We are very busy as our state has recently ended a lockdown and mask mandate so everyone is shopping again and using their pent-up retail energy. However, my store, like a lot of companies, downsized significantly during the lockdowns, and we’re struggling to hire people back to keep up with the demand.

Customer: “This is crazy! You have all these customers and only four lanes open! Explain yourself!”

Me: “We’re currently trying to hire, but it’s slow-going getting staff back after all that’s happened.” 

Customer: “Such a lazy generation! No one wants to work anymore!”

Me: “Would you like an application? I have some physical copies here if you don’t like applying online.”

Customer: “What?! Why the f*** would I want to work here?!”

Me: “Well, you just said we need more people.”

Customer: “I’m fifty-eight years old! Why would I want to work as a f****** checkout clerk?!”

Me: “It’s sad… People your age don’t want to work anymore…” *Huge customer service smile*

Customer: *Glaring* “That’s not what I mean, and you know it!”

Customer: “I’m so happy you had this sauce! I was looking everywhere for it!”

Me: “Oh, I’m usually pretty good at knowing what we have in stock, but I’ve never seen this one. What’s it for?” 

Customer: “It’s used for Puerto Rican food. It’s a very special and unique flavor that you can’t really get from anything else. I love that your store sells it.”

Me: “I’m really happy we had it for you! I’ve never had Puerto Rican food, but I’ll look up this sauce later and see what it goes well with.” 

They check out, and I continue with my shift as normal. About three hours later, I see the customer back at my checkout lane.

Customer: “Oh, good! You’re still here! I was worried your shift might have ended!”

Me: “Is everything okay?”

They hand over some Tupperware containing what looks like many different types of food.

Customer: “I was telling my mom about the cashier who’d never had Puerto Rican food, and I swear you could’ve heard her gasp from here. She cooked up a little bit of everything and made me run back over here for you to try some.”

Me: “Oh, my! That’s so nice of you! And her! Thank you so much!”

Customer: “I’ll be back next week for your opinion!” 

Me: “And the Tupperware!” 

Customer: “Nah, it’s okay. Mom never expects to get those back.”

Not only was the food delicious, but I tried it with the sauce from my store, and it really enhanced it! I still returned the Tupperware the next week (I had it on me for every shift just in case), and it’s a good thing I did because even more food came my way from that crazy Puerto Rican mother the following week.

I became an expert on Puerto Rican food just from sitting at my checkout lane!

This just happened to a coworker of mine who is active-duty military. She’s been in a leadership class all day, so she left her military-issued laptop in my office for safekeeping while she’s in class. 

For those not familiar with US military IT regulations, there are a great many things that cannot ever be plugged into a government computer’s USB ports — chiefly anything with internal memory such as flash drives, cameras, and cell phones. Doing so causes the government computer to report the unauthorized plug-in to the network, and the network security people take steps to secure the device from possible attack.

As mentioned, [Coworker]’s laptop has been sitting in its computer bag in my office since she left for her class, and nobody has touched it. A little bit after her class broke for lunch, [Coworker] got a phone call from her Chief Petty Officer. It seems the network security people had been frantically trying to reach [Coworker] about an unauthorized plug-in to her computer. Since she was in class and her phone was therefore turned off (Navy tradition says anyone whose phone rings during training has to buy donuts for the whole class the next day), they couldn’t reach her and therefore decided to shut off not merely her computer but her entire network access.

Once she’d turned her phone back on and started seeing all the calls from network security and her Chief, [Coworker] called the Chief to find out what was going on. After she was told about the “problem”, [Coworker] talked to me and found out that no one had been anywhere near her laptop at all. Confused, [Coworker] called the Chief again to find out how to fix the problem.

She was told it would be no problem. The Chief would annotate that he had counseled [Coworker] about network security, and she would have to retake the online network security annual training. Once these were accomplished, [Coworker] would be able to get back into the network to do her military job as Leading Petty Officer for the shop.

Most of the readers familiar with various IT disasters are doubtless nodding sagely as they can see where this is going. In order to regain access to the network, [Coworker] had to take a network security training course on the network, and all of her network access had been shut off. She couldn’t even get into the network from another computer because network security had killed all of her access rights.

After laughing until I was blue in the face, I strongly suggested she take the laptop to the network security office and kindly ask them how she could retake the security training if they’d shut off her access. She was too tired to get into a fight after a day in the classroom, so she called the Chief and told him someone else was going to have to handle the morning muster reports and other administrative tasks she normally handled until someone at network security realized the Catch-22 situation they had created.

Network security is actually a pretty important job for government workers — especially military — but some of the network security administrators are full-on caricatures who absolutely belong here on Not Always Right.

On my way to work after getting off the streetcar in the morning, I meet a coworker.

Coworker: “You’ve seen the unionists at the streetcar stations?”

Me: “Yes.”

Coworker: “They’re boring with their petitions! It’s bad enough that I have to leave early now that we have fewer streetcars.”

Me: “You know what the petition is about?”

Coworker: “What?”

Me: “The petition is against the lack of streetcars in the city, especially in our area.”

As we were really early for our workplace due to the lack of streetcars — it was either that or be late — he finally went back to sign the petition. Unionists aren’t such a pain when you agree with their petitions! But maybe you should listen to them first!

My grade went on a field trip to a national park. We were split into several groups, each supervised by a different adult. Most of these groups managed to follow their assigned trails, break for lunch, and get back to the buses within the assigned time frame.

Not my group. Things started going wrong immediately. Our adult let us vote on which path to take, and we chose the longest hiking route — one that simple math showed would be impossible to complete before pick-up time. Not that anyone listened to me trying to point it out.

Then, a few kilometers in, we took a wrong turn. I’ve hiked before, and I was familiar with the path markers. The adult in charge was not. I tried to tell him it was the wrong route, but he didn’t want to listen to a little girl.

The new route we were on did not circle back to the parking lot at all.

Our adult did, at some point, figure out that something was wrong. Unfortunately, his solution was twofold: he refused to let us stop for a lunch break, and he took us off of the marked paths.

I tried to tell him that we should either sit and wait until rescued or turn around and follow the path back, and that eating lunch would help us feel and think better. I think that made him more convinced his idea was correct. He did not like the idea of listening to a little girl.

Long story short, the sun was starting to set when the park rangers found us and led us out of the park.

The kicker is that our group’s adult wasn’t a teacher and didn’t have any wilderness or educational training. He was the adult layabout son of the vice principal and had been voluntold to lead a group. He’d mismanaged other events for the school in the past, but none to this extent.

I don’t know what punishment he suffered as a result of his repeated mistakes (I cheerfully told the park rangers everything he did wrong as we were walking back), but he never showed up to participate in a school event again.