(I am an employee at a drive-thru bottle shop that is attached to a pub and a restaurant. Previously, some of the regulars have been given discounts on their purchases in the shop, but that is being phased out as it is costing the business a surprisingly large amount of money.)

Customer: “I’ll have this, thanks.”

Me: “That’ll be $6.50.” *the regular price*

Customer: “No, I pay $5.”

Me: “I’m afraid my manager has told me we’re not allowed to give discounts anymore. Only he can do it.”

Customer: “No, I pay $5.”

Me: “I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to give discounts. It’s $6.50.”

(The customer glares at me.)

Customer: “You know, I really don’t like you. You have a bad attitude.”

Me: “Well, I really don’t like you, either.”

(The customer looks surprised.)

Customer: “Why not?”

Me: “Because I don’t really appreciate it when customers come into the store and tell us how much they’re going to pay for things.”

Customer: “Well, I’m going to take my business elsewhere!”

Me: “Feel free.”

(He later came back, went into the attached pub, and had one of the bar staff purchase his drink from the bottle shop. He also complained to my manager, the bar staff, the bottle shop staff, and any patrons he could find about me. My manager told him in no uncertain terms that he was wrong and to stop complaining.)

While at university, I was a member of the Science Fiction Association. We shared a lot of membership with both the D&D club and, importantly, with the University Regiment. This meant that a lot of us learned a great deal about self-defense by osmosis.

Dial forward twenty years. I’m a teacher at a girls’ school, and our principal decided to have a guest lecturer to talk about assertiveness and self-defense. As part of it, we were asked to describe how we might react to someone trying to steal our money while making a withdrawal from an ATM. I’m sure that they were expecting “run” or perhaps punch with keys interlaced with fingers and other similar responses.

However, by coincidence, one of the staff at the school was also a female friend from uni who’d been a member of the Science Fiction Association. Our natural reaction was to start describing all the ways that one could disable or kill an attacker. I mentioned punching in the throat to crush the larynx, she talked about a palm strike to the nose to drive the bones up into the brain, I followed up with… well, you get the idea.

As we did so, we gradually noticed that the other staff were backing away from us.  

We got a lot of odd reactions for years afterward, and the principal never brought up self-defense again.

(My workplace contains hundreds of watches and several different brands. This occurs far too often.)

Me: “Hi there. How are you?”

Customer: “Yeah, I want to look at a watch in the window.”

Me: “Okay. Can you tell me what brand it is?”

Customer: “Uhhhh…” *…trails off, looking away*

Me: “Okay, can you tell me the price? The colour?”

(The customer shakes his head, beginning to get irritated.)

Me: *giving up* “Look, would you mind just going outside and pointing the watch out for me?”

Customer: “It’s out the front! I don’t understand how this is so difficult!”

Me: “We carry hundreds of items in our store. Do you really expect me to know what you want, with no information volunteered from you, just off the top of my head?”

Customer: “It shouldn’t be so hard to do your job!”

(Apparently, mind-reading is a part of the job description these days. Some people are ridiculously self-involved.)

(I have three ferrets, all due for a checkup. First ferret, fine but getting old. Second ferret, perfect health. When the vet picks up the third and starts feeling his little fuzzy abdomen, his face falls.)

Vet: “Hmm. Have you noticed that he’s got quite a large lump here? In his abdomen?”

Me: “No, I had no idea.”

Vet: “Okay. Hm. So, it seems very close to his prostate, maybe even on his prostate, so that’s quite worrying. It’s really large; are you sure you haven’t felt it before?”

Me: *starting to freak out a little bit* “No, definitely not.”

Vet: “Okay, well, I’m going to take him out the back and we’ll do a little ultrasound. Don’t panic; there’s a good chance it could be something benign, and if it isn’t, we have options, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

(I sit in the consulting room for ten minutes, wringing my hands, wondering if one of my pets has cancerous tumours and how I couldn’t have noticed. The vet comes back, still holding my ferret.)

Vet: *putting my ferret down on the examination table* “Okay, so, we did an ultrasound, and we’re at a little bit of a loss. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen, so we’re going to have to either biopsy or…”

(He trails off, as my ferret has toddled over to the sink and started urinating. It goes on for a very long time.)

Me: “Oh, geez, I’m sorry! He’s never done that before.”

Vet: “Well, better there than on the table, right?”

(He pauses, realisation dawning on him. He picks up my ferret once he’s finished his business, and feels the abdomen again.)

Vet: “So. Uh. This is a little awkward, but good news! He doesn’t have a tumour.”

(It turns out, my little boy was too polite to pee on a person or on the examination table, even while people were touching and scanning his large and very full bladder. They didn’t charge me for the ultrasound.)

This quote was told to me by my husband. A few years ago, he went to our regular petrol station for fuel and smokes. One of the petrol pumps is out of order. While my husband is being served, a woman enters.

Customer (angrily placing “out of order” sign on counter): My pump’s not working! This was on there!
Staff member: What does the sign say?
Customer (reading): Oh…

She wasn’t too impressed when my husband started laughing..