: “Oh my god! I’m so hungry I feel like Helen Keller!”

Customer #2: “Who’s Helen Keller?”

Customer #1: “She’s some Jewish girl that got locked in an attic.”

I laughed so hard they ended up glaring at me.

It was my roommate’s turn to do dishes after dinner, and I noticed, as she was going through, that she was only running things under the hot water, but wasn’t actually using soap.

Me: *Trying for a tactful hint.* “[Roommate], the soap is in the green bottle next to the drying rack.”

Roommate: “Ugh. No, I’m not using soap, not now that I can use water.”

I was never the most assertive person, so I just waited until she’d ‘washed’ everything, put them in the drying rack, and walked off, and then hopped up to wash them properly. I’d gotten out the wash bin and was scrubbing at a plate when she came back.

Roommate: “What did you do?!”

Me: “I’m just giving them an extra scrub with soap. I—”

Roommate: “—Where did all the bubbles come from?”

Me: “Uh… the soap.”

Roommate: “What?! Show me!”

I put a bit of soap on the plate, put it under the water, and scrubbed it around.

Roommate: “Wait, you can do that?”

Me: “Do what?”

Roommate: “Use soap with water.”

I’ll admit, that question sort of broke my brain a bit. I told her yes, finished up the washing, and we sat down to chat a bit.

It got rather personal, so I’m not going to share all of it, but in regards to her question specifically, it turned out that her family ‘didn’t believe in wasting water’, so when her mom would ‘wash the dishes’, she’d do it by putting a drop of soap on them, scrubbing them with a rag, and wiping them off with a different rag, which would, naturally, not really clean it but instead just leave a layer of soap built up on the dish.

My roommate had hated the taste of soap that clung to everything, so the moment she’d gotten to college and away from her parents, she’d shifted over to ‘washing with water rather than soap’ and hadn’t looked back, having never realized that you were supposed to use both.

For a few weeks after that discussion, she insisted on doing all the dishwashing, and would be giggling the entire time as she did it ‘the proper way’.

Related:
A Different Kind Of Soap Opera Drama, Part 2
A Different Kind Of Soap Opera Drama

I work in a cookie store. A man comes into the store on his phone, looking slightly confused

Me: “Hi! Welcome!”

Customer: “Yeah, hi, do y’all sell gluten-free bundt cakes?”

Me: “Sir, this is a cookie store.”

Customer: “So, no?”

Me: “No, sir.”

Customer: “Ah, okay, I’ll try somewhere else.”

He leaves the store and goes to the next door place, which is a tailor’s. We’re the only food shop on the block, so I truly have no idea where he was going.

I’m a manager for a sporting goods store. I come in one morning, and my associate is telling me a customer will be in later to complain about a pair of shoes, and he’s not nice about it.

The man shows up and after bashing the associate’s competence, he asks me to grab the shoes he wants so he can point out the issue. I’m annoyed already by the way he’s speaking to and about my employee; even if he’s right, it isn’t his place, and on this issue my associate wasn’t wrong. I get the white, leather Nike shoes the customer wants.

Customer: “See the wrinkle right here in the leather? This shoe is ruined! You have to have a new one shipped in.”

Me: “Sorry, sir, but I do not see a wrinkle. I only see the stitching. And at the moment, corporate is not allowing store transfers that are not on our shipping route, which my associate already checked for you. At the moment, there’s nothing I can do except wait for us to get another pair in your size, and I have no control over inventory replenishment.”

This annoys the customer, and all the berating directed at the associate is now aimed towards me. I let him say his piece, then inform him:

Me: “Sir, you can be respectful, or you can leave.”

He leaves. 

I inform my district manager of what happened. Within a week, my district manager calls to let me know the customer has called corporate and they’re sending the shoes. 

The shoes arrived a week later, but I had already decided this man cannot win, so I switched the shoe he rejected out with the new pair sent for him, then called him to come get them. The arrogant jerk walked in, nose in the air, and asked for the shoes. He pulls out from the box the exact shoes he rejected a week ago and starts waving them in our faces, clamoring about how perfect it was.

The associate and I manage to keep from laughing while he unknowingly celebrated buying the exact same shoes two weeks later.

One day, I was at the zoo, and a first-grade class was there on a field trip. I was at the leopard exhibit, and there were three little boys in line with their teacher in front of me.

The leopard made a roaring/groaning noise.

Boys: “Hi! Hello! Hi!”

Teacher: “He doesn’t speak English.”

Boys: “…”

Boys: “¡Hola! ¡Cómo estás! ¡Hola!”