Washington DC has separate gas and electric companies, and my building has no gas lines.

Scammer: “I am calling from [Electrical Company] and your gas will be turned off today.”

Me: “What is the address you have on my account?”

I know this is a scam, but I want to see how far the scammer will take this.

Scammer: “[Phone number].”

Me: “Not the phone number, the address.”

Scammer: “[Address].”

Me: “I don’t have natural gas.”

Scammer: “Yes, you do. You haven’t paid for seven months, and it will be shut off today.”

Me: “I live in a co-op and utilities come out of the fee.”

Scammer: “Your meter is not compatible with our systems. You owe for a new meter, not the bill.”

Me: “I don’t have an individual meter; the utilities are measured at the building level.”

Scammer: “Yes, you do. It is a little black box.”

Me: “Why wasn’t I notified about this before?”

Scammer: “We sent you a notification seven months ago.”

Me: “What was the date the notification was sent?”

Scammer: “July seventeenth and August nineteenth.”

Me: “That’s three months ago, not seven.”

Scammer: “Those were the dates of the most recent notifications, not the original one.”

I’ve had enough at this point.

Me: “I think you are trying to scam me.”

Scammer: *Frustrated* “You think what you want, ma’am.” *Click*

At least I ate up some of his time. I also reported the scam to the building manager so our elderly residents don’t get scared into paying!

A customer brings up a bottle of half and half.

Customer: “Do you have a fat-free version of this?”

At my summer internship, one of the intern duties was logging and responding to complaint and query letters. Once we were done with the response, it was reviewed by a supervisor and then sent out. This ensured that responses were approved while sparing the salaried employees a lot of the grunt work researching them.

Because it took several days for a letter to be approved, I suggested to a fellow intern — there were five of us — that we create a shared doc about who was working on what so that we wouldn’t all accidentally write responses for the same issue. He told me he didn’t like the idea. I still brought it up to our supervisor, but she told me not to, because when there were multiple responses to the same issue, it allowed them to pull from all of them and give the most accurate response. I dropped the idea.

Towards the end of the internship period, I was talking to another intern and venting about a difficult response I’d been researching. She was confused and told me that I hadn’t marked down that I was working on that. I asked her to explain and discovered that the first guy I’d talked to had taken the idea for a spreadsheet and had been passing it off as his own among the other interns. 

I wasn’t sure how to handle the issue, but luckily, fate resolved it for me. One of the other interns mentioned the spreadsheet in front of our supervisor, who was less than happy about it. She asked me about it, since it had been my original idea, but since my name wasn’t on the doc, I was the only one who didn’t get lectured about it.

To make it even sweeter, the guy who stole my idea in the first place got called into the big boss’s office and was yelled at about how stealing someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own is unethical behavior that wouldn’t be tolerated. He didn’t end up getting fired, but he was on probation for the rest of the internship. I’m guessing he didn’t get a good letter of reference out of the whole thing.

It’s a small staff and my boss and coworkers are almost all out of the office, so even though I’m relatively new to the working world, I’m the most senior employee in the back office at the moment. A young man huffs and puffs into my doorway and approaches my desk.

Customer: *Rolling his eyes* “Your box office seller is new. Ugh. He didn’t recognize me, and I need to get my employee discount for tickets for [Upcoming Performance].”

Me: “He’s not new, and I don’t recognize you, either.”

Customer: “How dare you?! I’m an usher!”

Since I work in the back office, I suppose that this guy is on the roster to work an occasional shift and I just haven’t met him yet.

Me: “Um, we don’t actually have an employee discount at the box office. You either work the show or…”

Customer: *Scoffing* “Well, then, put me on the schedule to work the show!”

Me: “The… house manager manages the usher schedule. Not the marketing department.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! I can’t believe you won’t help me! Let me talk to [Former Executive Director]!”

My eyebrow shoots up.

Me: “Sir. She resigned three years ago. You say you’re a current employee?”

Customer: “Um, I guess it’s been a little while since I worked a show… Three years? Really?”

Me: “Yup.”

I’m on vacation with my son in our nation’s capital, visiting the National Zoo. The vending machines take large bills, and at some point during the day, I buy a drink and get dollar coins as change. Later on, we are buying a meal in one of the cafes and I try to pay with the dollar coins.

Cashier: “I’m sorry, I can’t accept these. We can only take American money.”

Me: “What? That is American money.”

Cashier: “No, it’s not.”

Me: “It says, ‘United States of America.’”

Cashier: “It looks fake.”

Me: “I got it as change in one of your vending machines. You must have had other people pay with them, too.”

She eventually called over her manager to confirm that dollar coins were, in fact, real money. No harm done, but how do you work at the National Zoo and not recognize American money?