(It’s about 7:40 pm. The deli stops serving hot foods at seven, and deli clerks are to clock out by nine. We are behind as it is. My coworker and I are cleaning the deep fryers, washing dishes, and the like.)

Customer: *approaches hastily* “Are you guys closed?”

Coworker: *stops washing dishes* “Yeah, we are. Sorry.”

Customer: *annoyed* “Well, that’s just great! When do you normally close?!”

Coworker: “We close every night at seven, ma’am.”

(The customer lady checks her phone to see the time and just grunts annoyingly.)

Customer: “So, you’re telling me I can’t get four chicken tenders?!”

(There is a pan of old, kind of burnt chicken tenders in the now turned-off display case. It’s not been heated for way over the ten-minute rule and was dried out even before we turned off the heat. I stop in the middle of cleaning the deep fryer and turn to her.)

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am. But we stop serving food from that side of the deli at seven. I can get you something from our salad bar—”

Customer: *interrupting me* “You’re telling me you can’t give me four chicken strips?!”

Me: “No, ma’am…”

Customer: “Then what’re you gonna do with them?!”

Me: “Normally at seven, if the tenders are still fresh, we put them in the fridge to be packaged up tomorrow and sold as cold food. But those have been sitting for a while even before we closed, so—”

Customer: *interrupting again* “You can’t give me four d*** chicken tenders?!”

Me: “I just said—”

Coworker: “Sorry, we can’t. It’s the rules.”

Me: “Yeah, it’d be against code for me to serve them to you.”

Customer: “Fine! Whatever!” *leaves*

(My coworker and I exchange looks and then get back to what we were doing. The customer comes back not two minutes later.)

Customer: “So, you’re telling me I can’t get four d*** chicken tenders?!”

Me: *internally screaming* “No, ma’am. You cannot. If you really want some, we do have some cold packaged tenders over at the cold display case.”

Customer: “But isn’t that stale, too?”

Coworker: “No, it’s not, ma’am. It was cooled and packaged before it was stale, keeping it mostly fresh for you—”

Customer: “So, you’re telling me that the packaged tenders are stale?”

Coworker: “No… It’s not. It’s more like…” *starts trying to explain to her how bacteria in food and temperature works like on our food handlers test*

Customer: “So, the packaged ones are filled with bacteria.”

Coworker: “No. It’s…” *starts repeating himself*

Me: “It’s not how it works, ma’am. And it’s just too late. The hot food is closed down for the night. We’re just following the rules.”

Customer: “I just want four chicken tenders!”

Coworker: *starts explaining again*

Me: “We’re not supposed to, ma’am. We don’t make the rules.”

Customer: “So, you’re telling me the packaged tenders have bacteria in them?!”

Coworker: *getting really tired of repeating himself*

Me: “Look, I’m sorry, ma’am. But we just don’t want to give you bad food and get in trouble. All right?”

(That seems to have done it, because she then leaves again and doesn’t come back.)

Coworker: *after a few minutes* “I miss her.”

Me: “Me, too… If she comes back, I wanna make sure to throw those tenders into the compost right in front of her.”

(I work in IT, and when giving users temporary passwords, we try to give them phonetically in order to avoid confusion. I’m giving a user a password that has a P and a Y next to each other.)

Me: “…that’s P as in ‘yellow’… wait.”

(My coworker from the desk across from me sends a direct message.)

Coworker: “P as in ‘yellow.’”

Me: “I heard it!”

(Next, I have an N and an O right next to each other.)

Me: “N as in ‘Orange’— Wait!”

User: *laughs at me as I give her the correct password*

(I participate in this bookish group and we send packages out to each other once a month. It’s kind of a cheer thing. One of the big rules is to not ship stuff directly from whoever just because that kind negates the cheer portion of things. Due to reasons, I have to go into a [Big Chain Bookstore] to pick up a couple of things so that I can get things out to my sister on time.)

Me: *approaches help counter* “Hi! I’m wondering if you could help me out?”

