I’m working the Tuesday lunch shift at a small Chinese place. We get lots of professionals and retirees. An older guy in a suit comes in. He looks well-kept and is very nice when ordering.

He keeps his order simple and says thank you when I bring him his food. You just know something about when a customer is really genuinely kind. 

He gets soup that comes with the lunch special and his entree. I’m bussing tables around him, and he just kind of waves at me nicely, and he tells me:

Customer: “I found a small metal wire in my soup.”

He shows me. I tell the person above me. It’s from one of those metal scrubby sponges that they clean the soup basins with.

I apologize profusely.

Customer: *Super chill.* “I’m fine. I’m just telling you, just in case you wanna look so that future customers don’t get that in their soup.”

He’s not upset at all.

We try to comp his meal, but he insists on paying. He still got a discount.

He left ten dollars on a twelve-dollar ticket after all that.

I would have been upset, in a calm way, if I had been in his situation. But literally, probably the nicest customer I’ve had.

I suffer from terribly dry hands in winter, so bad that without constant lotion, my skin cracks and bleeds. Today I forgot to reapply before heading out, and by mid-afternoon, my knuckles and pinkies are a bloody mess.

I pass by a kiosk that sells high-priced skin care products, and the women there are trying to flag down people with samples of lotion in order to pitch their items. I decide I’m desperate enough for a little relief to deal with their sales pitch so I can get a free sample of lotion on my hands.

Me: “I could use some lotion. My hands are really chapped.”

I hold out my hands, expecting her to tear open the sample dose of lotion she’s holding and squirt it onto my skin. However, she takes a look at my cracked and bloody fingers and gasps in horror.

Woman: “Oh no, sir, we need to use our best product for you.”

She puts the lotion packet down and picks up a wide-mouth jar of something coarse and greasy. 

She has me hold my hands over a metal bowl, scoops some stuff out of the jar, and starts rubbing it on my hands.

Woman: “This is made from salt taken from the Dead Sea. Doesn’t it feel amazing?”

Me: *Calmly but emphatically.* “To be honest, it stings like hell because you are literally rubbing salt into my wounds. Could you please wash that off? Quickly?”

Her eyes go wide when she realizes what she’s doing, and she sprays my hands off with a spray bottle as fast as she can. 

She still tried to get me to buy that overpriced oily salt.

One morning, I woke up to find snow had completely shrouded my (admittedly small) bedroom window. I make my way out to the (much larger) living room window and find snow coming down so hard I can’t see the road. Sure enough, my weather app has an alert telling me that there is a stay-home advisory in effect due to unsafe weather for driving. Fine by me; I crawl back into bed and try to get back to sleep. 

My phone rings within half an hour. It’s my manager.

Manager: “Hey, just want to let you know that you are still coming in today.”

I laugh into the line and hang up.

My manager calls again before the minute changes.

Manager: “Do you think I’m joking? You’re scheduled for today. You’re coming in to work.”

Me: “Do YOU think I’m stupid enough to get into a car and drive in this weather? Not happening.”

I hang up. My body has fully booted up and acknowledged an empty stomach, so falling asleep again is no longer an option. I’m on my way to the kitchen when my phone rings again.

Manager: “If you don’t come in today, you’re fired.”

Me: “Cool. I’ll come get my last paycheck when the weather clears up.”

I hang up yet again and make myself breakfast.

The next day, I got a call from my manager’s boss. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one he tried to demand come into work yesterday, and not everyone had the courage to say no like I did. Some of them had accidents on their way to work. (I later learned that none of them were more serious than “didn’t stay on the road, hit something that damaged my car more than my car damaged it,” but still.) I was assured that if I still wanted my job, I was not, in fact, fired for staying home during a stay-home advisory. 

I agreed to those terms and came into work a day later to find my manager was no longer employed there.

I’m hanging around at my register during a lull in customers, when a couple of my coworkers meander over, apparently having a conversation about the reusable bags we sell at the registers.

Coworker: *While gesturing at a watermelon slice-patterned bag.* “So we’ve got pineapple, we’ve got fruit skewers…”

Me: “…[Coworker], did you just call a watermelon a pineapple?”

Coworker: “…yes. It’s opposite day. This is now what I call a pineapple.”

Me: “Yeeeeah, okay, that can be your excuse.”

Coworker: “Yeah, I don’t know why I called it that. Aside from both being citrus, they’re nothing alike!”

Me: “…I hate to break it to you, but a watermelon isn’t citrus, and neither is a pineapple. ”

Coworker: “Wait, really? Pineapples don’t have like, citric acid?”

Me: “Nope.”

Google confirmed. Coworker’s mind was blown a bit. Later that same conversation:

Coworker: “Cinnamoroll is a dog and not a rabbit?!”

Me: “Your world is built on a pyramid of lies.”

My boss comes down from the office to speak to one of our mechanics. The mechanic is very good at his job, but his English is a bit work in progress.

Boss: “Hey, [Coworker], did you work on [Customer]’s rims yesterday?”

Coworker: “Yes, boss.”

Boss: “Okay, I know we refer to everything around here as ‘a job’, but let me explain to you why we do not offer customers ‘rim jobs’.”