My supervisor appears at my desk one evening an hour before home time and announces he needs me to print, hole-punch, and sort into files three copies of an instruction manual by lunchtime on Friday — the next day — because he has an urgent request to get it to the dispatch team by then. Each manual has roughly a thousand pages, double-sided, throughout eight chapters, and he wants this done without me hogging the one printer in the office so that nobody else’s work is slowed down. Also the hole-punch is faulty, so I have to be careful with that.

So, I get to work. I spend the last hour of the day printing as much as I can in bursts and apologising frantically to anyone waiting at the printer. The next day, I come in early and crack straight on. One section of the manual is a 175-page document, so I have to do it in bits and end up almost upsetting several people queuing for their own printing. My supervisor has so far dropped in twice to remind me that he really needs this doing by lunchtime and it’s urgent. A friend in another department offers to print me one chapter on his printer to help me out, and I take him up on that with only three hours to go. Eventually, I have six ring binders full of printing, with all three copies complete, with only twenty minutes to spare. I haul them over to my supervisor’s desk and he looks at me in surprise.

“Oh! Well, just leave ’em on your desk; we’ll deal with it on Monday.”

(I work in a popular coffee shop that is located at the back of a popular stationary shop, separated by a small fence. The combination of the two companies is very common across Britain and has been for years. At this point, I am seven months pregnant)

Me (behind tills of coffee shop) Yes Ma’am, what can I get you?

Her – *places order. All is routine at this point*

Me – That will be [total.] Do you have a points card?

Her – *Hands over (stationary shop) discount voucher*

Me – Oh, sorry. This is for (stationary shop) and this is (coffee shop.) We can only accept our own cards as we are a different company.

Her – Well that’s just stupid!! The sign on the door is for (stationary shop) it is not a sign for (coffee shop.) I am in (stationary shop) and I demand to use this voucher!!!

Me – I’m sorry Ma’am, but once you pass the fence, you are in (coffee shop) and can only use the (coffee shop) loyalty card. This voucher is for another company so our tills will not recognise it.

Her – *screaming* I bet you are just doing this because we argued in a past life!! You don’t even have a job!! You are on benefits and you will raise your child to claim benefits!!  I pay my taxes and I pay for you. Your only having a child to claim ( child benefits and tax reductions) and I bet you have more kids at home you unemployed scum!

Me – *I just stand there, silent, in full uniform, working behind a till and there was no precursor to this outburst*

Her – I ordered a hot chocolate! Where is it you stupid woman?

Me – Y-y-y-you need to pay for it. It is [total.]

Her – And now I have to pay! Typical ! Stupid scum!

*She storms out and I stand there reeling*

College – What in the name of all that is holy just happened? Go sit down, I’ll bring you cake!

(I’ve recently moved back to the UK having lived in the South of Ireland for 26 years. I was born in the UK, but my family moved when I was a baby, so I have a Southern Irish accent. I get customers commenting on my accent every so often, and normally they’re complimentary. In this instance, it is a perfectly normal transaction at a till until this point.)

Customer: “So, why did you leave?”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “Why would you want to move here after living somewhere so lovely?”

Me: *kind of befuddled* “Well, it’s nice here, too…”

Customer: “But why would you want to leave Australia, where it’s always sunny?”

Me: “…”

(I’ve been told I have a “lovely Belfast accent” before, which is nothing like what I’ve got, but nobody has ever thought I was from Australia before.)

(One Christmas, I visit my brother and his family. They live in the “sticks” in Yorkshire. My niece and her husband have recently moved into a house they bought a couple of miles from my brother. They are away, visiting her in-laws, but on Boxing Day my brother suggests we walk off the turkey and trimming by going to have a look at the house. My brother and I walk with the dog along a muddy footpath, peer through the downstairs windows of the house to see how the redecorating is going, go round the back to admire the view from the garden, and generally have a good look around. As we are walking back, my brother receives an agitated text from my niece:)

Niece: “Dad! Can you check on the property, urgently? The security cameras have just picked up two tramps trying to break in! I’ve called the police, but they say they will take hours to get there.”

(To be fair, neither my brother nor I were dressed out of a Barbour catalogue, and the dog was a nondescript “Heinz Varieties” mongrel. But how good were those security cameras, that my niece didn’t recognise her own dad?)

(My mum is waiting for me in a popular coffee shop. She grabs a coffee while she waits for me to get off work nearby. After a while, she needs the restroom, so she leaves the table for a few moments. When she returns:)

Random Customer: “Hey! Cheeky cow! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Mum: “What?”

Random Customer: “You can’t just drink someone else’s coffee, lady!”

Mum: “What are you talking about? This is my coffee.”

Random Customer: “Er, no, it isn’t. I’m getting you kicked out!”

Mum: “It is my coffee. I just went to use the ladies; that’s all.”

Random Customer: “Yeah, right.”

(The random customer then cuts the queue to rant at the barista about my mum. The barista looks over, and tells the man that my mum did indeed pay for the drink, and is entitled to drink the coffee she paid for.)

Random Customer: “But I was here! She just walked up and started drinking it!”

Barista: “Yes, because she paid for it. You walked in just after she got up to go to the restroom. It is her coffee; now leave her alone, or you’ll have to leave.”

(This apparently embarrassed the random customer enough to shut up. Later, Mum dropped her walking stick to the floor, and the same random customer who accused her of drinking someone else’s drink came over, picked it up for her, and walked off without another word.)