I rarely swear, and when I was young and earnest I used to get uncomfortable around people who did. I got over myself in the end, but reputations can be long-lasting, so people sometimes comment on it. I’m talking to a friend about this. He has a darker sense of humour and gets a kick out of shocking me.

Friend: “Swearing is like sex; its impolite to do in public, doing it with someone shows how much you like them, and if you go to a party where everyone’s doing it and you just point out that you don’t like it, they begin to wonder why you came.”

I’m about to comment, and then…

Friend: “Also, doing it with someone who doesn’t like it is rude at best.”

Me: *Shocked* “F****** h***, dude!”

Friend: “Ah, you’re catching on.”

I’m monitoring a room in a historic house when a little girl of around four or five wanders in. We have the rooms set up with the original furniture, so I try to keep an eye on her.

Girl: “Hi.”

Me: “Hi, honey, where are your parents?”

The girl points to the room she just came from.

Me: “Oh, great! Why don’t you head back to your parents? When they’re ready, you can pop back and I’ll see you again!”

Girl: “It’s just my mummy.”

Me: “That’s great! Is she still in there? Could you go stay with her for me?”

There’s a pause.

Girl: “My daddy doesn’t live with us anymore.”

Me: *Awkward pause* “Oh, no!”

Girl: “It’s okay. He just moved out.”

There’s yet another pause.

Girl: “Daddy moved out so Uncle Pete could move in. Uncle Pete lives with us now.”

Me: *Another, even more awkward pause* “Your silly mummy’s taking a very long time, isn’t she?!”

Girl: “Mummy and Uncle Pete are going to have a baby.”

Me: “OKAY! Back to Mummy, sweetheart!”

Related:
Ah, Children

When I’m a teen, my family is visiting my family and we go to a movie theatre with the younger generation of kids and teens. We go to see one of the “Transformers” movies and I am seated beside my cousin who is so dyslexic that, even as a teen, he can’t read.

During the movie, all of the baddies are checking in over walkie-talkies in preparation for an attack. They are speaking their own alien language, so I lean over to my cousin to read the subtitles to him. The music swells as the scene progresses, so I get louder with it. Then, it stops suddenly to build excitement for the coming battle.

In this sudden silence, I yell the final subtitle.

Me: “ALL HAIL DECEPTICONS!”

The roar of laughter from the almost sold-out show, my family, and their friends shook the theatre.

To this day, the younger ones of the family who were there still rib me about it.

This story is part of our Best Of December 2020 roundup!

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I work for a phone network in the UK in the late 2000s as a shop salesman.

The company has a problem with declining sales, so, along with a string of other draconian measures, they insist that if you miss any one of your twenty-one key targets each month, you have to travel to wherever your area manager is and explain in person why you failed and how you will correct this for next month. If you don’t, they start disciplinary proceedings.

A lot of us on the staff realise the colossal mistake they made in the wording. First off, we can choose when to travel to them, and by law, the company has to pay for it. They even say they will pay travel and “other expenses” in the announcement and link to the government website stating the requirement.

Cue malicious compliance!

I have taken a new role in a different industry and am on my three-month notice. This new policy comes into effect in the first of the three months, and a while later, I miss one of my targets (for amount of accessories sold) by 2%. So, I get the summons to see the area manager.

I am informed that there will be a meeting of area managers held in Aberdeen — the far north of Scotland — in two weeks, so I schedule my meeting with him accordingly.

I live and work near the other end of the country, so I use the company system to book my travel, and due to the journey times — nine hours each way — I have to book a hotel for two nights. I also opt to pay the optional £50 to upgrade all my bookings — first-class rail ticket and a four-star hotel instead of a budget option.

On Monday, I travel up and stay overnight. Tuesday afternoon, we have my fifteen-minute meeting.

Area Manager: “So, why are you here?”

Me: “I missed my target for sales of accessories by 2%.”

Area Manager: “How do you plan to correct this so that we don’t have to start a formal disciplinary?”

Me: “I don’t.”

Area Manager: “I beg your pardon?!”

Me: “I have no intention of making a huge effort to sell £4 more stuff. I officially leave the company in three weeks.”

Area Manager: *Turning red with anger* “What the h*** are you doing here, then? Why have you even bothered?”

Me: “Well, I need a good reference, so I’m following all the rules.”

I also showed him how much they had paid to send me up there. Train tickets were close to £800, and the hotel was around £400 for two nights. So, they spent close to £1200 to send me most of the way up the country to tell the manager I was leaving. Oh, and they also paid me for three full days of work to attend this meeting, since it was on company time.

Coworkers told me later that they also did similar tricks and it basically cost the company tens of thousands of pounds to send staff here there and everywhere to these meetings. It also caused a huge turnover in staff who had just had enough with all the garbage. Around three months after I left, I heard that they stopped doing this as the cost was astronomical, and the amount of staff downtime was also astronomical.

The company has slowly learned their lesson, mainly through replacing most of the top brass with people who have a clear idea of what they are doing. But that was the best trip I ever had to Scotland!

As a manager, I regularly price-check other charity shops nearby, and I know that our prices are the lowest in the area. Still, we regularly get asked to give discounts, especially if someone thinks an item is faulty.

The cashier calls me to the till to deal with a customer demanding a discount on an item that’s already reduced in our sale.

Customer: “This cardigan has a massive hole in it.”

Me: “I’m sorry, we’ll remove it and send it off for recycling.”

Customer: “No, I want to buy it.”

Me: “Okay, well, it’s on sale, so it’s only £2.49.”

This is for a brand that would have cost upwards of £40 new.

Customer: “Aren’t you going to give me a discount?”

Me: *Showing the tag* “It’s already been reduced.”

I look at the “massive hole.” It’s a small split in the seam that would take less than five minutes to repair.

Customer: “But that’s so expensive, and it needs repairing.”

Me: “It’s already been reduced, and I know from checking that even at our full price, it would still be cheaper than any other charity shop in the area. The repair is a five-minute sewing job that I would do myself if I had the right thread in the stockroom.”

Customer: “Well, I can’t sew. I’ll have to send it to my mother down south to have it repaired, so I think it should be discounted.”

Me: “It already is discounted. Our branch is the cheapest charity shop in the area, and to buy this brand at this price is an absolute steal. [Charity] has set prices and that is the absolute lowest price I can sell that item for.”

The customer spends a good couple of minutes grumbling about how much effort it’s going to be to repair this tiny split seam.

Customer: “What will happen if I don’t buy it? Will it be destroyed?”

Me: “It will go to our recycling centre, where it will probably be repaired and sold in our online shop, and they can get a much higher price than we’re selling it for.”

Customer: “And you can’t discount it?”

Me: *Starting to lose patience* “It’s already discounted. That is the lowest price it will be for it to be worth selling in our shop.”

Customer: “You don’t have to be rude about it!”

Me: “Telling you I won’t discount an already discounted item isn’t rude. Honestly, I’m getting frustrated because you keep asking me for a discount when I’ve already said no.”

Customer: *Thinks for a moment* “Well, I suppose I’ll have to buy it at that price, although it’s going to be such an effort getting it to my mother to repair it.”

Me: “Okay, we’ll ring this up for you.”

I rang up the sale, desperate to get this customer out of the shop before I said something I shouldn’t. She left, talking to herself about how lucky she was to find that particular brand at such a low price, as I wondered if we’d actually had the same conversation.