I work for a natural beauty product store. I answer the phone.
Customer: “Hello, I’d like to know what oil is good for the hair?”
Me: “Castor oil is very good for—”
Customer: *Cutting me off* “A friend told me macadamia oil is good!”
Me: “Well, yes, macadamia oil is also good—”
Customer: *Cutting me off, getting impatient* “Yes, I know, but I want to know what other oils you have!”
Me: “…”
A woman tries to pay for her bill — £40 worth of cocktails — with a pharmacy chain’s loyalty card.
Me: “I’m sorry, madam, this isn’t possible.”
Customer: “I’m going to get the money out.”
I follow her and see her trying to get into a taxi. I challenge her.
Me: “Madam! I need the £40!”
She runs at me, belly first, and screams:
Customer: “I’M PREGNANT!”
She then proceeded to wet herself, claiming her water had broken.
Over the summer holidays, my class lost a member. [Classmate] is now a mother to an adorable little girl. The birth was in August, right before the school term started.
She spent a great deal of the last school year pregnant. And once she began to show, it exploded into a big scandal, and [Classmate] was expelled in May due to her pregnancy.
She eventually argued her rights to an education and reached a settlement with the school, where she was allowed to return and continue studying, but she was still relentlessly mocked by basically everyone for her pregnancy and motherhood — including, shamefully enough, my girlfriend and me. Both of us were her classmates, and we were rather nasty about our opinions on her pregnancy. We needled her relentlessly through most of September.
Six months or so later, in March, my girlfriend gave birth to our own adorable little girl. Turns up I knocked her up in June. That meant she was three months pregnant when we were mocking [Classmate]’s pregnancy.
The irony wasn’t lost on either of us. We learnt our lesson and promptly apologised to [Classmate]. She forgave us, thankfully, and our daughters are now playmates.
Related:
¡Que Embarazada!, Part 2
¡Que Embarazada!
I work in a family-owned hotel that has a five-star rating, though it’s not somewhere I personally would stay if I was looking for five stars. Our customers are a mix of locals and tourists, though the five-star rating attracts wealthy clientele looking to “splash the cash.”
The same older gentleman has been coming on the same evening every fortnight for several years. He comes at the same time and orders the same bottle of wine and the same meal. I think he’s lovely; he’s very polite, friendly, and chatty (on the right subjects), and he eats, drinks, pays his bill, and leaves without any issues.
The customer is very wealthy, but he’s humble and you wouldn’t know by looking at him. Tipping in the UK isn’t a given and we earn a “living wage” that is slightly higher than the national minimum.
I’m stood at the bar making drinks when my colleague storms over with his bill and starts ranting loudly.
Coworker: “Can you believe it?! No effing tip again! He’s f****** loaded but can’t spare for a tip?!”
Me: “Don’t worry about it. My table has left a nice tip; let’s share it.”
Coworker: “That’s not the point, is it?! He shouldn’t come here if he isn’t going to tip! What a skinflint!”
I’ve suddenly noticed that the customer has followed her out, presumably for his coat. He’s stood by the bar quite calmly watching her rant.
Customer: “Might I have my jacket? The taxi’s here.”
My coworker goes bright red and storms off out of sight, leaving me at the bar to get his coat and apologise for her behaviour.
Customer: “Don’t you worry yourself over her behaviour. My mother always said that bulls*** won’t stick to the sun.”
And he left.
When I quit several months later to travel Asia, at the end of my shift, I found that [Customer] had left me a thank-you card with a manager who said to open it when I got home. Inside? A traveller’s check for £100 with a note saying, “in case of emergencies”.
No, I didn’t tell [Coworker].
Where I work, we have a shelf filled with sandwiches. We have baguettes, ovals, and subs. We did have bread packs before lockdown, but they are all classed as sandwiches. Since reopening, corporate has decided to remove some products until further notice.
Today, around 10:00 am, a customer comes in. She walks up to the sandwich selector and has a look at them. She then grabs a sandwich and comes up to the counter and I say my greeting.
Customer: “Do you still do the sandwiches?”
Me: “I’m sorry, which sandwiches?”
Customer: “Just a sandwich.”
Me: “What kind of sandwich?”
Customer: “Just a sandwich.”
I give up trying to figure out what kind she wants and resort to the standard answer of, “All our sandwiches are in the selector.”
Customer: “So you haven’t got any sandwiches, then.”
I finished the transaction and she left the shop. My manager was behind me the whole time bagging sausage rolls, so I asked her if she’d heard what happened. She hadn’t, so I explained it all to her, and when I finished explaining, I realised she’d meant the bread packs as that’s the only one we hadn’t got out of all the sandwiches.
After I got home, I told the story to my partner, who started pissing himself laughing. I didn’t understand why he was laughing because I was so confused as to why she didn’t specify or explain what kind of sandwich she was looking for.
After my partner pulled himself together, he explained to me why he found it so funny. Our bread pack is two slices of bread with filling in between, cut diagonally, and placed in a container that has a clear front so you can see what the filling is. It turns that out since I started working with this company, I forgot that pretty much everyone else calls that a sandwich.
I now feel like a complete idiot and I feel so bad for the customer.
