One day when I’m leaving work, I pass a woman (woman #1) in the hallway who’s looking around. As I’m walking towards the stairs, another woman (woman #2) is coming towards me. I’m in my early 30s and these ladies are both at least in their 50s. There have been classes and workshops all day.
Woman #1, to woman #2: do you know where we’re supposed to go?
Woman #2: we were supposed to be the last classroom on the right, but they emailed that they changed it. (to me) are you going to the talk? Where are we supposed to go?
Me: no, sorry, I don’t know.
Woman #2, suddenly a little nasty and accusatory: then why you here?
Me: Because I work here?
Woman #2: what do you mean, you “work” here?
Me: What do you mean, what do I mean? I work here. I’m going home now.
Woman #2: ugh never mind! You’re supposed to go, you know, you won’t finish the course if you miss this.
(I ignore her and walk away.)
Woman #1: no, I think she does work here.
Woman #2: of course she does not work here!

The ice cream place that I work at is quite small, and therefore we only have a maximum of two people working at a time, one being a manager, and one being a newer hire. In this story, I am the newer hire working with the daughter of the owners.

The shift had been pretty calm overall, but out of nowhere we get slammed with a bunch of people at one time.
The first guy we serve (I’ll refer to him as Customer 1) order two shakes, the first was a chocolate shake, which is easy, the second was a mint chocolate chip shake with hot fudge. I was sure to double check that I heard him correctly, since my hearing isn’t always the best. He confirmed his order, and I had my coworker make the mint shake because it required more steps than a normal shake. (So I can confidently say I never touched his drink)
Then I helped the next two people who ordered flurries (this is important because the mint shake and the flurries use the same machine to get mixed)
Everything was flowing well until my coworker handed Customer 1 his shake.
He started complaining that “that wasn’t what he ordered” without trying it, or even really looking at it.
My coworker was unsure of what he meant so she asked me to figure out what was wrong while she finished the other orders.

Me: “What seems to be the problem?”

Customer 1: “This isn’t what I ordered.”

Me: “You had a mint chocolate chip shake right?” (By this point I’m really nervous and unsure of what to do, but still trying to be nice)
Customer 1 didn’t confirm or deny this statement, so I opened the lid of the shake, which, in all fairness, looked disgusting because it’s green mixed with brown, but it’s definitely the right item. I asked my coworker if she added the right things, which she did, so I went back to the customer.
Me: “I know it looks weird, but we have to mix the ice cream with milk and then add the hot fudge, so-“

Customer 1: “This isn’t what I ordered, you brought my order over to that counter and then one of you did something with it!”

I still have no idea what to do so I apologize, but it’s too busy to do much else. The man takes a sip of his shake and walks out the door. My coworker and I discussed this later. From my view it looked like it WAS what he ordered and he left because he was wrong, but to my coworker it looked like he just decided to settle for the wrong thing. We still don’t understand why he was so upset over us doing exactly what he asked us to make.

(My mom used to be a teacher for kids aged 10-11. One year she had a student that she would jokingly trade barbs with. He would always make fat jokes to her and she would make dumb jokes to him:)
Student: Hey, Mrs. (Mom) you’re so fat that you stepped on a quarter and squeezed a booger out of Abraham Lincoln’s nose.
(The rest of the class audibly groan as they recognize the low-ball he just served up to my mom. My mom knowingly glances around the room with a smirk, then looks at the student:)
Mom: (Student), you’re so stupid you don’t know that it’s Washington on the quarter, not Lincoln.
(Everyone loses it and the student hides his face in embarrassment. Before anyone goes off about my mom abusing her student, know that he sent her a handwritten letter asking her to attend his high school graduation. She showed up and he enthusiastically hugged her.)

We have a children’s comic in Sweden called Bamse. He is a very kind and incredibly fair brown bear. He has great friends (a turtle and a rabbit) and a family consisting of his wife, three kids and his grandma. This grandma makes Dunderhonung which is a man made honey that makes Bamse very very strong. He is then consequently known as the strongest bear in the world. As a child I loved Bamse, and I wasn’t the only one.

Swedes are usually quite secular people but growing up in the countryside, I attended gatetherings for small children in church every week called children’s hours. There would be people there who had education to take care of children who played with us, we had some snacks and we also talked about the bible. Some Sundays, there was a service called family service in our local church, which was aimed at a younger audience. Lots of children were baptised during these services and there was no formal sermon. Our vicar was a very kind and child friendly man so he loved talking directly to us.

I was four years old when this happened during one of these services. The vicar had baptised a baby and we small kids would sit in front to watch and he would always show us the baby who was now a member of the congregation. We loved it. This time, the vicar talked directly to us about god.

Vicar: You know, children, God is very very strong. He can do anything! He is the strongest in the whole world!

Me: (in the very audible 4-year-old’s voice): NO, Bamse is the strongest!!

My mom, who sat in church a but further back, wanted to fall through the floor but the congregation and the vicar laughed hard. I have, of course, never been allowed to forget this, although it was 40 years ago.

I’d just had a laparoscopic tubal ligation (keyhole surgery to clip my fallopian tubes) and I woke up in recovery in significant pain. Looking back, it was probably an 8 or 9 on the pain scale – I was having significant difficulty thinking about anything else and was involuntarily moaning and gasping.

The attendants caring for me gave me both fentanyl and morphine, but it didn’t seem to be relieving my pain in the slightest. So naturally, I was still moaning, gasping and crying.

My attendant’s sage words of advice?

“Stop crying.”

Yeah, thanks for that.