I recently stayed at a hotel, where conference organisers had booked me into a wheelchair-accessible room. It was round the back of the building down a lane-wide ramp with no sides, handrails, or lighting. Even in a wheelchair, I wouldn’t have been able to get to or from it unless someone was there to push me.

The hotel’s answer was that there was a dedicated disabled parking bay nearby so I could just drive to the front of the building, hope to find suitable parking, and walk across the busy carpark every time I wanted to go to breakfast, reception, the coffee shop, meetings or anywhere.

When I pointed out I didn’t have a car and would need to call a taxi each way to take me from my room to reception and back, I got the obligatory “deer in the headlights” look.

It’s not really the hotel’s fault. Despite it being completely unsuitable for me, who can walk (sort of) and would be on my own without a car most of the time, I believe the room was quite spacious and well-equipped.

The requirement I had asked for was accessible washing and toilet facilities, so I ended up with a smaller and more basic (but still accessible) room, but at least I could make my own way around.

They were also good enough to provide a proper ergonomic computer chair so I could sit in my room and work.

Watching the cogs whirring was fun; I don’t think it had ever occurred to the managers that without a car, or at the very least a fairly meaty powered chair, there was no safe way to go to and from their premium “accessible” rooms.

A customer orders a latte and then sits down next to it browsing their phone for over half an hour. They take a sip, look disgusted, and storm back up to the counter.

Customer: “My coffee has gone cold! Now it’s lost all its caffeine!” 

Related:
Making A Caffeine Scene

Customer: “I want you to make my coffee for me.” 

Me: “I’m just taking the orders for today, sir.”

Customer: “No. I want you to make it. I don’t trust those other guys. I was in Afghanistan, and I don’t trust Arabs to make my coffee.”

I try to ignore how wrong all of that was.

Me: “Well, they all make a decent cup of coffee, sir, I assure you.”

Customer: “Fine… but you’d better be making them tomorrow.”

Me: *Just trying to move this along* “I will try, sir.”

Customer: “It’s so bad in America these days. They’re everywhere. I saw online yesterday that they started teaching Arabic numbers in schools! That’s crazy!”

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.”