Customer: “I’d like to find out information about upgrading my membership.”
Me: “Okay, if you were to upgrade it would be $100 instead of $70, and the coverage would be an extra 100 miles of service.”
Customer: “Can you print that out for me instead of just telling me?”
Me: “Sure!” *prints information out and hands to member* “There you go.”
Customer: “Can you read it to me? I can’t read.”
At some point when I was a kid, my father got the bright idea of using me for weight-bearing massage “treatments” by having me walk about on his back barefoot while he was lying on the floor. Mom usually gave me a hand to keep me stable. I have no clue if it ever worked to actually help with anything, but he kept periodically having me do it. When I was little I still thought it was fun.
His back seemed to gradually get worse as I grew older: lower spine problems. He mostly stopped having me do the walking massages as I aged into my teens.
Then one day when I was 17, when I hadn’t done it in several years, he seemed to be having some particularly bad back pains, and decided to have me stand on his back again. For some reason he was just absolutely convinced it would magically cure him, and somehow managed to rope Mom into agreeing with this. The problem is that at this point I weighed about 115 pounds — only about 15 pounds less than him — and could tell this was a terrible idea.
I refused. He insisted. I refused again and protested, pointing it out as being foolish and dangerous at my weight relative to his — he is a man of very slight and narrow build. He called me ridiculous. He and Mom both kept insisting, urging, and nagging me, and telling me I was being ridiculous. “Nothing will happen!” “Come on, it’s just a few minutes!” “Just stand on his back for a bit!” “Come on! Just help out your dad!” “It has to be you; there’s no one else, and you still weigh a lot less than Mom!”
After much protesting from me and nonstop insistence and urging — from Mom in particular, who’s always been very good at managing to bully me into doing just about anything against my will — I gave in, despite my better judgment. I very shakily stepped up on Dad’s bare back. His skin was sliding around sickeningly on his back under my feet. I nearly fell off right away, despite Mom doing her best to hold me up there, barely managing to stabilize me with her own entire weight. Meanwhile, he was very impatiently urging me to quit hesitating and being a coward, and get on with it already.
When I finally managed to stand on him properly, putting my entire weight on his back, he grunted alarmingly. Very alarmingly. And then he went abruptly very quiet. After maybe a couple of steps on him, Mom helped me get back off. Then, there were some very pointed, meaningful and alarmed looks between the two of them, but they didn’t actually say anything. I took this to mean I could finally escape the living room. Frankly, I just didn’t much care what was going on as long as I was no longer forced to participate.
There was a quiet commotion behind my back and for the rest of the day, I kind of made a point not to ask any questions for fear of being made to take part in some other poorly-thought-out treatment.
Though they’d never included me in important family concerns or given me any details about dad’s health problems, the general state of things became obvious to me in the next couple of days. What they’d made me do was indeed — Surprise! Surprise! — an incredibly terrible idea. Clearly I was too heavy, and it damaged his back even further. It was pretty severe, as far as I could tell, based the fact that he’d been forced to stay home from work for the next full week while spending pretty much all his time lying flat on the floor, except for occasional doctor’s appointments that Mom somehow had to find a way to cart him to.
Despite knowing it was stupid, I still felt guilty about what happened.
They didn’t say anything to me beyond a vague statement that Dad’s back had gotten worse — as if it was actually even possible to pretend that this had no relation with what they’d made me do. But there was never any hint of admitting that they’d done something foolish or that I’d been right. Unsurprisingly, in the following years, it became clear that Dad’s back was significantly damaged forever after this incident.
Lesson to be learned here: once in a while a teenager really does turn out to be smarter and have more basic common sense than both parents put together.
