A man comes in with several sheaves of paper, each seeming to be some kind of manual. He wants us to cut off a section at the bottom of each sheet, BETWEEN two lines of six-point text, and then bind each one.

Me: “Sir, I have to tell you that I can’t be sure that these will cut right.”

Customer: “What? Why not?”

Me: “You see, sir, the two lines of text you want us to cut between are very close together; the top page might look right, but other pages might have text cut off. And these pages are double-sided, which makes the likelihood of error even greater.”

Customer: “Why would that happen? The text is in the same place on every sheet!”

Me: “Sir, it may look that way to the naked eye, but no printer is that accurate.”

Customer: “I don’t understand; they’re perfectly aligned!”

Me: “Again, they may look aligned, but the cut that you want us to do has a margin of error of hundredths of an inch. If the printing is off by only a little bit — and it will be — the difference will be noticeable.”

Customer: “Well, then, just do one and I’ll see how it comes out!”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but this job is going to take time, and we have other jobs ahead of you. If you want to leave it with us we can call you when it’s finished, but again, I can’t guarantee the quality.”

Customer: “I don’t want to leave it here! Why should I have to leave it here?”

Me: “We do our jobs in the order that they are received, sir.”

Customer: “Can’t you just call me when you’re done?”

Me: “What?”

Customer: “Yeah, just give me a call when you’re done with these jobs and then I’ll bring mine back!”

Me: “Sir, not only can I not guarantee when that will be, but we get in jobs all day; we can’t just save you a spot.”

Customer: “Why not?!”

By the way, what he wanted cut off of the documents was the copyright holder’s name, but not the notation that it was copywritten. The name was female.

I go to a liquor store.

Me: “Let me have the larger bottle of [Brand] brandy.”

Clerk: “Sure. Hey! What’s your usual poison?”

Me: “Usually vodka.”

Clerk: “Oh, have I got something for you to try!”

A nearby associate speaks up.

Associate: “Oh, here we go again! You should get a commission on those.”

The clerk shows me a bottle.

Clerk: “Have you tried [some booze I had never heard of]?”

Me: “Nope.”

Clerk: “You’ll like it! It’s a mix of Cognac and vodka. They also have it in apple and peach.”

Me: “Oh, I don’t want flavored ones. Those are always sweet. I love [Expensive Sweet Liquor] but it’s got sugar and I’m on a low-carb diet.”

Clerk: “Okay, but I promise you’ll like this. If not, bring it back and I’ll drink it.”

We all laugh at his little joke.

I get home and pour a little into a Brandy snifter. I take one sip and it is a sweet liquor. It tastes great, but I can’t drink it; I give it to my daughter who can.

Two days later, I’m in line again, this time with some vodka. This time the “here we go again” associate is ringing me up and the original clerk is lingering behind her.

Me: “Hey, dude! Remember the stuff you encouraged me to get?”

Clerk: “Yeah? How did you like it?”

Me: “It was great, but I couldn’t drink it.”

Clerk: “Why not?”

Me: “Remember I told you I couldn’t do sweet drinks? That stuff was syrup.”

Clerk: “Really? I didn’t think it was sweet.”

A customer behind me speaks up.

Customer: “Was it [Recommended Liquor]?”

Clerk: “Yes, that’s it.”

Customer: “Yeah, man, that’s really sweet.”

Clerk: “Wow! I didn’t think it was sweet at all.”

I just shrugged and shook my head. I wasn’t going to act like a jerk about it — especially since I’m a regular there — but I don’t know how someone could drink a sticky, syrupy drink and not know it’s sweet. I’m glad I’m not diabetic.

I work at a big department store and I am walking by our toy department when I witness a boy, around eleven or thirteen, throw a soft rubber ball at the woman watching him.

Woman: *To me* “Did you see that?”

Me: *Doubling back to the aisle* “I did.”

Woman: “Do you see how I’m treated?”

Me: *Chuckling a little* “That’s not cool, dude.”

Boy: “But I was excited! I was expressing my excitement.”

Woman: “By throwing a ball at me?”

Boy: “It’s green, and I was happy there was a green option. It’s my favorite color.”

Me: “If it’s your favorite color, why would you want to throw it away from you?”

Boy: “I was sharing my excitement.”

Woman: “Okay, right. Well, we have to go meet your mother. Let’s go.”

The woman takes the ball and sets it down in a bin of puzzles immediately in front of her.

Boy: “Seriously? Seriously.”

Woman: “Yeah, let’s go.”

Boy: “Can I just show you something?”

Woman: “No.”

Boy: “Just watch.”

He picks up the ball and counts his steps back down the aisle.

Boy: “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five steps.”

He puts the ball back in its place.

Boy: “It’s not that hard.”

Woman: “Your parents raised you well. Now let’s go.”

Laughing, I gave the boy a fist-bump and wished them both a great night.

Our store is enforcing strict social distancing measures: mandatory masks, one-way system, hand sanitizer, etc. I am at the customer service desk serving an old man who is wearing a mask when I see a woman enter the store who isn’t wearing one. Since I am the closest member of staff, I call out.

Me: “Excuse me, ma’am? You need to wear a mask if you’d like to shop in-store today.”

She looks at me as if I’ve just cursed her mother and sneers.

Customer: “No way in h*** am I putting one of those on my face! I am medically exempt! My lungs can’t handle them!”

While some states have made lists of medical exemptions for wearing masks, ours has not, and our corporate policy is that everyone wears a mask, no exceptions. 

Me: “Ma’am, I’m afraid I am going to have to insist. You must wear a mask to shop in our stores.”

She just huffs and marches into the store, ignoring me. I call the security guy and relay the information before returning to my patient older gentleman who has been waiting.

A few minutes later, I see the woman storming up to my desk, enraged. The security guard is close behind her.

Customer: “How dare you call security on me?! I have a medical condition! I have bad lungs! I don’t have to wear a mask! I am going to take your name and get you fired! This is harassment!”

Old Man: “Oh, shut up, lady!”

Customer: “What did you say to me?!”

Old Man: “Lady, I grew up in London when it was being bombed by the Nazis. We had to wear heavy masks for days in case they used poison gas; at the same time, I had to clear away rubble from my neighborhood. If you can’t wear a light piece of cloth for twenty minutes, then you’ve never known harassment in your entire God-d*** life. Now f*** off!”

The woman has tried to interrupt this old man but he wasn’t having any of it. When he finally finishes, she starts loudly screaming more obscenities, but the security guard is already escorting her from the building. The old man turns back to me.

Old Man: “For someone with ‘bad lungs’…”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence as we both smiled.

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At my last job, I worked in a tea house where the manager was also the owner of the business. Like most businesses, we received our fair share of solicitor calls, but we had an advantage for detecting these calls early. The owner’s husband’s name had been put down on some piece of paperwork when opening the business, so we could always tell when a solicitor was calling because they would ask for her husband’s name.

The owner had no tolerance for solicitor calls, so as soon as someone asked for her husband’s name, we would say, “We don’t accept sales calls,” and hang up on them.

There are a lot of things that I do not miss about that job, but hanging up on solicitors and leaving them to wonder how on earth we figured it out so quickly was one of the perks.