I work in a grill restaurant in Amsterdam. A tourist bought a full rack of smoked spare ribs.

Customer: *Calling me over.* “I need to complain.”

Me: “What’s the issue, sir?”

Customer: “The ribs were really tasty, but I’ve been waiting for an hour, and I haven’t felt anything yet. I’m quite dissatisfied.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Customer: “I ordered a smoked rib, and I’m still not high!”

Me: “Sir, smoked means the ribs were smoked on a grill. They don’t have weed in them.”

Customer: “But… this is Amsterdam!”

Me: “This is not a magical place where everything has weed in it.”

The whole kitchen crew laughed for a solid ten minutes when I told them.

I had a woman come in for breakfast with her American tour group. We had a hot buffet (sausages, fried or poached eggs, bacon, hash, etc.) and a cold (Continental) buffet. You can get cold boiled eggs on the Continental. We also have omelettes available, but these are an additional $5, which tour group members didn’t like to pay for (their hot buffet is included with their room usually).

Guest: “I want an omelette.”

Me: “That will be an extra $5 charge.”

Guest: “But I don’t want to pay extra!”

I explain I can’t give her a free omelette, and she walks back to the buffet, grabs a plate, and fills it with three or four boiled eggs.

About three minutes later, she’s waving me over angrily from her table. All her cold eggs have been smashed apart on the plate.

Guest: “These aren’t what I want! I want the flat eggs!”

Me: “Sorry, you want the flat eggs?”

I’m thinking maybe that’s a style of cooking eggs in the US.

Guest: “Yes, the flat eggs! Like that one!”

She points to the omelette on the next table, where there are also some empty eggshells.

Guest: “Mine came out round! I want flat!”

Me: “To clarify, when you say flat, you mean like that?” *Points to the omelette.*

Guest: “Yes!”

Me: “Omelettes need to be made at the omelette station. They don’t just come out of the egg like that.”

Guest: “Then why does that table have flat eggs and eggshells?!”

Me: “Because they had both an omelette and some boiled eggs, which are the same as the round eggs you have.”

Guest: “Well, how was I supposed to know that!?”

That’s right. She’s never seen an omelette MADE. She thought because there were empty eggshells on the other table, that omelettes came packed and cooked up inside an eggshell, and that when you crack one open… it folds down onto the plate, I suppose?

After I explained this:

Guest: *Holding up the plate of smashed eggs.* “Well then, what the h*** am I supposed to do with this?”

Me: “I can bring you some mayo and boom, you got yourself some egg salad.”

She did not take me up on my offer.

I’m getting some self-serve coffee from a coffee machine at a convenience store next to a gas station. A car of tourists driving through has pulled in, and one of them asks a question we get a lot up here in Alaska:

Customer: “Do you guys take American money?”

Cashier: “We do.”

Customer: “Oh, that’s very cool of you.”

Cashier: “But I have to charge a couple dollars more for the exchange rate.”

Customer: “Oh, yeah, of course, that’s cool.”

Me: *In a disapproving tone.* “[Cashier’s Name].”

Cashier: *Rolling his eyes at me, but speaking to the customers.* “Oh, would you look at that, the exchange rate is the same.”

Customer: *Oblivious.* “Score!”

The customers leave, and the cashier half-jokingly says:

Cashier: “I could have made a couple extra dollars!”

Me: “Remember what your boss says?”

Cashier: *Sighs.* “We charge the a**hole tax, not the stupid tax.”

Me: “Were they a**holes or stupid?”

Cashier: “Just stupid.”

Me: *Thumbs up, and leaves.*

My spouse is autistic and gets overloaded easily. We’re vacationing in France, but I’m American. I speak some French. These are the facts you need to know to understand this story.

We’re on a very crowded bus in Nice, and my spouse starts hyperventilating. I start giving her a massage to calm her down.

A man, jokingly, demands in French:

Man: “Est-ce que je le-recevrai?” *Could I get one?*

I’ve been asked this before, but my typical response to this joke (a quick explanation of my spouse’s condition) is too complex for my limited French. So instead, I reply with a comeback I’ve been meaning to use against the rude people who make this joke, but have felt was too rude to use in the States.

Me: “Quand vous me-préparez le petit-déjeuner, après la meilleure nuit du monde.” *When you make me breakfast in the morning after a great night.*

Four other young men who had been standing with the man, presumably his friends, all go ‘ohhhhhhhhh’ and what I assume is French for some variation of ‘you got burned’. Or possibly ‘this American makes no sense’, I may have mangled the joke, but I think I said it right.

Blushing, the man turned back to his friends and left my wife and me alone the rest of the ride.

I’m in a pub with some friends. London, being the multicultural hub that it is, means that our group consists of people from all over the world.

Me: “I’m surprised we don’t have any more Americans in our group.”

Friend: “They’d only get lost anyway.”

Me: “Hey! I’m an American, and I get around pretty well.”

Friend: “An American once asked me where I was from. I told him Croatia, and he looked very puzzled and asked me, ‘Where’s Croatia?'”

Me: “I mean, that’s not too bad. Not everyone knows where every country is.”

Friend: “This was asked of me while we were in Dubrovnik, a city in Croatia.”

Me: “Oh… never mind, then.”