Where I work, we keep printer ink behind the counter due to theft, and only employees are authorized to be behind the counter.

I’m about a third into my shift when this woman comes in and grabs a shopping cart.

Me: “Hi, welcome in. Is there anything you need particularly?”

Woman: “Yeah, just some printer ink.”

Me: “Oh, we keep those behind the counter.”

I don’t know if she thinks that’s an invitation to come to look or what, but she tries to get behind the counter to where the ink is.

Me: “Ma’am, I can’t let you back here; it’s employees only.”

Woman: “I just need to see the ink I need.”

Me: “I understand that, but due to a lot of theft, we can’t let anyone back here.”

Woman: *Screaming at me* “Do I look like someone who would steal?!”

Me: “Ma’am, it’s a security risk; no customers are allowed back here.”

Woman: “I’m offended that you’d think that way of me.”

Me: “If you tell me what kind of ink you need, I can get it for you.”

She tells me, I get it, and we head back to the register.

I proceed to hold up the ink to show her, and she tries to reach under the plexiglass to see it.

When I don’t let her have it immediately, she loses it, screaming that she should be able to get her ink, that she’s not a thief, and that I need to talk to my manager about this.

Me: “I’m sorry, but it’s not up to my manager; it’s a corporate decision.”

She then ran to get something else and ran into the manager on shift, who repeated the exact same thing I’d said.

Finally, she got her stuff, saying she’d never come back again, and spewed other nonsense that usually would make me cuss someone out.

I cashed her out and ripped the survey code off the receipt before it printed all the way, and she left.

I work in a chain pub/restaurant. We are fairly cheap, but we do pretty good roast dinners on Sundays, so we are normally full.

Today, we have been stacked — as in no table left empty for more than about two minutes — all day. It’s about 8:20 pm, and we close at 9:00 on Sundays. A couple walks in, and the guy demands “the nicest table we have” with his first words to me, which I take as an odd start, but oh, well.

I seat them in a fairly private corner of the restaurant. We are only now starting to have a few empty tables, so they can have a table for four, which I consider “nice”.

I take their drink order and come back to take the food order. Like 95% of our customers on a Sunday, they order roast dinners; he gets the beef and she gets lamb. He then asks if we cook to order, obviously trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about.

Me: “No, not the roasts. You can’t really roast meat to order.”

Man: “Well, it had all better be hot!”

Someone else takes their food out, but I go to do the check-back and ask if everything’s okay with their meal after a few minutes.

Man: “No, my meal didn’t come with any sauce.”

Me: “I’m sorry. What sauce would you like, sir?”

He has gravy, and I know the server would have asked if he wanted any sauce when they brought out his meal.

Man: “Mustard. Dijon mustard.”

Like he’s James Bond.

I go on the hunt for some. As I said, it has been a busy day, and we have run out. Our main food order with all the sauces, etc., came on Monday, and frankly, it’s not something many people order normally, so we do not have a massive stock. I go back and tell the man.

Me: “I am very sorry, sir, but it appears we’ve run out. It’s been a very busy day.”

Man: “What do you mean you’ve run out?! I want Dijon mustard!”

He literally sounds like a child.

Me: “As I said, sir, we’ve been very busy, and it’s late in the service, so, unfortunately, we’ve run out.”

Man: “Rubbish. Go and buy some, then.”

Me: “Sorry, sir, it’s a Sunday and the shops will be shut by now.”

And then he says the classic line.

Man: “I want to see the manager!”

I go and get the manager. She introduces herself and tries to calm him down. By this point, it’s 8:40. We are closing in twenty minutes and the place is emptying out. She tries offering him any other sauces, to which he says no. Then, he literally bellows:

Man: “If you don’t have Dijon, I am not paying!”

People all over the restaurant look round.

My manager, I think, decides, “What’s the point in arguing?”

Manager: “Fine.”

And then she walks away. The man looks crestfallen like he wanted the argument.

I carry on working as the man and his wife grumpily eat everything on their plates. By the time they are finished, it’s 8:50. I hurry over and ask if they would like dessert or any final drinks, and to my relief, they say no.

I fetch their bill, which has their drinks and the woman’s meal on it, but not the man’s. As I said, it’s a fairly cheap restaurant, so their bill is not too much. The man looks at me as I put it down.

Man: “What’s that?”

Me: “The bill, sir.”

Man: “I said I am not paying.”

Me: “Yes, sir, we’ve taken off your meal. This is just for your drinks and your wife’s meal.”

Man: “No, I’m not paying for any of it!”

Me: “Sir, we’ve given you your meal for free. You’ve not said there was any issue with anything else.”

Man: “The manager! Get her!

At this point, the place is basically empty, so the manager has been listening in and comes straight over.

Manager: “We can’t just give you a whole free meal. You both ate your meals, anyway.”

The man looked shocked by this and stood up. My manager and I looked at each other, and we both let him storm out. Frankly, it’s a chain restaurant, they were two of hundreds of customers we had that day, and neither of us thought trying to stop him was worth the effort.

