(When you call the store, you are given options to directly call one of the departments in the store — shoes, clothes, housewares, etc. — or if you don’t press any of the extensions and wait, you connect to customer service. A lot of times, people can’t figure this out and the customer service associate has to page the employees to take the phone calls.)

Customer Service: “Jewelry, you have a call on line one.”

Me: “Thank you for calling [My Name] in jewelry. How can I help you?”

Customer: “Can you talk to me about toys?”

Me: “No, give me one second and I’ll transfer you.”

(It kills me that she didn’t press the toys extension, waited until customer service picked up, told her she wanted to speak to somebody in jewelry, heard me say jewelry department, and thought that’s where the toys were.)

(One of my coworkers enjoys carpentry as a hobby and a side hustle. He’s done several small to medium projects for our group home where we work and for several coworkers. Today he’s brought in a work in progress that looks like a sign for home decor, with some words starting to get painted on it.)

Me: “Why does it say, ‘PROVE BS?’”

Coworker: “That’s supposed to say, ‘PROVERBS.’ I’m missing my ‘R’ stencil.”

Me: “Ah, I guess that makes more sense than a sign telling us to prove our bulls*** or something.”

(I’m at rehearsal for my college’s jazz band. It’s toward the end of rehearsal and we are about two-thirds of the way through sight-reading our last piece of music for the night. Suddenly the bassist stops playing. Once the director notices, he cuts us off.)

Director: “What’s up, [Bassist]?”

Bassist: “I don’t have the last page.”

Director: “What?”

Bassist: “I don’t have the final page of the music.”

Director: “Hmm…”

Bassist: “I’ll try to get by without it; could you give me some of the chords?”

(I usually stand next to the bassist. There’s an extension cord laying on the ground by my feet, so I pick it up and hand it to him.)

Me: “Here’s a cord.”

(The entire band begins to groan at my terrible pun, but the bassist just stares at me with a confused look on his face.)

Bassist: “Okay?

(We start getting ready to play again, and then, right as the director is about to count us off…)

Bassist: “Ohhh! I did not get that until just now.”

(I work in a store that has an in-store credit card. You can pay with debit, cash, or check. I would think it would be common sense that you cannot pay a credit card with another credit card, but it happens a lot.)

Customer: “Hi. I’d like to pay on my charge.”

Coworker: “Okay. Go ahead and insert the card and type in your PIN.”

Customer: “No, it’s a credit card.”

Coworker: “I’m sorry, but we need to have a debit card to make a payment.”

Customer: “No, I want to use this card.”

(He then begins ranting and becoming incredibly louder, making quite the scene. He finally leaves after his temper tantrum.)

Coworker: “What’s sad is that I know him. He works at the grocery store down the road where my son used to work.”

Me: “Seriously? My aunt is the manager there. I’m so telling her about this.”

(I told her about the jerk customer, and she made sure she made a big announcement at their employee meeting about why you can’t pay a credit card with a credit card because some jerk tried it at another store and made a fool out of himself. She made sure she was looking at him, too.)

Related:
To Give Credit Where Credit Is Due, Part 2
To Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

(I’m a passenger on the bus. A guy gets on and sits down in the seat across from me. The second the bus starts moving, he pulls the “stop requested” rope and gets off at the next stop, which, thanks to the huge cluster of stops on this street, is barely a block away from where he got on.)

Me: “You’re getting off already? Didn’t you just get on?”

Passenger: “Yep. My bus pass expires today and I wanted to give it one last taste of being useful before I throw it away.”

(Well, at least he didn’t pay $2 to ride for barely a minute.)