Employee: “Sure! What can I do for you?”

Me: “I’m wondering if you have some books in stock?”

(We go through a list of a few books. A handful aren’t available in store currently.)

Employee: “Well, we can ship these to you in two to three days if you’d like.”

Me: “Sorry, it’s going to someone else.”

Employee: “Oh! Then we can ship it to them!”

Me: “Sorry, it’s part of a box I’m trying to send out.”

Employee: “Oh! We can ship them to you direct in two or three days.”

Me: “No, sorry. I’m getting ready to go out of town and I need this to be ready before I leave.”

(We finally find a book that’s in stock in store. The employee walks over and helps me find the book. As she’s handing it to me:)

Employee: “Are you a member with us?”

Me: “Yep.”

Employee: “Oh! Did you know you could have this stuff shipped to you in two to three days?”

Me: “Yeah… I just didn’t have time to wait for the two or three days for this. I actually have some stuff on the way that was delayed so I’m coming up with a backup.”

Employee: “Did you order from us?”

Me: “No.”

Employee: “Oh! You should have ordered from us; we could have shipped it to you in two to three days, and then you wouldn’t have had to wait!”

Me: “Thanks for the help!” *walks away quickly to another part of the store*

(I get that they’re trying to drive business or whatever, but I’d already told her I didn’t want anything shipped to me or my friend and that I was aware of the two- to three-day shipping.)

(I’m ordering an item for a customer. In some cases, we have to use the tablets provided by the store to look up the item number online, then input that into the register to complete the order. If you’re thinking that sounds unnecessarily convoluted and annoying for both employee and customer… yeah. It definitely is. It’s not helped by the fact that the Wi-Fi in the store is terrible, so as usual, the tablet is moving very slowly through the necessary steps. So, to help pass the time while we wait, we start joking around a bit.) 

Customer: “For what those things cost, you should be able to just take a picture of the item and say, ‘Find this for me!'”

Me: “You’d think so, right? But hey, we’ll get there eventually. Our Wi-Fi just sucks.”

Coworker #1: *overhearing* “Hey, don’t say the S-word in here!”

Me: “At least it’s not the worst S-word I could say.”

Customer: “That’s true; I can think of a few. Anyway, sometimes sucking is good. In my line of work, sucking is very important!”

Me: “Where do you work? Do I even want to know?”

([Coworker #1], [Coworker #2] who has joined us behind the registers, and I all burst into laughter before the customer can explain any further.) 

Customer: *when we finally quiet down* “I work in absorbent products. Diapers, feminine hygiene, that kind of thing. So, like I said, in those cases you want them to suck well!”

(The tablet finally loaded what needed loading and I was able to complete her order. We laughed through the rest of the transaction, and my coworkers and I kept making jokes about it even after the customer left. Thank you, wonderful customer, for giving me a much-needed laugh at the end of a long and hectic shift.)

(When I am in college, I work at an arcade for a while. I usually work the later shift in order to accommodate my school schedule. That usually means that I close alone. We have a policy: all tickets must be exchanged no later than ten minutes before closing, and “last game” needs to be started by five minutes to closing. We usually go around and give people warnings at 45, 30, 20, 10, and 5 minutes so they’ll have a heads-up. On this night, these two women come in with a bunch of kids about two hours before closing and I spent most of the time I usually spend doing cleaning, inventory, etc., chasing said kids because the women are too busy playing basketball.)

Me: *two of the kids are climbing the front of one of the games* “Hey, guys, could you please get down? Those aren’t meant for climbing and I’d hate for you to hurt yourselves.”

Woman #1: “Don’t talk to them like that!”

Me: “Ma’am, your kids can’t climb on the games. It’s a safety hazard.”

(She glares at me, but the kids get down. About fifteen minutes later, I’m taking care of some issues near the front of the store.)

Woman #2: “[One of the Kids] is missing! What did you do with him?”

Me: “What? I haven’t done anything with him.”

Woman #1: “Well, where is he?”

