(I work in a restaurant.)

Guest: “My girlfriend is only 20 years old. But I’m 21 years old. So I’m going to order a piña colada and give it to her. Okay?”

Me: “…”

(I’m an engineer for one of the biggest ISPs in the UK. I have a home visit next in my daily planner for a customer having trouble with their TV service. The notes claim it has been escalated as advanced, so I have a two-hour slot allocated for the visit. I turn up at the customer’s door and she just stands there looking at me for a while.)

Me: “Excuse me, just to confirm you are Mrs. [Customer]? I’m the telecom engineer you have booked to come and investigate a fault you reported with your television service.”

Customer: “Oh, yes. Um, so, is your partner still at the van or something?”

Me: “No, just me.”

Customer: “I thought you said you were a technical engineer, a nerd! Where are your glasses, crazy hair, spotty face, and fat?!”

(I am about to laugh, thinking she is joking, but she just stands there, deadly serious, waiting for an answer.)

Me: “I can assure you, I’m an engineer. Here’s my ID card. It should match the name on the text message you were sent, and as you can see, I have been fixing faults like yours since 2011. Would you like to show me where your set top box and router is located?”

Customer: *still not convinced* “I suppose. But I still can’t believe they sent out someone just like me. I know my stuff, but simply can’t get it to work at all. That’s why I called for help. For a geek!”

(She continues to suggest that she probably knows more than I do, and that I am just a kid who knows nothing. I start by checking that everything is wired up correctly ,while the customer is literally breathing down my neck, looking closely at what I am doing. I ask her a few more questions, and her answers seem normal — with exception to all the insults she also slides in.)

Me: “Well, so far, so good. It looks like you have everything wired correctly, and your broadband is functioning properly. Let’s see if I can get any life out of your set top box.”

Customer: “Look, you’re just wasting my ti– How the hell did you do that?”

Me: “There’s a red power switch on the back of the box. You hadn’t pressed it.”

Customer: *physically dragging me backwards by my shoulder to guide me out of her house* “Here’s £10. Change your report so I don’t sound stupid in your files!”

Me: “I’m afraid there is a charge of £65 if there is no fault found, or the problem relates to user error. There’s no need to pay me, but it will be added to your next bill. Would you like me to come back inside and make sure it’s set up properly and works fine?”

Customer: “F*** it. F*** you! I’m complaining right now! How dare you insult my intelligence!” *slams door*

(I work at a typically quaint little shop that sells various Scandinavian items. One of our more popular items during Christmas is our wooden nutcracker statue. On this particular day, we get a woman who bought three such nutcrackers the day before and is complaining that they were all broken when she got them home.)

Customer: “This is disgraceful! That you would willing to sell such cheap, third-world products at such inflated prices! I can’t believe this! You’ve ruined our Christmas!”

(She continues berating me while I check the nutcrackers and find all of them are missing their jaws. One has the broken piece in the box with it, but the other two don’t have anything. I grow suspicious, as the nutcrackers are shipped to us with plenty of padding in their boxes, meaning it’d be very difficult for their jaws to be broken in transit, and even if that were the case, then all three should have the broken pieces, not just one. I call my manager over and show him the nutcrackers.)

Manager: “Interesting. Ma’am, to clarify, you said these were broken when you first opened the boxes?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Manager: “And you just put them right back in the boxes and brought them back to us?”

Customer: “Are you calling me a liar?”

(My manager picks up the one broken jaw.)

Manager: “Well, allow me to show you something. This nutcracker has white hair, yet the beard attached to the jaw piece here is black. And if we have a look at the display.”

(He walks over and picks the same nutcracker out of our display case.)

Manager: “We see it’s supposed to have both white hair and a white beard. I know for a fact that can’t be a factory defect, since the company that makes these for us is very thorough with its quality control… not to mention it also doesn’t explain why the other two jaw pieces are missing.”

(He looks expectantly at the customer… who is now looking very pale.)

Customer: “Uh… Well… Mm… What if I told you it was actually my kid and me who broke them? That we went through them one by one to see if they could actually crack nuts?”

Manager: “I would first direct your attention to the box, right here, where it says, ‘For display only. Not to be used to crack actual nuts.’ I would also mention that we’d have happily refunded your money, anyway, meaning there was no need to lie to us or subject my employee here to all your verbal abuse.”

Customer: “Geez. Well, now you’ve made me feel like a first-rate d****e!”

(I buy a necklace from the store where I work, and only notice after I take it home that there is a bead missing. I wouldn’t normally mind, except I’m planning to wear the necklace to work. Since my store is a little bit higher-end, we are supposed to be conscious of our appearance, so I don’t think it would be appropriate to wear a necklace with a piece missing. As such, I take it in the next day and stop by the registers to exchange it for an intact necklace. My manager processes the exchange, and I assume she’s going to damage out the old one, as that is normally our process with jewelry that is missing a part. However, instead, she simply takes the old necklace and puts it back out on the display alongside the other intact jewelry.)

Manager: “Maybe no one will notice.”

(I chose not to argue, but I know our clientele is definitely the kind of people who would notice, and who would potentially make a fuss. I never did hear anything more about it, though, so maybe we lucked out and whoever bought the broken necklace really didn’t notice that anything was wrong.)

(I schedule appointments at an OB/GYN office. One day, a woman calls in needing to be seen; she has just learned she is about three months pregnant.)

Patient: “I thought I had food poisoning or something from my trip to see the pyramids, but my symptoms lasted so long I thought I should take a pregnancy test. Positive! I’m so excited!”

Me: *hardly able to contain myself that I can use this joke* “Sounds like you did catch something on your trip. You have the Egyptian flu: you’re going to be a mummy!”

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