A friend and I are customers in a shop, mostly just doing the tourist thing. Someone’s kids are sprinting around the store doing a hide-and-seek kind of game around the shelves. They’re noisy but not destroying anything, so I’d count that as a small blessing for the staff.

Friend: “Hey, let’s get lunch after this. My stomach is starting to gnaw at me.”

I grab my phone and use it to Google food places nearby, and we find a fish place with pretty good ratings. We’re kind of gathered around my phone, looking at their online menu.

Me: “Their parmesan pollock looks pretty good…”

Kid’s Voice: “Pollock!”

I look up, surprised, as one of the kids goes sprinting through the store yelling “pollock” loudly like he just learned a new swear word. My friend snorts in amusement, and I shrug. It doesn’t take two minutes for the other kids in the store to take up the new word.

Friend: “I guess it does kind of sound like a word you’d say when you stub your toe…”

I snicker.

Apparently, the kids’ mom thinks so, too, because she storms over to us while we stand in line and starts berating us for “teaching children bad words”.

Me: “Ma’am, I didn’t teach your children any bad words.”

Mother: “Then why are they yelling that word all over the store?”

Me: “Because they probably don’t know what it means, just that it sounds like it might be a bad word?”

Mother: *Crossing her arms* “If it’s so harmless, then maybe you should explain the word.”

She has a smirk as if she thinks she has caught me in a lie and I’m going to fumble with the explanation.

Me: *Rolling my eyes* “Fine. It’s a fish.”

Mother: *Blank stare* “Excuse me?”

Me: “A pollock is a member of the cod family.”

Her blank stare continues.

Me: “Cod. You know, like codfish? We’re going to a fish restaurant, and I want to try it.”

Mother: *Suspiciously* “If it’s called cod, then why did you call it a pollock?”

I open my phone and show her.

Me: “Because it’s called pollock on the menu.”

The woman scowled at my phone for a long time and then turned and stomped away, muttering about made-up words to hide swear words.

My friend and I paid for our items and left the store, still occasionally hearing a child’s voice yell, “Pollock!” The fish, swear word or not, tasted great, by the way.

Customer: *Angrily* “Where are you hiding your shopping carts?!”

I point to the hundreds we keep outside the store.

Customer: “Oh, I thought those were just for display.”

Two women approach me, and one of them places a ruined pair of shoes on the counter.

Customer #1: “I need a refund! These just fell apart!” 

Me: “I can see that, ma’am. It looks like they got wet.”

Customer #1: “Well, yes, I put them in the washing machine.”

Me: “Ma’am, these are a delicate pair of shoes. You should wipe them to clean them, not put them in a laundry machine.”

Customer #1: “Well, there weren’t any instructions telling me not to!” 

The customer’s friend looks up from her phone and seems dumbfounded.

Customer #2: “Dear God, Barbara. It’s because of people like you there’s a tutorial video on YouTube on how to drink water…” 

Related:
Why Contracts Are A Gazillion Pages Long, Part 4
Why Contracts Are A Gazillion Pages Long, Part 3
Why Contracts Are A Gazillion Pages Long, Part 2
Why Contracts Are A Gazillion Pages Long

Our store has just fully reopened after lockdowns, but management is mandating that customers be vaccinated. Of course, this goes down with certain groups of the population about as well as can be expected.

Customer: “You can’t force me to take a vaccine!” 

Manager: “No one is forcing you, ma’am, but we also don’t have to let you into the store.”

Customer: “It’s my right as an American to go where I please without being forced to be vaccinated!”

Manager: “This store is private property, ma’am, and we can exercise our right to deny you entry.”

Customer: “Freedom has been a right in this country since 1776! Vaccinations are an attack on those freedoms! George Washington is turning in his grave right now!”

Manager: “George Washington made Congress force all his troops in the Revolutionary War to be inoculated against smallpox, ma’am. Please try again.”

In November, I attended a convention in Tucson, Arizona. Back in October, just before the cutoff date, I reserved two nights at the hotel and gave the code for the convention rate. They didn’t need a card number for the reservation, which I thought was odd, but oh, well.

I went up to the desk during the convention and told the clerk I had a reservation.

Clerk: “I don’t see anything here.”

Then, he poked around for a minute.

Clerk: “Here it is. The tenth and eleventh of October, not November.”

Me: “What? I specifically gave the TUSCON50 code to get the cheaper rate.”

Clerk: “Yup, I see that here, and at the convention rate. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

Luckily, they were only about a third filled, even with the convention, so I got a room — even at the convention rate.