The man’s wife hurried out after him. As she did, she clearly realised how ridiculous he was being as she took some cash out of her purse and left it behind. They both left, and my manager just looked shocked.

It turns out that the woman left more than enough to cover the bill, even with the man’s meal included, so I made a fairly good tip off of them.

Also, in his anger, the man left his scarf behind. It was left in lost property for long enough that he had the opportunity to come and collect it, and then I took home as a kind of trophy. It’s very nice! And it probably cost him more than the whole meal.

I’m working at a restaurant, serving a family. The husband orders for himself.

Husband: “I’ll have the lasagne, but can I have the lasagne swapped for the cod and then add a side of fries?”

Me: “Oh, we have cod and chips. I can swap the thick-cut chips for fries for you.”

Husband: “I can see that, but it has peas.”

Me: “We can hold the peas, and actually, the fish and chips are cheaper than the lasagne, so you’ll be saving yourse—”

Husband: “Just put it through as I ordered it.”

Me: “If you’re sure?”

Wife: “I think the young man is right abo—”

Husband: “I wouldn’t order it if I wasn’t sure. Just swap it. It’s not hard, is it?”

Me: “Not at all. I’ll put that through for you.”

That might be the oddest order I’ve ever taken, just for how silly it was. The chefs had a good laugh, as well. In the end, it didn’t matter on our end — it worked out to be more money for no extra work. But it was such a weird request.

Screw you, random rude guy from five years ago. I still laugh at the fact that you spent an extra £7 quid for being arrogant.

This happened around 2019. As I had an exam in a week, I went to the library to find the textbooks and other resources to study for it. It was a closed-book exam, but we were allowed a single two-page cheat sheet, so I was planning to type everything on a Google Doc that my friends and I all had so we could all print it out before the exam.

I was trying to finish the lessons that I was assigned to do the cheat sheet for. Luckily, I found a table in a secluded area of the library. I had been sitting there for a good forty-five minutes to an hour when I heard someone clear their throat rather loudly nearby.

Guy: “Excuse me! You have been using that computer for more than an hour now. You need to let other people like me use it.”

Me: “Um, the library computers are on the other side of the level over there.”

I pointed in the general direction

Guy: “No, I dont want to walk all the way over there; just give me this one.”

Me: “This is my own laptop. Get your own.”

This pissed him off, apparently. He tried to take my laptop. I moved it out of the way, which caused me to push my stationery off the table. It hit the floor with a loud thud. This caused the librarian to walk over.

Librarian: “What is going on here?”

Guy: “This girl is hogging the computer and not letting me use it to check my emails!”

Me: “This is my own laptop, not the library’s.”

The librarian looked at the sticker-covered laptop.

Librarian: “Yes, sir, that is her laptop, not the library’s. I am going to have to ask you to leave as you are disturbing other readers.”

The man huffed and walked out of the library.

I left the library at about 5:00 pm as the library had to close early. I saw this dude waiting outside the d*** library. HE STOOD OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY FOR AN HOUR!

I saw him and decided to walk out the other way around the library building. Halfway home, I had to make a turn at a corner with a mirror for cars to see if anyone is turning. I looked at it and found the guy following me. I sprinted across the bridge and all the way home.

To this day, I don’t know what the f*** this dude’s problem was. He followed me out of the library because I wouldn’t let him use my laptop?! What the f***?

This is a story that was recently brought up again by my mom when she was recounting some really s***ty racism she encountered when she first came to the United States.

It was the late 1980s in Los Angeles, California. By this time, my mom, a Japanese immigrant, had been living in the United States for ten years. Although she could speak English well, she wasn’t fluent and preferred to speak Japanese with others from the local Japanese-American community.

One day, she and a friend were waiting to be seated at a restaurant. As they chattered away in Japanese, a shadow cast down upon them. Looking up, they found a woman leering down at them.

Woman: “You two! This is America! Speak English.”

Startled, my mom and her friend made eye contact, unsure of what to do. Encounters like this were, sadly, ones they had run into many times since they came to live in the USA. They were not ones for confrontation. Before, they couldn’t do anything while their bullies marched off, unpunished. But then, as they made eye contact, a brilliant thing happened.

Mom likened the moment to their thought processes coming in sync together. They had a shared idea that didn’t need any further elaboration or explanation.

Mom chimed in the poshest English accent she could muster:

Mom: “[Friend], my dear, I do think the waiter ought to have shown up to escort us to our table by now. It’s frightfully rude to keep us waiting like this!”

Her friend replied, invoking her best impersonation of the Princess of Wales:

Friend: “Yes, darling, it is frightfully rude, indeed!”

As they continued to twitter away in their fake English accents, the woman began to slowly back away. Her face reddened and twisted itself in a visage as hideous as the Furies. Realizing that she had just been outsmarted by two young women obsessed with British culture and celebrity, all she could do was storm off down the street a defeated bully.

While there was no direct punishment, it was a story that my mom would continue to retell thirty years later. It has always made me chuckle to myself, and I hope you enjoyed it, too.