I am helping some customers buy some local items. They are on vacation and have European accents, although I can’t place the exact country. They seem to have an American with them.

Me: “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you all from?”

Foreign Customer: “Denmark.” 

Local Customer: “They’re my cousins, visiting for the week.”

Me: “Oh, that’s awesome! I’ve seen pictures, and it looks beautiful.”

Foreign Customer: “Yes, it does have some pretty places. How much is this one?”

Me: “That’s [price] plus tax.”

Local Customer: “So, that’s about [full price].”

Customer: “Oh, yes, I forget that the tax isn’t included in the price.”

I’m about to make a light joke about differences between our countries when another customer who was listening in speaks up.

Other Customer: “That’s because your communist countries don’t do tax, because the state owns everything!” 

Customer: “Uh, that’s not true at all. Denmark is socialist, and we certainly do pay tax!” 

Other Customer: “Socialist! Terrible! I’m glad you managed to escape over to America. You guys are the okay ones. It’s the ones from Mexico we need to kick out!”

And with that, the customer wanders off as if they didn’t just string together a bunch of super insulting things one after the other. The poor group of Danes are looking at me with a look of bewilderment.

Local Customer: “Welcome to America, where a large part of the population uses the word ‘socialist’ to describe everything politically left of hunting the homeless for sport.”

Related:
Needs To Work On His Socialist Skills, Part 6
Needs To Work On His Socialist Skills, Part 5
Needs To Work On His Socialist Skills, Part 4
Needs To Work On His Socialist Skills, Part 3
Needs To Work On His Socialist Skills, Part 2

I went into the post office some years ago, needing stamps.

Me: “I’d like to buy half a dozen stamps, please.”

Clerk: “We don’t sell things in dozens or half-dozens. Your choices are six or twelve.”

Me: “…Six.”

The clerk gave me the requested stamps.

Clerk: “I don’t know why you people make weird and stupid requests like that.”

Me: “A dozen is twelve. Half a dozen is six.”

Clerk: “Now you’re just lying to seem smarter than me.”

Me: “No, ma’am, I would never try to seem smarter than you.”

I left, shaking my head and wondering if maybe, just maybe, we made one too many budget cuts to our education system.

I’m a woman with a pixie cut. I like to have an undercut and spike it up to keep me cool at work. Both members of a married couple have grabbed an item they only need one of. He hands me the extra one.

Husband: “Put this back; we accidentally grabbed two.”

Wife: “You should do it because it’s our fault and she’s clearly busy.”

Husband: “That’s her job.” *Pauses* “Or his or their job… I can’t tell anymore these days.”

Me: “I’m a woman.”

Husband: “Oh, good. I can’t deal with pronouns today. We didn’t have pronouns back in my day.” 

I just looked at the wife, who face-palmed and forced the transaction along before he could say anything else.

I don’t have a car, so I regularly use the light rail in my city. I was on my way downtown to meet a friend, and the train was pretty packed. I saw an older woman get on, and I gave her my seat. Then, I decided I’d just stand since I was close to my stop.

I was playing on my phone, and I heard a woman ask a question about a certain stop. I didn’t look up, but then she asked again with an angry tone. I looked up and she was staring right at me.

Woman: “I said, how do I get to [Stop]?”

Her attitude automatically turned me off.

Me: “How the h*** should I know? I don’t work here.”

Woman: “You must work here; you’re standing up!”

Now we were the center of attention on the train. I started pointing at other people on the train.

Me: “He’s standing. She’s standing. Do they work here? I’m wearing a jacket and jeans! Where does it say ‘Metro’?”

It finally hit her how stupid she sounded, and she put her head down because I was making some serious eye contact.

I got off at my stop and she had the audacity to say, “You didn’t have to be so rude,” right before the doors closed. All I could do was laugh.

Client: “I’ve worked with web designers before. I used to work at a large firm and was in charge of helping with the website there. I will be able to help you a lot. Here are a few images that we’d like to use on the site.”

Me: “These are pretty low quality, but for how big they’ll be on the site, I could make it work. Are these your only copies?”

Client: “Oh, I have some larger files! How would you like me to send them to you?”

Me: “You could zip them into a single archive file, upload that to [fileshare of choice], and send me a link, or you could put them in the [cloud storage] box we’ve been using. Or you could FTP them into the site’s ‘img’ folder for me. Let me know what you decide.”

Client: “You lost me at ‘zip’. Here’s the first image.”

With forty-plus emails arriving (and more with each passing second), each featuring 20MB-plus attachments, I’m typing this story in frustration.