I’m a young adult still living with my family. A very fat cat starts hanging about in our garden. We name her Bacon Sandwich, a reference to the British TV show, The Young Ones. We shoo her out of our garage, and the next thing we know, she’s given birth to four kittens in the garden next door; the house there is currently empty. So, this stray and her babies are now our responsibility. We feed the mum, and eventually, all five of them once the kittens are weaned. We name the kittens Rick, Neil, Mike, and Vyvyan, after the four Young Ones. The names are given randomly, but Vyvyan — named after the destructive punk character — got the right name.

After discussion, we decide that we will look after the young ones, so we find a new home for Bacon Sandwich (who hopefully got a better name, too) and call the vet about the four kittens, who enjoy pats but are semi-feral. We explain the situation, and the vet offers us a very good deal on neutering all four, which are of unknown gender. This is called TNR — trap, neuter, and release.

We drive to the vet and buy four cardboard cat transport boxes. These are wild cats we are going to feed, not pets, so we don’t expect to take them to the vet again, hence the single-use boxes. We wrestle all four cats into their boxes, and three sit noisily, but Vyvyan’s paw shoots out the air hole and claws out, and she has ripped through the cardboard in seconds!

We make a second trip to the vet to purchase the plastic version of the same cat box; this one proves strong enough to hold her.

The veterinary service knows the history of the cats, and we tell them about Vyvyan’s escape. We know she’s a punk — she once hopped over the fence, we heard wild yapping from the dog next door, and she returned a moment later with the dog’s ball in her mouth, and she dropped it and never looked at it again — but she has never hurt any of us or showed us any aggression.

The vet never told us what happened at her appointment. All I know is that they asked us to never bring Vyvyan back. I took a sneaky peak at her medical records, and they described her as a “naughty kitty”.

As vets put up with a lot of trouble, I think she must have really hurt one of them. I was afraid to ask!

I was in the storeroom working on personnel files when I came across this gem in one of our employees’ files.

File: “Marital Status: Married two children.”

I really, really hope there was meant to be a comma in there.

The secondhand store I work at has different coloured price tags on all the clothing. This is to help us cycle through clothes since each week a different colour tag is on special.

A lady approaches me with an item.

Lady: “Hi, I know the item says $5, but I only have $3. Can I have it for that?“

I see that the colour of the price tag is red.

Me: “Actually, anything with a red price tag is only $2 this week.“

Lady: *Pauses for a moment* “So, you can’t do it for $3?“

Related:
Sale Fail, Part 8
Sale Fail, Part 7
Sale Fail, Part 6
Sale Fail, Part 5
Sale Fail, Part 4

One day, I am shopping. I get a bunch of ingredients for soup and eggs benny, get to the checkout, and… realize that I forgot my freaking debit card. Stupid online shopping, getting me to take it out of my wallet.

I am very apologetic, and I ask if they can hold my groceries, what time they close, and what time it currently is. I have about thirty-five minutes before they close, and it takes me fifteen minutes just to get home, so I need to hurry.

I. Haul. A**. And I actually do manage to get back to the store just a few minutes before they close, and I get in line to patiently wait for my turn.

After a few minutes, I get to the front, smile, and tell them:

Me: “I just had to run home to get my card. My groceries should be just behind the counter.”

Cashier: “Oh, we only keep them for fifteen minutes, so we’ve already put them back.”

Me: *Pauses* “Excuse me? I just ran all the way home and back because you said you would hold them for me.”

The cashier starts to get pissy.

Cashier: “Well, we can’t just hold onto food forever.”

Me: “And I get that, but you don’t think that would’ve been good to know before I ran all the way home and back?!”

Cashier: “Well, it’s not my fault!”

I wave toward the store.

Me: “So, can I go get my groceries?!”

Cashier: *Sarcastically* “Oh, sure, I’ll just stay half an hour past closing.”

I said nothing and went to grab a basket since all I could think to say were variations of “not my f****** problem”. I quickly retraced my steps and got most of my groceries; I wouldn’t be able to make soup without another trip, but I would be able to make eggs benny as planned.

I got back to the cashier, and she did have the good grace to thank me for being quick. She also agreed with me that the original cashier should have told me the fifteen-minute time limit before sending me on a thirty-minute round trip. Because she had made such a big deal about how late I was going to keep her, as soon as I exited the doors, I checked the time: 21:02. I had kept her past close by a whopping two minutes.

I recently started to receive text messages from medical clinics in Darwin — the other side of the country from where I live, in Melbourne.

Apparently, someone kept making medical appointments and leaving my mobile number as if it was his own. I kept phoning and explaining that it wasn’t me who had made the appointment. Nothing changed.

Eventually, I had an idea and started calling them back, and I would say that I hadn’t made the appointment. However, as they had, if they wanted me to see them, I would be happy to go, so long as they paid the airfare and hotel bookings for me to travel to the other side of the continent.

They soon got the message, and I assume they asked their client for a valid phone number, as the calls stopped!