I overhear a dad talking to his young son, maybe four or five years old, at the bookstore where I work. They’re looking at an animal picture book.

Dad: “I swear, giraffes are real!”

Son: “Nice try, dad, you got me on unicorns, so I’m not gonna fall for it this time.”

The dad makes an ‘ugh’ sound and then spots me.

Dad: “Hey, you work here. Can you please tell my son that giraffes are real?”

Me: “You mean the cheetah-horse with the twenty-foot neck and horn stumps and eyelashes for days?”

Dad: *Trying not to laugh.* “You’re not helping.”

Me: “If you think it’s tough now, wait until he gets to the ‘N’ section and discovers the Narwhal.”

I did eventually tell the boy that every animal in that book was real, including the giraffe. The boy, in his distrust, managed to leverage a future trip to the zoo to prove it out of the dad.

We’ve been selling a lot of firesticks at the time of this story. I sell over ten a day because of the local cable being discontinued and the cable company forcing everyone to stream on a firestick or an Apple TV. The internet doesn’t count against your quota (I live in Alaska, so that s*** is a thing), but you have to have internet for cable.

Anyway, when you try to sell Apple products, headphones, Samsung products, etc., you are inundated with prompts to enter the customer’s email addresses so they can get spammed with free trials. Nobody wants them, so we just close the prompt and keep ringing up items.

Our national chain has changed its system to not allow you to ring up a firestick without putting in an email address, to get spammed with Apple TV free trial emails. If you click out of the prompt, their system will remove the firestick from the order and not let the customer purchase it.

Nobody wants the free trials, but I have to put in an email… so it is time to send these emails to corporate so that they can get spammed. 

I have been looking up the corporate emails to send these spam-free trials emails that customers don’t want, and I type them into the register and tell the customer:

Me: “I’m made to input an email, so I picked a [Electronics Store Chain] corporate email so they can see what it is like to get these emails they try to force on you.”

Customer: “Excuse me, but where’s your bathroom?”

I point her in the right direction. She walks away, leaving her cart and purse behind.

Me: “Ma’am, don’t forget your purse!”

Customer: *Calling back.* “It’s okay, Jesus watches over me.”

I make eye contact with a coworker.

Coworker: “She should be lucky she got you then because if that were me, then Jesus would be helpin’ himself to a few extra dollars…”

I know [Coworker] was only joking, but still. Talk about putting God to the test!

I work at a pet food store, and I got paged to the front for customer service.

Me: “How can I help you today?”

Customer: “I’m trying to find some certified organic freeze-dried dog treats made from animals that don’t jump.”

Me: *Thinking I’d misheard that last part.* “Sorry, what was that?”

She’s looking at me like I’m the crazy one.

Customer: “Animals that don’t jump? You know, like chickens jump and rabbits jump, but turkeys and cows don’t jump.”

I ended up showing her some treats that she seemed satisfied with, but I grew up on a farm, and so I know that all of those animals jump. 

I asked my manager why it would make a difference feeding a dog animals that jump versus animals that don’t.

Manager: “I’m just as confused as you. I do know that elephants are the only mammal that cannot jump, so there’s nothing we could have done for her.”

Me: “You mean to tell me that our store doesn’t carry elephant dog food?!”

I’m setting up my email at a corporate job. The IT guy is going through all the quirks on the software.

IT Guy: “Also, there’s no spam or junk folders, so everything will be in the main folder.”

Me: “Okay, that’s kinda weird though.”

IT Guy: “It’s a decision from just after the COVID lockdowns. The boss moved three hours away during COVID and never came back. Your team was supposed to be hybrid, but somehow it shrank to one on-site meeting every three months.”

Me: “What’s that got to do with the lack of spam folders?”

IT Guy: “So then you got a new hire. Usually, that meant a day or two in advance, the boss would call a coworker living nearby to come into the office and greet them, and then for the next few months, somebody needed to be in the office on a daily basis to train them. But somehow the boss totally forgot about this guy.”

Me: “Forgot?!”

IT Guy: “Yup! He came in on his first day to the office, and it was empty. It was empty the day after. After a week or so, he just gave up and stopped coming back.”

Me: “And no one noticed?”

IT Guy: “Hey, forgot is forgot. The team had rotating nightshifts. Once per month or so, you would have to take phone calls and solve some issues. There was some automated Excel file that would assign coworkers for those shifts. Each newbie had a half-year grace period to learn the ropes before getting these night shifts.”

Me: “Six months? I think I can see where this is going.”

IT Guy: “So on one random meeting, the guy currently on the night shift is asking, who is the person he should switch it with, as he’s never seen that name before. The newbie. He’d been collecting the wages for seven months and working for half a year in a different company already!”

Me: “Okay… that’s amazing. It still doesn’t explain the—”

IT Guy: “—the spam, yeah. So when HR tried to get those wages back, the newbie said he’d emailed the boss to ask why no one was in the office and what he should do. The email ended with “I await your instructions.” That email went to the boss’s spam folder, and he never saw it. The newbie argues that he was still “awaiting instructions” and HR gave up chasing.”

Me: “So… I’m a newbie. Do you think you could forget about me?”

IT Guy: “Haha, sorry, but no. That story has gone down in infamy and will never be forgotten. That guy is kinda my hero!”