(I am female. I work at a pool as a lifeguard/swimming instructor/supervisor for a few summers. The town is extremely conservative, and I am dating another woman.)

Me: *picks up phone* “Hello, this is [Pool]. How can I help you?”

Customer: “I’ve heard there’s a [lesbian slur] working at your pool. How can you let her around the children?”

Me: “Ma’am, our employees personal lives are not our business.”

Customer: “Well, I want her fired. It’s inappropriate.”

Me: “You do realize it’s illegal to fire someone based on their sexuality in this state, right?”

Customer: “I don’t f****** care. I don’t want her around my daughter! She’ll fill her head with horrible ideas and make her a sinner!”

(By now, my boss has noticed that I’m about to cry, so she picks the phone up and tells me to hang up. I only hear my boss talking. Note: My boss is a 50-year-old mother of two that comes off as quiet, and I’ve never heard her curse before.)

Boss: “Ma’am, that’s not how we operate here.” *pause* “Well, f*** you, too. All of our employees are valuable members of the team, and I’d rather lose you as a customer than her as a family member. You are no longer welcome here.”

(I work at a pool where all the supervisors and managers are female. The only male employees teach swimming lessons or life guard. It’s a small pool, so there’s normally only two or three of us on duty. I was supervising a very quiet open swim with a male coworker. I’m 24 and he’s 16.)

Customer: “I need to speak to your manager.”

Me: “I am the manager, sir. How can I help you?”

Customer: “No, you’re not. I need to talk to the maaaaaanageeeeeeeer.”

Me: “I AM the manager. What do you need?”

Customer: “No, you can’t help me. I need the man out on deck right now.”

Me: “Sir, the guard on deck has been working here for less than two weeks. I’ve been here for over six years. What do you need?”

Customer: “Never mind. I’ll just ask him when he’s off.”

(I switch with my coworker a few minutes later. Not even a minute after, he comes out on deck to ask me to help the man who had been bothering me earlier.)

Me: “Are you willing to let me help you now?”

Customer: “YOU can’t help me. I want to speak to your boss.”

Me: *seeing where this is going* “My boss is also a woman. So is about 75% of this staff, which is fairly common in an aquatic environment. Now can I help you or not?”

Customer: “Fine. I need change for a dollar.”

(After a full term of swimming lessons, my four-year-old daughter’s teacher wants to meet me and give a report on my daughter’s progress.)

Teacher: “Your daughter never listens to my instructions.”

Me: “Really? That’s very unusual behaviour for her.”

Teacher: “Yes, I call [Another Name] and she looks but doesn’t respond.”

Me: “That’s because [Another Name] is not her name.”

(But it was her older sister’s name, which is why she took notice.)

(I am lifeguarding at the local pool when I overhear this conversation between a young boy and his mother:)

Young Boy: “Mommy! Mommy! I went pee-pee in the pool!”

Mother: “Good job, honey!”

(I overhear this one during a slow period at work. I walk past a father helping his young son out of swimming gear.)

Son: “Can I get back in the pool?”

Father: “I said if you behaved, and you were acting up. Now you’ve lost that chance. It’s time for dinner, anyway.”

Son: “Can I swim for a few minutes before dinner?”

Father: “No. I told you, you lost that chance.”

Son: “No, you took the chance so you have it now. Please give the chance back to me.”