Gas station. “Hey, the bathroom door is locked. Can I get a key?” “There’s no key, if it’s locked there’s someone in there” “How does it know?” “How does… what… know… what?” “How does the bathroom know someone is in there?” “People…. people go in and then they lock the door while they’re using it.” [5 second pause] “Ohhhh” “Yes, I understand I haven’t paid my credit card bill in 3 months. But why can’t I use my card?” “Because you haven’t paid your bill in 3 months.”

“Can you aerate that for me?” He wanted me to stir his apple juice. Technically his word choice was applicable, I guess, but wtf, dude? He had a straw ready in his hand and he could damn well have aerated that juice himself. I admit it took me 2 seconds of staring at his serious face before I reached for a straw, unwrapped it, and stirred his drink. I did it all without breaking eye contact with him, and he was satisfied. I’m a cashier at a grocery store and one time I had a lady ask me of I could “tell everyone else to let her go first.” Like, she expected me to force everyone who had been patiently waiting in line to let her cut them. It wasn’t like she only had 1 or 2 items either; her cart was packed. Customer: Where’s the sugar? Me: What? Customer: I ordered sweet corn, this is just corn.

-Can you photoshop some pictures for me? -Sir, this is a bookstore. -Yeah, but I see you have a computer right here. I worked at REI a few years back (large outdoor sporting goods co-op, just in case you haven’t heard of it), and we sold bear spray (pepper spray for bears). A woman came in with her two kids one day and bought a canister because they were going camping. She gets to the front door, then comes back to the register as an afterthought, and asks if she’s supposed to just spray her kids from head to toe with it. Once, while working at an eye doctors office, a woman was upset because we were charging her to make new lenses with an updated prescription and asked “why do you have to make new lenses, just inject some more medicine in the ones I already got?”

Back when I did tech support, I received a call from a customer with a peculiar keyboard problem. It seems that he was having trouble with the shift key. When he typed a letter with the shift key pressed it gave him the upper case letter, but when he typed a number, it didn’t do that. Didn’t do what? Type the upper case number. I had to break it to him gently. I’m a dog groomer, not a tailor: “His hair is too short, can you just let the sides out a bit?” Working at callcenter, asking people to pay their old bills. Naturally some responded angrily. ‘So this is what you do all day? You just call people who haven’t paid their bills?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So if I paid my bills you’d be out of the job?’ ‘If everybody paid their bills, then yes.’ ‘Ha ha! Good. You just fucked up by telling me this. I’m going to pay my bills right away. When you’re unemployed then see how you like getting calls about your bills!’ The futility of eradicating a job that relies on the existence of poor people by making me poor escaped them.

Worked on a Christmas tree farm over winter break in college. One time I had a lady ask me, “so, what are these trees made out of?” I work at jimmy johns. All jimmy johns have a sign that says free smells. Had a lady come through the drive thru one day while me and my manager are running it. She asks about the free smells after her order and my manager tells her okay you can pull up. She gets to the window, gets her food then proceeds to look through the bag. She eventually looks up all confused and asks where her free smells are? My manager jokingly says “oh yeah come inside and you can smell all you want for free!” She then says “ok asshole!” And then speeds off. To this day i have no fucking clue what she though would be in that bag. Spoke to the tour guide at the lodge I stay at (wild game lodge) and he said he had been asked: Do giraffes hunt in packs? If it’s October back in the USA, what month is it here? (South Africa)

A customer walks into our tiny bike shop jammed packed full of bikes. Bikes are hanging in the window, off the ceiling on the walls, all over the floor. There is not a square foot of space in the shop that is not occupied by a bike or various parts of one. “This is the bike shop right?” Yes. “Do you guys sell bikes or fix them?” Both. “If I brought my canoe in could you fix it?” Is canoe the name of your bike or is it a boat?” “It’s just a canoe for the lake. Do you guys fix them?” What? No, we’re a bike shop. “Oh.” Working at a small coffee shop that roasted their own beans/had their own brand. “Do you sell Starbucks here?” “No ma’am we roast our own coffee.” “Well that’s just bad business!” … okay. I work at an Italian place right now. We call our Italian menu items by Italian names with English descriptions. I get a lot of questions, but I don’t mind a hair because I get paid to talk about food. Not too long ago though it sort of went slapstick. It’s not that they asked a dumb question, but they kept asking it. “Pollo e penne?” “Oh, that’s chicken and pasta with…” “Does it have meat in it?” “The chicken pasta? Yes, pollo is Italian for chicken.” “Can I get the chicken but not the pollo?” “Pollo is just Italian for chicken, if you want chicken it’s really good…” “No, I like chicken but I don’t want pollo.” I kind of lost it for a split second.