I am working in a restaurant in Alaska, and we get a few visitors. My manager is speaking to some customers.
Customer: “How long does it take a deer to turn into a moose?”
Manager: “About as long as it takes a moose to turn into a unicorn.”
The woman left still confused.
I am explaining traits of our bats in the bat enclosure in the zoo.
Me: “These bats, like all mammals in the Chiroptera family, are—”
A guest on the tour speaks up.
Guest: “Excuse me. You’re wrong. I would appreciate you not lying to my children.”
Me: “Wrong about what, ma’am?”
Guest: “Bats aren’t mammals! Honestly, you work in a zoo!”
Me: “Bats are absolutely mammals, ma’am. In fact—”
Guest: “Bats fly! They have wings! They’re birds!“
A few other members of the tour group chuckle, but I try to remain polite.
Me: “Some mammals can fly, ma’am. In fact—”
Guest: “Stop lying to the children!”
With that, she storms out, dragging two upset-looking children with her. I just turn to my group, who looks as dumbfounded as me.
Me: “Wait until she gets to the ocean exhibit and finds out about the dolphins.”
I live on the west coast of the USA in a tourist town famous for whale watching. I’ve heard these odd questions from tourists many times.
Tourist #1: “When do they let the whales out so visitors can see them?”
Tourist #2: “Does the rainy weather bother the whales?”
My client wanted something like a coat of arms for his logo. I showed him one with a lion.
Client: “It’s been done before. We want to be unique.”
So, I showed him one with a tiger, instead.
Client: “Not that unique. Tigers don’t belong on a coat of arms. Can’t we find a middle ground?”
A week later, tired of redesigning the logo, I just literally found a middle ground: I sent him one with a liger.
I work in a computer repair shop. We’ve had plenty of odd customers, as all such shops do. But we also have the occasional customer like this man.
Me: “Hello, sir, how can I help you today?”
Customer: “I have a laptop that needs to be fixed. And you’re going to want to wear gloves for it.”
Me: “Okay. What happened to it?”
Customer: “I bought a new puppy a few weeks ago. We’re still house-training him, and you can probably fill in the blanks from there.”
Me: “Oh… So, the puppy…”
Customer: “Yeah. My toddler son was playing on the computer on the floor and forgot to put it back on the table when he was done. The puppy peed on the computer. Are you still willing to work on it with gloves, or does that put you off?”
Me: “I’ll tell you what. I’ll pull the hard drive and put it into a reader to see if we can recover anything from it. If there’s enough data to recover, I’ll swap it onto a refurbished computer and sell you that for a discount as thanks for telling me up front instead of making me find out the hard way.”
Customer: “That works for me. Thank you!”
In the end, that’s exactly what I did: I copied all the data from his old laptop onto a refurbished laptop I had recently rebuilt, wearing surgical gloves any time I touched the pieces of his old laptop. I also started wearing surgical gloves as standard procedure any time I work on water-damaged devices; most customers are not as honest as this man.
