Me: “Hello, thank you for calling member services, my name is [My Name], how may I—”

Angry Husband: “—I need your supervisor right now! My wife’s card is declining at [Retail Store], and she has used her card here plenty of times, and it needs to be fixed now!”

Me: “Okay, so I can definitely assist with getting a supervisor on the line, but first, I will need to gather some information. May I have the member’s first and last name?”

Angry Husband: “[Member Name].”

Me: “Okay. [Member]’s date of birth?”

Angry Husband: “[Date of Birth]. Your company lied to me, and I’m getting very upset.”

Me: “I understand. May I have the member’s Member ID Number?”

Angry Husband: “Why do you need all this information? Just transfer me already!”

Me: “I cannot transfer you without an account pulled up.”

Angry Husband: “Well, that’s just ridiculous! I need your supervisor immediately; you don’t need all this information from me!”

Meanwhile, I can hear the wife yelling about the unfairness of it all in the background.

Me: “Sir, please stop yelling at me, I’m trying to help yo—”

Angry Husband: “YOU’RE NOT HELPING ME! I HATE THIS COMPANY! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S ANGRY!”

Me: “Sir, I’m actually the calmest person on this phone right now.”

Angry Husband: “…”

Me: “So, if you don’t have your wife’s Member ID number, I hope you have a great rest of your day.”

Angry Husband: *To Wife.* “She was so rude!” *Click.*

A friend and I went to his alma mater (West Virginia University) for a football game. I had gone to college in Colorado.

Besides the game, he was excited for me to watch the halftime show, as their band did an impressive show.

During the halftime show, the band marches around with what looks like chaos, but then ends with the band members forming a silhouette of West Virginia — a very irregular shape. Then, after playing a few more measures, they break ranks, then reform into the same shape, but formed so that the opposite stands can see the state correctly.

My friend turns to me and asks:

Friend: “Impressive, yes?”

Me: “Meh. We did the same thing in Colorado.”

If you know, you know.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out Colorado on a map!

I’m on my lunch break. I’m in my car, parked in the store’s parking lot, halfway through a sandwich, when there’s a ‘tap tap tap’ on the driver’s side window.

I look up. A customer.

I lower the window about half an inch.

Me: “Sorry, I’m on my lunch break.”

Customer: “I know. I saw you come out. But the lines inside are insane, and I really don’t want to wait. Can you check me out?”

She gestures to her cart, loaded and brimming.

Me: “You… want me to ring you up? Out here? In my car?”

Customer: “Yes! You’re the only one I trust to not bruise my avocados.”

Me: “Did… you already pay for that stuff?”

She rolls her eyes like I’M THE IDIOT.

Customer: “No, obviously not. I came to find you!”

Me: “You walked out of the store. With all your groceries.”

Customer: “You expect me to just leave my cart unattended in there while I go looking for you? Like an idiot?!”

Me: *Deadpan.* “So instead, you brought a full cart of unpaid items… to the parking lot.”

There’s a pause. You can see the moment she realizes she just confessed to shoplifting. She scoffs and starts wheeling her cart back toward the store.

I text my manager and tell her what happened. My manager is able to intercept the customer, who, to her credit, is trying to come back and pay.

Manager: “See her. She looks like a salmon swimming upstream.”

She won points for realizing her mistake and paying, but she loses them for coming out to find me OUTSIDE THE STORE.

We still don’t know how she managed to get a full unpaid cart outside the store…

I work in one of those popcorn stands you’ll find in malls all across America. We’ve got a lot of flavors of popcorn.

We don’t actually pop the popcorn ourselves. Some of the fancier locations like this do, but we have already just popped and seasoned the popcorn that we brought in. We sell it sealed in plastic bags. 

A customer is upset with us over this fact: She wants me to mix two flavors together in her popcorn, and short of buying two different bags of popcorn, we simply can’t.

The argument keeps escalating as she demands I just ‘open a bag’ of caramel popcorn and add white chocolate sauce (We don’t carry white chocolate sauce, though we’ve got white chocolate popcorn).

Finally, she leaves, only to return with a bottle of mustard stolen from a local burger joint. At this point, I’m faced with a dilemma: Attempt to physically restrain her from what she’s clearly about to do and get fired for touching a customer, or don’t and get fired for how much product she’s about to ruin. As a fairly long-running staff member, I’ve seen people get fired for both options already. 

So, I say f*** it, and simply start walking away from my little stand in the middle of the hall while she opens popcorn bags and adds mustard, shouting:

Customer: “How do you like that, huh, how do you like that?!”

Sure enough, I get a call from the owner letting me go for ‘abandoning my station’. Apparently, she ruined all of the popcorn we had before security could restrain her.

The popcorn stand shut down not long after, supposedly due to the economic damages of her attack. The boss man never cared about our so-called ‘excuses’ when something went wrong, so frankly, I’m a little nastily gleeful about his loss.

I’m working the pharmacy counter when a woman in her early twenties steps up to the pharmacy window.

Customer: “Hi, yeah, do you have, like… Plan B? But, you know… for before?”

Me: “For before… you get pregnant?”

Customer: “Yeah, like I don’t want to take it after the night but before anything happens, just in case.”

Me: “You mean regular birth control?”

Customer: *Not getting it.* “No, no, not that. I mean, like, something to stop it before it even starts. Like, a pill you take before anything happens.”

Me: “Yes. That’s… literally what birth control is.”

Customer: “Wait, what? That’s real?”

Me: “Very real. Been around a while.”

Customer: “Oh my god. Why doesn’t anyone talk about this?!”

Me: “I learned about it back in school during sex ed.”

Customer: “Ooooh yeah, my mom didn’t want me going to that. She didn’t want me learning how to get pregnant.”