(I study dentistry at a dental clinic in France. The dental clinic is split into what we call services: surgery, prosthetics, urgent care, etc. That means that a patient who wants the teeth we remove to be replaced by a prosthesis needs to coordinate his appointments with both services. It’s more complicated than just going to a regular dentist, but in France clinics make you pay exactly what healthcare reimburses, making it free for everyone, apart from “better” acts, like implants. The basic stuff is 100% covered, though, and that’s why poor people come here. Every service is clearly labeled. I have this interaction while working in the surgery service, with a patient who has six teeth left, and NO prosthesis.)
Me: “So, according to your file, we have to remove those three teeth.”
Patient: “But you will replace them, right?”
Me: “It says in your file that you have an appointment in prosthesis; they will take care of it.”
Patient: “But I want you to do it now! It’s in two months!”
(It is rather urgent that his teeth be removed, as they have already become infected in the past.)
Me: “Ah, well, then, we can remove the teeth now, and you can go to your planned appointment. In fact, it’s not that bad; we require about two to three months of healing before we can make a fully-functional prosthesis.”
Patient: “What will I do without my teeth, though? I’d rather stay like this and come back in two months!”
(The teeth we’re talking about are premolars. His front teeth, the incisors, are long gone, as are his back teeth, his molars. The premolars serve no purpose if they’re not surrounded or faced by other teeth.)
Me: “Are you sure? They could get infected again and cause you a lot of pain. They’re of no use to you, you can’t eat with them, and we don’t see them when you smile.”
Patient: “I want to keep them! What would I do without them?”
(I don’t know, the exact same thing you’ve been doing for the past ten years with your six remaining rotten teeth? He ended up leaving and refused any care. Bet he’ll b**** and moan when, in two months, they tell him they can’t do a nice prosthesis for two other months…)
(I work at a take-away restaurant. It is a quiet evening, so I stand in the kitchen, washing the dishes, while my boss is taking orders at the register. I can hear her serving a customer, and then she comes into the kitchen and tells me that she’ll be at the warehouse for a while. I continue with my work until I hear an angry voice from outside, so I get out to check what’s up. A woman is standing at the register with a bowl of soup. When she sees me, she starts to shout even louder.)
Customer: “HELLO?! HELLO?! How long do I have to wait here until you come?”
Me: “Good evening. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you sooner. How may I help you?”
Customer: “Your coworker just made me this soup, and I can’t eat it!“
Me: “I am sorry, ma’am. What’s wrong with it?”
(The woman grabs a spoon and starts to stir aggressively in her soup.)
Customer: “You see this? This soup is too liquid! I can’t eat this!”
Me: “Uh… If you want, I can add more vegetables and chicken in your soup—”
Customer: “I DON’T WANT THIS F****** SOUP ANYMORE! THIS SOUP IS S***!”
Me: “Ma’am, I am terribly sorry that the soup is not to your tastes, but—”
Customer: “HOW DARE YOU SELL ME THIS SH**TY SOUP?! IT’S TOO LIQUID! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!”
Me: “All right, but you’ll have to wait until my boss comes back, because I am not authorized to do this.”
(She then continues to scream insults at me, getting more and more aggressive to the point that I think she will throw the soup at me, and going on about how the soup is too liquid for her tastes, until I’ve had enough.)
Me: “Would you please shut your mouth?! I’ve already apologized several times to you, and that’s all I can do for now. What… do… you… want from me?!”
Customer: “THE SOUP IS TOO LIQUID!”
Me: “That’s because it is soup; it’s meant to be liquid! Maybe you should’ve gotten a sandwich instead!”
(At this moment my boss returns. Without saying a word, she goes straight to the register and hands the woman her money back.)
Customer: “This place is awful! I’m never coming again!”
Boss: “We’re more than happy to hear that; now please get out of here.”
(I’m sitting in a diner next to a large family, and I don’t think they really understand what organic means, because suddenly I hear this.)
Woman #1: *presumably to the children* “Well, it’s organic milk. The reason it tastes sweet is because it’s from one cow.”
Woman #2: “And non-organic comes from multiple cows.”
Woman #1: “Exactly!”
(You can’t imagine the amount of restraint it took to keep my mouth shut.)
