I am taking a train and have just had my ticket checked by a ticket inspector. The inspector then asks the next passenger for his ticket. The passenger starts speaking in a foreign language.

Inspector: *Showing a ticket* “I… need to see… this!”

Passenger: *Speaks some foreign words*

The ticket inspector gets out his phone.

Inspector: “Where are you from?”

I see him loading up a translation app.

Passenger: *Speaks some more foreign words*

Me: “Excuse me, sir, I believe I know what language he’s speaking.”

The passenger looks at me wide-eyed while the inspector breathes a sigh of relief.

Inspector: “Thanks, mate. What language is it?”

Me: “It’s the Black Speech of Mordor.”

The passenger is looking really miffed, while the inspector just looks confused.

Inspector: “Eh? Is that like… an Eastern European thing?”

Me: *Now looking at the passenger directly* “You were saying, ‘Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul,’ weren’t you?”

I look back to the inspector.

Me: “It’s a language from The Lord Of The Rings. It’s the ‘One ring to rule them all’ line. He’s having you on, mate.”

We both now stare pointedly at this fare-dodging passenger.

Passenger: “F*** you.”

The passenger got fined, and I spent the rest of the trip laughing at the audacity.

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This was relayed to me by one of my subway conductors, who said it happened to her when she was still new on the job.

She and another conductor are assigned to work the platform overnight. Because of track maintenance, the train won’t be running all the way to its usual terminal, so their job is to tell customers to go upstairs to a shuttle bus, which makes all stops at the terminal.

After several hours, she heads upstairs to get some coffee and is quickly accosted by a very angry woman who begins shouting at her about how she’s been waiting for the bus for three hours and they’ve been wasting all her time.

They’re standing on the mezzanine — upstairs from the tracks, but still very much inside the station. The woman never even went through the turnstiles. [Conductor] looks her dead in the eyes and says:

Conductor: “Ma’am, I don’t know how they do things here in Brooklyn, but in the Bronx, our buses run on the street.”

And she walked straight out of the exit.

To get home from the train station, there are bus routes from the station to the town. It’s quite a steep trek up the hill, and at the time of this story, I lived over a mile from the station. There was only one route that the bus took, which went toward where I lived. If no one was on the bus to where I lived, the bus would take a different route.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I got on the bus and the driver took the route toward my apartment.

Fellow Passenger: *Annoyed* “Why are we going this way when that lady’s the only one who needs to?”

He kept trying to complain, but the driver shut him down.

Honestly, had the bus driver taken the other route, I would have gotten off at the closest stop to my apartment, which would have been a five-block walk. No biggie.

I sell tickets at a bus station in Detroit, Michigan. A couple comes up to my counter, looking all excited.

Customer #1: “Am I reading this correctly that you sell bus tickets to London?”

Me: “That’s correct, sir, London, Ontario. It leaves in thirty minutes.”

Customer #1: “Two for that bus, please!”

I start processing the tickets as they speak excitedly between themselves.

Customer #2: “It’s a good thing we had our passports on us today!”

This is normal, as they’re crossing the border into Canada.

Customer #2: “I can’t believe we’re finally getting to see Buckingham Palace!”

I stopped processing the tickets. Then, I sighed and started the explanation that would ruin their day.

I worked at a large pet store chain for a few years, and I worked directly with the animals. I was on the bus, coming home from college. I had my headphones on, and a lad was trying to get my attention, so I took them off.

Lad: “Hey, you work at [Store], right?”

Me: “Yes?”

Lad: “Okay, great. So, my sister has this lizard…”

I’ve also had people ask me for information while I was shopping in other stores.