Me: “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

Woman #1: “Did he walk by here?”

Me: *shakes head* “I haven’t seen him.”

Woman #2: “Then where is he?!”

Me: “I don’t know, but let me go see what I can do.”

(I head back towards the storage room thinking I’ll call security and ask them to come help search. As I pass the prize counter, I hear something so I duck around. Guess who I find digging through the prizes?)

Me: “Hey, buddy, people are looking for you.”

(This kid is probably two so I grab him and carry him to the women.)

Me: “I found him behind my counter.”

Woman #2: *snatches him from my hands and hands him off to one of the other kids* “Why weren’t you watching him? Come on; we’re leaving!”

(The kids whine and scream and she finally relents. Somehow, considering [Woman #1] is still playing basketball, I didn’t think they were going to leave. I continue with things and then it gets to be time for closing. I’ve given them all the other notices and it’s coming up on the ten-minute time frame. I walk over to the basketball game the women are playing.)

Me: “Just wanted to let you know that we’ve got about ten minutes to closing. If you have any tickets you’d like exchanged, you need to do so now.”

(Both women ignore me. They do the same when I give them the five-minute warning.)

Me: “Hey, it’s time for me to close.”

Woman #1: “I’m almost done. I need to finish.”

(She’s not looking at me as she continues to shoot, so I just let her finish. It isn’t a fight I want to have, anyway. I do everything I can in order to close with them still in the arcade, but then I end up waiting back behind the counter. She finally finishes after starting another game — she didn’t think I’d notice, but I did — and comes up to the counter with tickets.)

Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t exchange those.”

Woman #2: “What the h*** do you mean?”

Me: “It’s after closing; I can’t exchange tickets.”

Woman #2: “Well, nobody told us that!”

Me: “I did. I gave you several notices that I was closing and that you needed to exchange your tickets. If you don’t want to take all those tickets home with you, you can put them in the ticket counter and get a receipt that you can bring back with you next time.”

Woman #1: *sighs in disgust but grabs the tickets and goes to the counter*

(She gets her tickets counted and comes back, and places the receipt on the counter.)

Woman #1: “There. Now do your job.”

(While she was counting tickets, I’d left the counter with my closing stick to pull the grate down and am now standing about halfway between the door and the counter.)

Me: “I still can’t give you prizes. It’s after closing and I need to lock up. You can bring the receipt back with you next time you come, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Woman #1: *explodes* “Why in the h*** would I come back? You’ve treated us horribly and you never told us that we needed to exchange these tickets before closing!”

Me: “Yes, I did. I told you several times. I did you a favor by letting you finish the game you’d started, but I know you started another one after that.”

Woman #2: “How dare you?! She did not!”

Me: “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Woman #1: “Why won’t you exchange our tickets?”

Me: “Because it’s almost twenty minutes after closing, I have to lock up, and I gave you several warnings that you needed to exchange your tickets and that we were closing. Now, please leave before I call security.”

Woman #1: “B****, you’d better not be threatening to call security!”

(She starts ranting and raving and throwing her arms in the air, but she does start to leave. [Woman #2] and all of the kids start to follow, with me pulling up the rear. One of the kids gives me this disgusted look.)

Kid: “You’re a mean b**** and you should give me a prize!”

Me: “It’s not nice to look at people like that or to call people names like that.”

Woman #2: *rounds on me as [Woman #1] comes back into the arcade* “Don’t you dare speak to my daughter like that, you dumb b****! Where’s your car? I’ll meet you out in the parking lot as soon as you finish work!”

Me: “If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling security!”

Woman #1: “Go ahead, b****! Call security!”

(I turned on my heel and headed for the back storage room where the phone was, fully intending to call security. But the whole thing had me shaking and when I got back, I was trembling so hard and I honestly felt like crying. I had to take a few deep breaths to get my shaking and the urge to cry under control. By the time that happened, the women had left. I finished my closing tasks and went home. As far as I know, they never came back.)