I work for a store that operates online mostly. We do have people come in from time to time, but we mostly do online correspondence. This one customer just will not stop sending us emails — for a few days straight — about the item he received being made in China.

Email #1:

Customer: “You cannot imagine how disappointed I was when the [item] I just received was MADE IN CHINA! I’ll never order from you again, because by supporting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), you are, in effect, allowing/supporting the takeover of America by the communists! NOT ON MY WATCH!”

Email #2:

Customer: “You sell crap made in China. I’LL NEVER BUY FROM YOU AGAIN!”

Email #3:

Customer: “And was I ever disappointed. The [item] was made in CHINA. So, that means that YOU are supporting the CCP! Never again will I buy crap from you. OH, what did I do with the [item]? I put it in my vice, cut it in two, and then melted it down in my forge. You could have at least been honest and stated that the crap was made in China… but OH, NO! You’d rather support the CCP than be honest. NEVER AGAIN WILL I ORDER ANYTHING FROM YOU, AND I’LL LET MY FRIENDS KNOW, AS WELL!”

My boss, the owner finally responded.

Owner: “Hi, [Customer]. Yes, many of our items are made in China, and many of your items, as well! If you have any of the following items, they all have ‘made in China’ parts, as well as being assembled there, too: nails, screws, TV, cable box, phone, computer, wallet, watch, clothes, iPad, tablets, food, car, and many other things.

“You might as well become a nudist and be nomadic if you don’t want to support the CCP at all. Live under a rock, and you might never hear about China ever again. But do your research before being so bluntly rude and disrespectful in an email.

“We don’t need your business, but you could have at the very least kept a professional manner instead of telling us you melted down the [item]. You just wasted your own money.

“Best regards, [Owner].”

When the remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep was in the theatres almost twenty years ago, my wife and I went to a showing. It was delayed by almost twenty minutes. An employee explained.

Employee: “Some idiot at the previous showing was screaming political diatribes at the screen throughout nearly the entire movie, and no matter how hard we tried, we literally couldn’t drag him out until the movie was over and everyone else had left. That’s why we had to delay your showing.”

For a short time, I was a notary/receptionist at a legal document preparation office. More often than not, we were preparing and executing trusts. I’ve met a few unusual people while here. But this couple stands out the most.

We were chatting while the office manager had to reprint a miss-signed page, come to find out that this couple had some very… odd points of view. They were convinced that Hurricane Katrina was so devastating because the Democrats were holding the storm in place with lasers.

Yes, lasers.

Yes, they were serious, because I made the mistake of asking more.

I’m a bank teller. A customer comes up and starts talking to me while I’m processing his transaction.

Customer: “You know, the Kennedy assassination was perpetrated by Martians. They’ve been controlling our government with mind-control devices from their spaceships that hide behind the moon. But there is a civil war happening on Mars, and the rebels are coming to save us. Their plan is to take as many humans as they can to colonize Jupiter before the Martian Army destroys Earth. I feel very strongly that you could be chosen to be saved, but your life is in danger by people who are being mind-controlled. Here, take this and carry it on your keychain to protect yourself.”

He handed me a pocket knife. Honestly, I really only took the knife so that he would have one less weapon at his disposal, but I ended up keeping it for several years. I only saw him four or five times over the course of a couple of weeks, and then he disappeared.

I drive a taxi. In the mid- to late 2000s, I picked up a man and his five- or six-year-old son late one Saturday evening. Back then, we had small screens mounted behind the front seats. They showed news and commercials to those sitting in the back seat.

The boy asked:

Boy: “Dad, what is on those screens?”

Dad: “News.”

Boy: “That’s boring. What is it about?”

Dad: “About some people in jail.”

Boy: “Who are they?”

Dad: “Some people in Iraq.”

I then recognised the story, which was about some 24,000 Iraqis who, at that point in time, were imprisoned by the Americans. This made the last comment rather funny.

Boy: “What are their names?”