I was working at a place that had soft serve as a part of the menu. A lady came up to the counter:

Customer: “Hey, I’m really sorry, but my daughter dropped her ice cream, and she’s really sad about it. Do you think you could give me another?”

I was about to then realize an important fact:

Me: “Ma’am, the ice cream machine is broken today. We haven’t been selling any.”

Customer: “Oh! Uh… it was yesterday.”

Me: “It’s been broken for three days.”

She turns bright red and mumbles:

Customer: “Oh… then I guess it must be from Dairy Queen or something…”

She leaves quickly. Nice try, lady. Don’t scam an item that comes from a machine that breaks down so often it’s practically a meme.

If you don’t collect Pokémon cards, you might not be aware of the craze surrounding them. They’ve become hard to get, prices are soaring, and scalpers are buying out the stock to relist for crazy prices online. Some stores are even raising the prices and succeeding in selling, due to how hard some sets are becoming to get. I work, so I can’t be at the stores right when the cards are put out and miss out on a lot.

My mother is a seventy-four-year-old disabled Veteran and every time she’s at a retail store, she checks for Pokémon cards, and sometimes scores for me.

There are two sets that I have been absolutely unable to find. Black Bolt and White Flare. Unfortunately, these two sets correspond to one of my favorite games in the series, and I’ve been a bit down that I cannot get my hands on a single pack.

Well, one day my mom’s out shopping for regular groceries and happens to check the Pokémon card aisle, and lo and behold, there are Black Bolt and White Flare booster bundles. Now, my mom’s not a crazy scalper, so she selects 2 of each for me and leaves the rest for others.

She’s going about her regular shop when a man reaches into her cart and tries to take the booster bundles.

My Mom: “Don’t take those, they’re for my daughter.”

Man: “Yeah, I want ’em for my kid.”

My Mom: “There were more on the shelves. You can get some of your own if you head over now.”

Man: “They’ll be gone.” *Reaches for boxes again.*

My Mom: “NO! Go get your own.”

My mom attempts to maneuver the cart away from this man, but he follows her, a short 5’4″ (162 cm for my non-American friends) grey-haired old lady with a cane in her cart.

My Mom: “Please go away!”

Man: “Just stop.” *Grabs her cart and forcefully stops her.* “You can go get more if they’re really there.” *Takes booster bundles.*

My mom tried to stop him, but he pushed her away, and she had to grab on to the cart to maintain her balance. She has two bad knees and a bad back from the military, and she could have easily fallen and hurt herself seriously. So, the man took the cards and speedwalked away.

My mom told the first associate she saw, but the man was long gone, and sadly, so were the rest of the cards. When my mom told me the story, I told her to just let the miserable SOBs have whatever and keep herself safe. She’s worth too much to me to get hurt over my collection. 

Fortunately, my friend Adrien happened to be visiting his grandparents in Japan when I complained in the friend group chat about this, and he told me he’d get me a couple of boxes of Black Bolt and White Flare Japanese cards. My mom wired him some extra cash and told him to go wild picking out stuff for me, so I ended up with 3 Japanese Booster Boxes of each Black Bolt and White Flare, along with several other boxes from different sets.

But to that crazy man in the store, I seriously doubt you even had a kid, and I bet you just saw my mom as weak and easy to take advantage of. They’re just fancy cardboard, not worth sacrificing our human decency over. I hope the next old lady you decide to pick on has a background in Krav Maga and a spirit to match.

My mom’s okay, but she’s a lot more cautious and brings a coat into stores with her now to hide her finds under. It’s really sad that the hobby has come to the point where an old lady has to hide presents for her daughter from grown men.

This happened when I was eighteen. I worked in the kitchen at a chain diner. The uniform is a short-sleeve white Oxford shirt, a black bow tie, and a black apron.

My dad texted me asking me to stop by the pet store and get some dog food on my way home. No problem. I go inside, in my uniform, name tag, my hair in a very tight bun, still in a hair net. I’m looking at the dog food, trying to find the right brand.

A woman comes down the aisle and asks me:

Customer: “Where is the organic dog food?”

Me: “I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

She then STARES at me for a solid fifteen seconds. I can FEEL it as I’m looking over the dog food.

Customer: “Um, don’t you work here?”

I laughed and said:

Me: “Oh! No, I work at [Restaurant].”

I thought it was a funny mishap, no harm, no foul. She doesn’t laugh, though, she just says:

Customer: “You’re WEARING a nametag.”

I looked down and unpinned my name tag, showing her the restaurant’s logo.

Me: “Yeah, sorry. Just got off work.”

She is like… really boiling under the surface.

Customer: “Well, maybe you shouldn’t wear such confusing clothes!”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just picked up my dog food and went to the counter. I overheard her complaining to the next cashier about me. The cashier didn’t know what to say either, so I left before she talked to anyone else. Her seething anger was beyond confusing.

I work in a store that specializes in flat-pack furniture. I get a call from a customer on the support line:

Customer: “I got this cabinet from you and built it, but it wobbles!”

Me: “That’s odd. It should be stable after you’ve slotted the board into the back. Maybe it’s not slotted in correctly?”

Customer: “I didn’t put that in! It’s a useless piece of cardboard and ugly as f***! I want people to see my nice wallpaper behind the cabinet!”

Me: “…Well, good news! I think we’ve identified the source of your wobble.”

Customer: “Oh, really? How? You haven’t even sent anyone out yet…”

This story reminded me of a time when our team went out to lunch at a fancy French restaurant to celebrate the successful completion of a long and arduous project.

Our boss, ever wanting to impress, wants to order the items in French. This means instead of ordering onion soup, he’s ordering ‘soupe à l’oignon’, etc.

Boss: “What’s a “croque monsieur” called in French?”

We all giggle a little.

Boss: “What’s it called? That’s what I want to order.”

We realize he’s serious. A coworker says:

Coworker: “C’est un crunch mister.”

[Boss], nodded and ordered exactly those words. The waiter, bless him, kept his composure, purely professional, and knew exactly what he was ordering. He got a decent tip!