This conversation happened in the break room of the electronics store where I work.

Coworker #1: “I don’t understand these people.”

Me: “What people?”

Coworker #1: “I keep seeing customers wearing sleeveless turtlenecks. What the h*** is even the point of that?”

Me: “I mean—”

Coworker #2: “—Hickey coverage.”

Coworker #1: “Huh?”

Coworker #2: “The neck is the number one place for your lover to put a hickey, and turtleneck sweaters help to cover them up. Which is great… if you like being warm. But if you prefer to cool off, you want light clothing that leaves your arms exposed. A sleeveless turtleneck gives you that while still covering up the hickeys.”

Coworker #1: “That’s… huh. Guess that makes sense.” *Walks off.*

Me: *Once [Coworker #1] is gone.* “Dude, what the f***?”

Coworker #2: “Hey, any dumba** who is already acting like clothing has to have a POINT, instead of being allowed to just look nice, deserves bulls***.”

My getting fired was a joke of a concept at this store because we were going out of business, and they were understaffed. So, I could get away with a lot.

One day, as I was about to leave, a customer was harassing one of my fellow cashiers. The lady was trying to buy a Lego set for her son, an expensive one, I think it was originally priced at like $100, and was 80-85% off. However, the box it came in was pretty banged up, so she felt entitled to even more of a discount.

Going-out-of-business sales are “As-Is” sales. This means that all the items sold are discounted, and are being sold in the condition they are in for that discounted price, no exceptions.

This isn’t set in place by employees, or even the management staff; it is set by whoever/whatever is in charge of liquidating the company and its assets.

Customer: “I want another 20% more off of this!”

Cashier: *Calmly and professionally.* “Ma’am, I can’t add any more discounts.”

Customer: *Getting up in the cashier’s face.* “Get me someone who can then, as I doubt they’d give that much power to some Mexican at the checkout.”

This set me off. I want to preface before writing this next part that another coworker and I decided to dress overly nice for our last month, so we would get mistaken as management.

Me: “Ma’am, what seems to be the problem?”

Customer: “Your cashier is not cooperating with me.”

Me: “How so?”

Customer: “This item is $20, but it’s damaged, and I should get a discount for that.”

Me: “You are getting a discount, an 80-85% discount, actually.”

Customer: “I should get more, because it is damaged!”

Me: “This is an as-is sale, ma’am. Do you know what “as-is” sale means? It means the item being sold is sold as-is. Are you capable of understanding that?”

Customer: “But I’m getting this for my child! Pieces could be missing!”

Me: “If you feel like pieces could be missing, you are more than welcome to not buy the item, and buy it full-priced somewhere more reliable.”

Customer: “But I can’t afford that!”

Me: “Then I guess you can just not buy it.”

She throws the Lego set onto the ground and remarks:

Customer: “This is why your piece of s*** store is closing down!”

Me: “Actually, it’s because we didn’t make budget for giving out too many discounts to cheapskate racist customers who blame cashiers for how miserable their lives are.”

Customer: “How dare you!”

Me: “What’re you gonna do… get me fired? The store is gone in a week, and I am off duty. Stay here and moan, but all I’m gonna do is start using the c-word.”

Customer: *Storming out.* “I hope you all go homeless and f****** starve!”

Customer: “Will these fridge magnets work?”

Me: “If your fridge door is made with a coated sheet of steel, or regular stainless steel, then it’ll stick to the door.”

Customer: “I wanted to use them on my kitchen backsplash.”

Me: “What’s that made of?”

Customer: “Aluminum.”

Me: “Then no, aluminum is not magnetic.”

Customer: “But it’s a metal.”

Me: “Well, technically, all metals have some magnetism, but aluminum is so weak it doesn’t work with standard fridge magnets.”

Customer: “But… It’s a metal. All metals are magnetic, like you said.”

Me: “It’s not magnetic enough.”

Customer: “Well, do you sell fridge magnets that are magnetic enough?”

Me: “No, ma’am.”

Customer: “Can you get someone who knows what they’re talking about?”

Me: “That’s still me, ma’am.”

Customer: “You don’t sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

Me: “No, you just don’t like my answer, but it doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about. If you like, I could go into detail about how aluminum isn’t ferromagnetic, but instead paramagnetic, which is very weak. Or, due to how aluminum atoms have one unpaired electron, they can technically interact with a very strong magnetic field, but it would need to be even stronger than what you’d get in a hospital MRI, so your fridge magnets, which are about a thousand times weaker, have no chance.”

Pause.

Customer: “You could have just said you don’t have them in stock or something…”

Customer: “When does [other store in the mall] close?”

Me: “Well, the mall closes at—”

Customer: “—I’m not asking when the mall closes, I’m asking when [other store] closes.”

Me: “I don’t work in that store, ma’am, so I don’t know.”

Customer: “But it’s in the same mall!”

Me: “But I don’t work there.”

Customer: “You should have the information for every store in the same mall as you!”

Me: “Ma’am, where do you work?”

Caller: “That’s none of your business!”

Me: “And other stores’ operating hours are none of ours.”

She left with a typical customer ‘hmph.’

My manager asked me how I knew the customer was going to answer my question that way, and I told him I didn’t. I was actually going to assume she was going to tell me where she worked, and I was going to ask if she knew the favorite foods of all of her coworkers, because they all worked in the same building so she must know everything about them… but how the conversation turned out was way better.

Reading this story reminded me of my encounter with that word in the workplace.

We’re in the back office doing weekly sales reports when my coworker starts narrating a spreadsheet that he’s going to present to a boardroom full of bigwigs. He’s asked me to be really nitpicky so that the presentation is impressive. He also has a habit of overusing the thesaurus to pepper his presentations with ‘fancier words’ to sound smarter.

Coworker: “So I only compared homologous items to keep the numbers clean.”

I glance at his screen.

Me: “Those are all the same SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).”

Coworker: “Yeah?”

Me: “So, those are homogeneous. Homologous would be comparable-but-different items.”

He frowns, visibly annoyed.

Coworker: “That’s basically the same thing.”

Me: “It’s not. One means ‘identical,’ the other means ‘structurally similar.'”

Our boss, who has been pretending not to listen while making coffee, looks up.

Boss: “I don’t know. They both sound identical and gay to me.”

My coworker and I look at him.

Me: “Why, [Boss], are you homophonic?”

He didn’t get it.