(My friend and I are at a store that sells houseplants. We see a very delicate plant with several branches, and I ask about it.)
Me: “That one there; is it a tree or a fern?”
Worker: “It’s actually a tree fern.”
Me: *glaring at the fern* “Touché, plant.”
(I have a friend who I tend to be jokingly evasive with when she asks me questions. I’m currently playing a game on my tablet.)
Friend: “Whatcha doin’?”
Me: “Nothing.”
Friend: “You’re playing a game, right?”
Me: “No.”
Friend: “Then whatcha doin’?”
Me: “Lookin’ at p*rn.”
Friend: “No, you’re not!”
Me: “Yup, I definitely am.”
Friend: “No, you definitely aren’t.”
Me: “I totally am.”
Friend: “If you were looking at p*rn, you wouldn’t be swiping your finger across the screen so much. You’d be jacking it.”
Me: “I’m zooming in on her butt cheeks.”
Friend: *after a few more seconds of me swiping around* “How many butt cheeks does she have?“
Me: “Way too many. I think it might be a medical condition.”
(I work for a large grocery chain with locations all around the country. As part of my job, I get a staff card that entitles me to a 5% discount when presented. The only rule is that we can’t give it to others to use, but we are allowed to use it for family and friend’s purchases as long as we are the one presenting the card. One day, I tag along with my mum as she does the weekly grocery shop so she can use the discount. The store we visit isn’t the one I work at. We get to the checkout and I present my card.)
Cashier: “Are you the one paying for this?”
Me: “No, my mum is.”
Cashier: “Then I can’t scan your card. You have to be the one paying.”
Me: “It’s fine to do as long as I, the cardholder, am present. That’s the rule.”
Cashier: “No, it’s not. I can’t accept it. It’s against the rules. Technically, I should be confiscating your card just for suggesting it.”
Me: “What?”
Mum: “But we’re here together. They always let us do it.”
Cashier: “Sorry.”
Me: “That’s how it’s done at my store.”
Cashier: “Then you’re breaking the rules.”
Mum: “I have the money here. If I handed it to him to pay you, would that be okay?”
Cashier: “Yes, that would be okay, I guess, because then he’d technically be the one paying.”
Mum: “But if I just give the cash straight to you, without going via him, we can’t get the discount?”
Cashier: “Correct.”
(My mum made a big show of handing me the cash, which I then handed to the cashier, along with my staff card, which she finally accepted, with a look on her face like she’d put us in our place. The following day I mentioned this to my manager, who agreed that the cashier was in the wrong. We tend not to do our grocery shop at that store anymore, and I’ve since learned that that particular store isn’t held in very high regard by many of my fellow employees.)
(I am in a supermarket with my mother. She swipes an empty, non-shoplifted cola can from my hand and stuffs it on a shelf.)
Me: “Mother!”
Mother: *hushed tone* “It’s their job to pick it up.”
Me: “That’s because there are people like you who can’t be bothered to put trash in the trash can!”
Mother: “There’s no trash can!”
Me: *points to trash can* “There’s one, like, ten feet away, just over there!”
(This isn’t the only thing about shopping we disagree on; I used to put back things other customers had decided they didn’t need and left in some random section of the store, to make the employee’s jobs easier, and she was annoyed to no end by this. I don’t do it anymore. The way I see it, if you leave baby formula in the booze section, you deserve judgement by strangers, but she’s not a fun person to shop with when she has plenty of time to do it.)
(The customer is trying to pay using PayPass, which means you just tap your credit card to the reader. The machine beeps twice, which means the transaction hasn’t gone through.)
Customer: “It beeped twice; does that mean I was charged twice?”
Me: “No, it means it didn’t go through at all. Try holding the card a bit longer; it will only beep once.”
(The customer taps and takes her card away too fast, and the machine beeps twice.)
Me: “Just hold it there for a second while the machine reads the card, then it will beep once.”
Customer: *taps too fast, machine beeps twice* “It beeped twice! It’s charging me every time it beeps!”
Me: “No, only one long beep means the transaction has been accepted.”
Customer: *holds card to the reader until one beep sounds*
Me: “Would you like your receipt?”
Customer: “Yes! I want to make sure you didn’t charge me six times!”
