<em>It’s a Monday, about halfway into my shift. I’m on register for what I think is going to be a few minutes when my coworker sends me someone who’s doing a return. I go through the process of ringing up the items, as this person doesn’t have a receipt, but I forget one rule until I have to call up a manager. This is paraphrased a lot, but the gist of what happened.</em>

Assistant: “With a no receipt return, I’ll just need to see an ID.”

Customer: “I don’t have one with me. I changed my name recently. I have my school ID.”

Assistant: “Unfortunately I have to have a physical driver’s license or state ID, or the receipt.”

Customer: “They never gave me a receipt. Can you look up on your cameras and see that I was here and I paid cash and I never got a receipt?”

<em>(We continue in this vein for a second, reiterating that we need a physical ID to do a no-receipt return, which I’d forgotten to say at the beginning of the transaction. They say their friend probably has an ID and go to get them, and then come back inside alone. The assistant manager has me call up our co and we proceed to go through the spiel again, to everyone’s annoyance.)</em>

Co-manager: “Well, you can keep this stuff until you get your physical ID and return it then.”

<em>(The customer continues to say they don’t have an ID because they changed their name and asks why we can’t look things up on camera or give them a receipt that says they were here tonight to return it and couldn’t, which my co says wouldn’t matter anyway. Without an ID, we can’t process the return and they’ll have to wait. The customer then swears at us and walks out with their stuff and my co and I shake our heads and bring it up to the assistant who had originally come up to help me. Not an hour later, the stuff is returned by someone else, presumably with an actual ID. I’m not paying a ton of attention because I’m on register again helping someone else, but my coworker who does the return brings it up and apologizes to me in advance if the customer or the friend come back in while I’m manning the main register. All of that hassle over $30 of costume stuff that was the wrong color?)</em>

A few days back I found out I had Graves’ Disease, as well as a resting heart rate of 150 beats per minute. I’m told not to lift anything heavy for two weeks. Day six of this, where I’m trying to figure out what I can lift, I get this gem.

Coworker: If you’re free, can you help this customer with her water.
Me: I’ll try.
Customer: Oh. Is he disabled?

She said it as if she replaced retarded with disabled, thinking it’s okay. I made her let me help her, explaining what’s going on with me. The manager overheard me and was angry I would tell my personal issues with a customer, but once I told him she said “Oh, is he disabled?” the manager dropped the issue and told me to go back to work.
I have aspergers, and my back’s getting back, and I’m trying to get rid of my potentially fatal Graves’ Disease. I’m building up to what I was able to do before, so, yes, I am a bit disabled for now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

(I’ve been off work for a couple weeks, between medical issues and a big event. A friend and his dad come in from out of town, and we go by my store so they can check it out. My girlfriend is also with us. She’s trans, but very obviously female. While I’m showing them some new stuff in my department, a new hire I haven’t met walks over.)
New hire: Um, you need to leave.
Me: What?
New hire: You can’t be in here with *it*.
(The new hire glares at my girlfriend.)
Me: Yeah, no. Not gonna happen.
New hire: We don’t allow [slurs] in here!
Friend’s dad: Who taught you that, someone from the fifties?!
New hire: What, are you its dad?! You should be ashamed of your kid!
Friend’s dad: No, I’m not her dad, but I wish I was.
New hire: You want a [slur] for a kid?!
(At this point, a manager comes RUNNING over.)
Manager: [New hire], what the hell is going on?!
New hire: This [slur] is running around acting like it’s okay to be the way it is!
Manager: I…no. Go sit in the office.
New hire: What?! I didn’t do anything wrong!
Manager: Okay, then we’ll have this talk right here. First, we do not EVER discriminate against people. You do NOT use that kind of language or refer to ANYONE as ‘it’. Second, you do not throw out the head of [department]. OR her girlfriend, who everyone here has met. Third, even if someone did cause a problem, you do not have the authority to throw them out. Now, go sit in the office. I’m writing you up and sending you home for this.
(The new hire storms off to the office. My manager turns to us.)
Manager: [Girlfriend], I am SO sorry about that. Are you okay?
Girlfriend: Yeah, I’ve gotten worse yelled at me.
(The new hire ended up being fired when she refused to sign the write-up, saying we were being racist for not letting her discriminate. She also apparently threatened to sue us for it. Good luck.)

Me: Lately I’ve been obsessed with the song “Casey Jones” by THe Grateful Dead.

Dad: DRIVING THAT TRAIN! HIGH ON COCAINE! CASEY JONES YOU’D BETTER WATCH…never heard of it.

My father tells the tale of a science teacher he had, some time during the 2nd World War. This young man was new to his profession, keen as mustard but not the wisest of people.

He was demonstrating the power of combustion. Having electrolysed water into hydrogen and oxygen, he gathered the collected gases into a glass bottle, which he carefully wrapped in his jacket. Then he lit the gas by holding a lighted spill at the bottle opening. Not only was there the expected bang, the bottle itself shattered and completely lacerated the poor man’s brand new jacket which he had used up his entire clothing ration on.