Client: “Don’t bother with ShutterStock; grab pics off of Google Images.”

Me: “We don’t have the rights to them.”

Client: “We don’t need them. Everything on the Internet is in the public domain.”

This was a Communications Director within the Canadian Federal Government.

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My coworker and I have finished most of our closing duties. We are just waiting for the last customer to finish up so we can go home for the night. We have checked in with her a few times and helped pick out some supplies for learning to knit. She finally comes up to the counter and pays before dropping this gem.

Customer: “So, you guys can teach me how to knit, right?”

My coworker grabs the class sign-up book and starts into our spiel on dates and teachers, but the lady interrupts.

Customer: “No, like, now. It isn’t busy and it’ll just take a minute.”

Me: “Umm, I’m sorry, but we have to close up and go home now.”

She looks disappointed, but we recommend some books and YouTube tutorials and suggest she come back for a class if she needs to. We finally get her out the door and turn off the lights, but she stands outside for a while before knocking on the door. When my soft-hearted but assertive coworker checks on her, she says:

Customer: “Are you sure neither of you could teach me right now? You are done with work!”

I didn’t hear what my coworker said to her, but the customer finally left, and we made our escape!

My city’s public transit system has had a rule since mid-2020 that people have to wear masks on the buses and trains. There are signs on each bus and train and at all train stations and the major bus stations, and there are automated announcements played while riding the bus and train explaining this. However, some people argue with the drivers about it. In May 2021, I overheard the most bizarre “reasoning” yet.

Woman: “I don’t need a mask; I’m already blind!”

I was midway down the bus while she was yelling at the driver, so I might have misheard her. She might have actually said, “I’m already black,” though if she was then her skin was light enough that it was not obvious, but neither of those things gives immunity to the contagious illness that caused the health crisis, as far as I’m aware.

Bus Driver: “You’ll need to pull your mask up.”

A passenger who just boarded has his mask around his chin.

Passenger: “No.”

He goes to pay his bus fare. The driver blocks the coin slot.

Bus Driver: “Then you can’t ride the bus.” 

This should not be news for anyone, as for several months now the bus company has had bulletins on the windows of every bus and train, and at each station, that this is now policy for the whole city-wide transit system.

Passenger: “What? That’s stupid. What does the mask even protect you from?”

Bus Driver: “It protects you from getting kicked off the bus. Mask up or get off.” 

The passenger swore at the bus driver and left.

I work in banking for a number of years long before the introduction of automated tellers. One branch that I work at is robbed several times in the space of a year.

After one of these robberies, with numerous police cars parked out front and a sign advising that we are closed due to a robbery, one of our least-liked customers starts rattling the doors and screaming to get in.

Customer: “I have some urgent business to transact!”

This goes on for a good half-hour, despite her being told by the police that the branch is unlikely to reopen today.

She returns the following day a few minutes before we open and, again, starts pulling on locked doors and yelling for us to let her in.

When the branch opens, she storms into the manager’s office.

Customer: “Your service is atrocious. You don’t know who I am or you would treat me better!”

The manager, fed up with her antics, has me prepare a bank draft for the balance in her account, and then he gives it to her.

Manager: “Please never darken our doors again.”

I thought she was going to have a stroke on the spot. She called us every name in the book, threatened to have the entire branch fired, etc. Meanwhile, my manager hit the silent alarm button and, as we’d been robbed the previous day, the police showed up in record time.

She wouldn’t listen to the officers who responded, and she was taken out in handcuffs. No one got fired.