One summer, my brother was getting married. Of course, I left dress shopping to the last minute, so I bought a dress without trying it on, as I was on my lunch break and there was a sale so there were a lot of people and queues to dressing rooms. I reasoned that the dress was a bit oversized so it could not look bad. I was wrong, of course; it did not look oversized, just big and ill-fitting.

The store had a return policy where you could return any items for thirty days and get the cash back, or if the item was on sale you would instead get a gift card so you could buy something else there. I went back to the store and got the gift card with the intent of just buying something else, but I could not find anything that I liked or that fit. I went back again after a few weeks but still had no luck, and I started to think that just getting my money back would be better. I asked the employee if I could just return the gift card for money, but no, that was not possible.

So, while hopelessly wandering around the store, I suddenly came up with an idea and went to the same employee.

Me: “If I buy something from the new collection for full price with a gift card, then could I return it and get my money back?”

He was a bit taken aback.

Employee: “Yes, that is how it works.”

Me: “What is the point of the policy if you can bypass it this easily?”

Employee: “No one has ever asked that before, but that my coworkers and our friends do it that way.”

I took the dress that was right next to the counter. The employee asked me to wait for a few days before returning it so it would not look suspicious and checked me out. I came back to the store two days later when another employee was working, returned the dress, and got my money back.

I’ve been back at work for about a month, and every shift, there’s always at least one person that has their brain completely switched off. The other day is a prime example. My restaurant is on a limited menu while most of our staff is still furloughed. I’m greeting a table, and a woman interrupts me, shaking her menu at me.

Woman #1: “Are you back to your full menu or is this all you have?”

Let’s try to work through this together. I’ve given you a limited menu. I have not given you the regular full menu. What can we infer about our availability given this information?

Two days later, I’m opening the bar. Right when the doors open, this other woman makes a bee-line for the bar that has no chairs at it.

Woman #2: “Is the bar open?”

No! You can tell that by the fact that there are no chairs here.

My first week back, an eccentric regular was asking about our sanitation practices.

Regular: “Are you able to sanitize the glasses and plates?”

Do you mean WASH the dishes? Yes, it’s been our practice to WASH the dishes after every use. Even before there was a worldwide health crisis.

I have these interactions several times a week. Have people always been this stupid? Have I just forgotten that while being furloughed for two months?

I worked at a job that had sales goals, and we worked from a pool of warm inbound leads, calling people inquiring about our services. The original lead of our department was a good guy, and as long as you hit or surpassed your sales numbers, then nothing else really mattered.

At some point, he moved on to a better company and was replaced by a woman that used to run a call center. She started creating strict metrics, like a number of calls per day required, etc.

Despite me being one of our top salespeople, she didn’t like that my number of calls was low every day. My logic was, if I am selling, then I’m on the phone. Many successful sales could take thirty to sixty minutes, so on a good day, I might make eight to twenty-five calls, whereas the new department lead wanted a minimum of fifty.

My solution was to create a list of people I knew that worked during the day and call their home phone numbers — while they were out — to pad my numbers and meet the fifty calls per day. I could crank out fifty calls in no time and then do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. The new boss was happy. I didn’t care to be wasting my time on their dime. Everyone wins, I guess?

A customer calls in asking if I can convert a PDF to a Word document for them. I go through the basics of getting the customer’s name, the school, and the machine details, which she cannot provide.

Me: “You can do this yourself by finding the PDF in Downloads, highlighting the doc by clicking onto it and right-clicking, and use the ‘Open With Word’ option, and then you can save it as a Word document.”

Customer: “Oh, can’t you remote on and do that for me? I am in the middle of something.”

Me: “Our services are for technical issues like if you have no option to open with or it comes up with an error when you try to do this; this is a relatively easy task that takes only a couple of seconds. Getting remote setup on your machine would actually take longer, as you said you didn’t understand how to provide your machine name.”

Customer: “Oh. Oh, never mind. I’ll log a ticket!”

Me: “Feel free. I’ll provide written instructions to you so you can convert PDFs to Word.”

Customer: “No, no, so you convert it and send it back.”

Me: “We currently have three schools down due to power outages; it will take a while for one of us to respond to a low-priority ticket. It’ll be quicker if you follow my instructions. In addition, as I explained, this is not a technology fault for us to fix, so the standard protocol is to send you written instructions; anybody that gets the ticket will do so.”

Customer: “I thought you were here to assist us with our job? Never mind.”

Bye-bye, administrator who can’t do basic tasks.

We are here to help you if the technology refuses to cooperate and do a task for you, not to remote on and complete that task for you because you do not know how to do it. We can provide you instructions on how to do it, even training, but we will charge. Considering you have worked at the school for over fifteen years, you know how to convert a PDF. Don’t play dumb on me.

If I were having a less stressful day, and she’d provided the machine information, I would have remoted on and showed her and got her to do it and let her know why it’s the way it is. Not being able to understand basic instruction means no remote session.

I am in an office supply store buying some notebooks for my classes that just started. I’m walking toward the checkout when I hear an exasperated voice.

Lady: “Ma’am. MA’AM!”

I turn and see a little old lady with a Ziploc bag of ink cartridges in her hand and her mask around her chin. She waves me over to her and starts asking me if “we” have any of whatever specific ink cartridge she is looking for. She claims to have been looking for several minutes, but she doesn’t see it, so could I maybe look and help her, or go look in the back?

I am wearing a long sweater and some black leggings, and I have on my Halloween mask in January. I am dressed for a job I neither have nor want.

Me: “I don’t work here, but I can go get someone who does for you!”

It falls on uncaring ears. She physically grabs my forearm as I try to turn away.

Lady: “Will another brand work with a [Brand] printer? I need to print!”

I tell her, truthfully, that I have no idea, but that I can find an actual employee who does. Apparently, this is the wrong answer.

Lady: “Why in the h*** do you work here if you don’t know anything?!”

Me: “Again… I do not work here.”

Lady: “Whatever. Go get one of your little friends from behind the counter; maybe they’ll know since you don’t. This place hires people without even seeing if they know anything about computers.”

Honey, first of all, a computer and a printer are very different. Secondly, I cannot speak to this store’s hiring process or their candidate vetting. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly… I STILL DON’T WORK HERE. So, I go grab my “coworker” and explain the situation to him. We share a little laugh over it, and he goes to receive what I am sure is more abuse. I proceed to the checkout, thinking my adventure over and lamenting that my boyfriend isn’t here to laugh about it with me.

However, while I’m checking out, on the CUSTOMER side of the counter, I hear a very elderly and accusing voice.

Lady: “THAT’S her!”

I turn and, of course, there she is, a manager in tow. She’s pointing at me, blaming me for being incompetent, rude, underdressed, inappropriately masked — every nitpicky thing you could imagine, all to this poor employee who obviously has no idea who I am.

Manager: “Uh. Ma’am. She… she is a customer here. She’s not one of my employees.”

She called the MANAGER on me, a customer, over INK. She ranted for a few minutes, insisted that we were all lying about me not working there in order to “cover up” the problem, and then stormed out with her little Ziploc bag of used cartridges. And I gained a funny little story to tell my friends at Dungeons & Dragons that night!