(It’s around 1AM and my boyfriend and I drive up to a popular fast food place before we head home after a show. The manager says over the intercom that they’re currently updating their cash register system and to please go order inside, cash-only. This happens after the cashier writes down our order on a spare sheet of paper and manually tallies the price on a calculator that was likely twice as old as she was.)

Cashier: Here’s your change!

Me: Hey, uh, do you take tips? Can I do that?

Cashier: *weird look* Uh, no, unfortunately we can’t take tips…

Me: Darn. I figured you’d need it tonight. You’ve probably gotten yelled at at least once by now.

Cashier: Ha, well, so far people have been alright, but some do get pretty upset. But we have donation boxes for [Company charity]!

Me: Great! Have a good night, alright?

(It’s only when my boyfriend came back with our drinks that I realized she’d given us large cups rather than the medium we’d asked for. Still a shame I couldn’t leave a tip!)

This happened recently during a super busy night. We have chicken burgers on our menu, and since day 1 they’ve been made with chicken ground in-house. The front of house manager comes to the me (chef) with a returned chicken burger:

Manager: “Hey… just to check, this is the regular chicken burger, right? Not our veggie chicken?”
Me: (taking one look at it) “Yup… that’s regular chicken, do I need to make a new veggie one?”
Manager: “No no… this customer just keeps saying it’s not chicken, I thought I was going crazy for a second”

He leaves and comes back 5 minutes later:
Manager: “So… that customer wants to talk to you, he’s not angry or anything, please come?”
Luckily he came in a small lull in service, so I went to speak to this customer.

Me: (hiding my annoyance) “Is everything alright?”
Customer: (waving the burger in my face) “This isn’t chicken”
Me: “Uh… yes… it is…”
Customer: “No it isn’t, chicken has fibres and everything, this isn’t chicken! What is this?!”
Me: “I assure you, sir, it’s chicken. We just pass it through a grinder and form it into patties…”
Customer: “No it isn’t! This isn’t chicken! I ordered the chicken burger because I had it last time and it was pieces of chicken together! This isn’t chicken, I don’t know what this is!”
Me: “Like I said sir… this is chicken, I don’t know where you had that before, but it certainly wasn’t here, as this is how we’ve done our chicken burgers since day one…”
Customer: “Stop lying! I’ve had it before here! WHERE’S THE CHICKEN?? WHAT IS THIS?!”
At this moment I couldn’t help but laugh and just walked away.

The manager was annoyed with me at first, but apparently the guy didn’t leave any complaints.

Ever since then the kitchen staff will periodically pick random food items up (usually vegetables) and scream: “WHERE’S THE CHICKEN?! WHAT IS THIS?!!”

(My partner sometimes talks in his sleep. He just looks at me, utters a few nonsensical things, and goes right back to deep sleep.)

Partner: *mumbling* “I’m sorry! I enabled them.”

Me: “What?”

Partner: “I enabled them! I enabled the gay monsters to s*** in here.”

Me: “O… kay. Sure, baby.”

Partner: *mumbles and snores softly*

(I thought he was messing with me at first but, as usual, he was sound asleep and will have no recollection of it when I retell the story later.)

(I work in a callcenter that processes claims for various electronics sold by different companies.)

Me- ” Thank you for calling (company), my name is (name), how may I assist you today?”
CM- ”Yeah, I don’t want a (company) plan.”
Me- ”No problem, when did you purchased your plan so we can issue a refund.”
CM- ” I didn’t buy it.”
Me- ”…”
CM- ”…”
Me- ”Well you don’t have to buy it.”
CM- ”Okay cause I don’t want it.”

(I’m working technical support for a small ISP.)

Me: “Technical support, how I may I help you?”

Customer: “Hello, I can’t bend my index finger.”

(It’s not unusual for customers to warn us ahead of time if they have a condition that we should take into account when we ask for troubleshooting steps, so I wait for the customer to start explaining his issue.)

Customer: “It’s really painful, and I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night because of it. I don’t know what I should do.”

Me: “Let me make sure I understand. Your issue is that you can’t bend your index finger, and that the pain is preventing you from sleeping?”

(My supervisor is sitting next to me and starts listening in on the call at this point.)

Customer: “Yes…”

Me: “Sir, are you aware that you called technical support for an Internet company?”

Customer: “Yes… I didn’t know who else to call.”

Me: “Sir, this is a medical issue; you should speak to a doctor. You should try calling a clinic or a hospital.”

Customer: *sounding resigned* “Oh… okay.”

(I wish the customer good luck with his problem and end the call.)

Supervisor: “Well, that was a new one.”

(From that point on, we started joking that our service was so good that customers call us for medical advice.)