This happened shortly after I moved into a new apartment building three years ago. The landlady and owner of the building lived right next to my apartment on the first floor. She was a very nice old lady, and we would often sit out on our shared little patio and talk from time to time. She even told me I reminded her of her granddaughter one day.

After I’d lived there for about six months, she approached me one night while I was sitting outside.

Landlady: “So, who is that man that I’ve been seeing come over?” 

Me: “Oh, that’s my friend, [Friend]. We have been friends for a while now.”

Landlady: “Ohhh… When are you going to go steady?”

Being a young person, I assumed she meant dating.

Me: “Oh, we aren’t dating. He’s just my friend.”

After making some food for the two of us and coming back out, she said to me:

Landlady: “You know, you are a very social person. You always have so many girlfriends over. I see all these different girls come over. You must be very popular.”

I was hesitant about telling her this information because I wasn’t sure how she would react. I tried to word everything in the best way possible, but I was freaking out inside. Not only was she my landlord, in charge of whether or not I lived there, but I had grown quite close to her in those past six months and I didn’t want to feel judged. Old ladies tended to have old-fashioned viewpoints. But I took a breath and said:

Me: “Um… Actually, I am interested in women and those women were my partners.”

Despite my held breath, she only looked shocked for a brief second before replying. 

Landlady: “Oh, well, that’s okay, honey. I used to sleep around a lot, too, when I was your age. You will find a nice lady to settle down with someday.”

I was completely worried about the wrong thing. She moved right past the fact that I’m a lesbian to the fact that I had been sleeping around. She proved to me that older people aren’t always stuck in their ways, and I see the older generation differently now.

A less experienced coworker pulled me over to the self-checkouts.

Coworker: “This customer is having trouble finding a vegetable under the ‘look up item’ menu, and I can’t help because they’ve switched the machine to Spanish.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t know the Spanish name for it, either, so while my coworker attended to other customers, I tried typing in the code from memory only to find my memory faulty. I tried looking it up on the store’s app to see if I could find the code there, but the app proved to be useless for produce.

After almost giving up and getting ready to escalate this to someone else, a rather simple solution dawned on me. After I finished helping the customer, I stepped away and the coworker caught up with me.

Coworker: “What did you do?”

Me: “I just switched the menu back to English and looked it up that way before switching it back.”

Sometimes the simplest solutions really are the best solutions.

My parents divorced when I was eleven and my younger brother was only six. After a few years, my mom was in another relationship, and a year later, they were moving in together in another state. This meant my younger brother and I had to move.

I was pissed about moving. I had moved four other times before and each one sucked — always leaving my friends behind and starting over. This time was different since I was going to be starting high school in a new state and city. I wasn’t happy about any of this and was in a pretty foul mood.

My step-dad had already moved to the new house and he’d been there for about a week. My mom had things to finish with her work before she could move, so we stayed behind for a week. However, that dreadful day of moving finally showed up.

After seeing the moving crew load up the last few things and securing our stuff in the shipping truck, my mom got my younger brother and me into the car and we started our trip. Before we left, Mom decided to stop and get breakfast at a big nationwide restaurant chain.

The three of us walked in and got seated.

Mom: “Things won’t be so bad. You shouldn’t walk around with that sourpuss look on your face.”

My brother didn’t seem as fazed about the whole moving thing as I was, and he thought it was funny that Mom said “sourpuss,” so he started laughing.

The waitress came over and asked for our drinks to get things started. Mom ordered a coffee, I asked for a large orange juice, and my brother got milk.

The waitress brought us our drinks and took our order, and I started to drink my orange juice. As I was trying to occupy my time and take my mind off the fact we were mere moments away from driving away from all my friends and going to a new state, I was playing with the empty straw wrapper, just kind of folding it and making different shapes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fly buzz past me. It was buzzing around us at our table, and when it got close to anyone we just kind of waved our hands to shoo it away. My brother took an interest in the fly and started trying to catch it, but he was failing horribly.

As I looked up and reached for my glass of orange juice, the fly literally dropped dead in mid-flight and fell into my glass.

I looked at my brother and blurted out:

Me: “Your breath killed the fly and it landed in my OJ!”

Brother: “I didn’t do that! Mom!”

My mom laughed at my comment and waved the waitress over.

Waitress: “What can I help you with?”

Me: “There’s a dead fly in my orange juice.”

Waitress: “Oh, my God! I’m so sorry! I didn’t even see it there when I brought it out. I’m so sorry!”

We could see the panic on her face as she kept apologizing. My mom was still laughing.

Brother: “I didn’t breathe on it! It wasn’t me that killed it!”

The waitress got kind of a confused look on her face as she was trying to process what exactly my brother was talking about.

Me: “No, there wasn’t a fly in there when you brought it out. The fly literally dropped dead and landed in my drink. You didn’t bring it out with a dead fly.”

Waitress: “Oh, thank God. I felt so awful thinking I had done that. I’ll go dump this and bring you a new glass of juice.”

This happened almost thirty years ago, but every now and then, my younger brother brings up the fact that his breath didn’t kill that fly that dropped dead in my orange juice.

I am the sole scale operator for a waste facility in a small town. Some of my regulars can be… obnoxious.

Customer: “It’s just so unfair that we have to pay for the weight of the water in the load!”

Me: “I get where you’re coming from, but we have to pay for that weight when it’s transferred to the landfill, too.”

Customer: “But it’s not my fault it’s so heavy!”

Me: “Look, even if we could remove the water weight, you announced it as drywall. Not wetwall. Dry.”

Customer: *Under his breath* “Well, that’s not very funny.”

A young woman and her mother and father walk into the jewelry store where I work.

Woman: “Hi, I was hoping you could help me. My mom had a particular pair of earrings, but she lost one. Do you know if you have the same pair in stock?”

Me: “Do you have the other earring with you?”

Woman: “No.”

Me: “Do you have a photo of the earrings?”

Woman: “No. Why, do you need to see them?”

No, I don’t need to see the earrings. Let me just break out my crystal ball to know what pair of earrings, out of the hundreds in the store, you are hoping we have.

Related:
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 4
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 3
This Job May Require Telepathy, Part 2
This Job May Require Telepathy