This happens as the health crisis is raging. Our doorbell rings unexpectedly and my husband grabs a mask to answer the door. The dog is barking like mad. I’m a teacher and was just about to start a video conference with a student, so the untimely interruption already has me annoyed.

I am not near the door so the sound is muffled, but I hear what sounds like a sales pitch starting. My husband — a 6’5″ gentle giant — is far too polite to tell the guy to get moving, so I take matters into my own hands. I put on a mask on the way to the door.

As I reach it, I see that there is a home security sales guy right next to the door, about six inches from my husband, going straight into his spiel. He is almost as tall as my husband, and he is NOT WEARING A MASK.

I tug my husband gently from the door and light into the guy with all 5’2″ of my immune-suppressed fury.

Me: “What the h*** do you think you are doing, coming up to people’s homes in the middle of the day?! With no mask?! Get the h*** out of here!”

Sales Guy: “I just—”

Me: “No! Get going! And take us off your d*** list!”

The guy literally tripped over himself moving away from my door.

I’m normally more polite to people just doing a job, but you should not interrupt people’s workdays and put their lives in danger to sell home security to a house that already has a scary barking dog, a giant, and an angry halfling.

I am working in a movie company production office. As a general rule, in my city, a new TV or movie production starts up a new company with each new project.

A representative of the yellow pages calls us, obviously seeing that a new company has formed.

Representative: “Hi, this is [Representative] from the yellow pages. I’d like to speak to someone about setting up a listing in our book.”

Me: “Oh. Okay. Um. No, thank you. We don’t want to be in the yellow pages.”

Representative: “What? Everyone wants to be in the yellow pages.”

The representative starts her spiel but I cut her off as soon as I can.

Me: “No. Seriously. We don’t want to be listed.”

She starts up again and I start to get annoyed.

Me: “Look. We don’t want to advertise anything about us. We are a private company who doesn’t want to be bothered while we’re working.”

She pauses for a really long time.

Representative: “Are you with the government?”

That’s not the assumption I was expecting — especially since “Production” is in the company name — but I say:

Me: “Sure, yes, we are with the government.”

Representative: “Wow… Okay. Your secret is safe with me. Thank you and goodbye.”

I’ve never fielded that sort of call before or since, but I loved that she thought she’d stumbled on a secret government operation.

This story is part of our Best Of November 2020 roundup!

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My family is visiting Florida. We stop at a kiosk to pick up a free map.

Salesman: “Are you interested in going to [Big Theme Park]? We can get you some very cheap tickets if you attend a timeshare presentation.”

Me: “Sorry, we have a four-year-old. She’d never sit still for that long.”

Salesman: “Oh, you could leave her in the video game room!”

Yeah, I’m going to leave my toddler with a bunch of strangers to play video games.

I’m shopping at the mall when I’m stopped by a salesperson.

Salesperson: “Hi, would you like to try our health product? There are a lot of amazing benefits…”

He starts his spiel.

Me: “Oh, I’ve seen this product before. I’m allergic to some of the ingredients.”

It’s a powder that can be stirred into your beverage.

The salesperson replies rudely, as though I’m insulting his product.

Salesperson: “Our product is very safe; there’s nothing that can cause an allergy!”

He tries to continue his pushy sales spiel.

Me: “There’s milk. I’m allergic to milk.”

Salesperson: *Rolling his eyes* “Oh, there’s no milk in our product! It’s very safe!”

Me: “Did you check the ingredients?”

He has an advertisement board that is meant to grab the attention of passers-by, but it doesn’t have any details about the product. There are brochures behind him, which he definitely didn’t read if he doesn’t know the ingredients.

Salesperson: “Of course! And there’s no milk in it at all!” *Patronisingly* “Since you’re allergic to milk, you shouldn’t mix it into milk. You can just mix it into any other drink, like plain water.”

Me: “Do you think I’m stupid enough to consume this powder with milk, even though I’m allergic to milk?”

I took one of the brochures and showed him the ingredients, which clearly stated that it contained milk.

When it comes time to buy my first car, I am nineteen, have been working since I was fifteen, and have three-quarters of the payment in cash ready to go. My mum and I go to the car dealership. The car dealer assumes that she is going to be paying for the car and proceeds to pretty much ignore me.

He directs all his questions to my mum, asking her about warranties, leather seats, GPS, etc., while I have a look at the car itself and some pamphlets. I am happy for my mum to interrogate him about features while I just listen in and ask a couple of questions, but the guy’s faux pas happens while we are sitting down making small talk and filling out paperwork.

Car Dealer: “You know, I find it’s always girl drivers who get their license late!”

I am a year and a half older than the age when you can get your license in Australia; I couldn’t reach the 120 hours required before then.

Car Dealer: *To my mum* “Your daughter is getting it later than most but I find it always the girl drivers who get theirs late.”

The guy continues in this vein for a while. My mum and I are side-eyeing each other a bit at this point. The guy has pretty much ignored me in favour of my mum, and now he’s brought up how late I got my license, in a very generalising and kind of insulting way.

Car Dealer: “So, how are you planning on paying for the car?”

He looks at my mum.

Mum: “Don’t ask me; she’s the one paying for it!”

His face was hilarious as he finally started paying attention to me.