(I work overnights at a gas station. Due to a loophole in the laws of my state, the company I work for is able to shirk giving us 30-minute breaks by instead paying a yearly fine. After months of not being guaranteed a break, I decided to buy a pack of cigarettes to go on fake smoke breaks. I tucked them in my bag for later.)

Coworker #1: *barges into the kitchen* “Since when do you smoke?”

Me: “What?”

Coworker #2: *turning to me* “You smoke?!”

Coworker #1: “I saw cigarettes in her bag.”

Me: “You were SNOOPING in my bag?”

Coworker #1: “Your bag was open and I happened to glance inside. But seriously, when did you start smoking?”

Coworker #2: “Oh, my god, you better not have started smoking!”

Me: “Woah, woah. You two are hypocrites!”

(Both of them actually smoke cigarettes, one since the eighth grade.)

Coworker #2: “Just because we smoke doesn’t mean we want you to!”

Coworker #1: “Yeah, we make bad choices!”

Me: *starting to laugh* “Oh, my god. Guys, I bought them for the breaks.”

Coworker #1: “What?”

Me: “I bought them so I could go on smoke breaks. Not to actually smoke them.”

Coworker #2: “Oh, my god.”

Coworker #1: “You genius. I hate you.”

(I haven’t let them live it down, but every now and then they both ask to see the pack of cigarettes to make sure I haven’t started smoking!)

My mom gets remarried. She lives and works in [City #1] and he lives and works in [City #2], about 40 minutes away. She moves in with him but he’s able to transfer to a position in [City #1] and they start to look for a place to buy together.

While they look for a place to buy, they rent a place for a year in a not-very-affluent part of town. As I’m visiting them, Mom’s husband tell me the story about how he loaned their neighbor $40.

Now, every time he comes out of the house, said neighbor quickly scrambles back inside. He won’t talk to or make eye contact with Mom’s husband. He calls it the best $40 he ever spent.

(I work at a small bank and I know most of our customers. We are located inside of a Walmart. A man I don’t recognize walks up to the counter and throws some coins at me.)

Man: “What can I get for this?”

Me: “I’m not really sure what you mean, sir.”

Man: “With this… what can I get?”

Me: “Do you want to exchange that for dollar bills?”

Man: “No! What can I get?”

Me: “Well, sir, we’re a bank. I could exchange your coins for larger bills, if you’d like.”

Man: “Why would I give you money for money? What can I GET?”

Me: “Well, you can’t get anything here unless you have an account and want to make a withdrawal. We’re a bank.”

Man: “Why don’t you get your manager and I can ask him what I can get?”

Me: “We don’t have a manager on staff today; I’m the senior teller here. Sir, there’s really nothing I can do for you unless you want me to exchange your coin for dollar bills.”

Man: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, I just want to know what the h*** I can GET!”

(He walked away grumbling angrily to himself. I still have no idea what he wanted.)

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(For some reason, the members of my thesis committee want hard copies of my entire thesis, even though I e-mailed them a digital file of it in order to avoid wasting paper. My thesis is over 70 pages, and with three members on my committee plus the program coordinator plus a representative from the Graduate Studies Office, that’s a lot of printing, which I’m expected to pay for out of my own pocket. Nonetheless, I go to the library to start printing. The printer seems to work fine, until it stops printing near the end of a copy. I go to the technician on duty.)

Me: “Excuse me, but the last 12 pages of this document didn’t print.”

Technician: *checks paper levels, ink levels, looks at the printing queue* “There’s nothing wrong with the printer.”

Me: “…”

Technician: “…”

(It takes me a bit to process how illogical it is to say there’s nothing wrong with the printer when clearly, there is something wrong with the printer.)

Me: “Well, I’m missing 12 pages of this document. Did they maybe get thrown awa—”

Technician: *interrupting* “There’s nothing wrong with the printer.”

(Our library has a policy that if you send something to the printer and it doesn’t print the first time, you can re-send it and the technician will print it out for you at no charge.)

Me: “…okay. If I try sending them to the printer again, will they print for free?”

Technician: “There’s nothing wrong with the printer!”

(At this point I’m mentally banging my head against a wall.)

Me: “Well, I sent the pages to the printer and they didn’t print. Can I try printing them again for free?”

Technician: *gives me a dirty look*

Me: “I think that’s the policy if they don’t print, right?”

Technician: *continues to glare at me*

(I have no clue what her problem is but I go and re-send the pages.)

Me: “I just sent them. It should be a 12-page Word document titled [Thesis].”

Technician: *gives me an impatient look*

Me: “Could you send them to be free-printed, please?”

Technician: *exasperated groan, hits the button for free print*

(The pages print fine, but I immediately go somewhere else to print the other copies. How hard is it to understand that just because you don’t know what the problem is, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem?)

(My mom, about 70 years old, and I eat at a restaurant. She offers to treat me, pays the bill, and leaves a tip… a tiny 10%. It’s a small check, so I put another dollar from my wallet onto her other few dollars that are on the table.)

Me: “I’d like to contribute to the tip.” *I don’t want to offend her by pointing out the stinginess of her tip*

Mom: “Thank you.” *puts the dollar that I added into her purse*

(If I told her that I didn’t think her tip wasn’t enough, I would have started a war. I would have given the waitress directly another dollar but I was close to being broke.)