I’m working the host stand.

Customer: “Table for four, and it’d better be a booth.”

Me: “All our booths are occupied at the moment, but we have one that’s just got their check, so if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, then—”

Customer: “—We don’t want to wait. No one is sitting at THAT booth. Give us that!”

The customer is pointing at a booth that shares a wall with the bathroom. The bathroom is single occupancy and so poorly insulated that the booth will often smell. When sitting at this booth, you could quite literally hear the person peeing or using the sink in the bathroom. So we used that booth to roll napkins and do other setups.

Me: “Well, that booth is where we keep our rolling stuff, not to mention it’s close to the bathr—”

Customer: “—so you’re being lazy, is that it?”

Me: *All smiles.* “No problem! We’ll get this stuff cleared for you right away!”

I hope they enjoyed smelling s*** and listening to the bar customers p***ing after making us move all our crap so they could sit on top of the bathroom.

We now call the table “the enchanted grotto” and sit all of our most entitled customers there.

Our hospital is in the South. A couple I can only describe as “trashy” checks in, and she goes to the chairs to wait after a grandiose amount of PDA.

Nurse: “What brings you in tonight?”

Patient: “I got the drip.”

Nurse: “The what?”

Patient: “The drip! You know… the d**k drip.”

The nurse, who is from the north of the country, looks at me helplessly. I make a ‘G’ shape in the air and mouth “Gonorrhea.” The nurse nods and continues listening to the patient.

Patient: “I got a shot for it last time. I just need another shot.”

Nurse: “How many times have you been treated for this?”

Patient: “Three. Can I just get my shot?”

Nurse: “Is the woman with you tonight your girlfriend?”

Patient: “Yep.”

Nurse: “Are you and she sexually active?”

Patient: *Proudly.* “H*** yeah!”

Nurse: “Do you think she should get checked out, too?”

Patient: “Why? She ain’t got no d**k!”

I am leaving my shift at a grocery store, apron on my arm, purse on the other shoulder, leg lifted to enter the driver’s side of my boyfriend’s truck. A customer approaches with a plastic bag in one hand and a pack of chicken thighs in the other.

She demands:

Customer: “Ma’am, smell this.”

I stare in shock for two seconds before saying:

Me: “No matter what is wrong with that chicken, you have to go into the store for a potential refund.”

And then I got into the truck and left, still in disbelief.

I’m a new radiographer, being given a tour of the hospital’s imaging and radiography department.

Resident Radiographer: “This is the archive room. We keep records for all patients for the last five years here. Once a year, they get taken down to long-term archives.”

He shows me all the folders and records, sorted by patient name and imaging method.

Me: “This shelf is all x-rays, and there’s no patient name.”

Resident Radiographer: “Oh, that’s The Book. It doesn’t contain any patient data.”

Me: “Then… what is it?”

Resident Radiographer: “Every time we have to do an X-ray on someone who claims they fell, and an object just happened to insert itself so far up their rectum that they needed to go to the hospital, the X-ray ends up in there.”

Me: “Oh… my… God.”

Resident Radiographer: “It’s sorted by the name of the object. That folder is ‘L’ and is mostly light bulbs.”

Me: “I don’t want to know.”

Resident Radiographer: “Give it a few weeks… working here, you won’t have a choice.”

Sadly, he was right. Inside my first month, I was adding my own page to The Book, and had to ask if I filed it under ‘F’ for Funko Pop or did I file it under the name of the specific character.

An older couple has been shopping in the clothing section for a while. While his wife is in the fitting room, I find myself standing there with the husband.

Me: “I hope you’re both finding everything you need today.”

Husband: “Yeah, but this store is really going downhill.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What issues are you experiencing?”

Husband: “Well, for one, none of you girls working here are young! You’re all in your forties! I want pretty young girls waiting on me when I shop!”

Me: *Disgusted.* “Well, that’s not something that affects your ability to shop here and find the items you need, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

Husband: “It does affect my ability! If I can’t find something I want a pretty girl to find it for me! I know I’m never gonna get to f*** her, but this way I still get her to do what I want.”

I pause a moment, giving my brain time to process those words and determine if he really did just say them out loud, or if I imagined the whole thing. Turns out, I’m awake and lucid, so I decide if he can talk like that, then so can I.

Me: “That’s okay, you human equivalent of the hair and gunk at the bottom of the shower drain. None of us would touch you even if we were hookers with herpes.”

The look on his face was priceless. His wife could hear everything from her fitting room, and she couldn’t stop laughing.