I work at a restaurant and we have a senior menu that offers free coffee and ice cream to those over sixty. We never ask if they are a senior; we just assume by the color of their hair and the way that they have aged in order to make them feel comfortable.

Supervisor: “Hello, what can I get started for you?”

Gray-Haired Man: “I would like a burger and fries and a large coffee.”

My supervisor enters in the order and selects a senior coffee.

Supervisor: “All right, anything else?”

Gray-Haired Man: “Nope, that will be all.” 

Supervisor: “Okay. So, is everything on the screen correct?”

Gray-Haired Man: “A senior coffee?!”

Supervisor: “Yes, it’s free; isn’t that what you ordered?”

Gray-Haired Man: “I’m f****** 27!”

Supervisor: “Oh, my, I’m so sorry, sir. How about I just give it all to you for free? I deeply apologize.”

The man stays silent and moves off to the side to wait for his order. 

Me: “I would have just taken the free coffee.”

I work in IT. The company supports email on phones but only on iPhones at this time as the play store retired the app that we used to be able to manage for Androids. If someone with an Android already had email on their phone then it will still work, but if they get a new phone or are just now trying to add email, it won’t work.

We have training/KB articles with steps for various things that users regularly do. What a lot of managers and customer service teams have done is print stuff out in batches to hand people so they might not have to call for support.

I get this call the other day.

Me: “Service Desk, this is [My Name].”

User: “Hi, I’m trying to put mail on my phone but I’m at step seventeen and it’s not working.”

I am wondering what she’s looking at, because even the install that also adds a couple of extra reporting systems only has, like, fifteen steps.

Me: “Um, can you clarify? What’s not working? Is there an error?

User: “It’s not working. I got the steps and I got to this one and it’s just not working.”

I start to look up her account in the system.

Me: “What kind of phone do you have?”

User: “Well, I have a Samsung, but I don’t know why that matters. I’m looking at the steps I got from Customer Service.”

Me: “Oh! Well, I’m sorry, but at this time, we don’t support email on Android devices as the system was retired.”

User: “But I’ve got the steps right in front of me!”

Me: “I understand that, but if you have an old copy, it wouldn’t have the updated information. A note was added to the KB article that mentioned we aren’t supporting it at this time.”

User: “It doesn’t say that here. I got the steps from Customer Service!”

Me: “I understand that, and I apologize, but at this time, we don’t support email on Android devices.”

User: “When is it going to be supported again?”

Me: “I’m not sure at this time. They’re working on coming up with an alternative but don’t have one currently.”

User: “But I’ve got the steps from Customer Service! Why won’t they work?!”

Me: “Because it sounds like they gave you a copy from before the system was retired, back when it was still supported, so it doesn’t have the note that it’s no longer being supported.”

User: “When is it going to be supported again?”

Me: “At this time, I don’t have an ETA. They’re working on it.”

User: “Well, why isn’t it working? When is it going to work again?”

I mentally bang my head against the desk.

Me: “At this time, it’s not being supported and I currently don’t have an ETA.”

User: “Well, you should put a note out! Bye!”

My daughter and I are at a zoo with her friend from swimming lessons and her friend’s mom. My daughter, despite being almost four and otherwise neurotypical, barely ever talks. She’s in speech therapy, but it’s rare to hear more than one- or two-word phrases from her. Also relevant to the story is that she is white and her friend is black.

After a fun day at the zoo, we start heading back to our cards. As we exit to the parking lot, my daughter suddenly starts pointing at her friend, exclaiming, “Black! Black!” over and over.

Confused and embarrassed, I assure her friend’s mom that we never say anything like, “Let’s go play with your black friend!” or point out the difference in skin color; it doesn’t matter to pre-schoolers, so why would we make a big deal out of it? Her friend’s mother assures me that she has no reason to believe our family is racist, although she’s as baffled as I am. Meanwhile, my daughter keeps pointing at her friend and yelling, “Black!” 

After what seems like forever, we get to our cars, parked next to each other, and start getting ready to go. My daughter points to her booster seat and then to her friend’s car. “Black!” Then she signs, “Please.”

The friend’s car is black. Ours isn’t.

She was asking, with her limited speech, if she could ride home with her friend in her car!

I receive an iced tea pitcher and a lemonade pitcher as gifts, but as I don’t drink either iced tea or lemonade, I opt to return them. They are both from the same store and have a gift receipt so I figure it will be easy.

Me: “I need to return these, please. Here are the gift receipts. Cash would be ideal, but store credit is okay.”

Cashier: “Why are you returning them?”

Me: “Oh, there’s nothing with them. I just don’t have any use for them.”

Cashier: “Well, if they’re working fine, why return them?”

Me: “Because I don’t want them.”

Cashier: “But why not just donate them?”

Me: “But I have the gift receipt right here.”

Cashier: “Isn’t it a little selfish to return a gift?”

After a pause to make sure I really heard that, I say:

Me: “I need to return these. Now.”

Cashier: *Grumbling* “Okay, but you could just donate them.”

This was years ago; I can’t remember if I was able to get cash or store credit, but I did get the full value indicated by the gift receipt for whichever option I was able to do.

I work in a contact center for a small financial institution and I’m currently helping a member with her online login. When we reset a password, we usually just do numbers as a temporary password, for example, “2345678,” so it’s easy for the member to remember since they usually change it right away. 

Me: “All right, ma’am, I’ve reset your password to [series of numbers.]”

Caller: “Okay, thanks. Now, does that need to be uppercase?”

I assume she’s talking about her username since it contains letters.

Me: “Well, your username is not case sensitive, so no, you won’t need to worry about that.”

Caller: “But the [series of numbers], is that uppercase?”

Me: *Pauses* “Yes.”

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