A woman comes out of one of the auditoriums with a look of rage.

Customer: “That film is obscene! It’s full of filthy jokes about flatulence and defecation!”

Manager: “Yes, ma’am. That movie is rated PG-13, and one of the reasons is for ‘crude humor’.”

Customer: “That’s my point! Teenagers can watch that! My teenage boys could see it!”

Manager: “Ma’am, who exactly do you think the target audience for poop and fart jokes is?”

The customer would have clutched pearls at that moment if she had any and demanded a manager. When she realized she was talking to one, she called us all obscene and stormed out.

Manager: *To me, a relative newbie at that point.* “You saw that, right? Lesson to learn working in the movies, or well, working with people in general. People will be offended over everything. Just smile and let them rant.”

Me: “Yeah, I learned that from when my mom took me to see Titanic when I was a kid, and we saw Kate Winslet topless. She demanded a refund for my poor, innocent eyes being ruined, ha.”

Manager: “I mean, that’s kinda understandable. A few months ago, a customer demanded a refund and then that we pay for their therapy because the movie involved a death from a car accident, and it triggered them from being in a car accident.”

Me: “Oh, well…”

Manager: “Which is awful, but the movie was Final Destination. So… like I said, smile and let them rant…”

I owned a computer repair business for a few years. A woman brings in a laptop slammed with viruses, spyware, etc. It was so bad it wouldn’t boot. I got it all fixed up, and she picked it up.

She’s back the very next day with the same issues.

Me: “I feel I need to ask, what websites are you visiting on this thing?”

Customer: “Oh, hmm, lemme see. My boyfriend spends most of our internet time on…”

She proceeds to list, totally casually, a long list of adult-oriented websites with names that would make most people blush.

Me: “Um, okay. I’ll go ahead and clean it again for free, but if you visit those sites, I can’t do it again without charging. Those sites are 100% the cause of all your computer issues.”

Customer: *All smiles.* “Okay!”

She picked it up the same day, and is back in the next.

Me: “Did you go back on those sites?”

Customer: *Laughs.* “Of course.”

Me: “Do you understand why this keeps happening?”

Customer: “Yup!”

Me: “And you go to those sites anyway?”

Customer: “Yup!”

Me: “I’m going to charge you every time you come in with the same issue.”

Customer: “S’all good!”

Those two and their choice of websites paid my rent for months…

Basically, my mom wishes I were a lesbian.

Part of it comes from her suspecting I’m a lesbian because of ONE isolated incident. In high school, my bestie and I were attached at the hip. One day, we went to the beach and then had to go somewhere after that. We stopped back at my house and WITH OUR BATHING SUITS ON took a shower together.

My parents came home during the shower and decided I was gay, despite me only having boyfriends before/after that.

She’s also desperate to show her other friends how “open-minded” and “cool” she is, by ALWAYS and frequently telling me she’ll still love me if I go gay and that there’s nothing wrong with that, which we all agree on, but she does have a habit of saying it in front of her friends a lot.

Anyhoo, it’s the night before my parents’ legendary annual party, and we’re making mushrooms stuffed with sausages. She’s explaining:

Mom: “You can either push the meat out of the ‘skin’ on the sausage link, or you can slit the skin and pull it out that way.”

Me: “I prefer a slit.”

Mom: “I KNEW IT! I KNEW YOU WERE A LESBIAN!”

This resulted in my grandparents and aunts walking into the kitchen at the exact moment I yelled back to my mom:

Me: “I LIKE D*CK, I LIKE D*CK!”

I ran a small retail store for a few years. A new guy ends up working in there with me, and I’d been thinking that things were going relatively smoothly, until I get a phone call from the district manager asking me if I’d been in the store on a number of specific dates and times.

I said no, I hadn’t been, [New Guy] had been by himself in the store at all of those times. He said he’d explain everything when he got there, specifically at a time when [New Guy] was going to be there.

So, he shows up, [New Guy] shows up, and out come some papers that I realized were phone bills, and apparently, they listed a whole mess of calls to all over the place, none of which had any connection with the business.

It seems that a guy who had been there earlier had left a stack of magazines under the counter, which were mostly oriented toward motorcycles, but which also featured a bunch of ads in the back for what I can describe as “adult entertainment” and all of which mentioned a specific cost per minute. The new guy signed over his paycheck and was terminated on the spot, along with a promise that he’d pay off the rest of the balance.

A woman came through my line. After ringing up her multiple hundreds of dollars’ worth of clothes, she then began to hit on me and insinuate a few things:

Customer: “Any way I could “work” for the clothes instead of paying for them, if you get what I mean.” *Wink wink.*

I look around the place and lean in with a whisper.

Me: “Well… we could go to the store bathroom…”

Customer: “Oooh, yeah!”

Me: “…and you wait there while I come back with mop, bucket, and gloves. By this time of day, that place is disgusting, and it really needs to be cleaned.”

She didn’t even say a word. She just dropped everything and walked out.