We close at 2:00 am, and it’s approaching that time. A drunk customer walks in.

Customer: “Do you guys deliver to Lewisham?”

Me: “We do.”

Customer: “I live in Lewisham, but I missed the last tube. If I order a pizza for delivery, can you bring me home with it?”

Me: *Laughs* “That’s a good trick, but our delivery guys all use bikes, so we couldn’t take you.”

Customer: “Oh… I can’t afford the taxi, and I don’t want to take the bus. I can just afford the pizza.”

Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you. There is a twenty-four-hour taxi place next door, though. Maybe they can bring you most of the way?”

The customer drunkenly stumbles out and speaks to the clerk at the taxi place for a moment. Then, he comes back in.

Customer: “One halal chicken pizza, please!”

Me: “So, you decided to go with the pizza instead of the taxi?”

Customer: “No, the taxi guy said he’ll take the pizza as payment!”

I laughed and got him his pizza. He walked back to the taxi place, and the taxi driver happily accepted the pizza, even offering a single slice to the drunk passenger before they headed off.

Late-night London can be a crazy place…

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Back in the 1980s, I bought an old secondhand Skoda. At the time, they were very unfashionable and the butt of many, many jokes. But they were cheap, tough, and reliable.

My neighbour across the road bought a Mercedes at around the same time and thought he was the bee’s knees. He crowed about how expensive and exclusive his car was, all the executive options it had, and what a shame it was that I was stuck with just a Skoda. We both left for work at about the same time every morning, and he constantly sneered at my ugly, cheap car. He would jump in his smart shiny Merc and rev the engine, asking me, “Hear that? Doesn’t it sound good?” while my valiant little Skoda chugged away. 

Then, winter arrived, and the temperature overnight dropped way below freezing for the first time. At 6:00 am, I went out, started my car, and started scraping ice off the windows. My neighbour came out and laughed at me.

Neighbour: “I bet you wish your car had heated seats like mine!”

He got in his car. I had the glorious opportunity to listen to his car completely fail to start, over and over. He kept turning the key, and there was just that whirring noise of the car failing to start over and over until the battery started to fade, too. All the time, his face was getting redder and redder and angrier and angrier. Finally, he got out, slammed the door, and stamped back into his house.

This happened three mornings in a row. He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t even catch my eye as I got my car going and drove off. I even gave him a cheery wave.

He had to buy some electric thing that ran from the house under the bonnet. I’m not sure what, maybe an engine warmer or something — I’m not remotely technical. I waved to him every day from my cheap, ugly, super-reliable Skoda.

I am the manager of a store that sells mostly jewellery and accessories aimed at kids and teens. In the UK, we have Love2Shop vouchers — gift vouchers that can be spent in a variety of places. A number of the participating shop logos are printed on the front of the voucher itself.

A woman comes up to me and asks if we take these vouchers, to which the answer is no.

Customer: “But your shop name is on the voucher!”

Me: “Oh, is it? That’s strange. Let me have a look.”

I look at her voucher and see the name of a completely different store. They are a chain that sells a similar variety of products, but they’re aimed more at adults and not teens and kids. It’s also worth noting we don’t have one of these stores in our little town, and we never have.

Me: “That’s actually [Shop #2]. We’re [Shop #1].”

Customer: “No, you’re not! You’re [Shop #2].”

This went back and forth a bit. When she continued to argue, I pointed out my store lanyard and then showed her some stock with our store name on the packaging, but no, she still didn’t believe me. 

She then stormed out of the store to look at the signage out front in order to “prove me wrong”. I’ll never forget the look of confusion and defeat on her face when she came back in. Seriously, though, did she think I just didn’t know where I worked?

Our coffee shop has a group of old ladies from the same retirement home who gather twice a week to chat and do some crafts like knitting. It’s cliché, but it’s true! Today, as I bring them all their mugs, I see the group making what I would describe as rustic stick figures.

Me: “Oh, not knitting anything this week?”

Old Lady: “No, we’re all making these today.”

Me: “What are you making?”

Old Lady: “Voodoo dolls.”

Me: “Uh…”

Old Lady: “One of the Black ladies in the home died a few months back. One of the racist old c***s in the care home said, ‘At least the n-word won’t be doing voodoo anymore.’”

Me: “That’s awful!”

Old Lady: “So, we’ve been making these Blair Witch stick figures and leaving them where that troll will find them. She’s found seven so far.” *To the group* “Now, don’t dawdle, ladies. We need at least another ten of these before the bus picks us up!”

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This happened about five years ago, so I might get some of the terminology wrong. I had just started working in a new nursery (daycare), and on the Friday of my first week on the job, we were notified that there had been three reported cases of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease in the baby room where I’d been working all week. We were assured that adults couldn’t get HFMD, so I toddled off to a club night that evening with my boyfriend and my best friend.

Before we arrived, I started feeling nauseated, but I assumed it was because of my social anxiety — one of my main symptoms is nausea — so I thought nothing of it. Within an hour of arriving at the club, I was feeling worse, and I noticed red spots had appeared on my hands and knees and around my mouth. I texted my boyfriend that I was feeling too ill to stay, so he and my best friend came to collect me from the dark corner I’d retreated to and took me home.

On the ride home, I felt worse and worse, and coming in from the balcony of our flat where I’d gone for a cigarette to help calm the nausea, I found I’d developed vertigo so bad I couldn’t stand up. I crawled on my hands and knees to the bedroom, and my boyfriend kept me supplied with water and checked my temperature while my best friend looked up the symptoms of HFMD. Surprise! I had every symptom going and a few more on top.

After a sleepless night with my temperature bouncing from 37°C to 39.8°C (98.6°F to 103.6°F), my boyfriend drove me to Urgent Care around 8:00 am, where I was looked over by a doctor who was far too cheerful and condescending for the time of day.

Me: “I’m fairly certain I have HFMD—”

The doctor chuckled as though I’d said I’d been bitten by a vampire.

Doctor: “Oh, yeah? How do you figure that, then?”

Me: “I have spots on my hands, feet, mouth, knees, and bum, a high temperature, nausea, and vertigo, and I just spent all week working in the baby room of a nursery where we had an HFMD outbreak.”

Doctor: “Don’t be silly; adults don’t get HFMD. Your tonsils are swollen. You’ve got tonsillitis.”

Me: “I’ve had tonsillitis before and didn’t have most of these symptoms. Are you sure?”

Doctor: “Absolutely. You can’t have HFMD and tonsillitis, anyway. I’m giving you an antibiotic prescription, but if you don’t believe me, you can always get a second option.”

I didn’t believe him, so I went to a different Urgent Care unit and went through the entire process again with a much more sympathetic nurse.

Nurse: “He said you can’t have both at the same time? That’s ridiculous. You’ve got all the symptoms of both, and your tonsils are so swollen that I’m surprised we don’t need to get you a spit bowl. I’m giving you another prescription for [something I can’t remember]. Take both, and if your temperature goes above 39°C again, come back here and tell them [Nurse] told you to.”

Thankfully, the prescriptions worked, and after a miserable few days, my temperature stabilised, I was able to walk instead of crawl, and I could eat solid food again after nothing but soup. I’m eternally grateful to that nurse for actually listening to me and not dismissing me like the doctor did the first time round. But seriously, who says you can’t have two illnesses at the same time?