I just finished editing a thirty-second commercial spot.

Client: “Great, now upload it to the FTP.”

Me: “Sure, it should be there in about an hour.”

Client: “An hour?! It’s a thirty-second spot!”

Me: “I need to render everything, then export the file, then compress the file (from 7GB to 100MB), then upload it. It might take less than an hour, but we should budget an hour to be safe.”

Client: “I thought it would take thirty seconds! It’s only thirty seconds long! I told the customer we’d have the ad ready in five minutes.”

Me: “Why did you tell them that?”

Client: “Because it should only take a minute! I was giving you an extra four!”

I was working as a cashier at a large retail store that sells car parts. Ten minutes after close, once the doors were locked and we were all closing out our tills, a man came up and banged on the doors. A manager went to the door to meet him.

Customer: “I need to get windshield wipers!”

Manager: “We’re closed, sir. We open again at 8 am tomorrow.”

Customer: “But I need windshield wipers!”

Manager: “I’m sorry, sir, the tills are closed. You will have to come back tomorrow.”

The man leaves, clearly frustrated.

Cashier: “I don’t know why this is such an emergency. There’s no rain forecast before next week.”

Me: “Here’s the high-res version of the logo. Let me know when I can expect to have my invoice returned.”

Client: “Um, about that… I’m not sure I can approve this.”

Me: “The logo? But you approved it yesterday.”

Client: “That was yesterday.”

Me: “Yeah…?”

Client: “It’s not yesterday anymore.”

Customer: “Why is this beef so expensive?”

Me: “I don’t set the prices, ma’am. That’s just how much it costs.”

Customer: “But the last time I got this, it wasn’t so much!”

Me: “Well, it might have recently gone up in price. When did you last get it?”

Customer: “Thanksgiving…”

Me: “Oh, well—”

Customer: “…1995.”

Me: “…”

Dear readers,

According to some dictionary I found online, “time” is defined as: “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.” Time is a complex concept to contemplate.

Telling time, however, is generally less difficult to understand… unless you’re one of the people in these stories. We’ve rounded up 10 stories from our archives about people who just don’t quite understand how to tell time!

Close-Minded – What part of “always” did you not understand?

Time Waits For No Ham – Who just casually waits three hours for a sandwich?

As Easy As 1, 3, 2 – Hits from the comments: “Obviously the customer was a time traveler. Just, not a very smart one.”

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