I am working the breakfast service, and a lady of considerable wealth, dripping in diamonds and fur, orders from one of our servers.

Customer: “I want a three-minute — and precisely three-minute — soft-boiled egg. You will also peel the egg for me.”

The server brings the order to me.

Me: “No, I won’t be doing that. I know if I peel the egg it’ll burst it, or I’ll leave a tiny piece of eggshell on it or something. She will complain, and we will go through this runaround three times before [Manager] gets called in and just gives her a free meal. I’m not doing it.”

The poor server looks a bit scared; he doesn’t know how to say no to this customer.

Me: “Get [Manager] to do it for you.”

He does so, and the manager comes over to me.

Manager: “You have quite strong feelings about the egg, eh?”

Me: “I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and I know her type. She just wants something to complain about.”

Manager: “She will complain about this.”

Me: “Let her. Ten bucks says she kicks up such a stink you need to ask her to leave. If she doesn’t, I will try to peel the egg for her.”

My manager tells her. She gets up, slams her chair back, and comes for me at the back — literally comes for me, arms in the air.

The manager gets in between us and ushers her out the door as she calls me everything under the sun. I give her a smile and a salute.

Manager: “How did you know?”

Me: “Twenty years, you can smell the customers who just live to make a scene. It’s like a sixth sense…”

Luckily, it didn’t happen too often, but the manager didn’t question my “sixth sense” again.

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!

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!”

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.

This story takes place a few years back when I was doing a clinical rotation in phlebotomy for my degree in Medical Laboratory Science. I was placed in the Emergency Department of a local hospital, practicing poking patients and drawing their blood. All the staff knew that my snow-white scrubs meant I was a student, but some patients took them to mean I was a physician.

One night, I happened to walk by an exam room where an altercation was taking place between a patient and a very patient Registered Nurse. Altercations were a fairly common occurrence in the ED, but I was still pretty green so it was hard not to stop and listen in.

Nurse: “I’ve been doing this for thirty years, Mr. [Patient]. I can assure you—”

Patient: “I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this. I want a doctor to place my IV!”

Nurse: “Mr. [Patient], if you hold still, I promise I’ll have it in in a flash. You’ll hardly feel a thing.”

Patient: “Are you deaf or just stupid? I want…”

At that point, the man caught sight of me loitering in the hallway.

Patient: “I want her to place my IV!”

Me: *Flabbergasted* “But I can’t thread IVs. I only know how to draw blood.”

Nurse: “Sir, she’s just a student.”

This affront seemed to put the patient into overdrive, and he began slamming his fist on the bed rail and screaming for a doctor. The nurse quietly took me aside and asked me to go fetch one of the physicians on duty. I ran to get the kindest one, as I was afraid of getting snapped at by the other doctors working that night.

[Doctor] patiently listened to my explanation, wordlessly grabbed an IV kit out of the cupboard, and followed me to the patient’s room. We could hear the patient still throwing his tantrum as we walked down the hall. As soon as [Doctor] stepped into the room in his white coat, the patient switched it off like a light and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Patient: *With a smug smile at his nurse* “Finally!”

Doctor: *With a big friendly smile* “Hello, Mr. [Patient]! I hear you want a doctor to place your IV. Well, I haven’t done this since medical school, so that’s, what, twenty-five years ago now? I might be a little rusty, but I’m happy to give it a shot! Nurse, will you please position the patient’s head? I’m going for the jugular.”

Suddenly, the patient decided he didn’t want a doctor to place his IV after all, and the nurse with thirty years of experience placing IVs would do just fine.

Related:
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 19
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 18
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 17
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 16
Why Nurses Should Rule The World, Part 15