I work for a discount store. We are a small store in a small town. The parking lot on our side of the strip mall is never completely full, unlike the side with the grocery store. There are always parking spaces available, usually within three or four spaces of the closest to the door.

In front of the store, there is a fire lane, which is technically illegal to park in. As it’s a small town, laws like this tend to be bent or broken a lot. Usually, it’s senior citizens or those with physical ailments that park in the fire lane. In general, we don’t kick up too much fuss about it.

On this day, however, we have an expected soda delivery from a large and well-known company. They always park in the fire lane to unload and never use the back door. I don’t know why. Unfortunately, when the delivery truck arrives, there is a car parked right in front of the door. It is blocking easy access for both customers and the delivery driver. Customers must walk around the car to get onto the sidewalk in front of the store and the delivery truck has to block the entrance to the store next to us.

My manager respectfully shouts out across our small store that the owner of the vehicle needs to move the car as it’s blocking a delivery, please. He does this twice before going around to the ten or so customers in the store asking if the vehicle belongs to them.

He comes upon the owner of the car, who immediately takes offense at the entire situation. The car owner moseys up to the register after five minutes.

Manager: *As respectfully as possible* “Please move your car. It’s only ten feet from an actual parking space.”

Car Owner: *Goes off on him* “I will move my car after I pay for my things!”

Manager: “You can continue shopping after moving your car, and we will gladly hold your items.”

Car Owner: “You are all rude! You’ve lost a customer for good! I will never step into your store again!”

They paid for their $30 worth of stuff and then huffed out of the store, only to ensnare a few of our other customers in their tirade about how we were the rudest people on the planet, telling everyone not to shop with us ever again. It was a full ten minutes before they finally got into their car and left.

I’m not sure who was in the wrong. They shouldn’t have parked in the fire lane and could have moved their car in less than two minutes and continued shopping. My manager should have been more forceful about getting them to move their car. Maybe he should have refused them service until they did. And the soda truck probably should deliver in the back.

Either way, I hope the customer had the day they deserved after looking ridiculous for throwing a fit about moving a car ten feet.

I was purchasing three cases of wine at my local liquor store, where they offer a ten percent case discount. On that day, the store’s scanning/pricing system had crashed, so the young clerk had to check me out by using a calculator to add up the cost of each bottle, applying the discount, and then manually typing the total charge into the register that had reverted to a “stone knives and bearskins” backup mode.

She finished totaling up my wine and said, half to me and half to herself:

Clerk: “Three cases at ten percent. That’s thirty percent off.”

I paused for a moment.

Me: “Hang on. I’m going back to grab seven more!”

I thought she’d catch her error and we’d share a laugh.

Instead, she replied, “Okay,” and started moving my cases to the side.

Eventually, we agreed on the proper price, but not until after my first couple of attempts to explain the math. I did earn a belated chuckle from her at the end.

I wrote this story where my grandma, the drama queen, called an ambulance because she had a tickle in her throat and didn’t want to wait at the hospital, and this story where my grandma, the narcissist, refused to understand that my gluten-intolerant mother might actually know a thing or two about what’s in certain foods.

Grandma has been diagnosed with one of the least threatening forms of congestive heart failure, given medication to take, and told to go on a low-sodium diet. Some people in her situation might say, “I’m ninety-two years old; I’ll eat whatever I [expletive] want to eat.” Not her. She insists that she needs to go on a low-sodium diet. The problem is that she doesn’t really know what “low-sodium” means, and she won’t listen to us because we aren’t doctors.

One day, shortly after Grandma gets back home, we have chicken parmesan for dinner. While she was in the hospital, she asked for a grilled cheese sandwich and a nurse told her the cheese had too much sodium in it, so Grandma has written off all cheese. We make her a piece of plain chicken for dinner while the rest of us have chicken parmesan. My mom has prepared a salad and gives Grandma some.

Mom: “What kind of dressing do you want?”

Grandma: “Ranch.”

Dad gives her the ranch and she proceeds to completely drown her salad in it.

Dad: “Would you like some salad with your dressing?”

Grandma: *Laughs* “Good thing it doesn’t have too much sodium in it.”

Mom: “Yes, it does!”

Grandma: “No, it doesn’t.”

Mom takes the ranch bottle.

Mom: “It has [about 300] mg of sodium in it.”

Grandma: “That’s for the whole bottle!

Mom: “No, that’s per serving.”

Grandma: “No, that’s for the whole bottle!”

Mom: “No, that’s for one serving, and one serving is only two tablespoons. You’d be better off with your usual blue cheese dressing, which only has [about 250] mg of sodium.”

Grandma: “I can’t have cheese!”

Mom: “They probably served American cheese on their sandwiches, but other cheeses are lower in sodium.”

Grandma: “I can’t have cheese! It has too much sodium!”

We let Grandma eat her dressing with a hint of lettuce. She also ate three slices of Texas Toast with extra butter, but we didn’t say anything about that.

It wasn’t until about two weeks later when a home-help nurse came over and told her that ranch dressing was high in sodium that she gave that up.

Related:
We Should Totally Just Drug Grandma! (Not Really), Part 2
We Should Totally Just Drug Grandma! (Not Really)
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad), Part 2
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad)

One weekend, my partner and I visit our local zoo. It is a lovely day, so it is quite crowded with lots of people all around everywhere we go. A little boy — maybe six or seven years old — is proudly telling his mother what he’s learned about how humans have evolved. You can imagine what comes next.

Mother: “No, no… I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

Boy: “Yes, it is! We evolved from apes and—”

Mother: “No, none of that is true. I mean, think about it. If people came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys, huh?”

Boy: “Uh… but—”

Mother: “You see? It just doesn’t make sense.”

And off they went, the matter settled. I know these people are everywhere, especially in the US, but it was so hard to just keep on walking and not say something snarky.

When I first worked delivering pizza, orders were taken by hand on carbon-copy-like forms. There were no computers nor cash registers; prices were figured by hand by using a pricing guide taped to the front counter. The store where I worked, near a US Army base, had a bank of five phones. Orders were taken either by assistant managers (who also made pizzas) or specifically hired order takers. Drivers were strictly drivers; we came into the store, put our bags down to mark our place in the delivery queue, and then took off again when we were assigned an order or two.

After my second week, I was about fifth in line. A phone started ringing, but evidently, our order takers weren’t in. I went over, grabbed a pen, and answered. As I was picking up the receiver, I saw my store manager gasp in fear that I’d mess things up.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Store] at [Location]. My name is [My Name]. How may I help you this evening?”

I proceeded to take the order perfectly: filling out the order form, tearing off the carbon copies, handing one copy to the pizza line, and gluing the rest to a box. My manager came over and gave me a high five. Within two more weeks, he’d promoted me to driver trainer.

A few months later, my manager was transferred to another store, which was at the time the busiest franchise in the world. One Friday night, he asked if I could help at his store since he was short a few drivers.

It was truly a hectic store, but it ran well. At one point, a phone rang. But there were about six people between me and the phones, so I was going to let them answer. After three rings, my manager shouted:

Manager: “[My Name]! Get the phone!”

I answered and took the order, hoping that they were in our delivery area. (They were.) Afterward, I went over to my manager.

Me: “[Manager], sorry about that. I just saw a half-dozen people by the phones, but none of them went for the phone.”

Manager: “Yeah, well, that’s because none of them speak English. But they’re really good at delivery.”