A woman comes up to the box office.
Customer: “You need to give me a refund for my movie because the person next to me farted!”
Okay?
Me: “Did it happen throughout the movie?”
Customer: “No, just once.”
Me: “…”
Manager: “…”
Customer: “It was really bad!“
Of course, she had to finish the entire movie before voicing her complaint.
For several years, I was the emergency planner for our county Health Department. In that capacity, I was expected to have protocols in place that could respond to any contingency — floods, tornadoes, terrorist attacks, civil disturbances, fires, explosions, biological warfare, you name it.
One afternoon, a nurse from the immunization clinic materialized at my office door.
Nurse: “Does EmPrep (Emergency Preparedness) have any booties?”
Me: “You mean the little blue disposable footy-things?”
Nurse: “Yeah.”
Me: “I’m afraid not. What do you need them for?”
Nurse: “This is one of those ‘you don’t want to know’ situations.”
I never did find out what they were up to down in Immunizations.
I work in a small engineering office with six others, although only two were there when this happened. If things are quiet and no one is on the phone, it’s normal for someone to whistle a bit or maybe start quietly singing to themselves. No one minds.
It was getting late in the afternoon, and I think my coworker needed to hit his silly quota for the day, to the tune of a song from a certain musical about a wannabe nun from Austria.
Coworker #1: *Singing* “How do you solve a problem like diarrhoea?”
I burst out laughing.
Coworker #1: “You like that, then, [My Name]?”
Me: “Brilliant! If they put that on in the West End, that show would run and run!”
[Coworker #1] and [Coworker #2] responded with a mix of laughing and groaning.
I am working on the loading dock where we load up larger bags of dog and livestock feed for customers who have paid inside. I meet a customer in the parking lot, take his loading ticket for a couple of bales of grass hay, and walk over to the small storage garage while he gets in his truck to back up. It starts up, and then I see it.
I see his hand reaching out the driver’s side door and casually tossing a small blue bag with a bit of weight to it next to the fence and onto our line of garden soils. I recognize that kind of bag, and I recognize what weight it must have had. There is no question in my mind — that is dog s***.
I’m giddy at this moment. I have thirty seconds to ponder my thoughts while he backs up, and yet it feels like years. Finally, he steps out of the truck. I’ve since hauled the two bails up to the bumper, but I stop my advance.
Me: “Sir, did you just throw something out of your car?”
Customer: “Uh, no.”
Me: “Yes, you did. Was that dog crap?”
Customer: “Don’t worry about it.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Customer: “I said don’t worry about it.”
Me: “No. No. You do not get to throw your dog poop onto my store!”
It’s not my store, but the pronoun choice gives me apparent authority.
Customer: “I wasn’t aiming for the store; I was aiming over the fence.”
Over the fence is a railway and bike path.
Me: “I don’t care where you were aiming! You can’t just throw dog crap wherever, and on top of it, I’m not responsible for your bad aim!”
Customer: “It’s not mine.”
Me: “Then why the h*** is it mine now?”
Customer: “So, what do you want me to do?”
Me: “If I move that pallet, will you go pick up your dog crap and properly dispose of it in the dumpster?”
Customer: “Ugh, sure.”
And he did. The dumpster was only thirty feet away, too. It made my day. It was the only time in seven years of working with this company that I allowed myself to chew out a customer, with great success.
Content Warning: Animal Death
I worked at an aquarium store that was near the big airport in my city. I got a call one day from an airline worker.
Airline Worker: “We have what appears to be someone’s live fish in transport, and the containers are leaking.”
Long story short, upon opening the containers, they found that many of the fish were protected exotics caught illegally in Hawaii.
My shop ended up housing them for a bit while we waited for the appropriate officials to intervene.
The gross part came a few days later. The stress of transport and being in broken, leaking bags with little oxygen was rough on the animals, and within a week or so, the (not endangered, thankfully) snails and other invertebrates began to die off, despite the best efforts of the store workers.
We had to freeze and keep the bodies as evidence to show to fish and wildlife, so I spent the evening one night fishing dead snails and tube worms out of the tank and carefully placing them in plastic bags for the freezer. The smell was overwhelmingly horrible. It made no difference whether I breathed through my nose or my mouth, so I had to stop periodically to run off the back loading dock and breathe fresh air.
It’s been years since that incident, but my barometer for bad smells has shifted ever since. I can deal with garbage and dog poo and rotted food with no problem because absolutely nothing compares to that.
