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!”

I am a fine dining chef at a restaurant that serves tasting menus only. During the morning briefing, I see in the comments section of the seating list:

Comment: “This guest is a ‘Cutatarian’.”

The service manager and I are confused since it seems to be an allergy we aren’t aware of. None of the staff knows what it is, so we Google it.

Google: “Cutatarian: somebody that does not eat animals they believe are cute.”

This is why I hate people.

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.

Customer: “I want the chicken and dumplings soup with no dumplings or carrots.”

Me: “The soup comes premade, so I’m afraid—”

Customer: “You are not afraid, but you will be. I’m friends with the owner. I want the chicken and dumplings soup with no dumplings, no carrots, and no excuses.”

I bring the order to the back, and some of the kitchen staff sigh. They knew exactly who this order came from.

Coworker: “Every week, she tries something like this. Don’t bother bringing this to [Owner]; he won’t have our back.”

Have you ever tried to separate tiny little balls of cooked dough and tiny diced carrots from soup? That was not fun. The customer even had the audacity to send it back because there was one tiny bit of carrot remaining.

Then, she sent it back again saying it was too cold, even though I had microwaved it to warm it back up again. I maliciously complied; I put the soup in a sauté pan and got it screaming hot.

She then complained that it was too hot to eat. You can’t win with some people.

Related:
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 29
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 28
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 27
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 26
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 25