(I work in a clothing store, and I’m greeting an older woman.)
Me: “Hi there! How are you doing today?”
(The customer mumbles something, facing away from me.)
Me: “I’m sorry. Could you say that again?”
Customer: “I said, ‘I can’t believe China wants us to buy all the garbage that’s in this store!’”
Me: *pause* “I’m sorry?”
(I’m the misbehaving employee in this story. I tend to be a bit snarky and sarcastic, but I can usually “turn it off” at work. Today, I’m shelving DVDs when a woman pulls a DVD off the shelf, loses her grip on it, and drops it on the floor. The snark just pops out before I can stop it.)
Me: *cheerfully* “You can just set that down anywhere, ma’am.”
Patron: *laughs*
Me: “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry. That just popped out of my mouth.”
Patron: “It’s okay! It was funny!”
Me: “Thanks. Sorry, I speak sarcasm as a second language.”
Patron: “We should get you a t-shirt that says that.”
(Thanks for being a good sport about it, lady.)
I work at a higher-end grocery store in New York on the maintenance crew. I am a girl, and my job on maintenance is to basically get into the women’s bathroom every so often and restock supplies and wipe down the counters. Nothing too bad.
I was in there today, waiting to replace toilet paper in an occupied stall. An older woman, at least in her 70s, came out and asked if I needed to get into the stall. I told her yes, and she said she would do it for me, but I told her I would get in when she was finished doing her business.
She walked out of the stall and told me just how much she had to take a dump, in detail, and how she kept walking around the bathroom as she “waited for it to come.” She also told me how much she hated doing this in public. She talked and rambled for around five minutes.
I had absolutely no idea how to respond, but was polite and listened as she was old, no matter how much I wanted the ground to swallow me up.
(As a bartender, I ask for identification from every customer who looks to be under 40 and orders an alcoholic beverage, as is policy. The fines for serving someone under the age of 21 are steep, and punishments could include jail time. My bar doesn’t take any chances. A young lady who looks to be in her early twenties sits down at the bar and orders a Sex on the Beach.)
Me: “Sure, do you have your ID on you?”
Female Customer: “I was born in May of 1992.”
Me: “That will work, but do you have your ID on you to prove that?”
Female Customer: *rolls her eyes and holds her hand up to my face to stop me* “Hold on. Here comes my friend.”
(Her male friend approaches, and I think that maybe he is carrying her ID in his wallet for her.)
Male Customer: *to girl* “Are you getting a drink?”
Female Customer: “I ain’t got my ID, and she—” *glares at me* “—wont let me.”
Male Customer: *to girl* “Okay, what do you drink?”
Female Customer: “Sex on the Beach”.
Male Customer: *to me* “I’ll have a Sex on the Beach. Here’s my ID.”
Me: “Sure, but just to let you know up front, she won’t be allowed to have any of your drink, because I have no way to verify her age.”
Male Customer: “But I showed you my ID!”
Me: “Yes, sir, and you may have a drink. She did not show me an ID, so she may not have a drink.”
Female Customer: *to man, in a nasty tone* “Well, she just lost her tip.”
Me: “Sorry, ma’am. It’s better than losing my job.”
(The couple storms away from the bar, the girl still muttering rude things. They sit at a table in my coworker’s section. Just because they are at a different table in the restaurant does not mean the situation will change for her. She will still need an ID. I give my coworker a quick heads-up to brace himself for a tantrum and he walks over to greet them. It’s not long before he comes back to tell us she demanded to speak to a manager.)
Coworker: “Uh, she got online on her phone and pulled up her arrest record to try to prove her age.”
Me: “Seriously?”
(I’ve had customers try and use Facebook to try to prove their age before, but never their online criminal history. Unfortunately for her, that is not one of the four forms of ID that state laws allows us to accept. She continued to berate my manager, until he told her there was nothing we could do for her unless we wanted to risk arrest records of our own, and she stormed out.)
Coworker: “Geez! Now I need a drink!”
Related:
No ID, No Idea, Part 32
No ID, No Idea, Part 31
No ID, No Idea, Part 30
(We are writing about the histories of English-speaking countries for a project on colonialism. This happens when I read out a history of New Zealand in front of the class.)
Me: “People have only lived in New Zealand for approximately 700 years. It may be as long ago as 800 AD, but—”
Teacher: “No, [My Name], I need a history of the natives, not the settlers.”
Me: “But the Māori only arrived in New Zealand from the Pacific in what would have been the medieval times in Europe.”
Teacher: “When I said a history of New Zealand, I didn’t mean just the white people. The white people may have arrived then, but tell me what year they came from Australia, shall we?”
Me: “No, really, it was less than a thousand years ago. They didn’t come from Australia; they came from the Pacific Ocean. And Europeans weren’t interested in places outside of what they already knew until after Columbus came back from America. Well, roughly. So, everything you’re saying is wrong.”
Teacher: *passive-aggressively* “Hmm, I think I’ll be the judge of that.”
(I got a C.)
