I work as a hotel receptionist. I usually have fairly polite and peaceful guests. During my afternoon shift, I have just replaced my colleague and I have barely settled down on my chair when a man with his son in tow barrels toward me.

Guest: *In English and sounding a bit agitated* “Excuse me, Mrs. [My Name], do you happen to know where the nearest KFC is?”

Me: *Tilting my head* “KFC? Terribly sorry, sir, but there aren’t any here. You—”

Guest: “Look, I know what you’re going to say, but I really need to know.”

Me: “As I was saying, there are no KFCs in this area, or… anywhere in Tuscany, really.”

Guest: *Getting flustered* “Please, my daughter is autistic. I already promised her I was going to get her KFC for lunch if she behaved. There’s gotta be one around here.”

Me: “Sir, I am not trying to be a snob or push you to a restaurant or anything. There really aren’t any locations here.”

Guest: “Okay, fine. Give me a map and I will figure something out.”

I shrugged and picked up a city map from behind my desk and gave it to him. He scooted off with his daughter excitedly following.

Later that evening, the man came back to my desk and apologized to me for his behaviour, saying that he got lucky that a rotisserie chicken cutlet was good enough for his daughter, but I’m honestly more confused by his lack of forethought about it.

My dad witnessed this incident in the late 1960s. He had gone to see a neighbour (rural area, so about a mile away) to get some peaches for my mum to can. Ben, the neighbour, was an old guy who had a small peach orchard and grew the best peaches ever. It was a bit of a hobby, and like many small orchardists (for my parents it was cherries and pears) he sold the fruit at the roadside. Dad had loaded up the peaches and was just talking with Ben when a car pulled up. Big city folks.

The car was a white Caddy convertible with Washington, US plates. This took place in Canada, so they were obviously not from around here. The couple, in their fifties, were a stereotype. The woman had blonde beehive hair, snazzy sunglasses, tight capri pants, and a tiny poodle. The man had socks and sandals, plaid shorts, a patterned shirt, a weird hat, and some attitude. He told Ben he wanted a box of peaches and demanded to know the price.

Ben was an old guy who knew a thing or two — about peaches and about people. Though a funny man to his friends, he had the ability to be stone-faced when needed (think Buster Keaton). He told the man that each thirty-pound box was (some price I don’t know, but it was probably a couple of bucks or so back then). The box was handed over and money changed hands. If that was it, then there would be no story, but…

Mr. Big City suddenly accused Ben of selling him less than the agreed-upon thirty pounds. Ben, who knew d***ed well what a thirty-pound box felt like, quietly disagreed. Big City insisted, so Ben hauled out a scale, zeroed it with an empty box, and transferred all the peaches into it to get an accurate weight. It was more than thirty pounds.

Dad said it was magical as Ben looked the tourist in the eye, and with a laconic, deadpan delivery, held his hand out, palm up, and said, “You owe me fifteen cents.” And the hand remained out until the guy fished for change and paid before quietly slinking back to his car.

I work on a cruise ship, and it has a private island. I’m a lead ship-wide entertainment tech, so I run the team of techs that runs the shows that happen in venues around the ship.

One of our stops on the island was unfortunately a cold day. My team was actually asked this question three different times.

Guests: “Could you turn up the heat on the island?”

You know, the island which is controlled by Mother Nature. I did give my team credit for not saying the answer that was actually in their head.

Some guests aren’t the brightest. I’ve been asked if I sleep on the ship or if I go home at night.

I live in Florence, Italy, and a tourist came up to me once to ask:

Tourist: “Why is every shop selling Pinocchio gadgets?”

That day she learned that Disney didn’t invent this character and that it was formerly a book. She was happy to learn and went along with her day, but to me and my colleagues, it sounded like a really dumb question.

That story always makes me giggle, but I wonder if this woman was really oblivious or the news I gave her was obvious just in Italy.

I recently went on a tour of a slate mine. Once we got deep into the mine, the guide asked everyone to turn their lights off so we could see how dark it was. He then lit a candle, which was all the light the miners would have had, but before doing so he told us a question a tourist had asked him a couple of weeks prior that he still didn’t have an answer to.

Tourist: “Can I take a photo of the darkness?”