I overhear a doctor reassuring a patient that their scan for skin cancer came back negative.

Patient: “So it’s not skin cancer?”

Doctor: “I can assure you, it’s just some skin pigmentation. There is zero melanoma.”

Patient: “Oh, good! I’m too old to get… millennial-oma. I’m Gen-X!”

A customer walked in and wanted to get something printed. I point out the sign that has our email address so they can send us the file for printing. 

I finish the printing (less than one minute), put the papers on the counter, and enter it into the till. The customer is looking down at their phone. I figure that maybe they’re texting someone or moving money around, and wait. 

After half a minute of them still not looking up, I ask them:

Me: “Are you sending another file?”

Customer: “Yes.”

So, I wait.

After a minute of nothing showing up in the inbox and them still not looking up from their phone, I ask them again:

Me: “Are you still sending another file?”

Customer: “Yes.”

So, I keep waiting. After another minute of nothing coming in and then STILL not looking up from their phone, I changed the question:

Me: “So, you don’t have anything else to print?”

And again, I just get:

Customer: “Yes.”

I tell them the total, which is less than $4. They FINALLY look up from their phone to dig in their pack. They pull out $100. I firmly tell them:

Me: “No. I am not breaking $100 for $3 and some change.”

Customer: “I don’t have any cards on me, just cash.”

Me: “Again, I’m not breaking $100. There’s not enough money in the till to do that.”

The customer leaves without another word or their printing and doesn’t come back.

You decide when this transaction happens. It’s not like it was a surprise to you. Put the phone down while the transaction is happening. Also, don’t try and pay for a $3 service with a $100 bill!

The dry cleaners that I work for raised their prices a few weeks ago. (Well, I call it a dry cleaner, but we do laundry as well.) The owner assured us that our customers would be understanding, and for the most part they have been, but there are always some customers…

I’m processing an order pickup for this man (five shirts) that we’ve cleaned for him.

Me: “That will be [price around $40].”

Customer: “Eight dollars a shirt?!”

Me: “Um, yes.”

Customer: “Eight dollars a shirt?! Really?!”

Me: “Yes. Well, part of that is that these shirts were dry cleaned.”

Customer: “Why would you dry clean these shirts?!”

At this point, my coworker steps in to help.

Coworker: “Probably because of the material. Let me see… yes, this shirt has wooden buttons which would be ruined in our dryer, and this shirt has a net in the back which would also be ruined—”

Customer: “—Why would you dry clean these shirts?!”

Coworker: “Let me go get the manager.”

So, the manager comes to the front.

Manager: “Hello, sir. I understand you are unsatisfied with our prices. I’ll change it to the price it would be for laundry, so that would be [price around $18]. Is that acceptable?”

Customer: “Yes!”

And then he paid… with the hundred-dollar bill he’d been holding in his hand the entire time. I wonder if he knew that we don’t keep large bills in our registers, meaning the manager had to go to the safe to get him change…

I’m a web designer. A would-be client contacts me and asks if I’d be willing to “clean up” a website that he had another designer do, “which has since stopped working”.

I go to the URL he gives me and am greeted with a site that looks like it has been sliced EXACTLY in half. One half is a workable site. The other half is giant, colourful text reading “PAY HALF THE BILL, GET HALF THE PRODUCT”.

I refused the job.

A gaggle of six kids ran into the library while I was watching the front desk; none of them over the age of eight, and all of them talking excitedly and “whispering” their own last name so they could find their holds.

Their mom came in after them, pregnant and calm despite her kids being rambunctious. This is a woman who loves her kids. As such, I trusted her to let her kids know when they were being too loud.

Eventually, they return from the holds shelf with approximately thirty books, all of different reading levels for the differently aged kids. This is a woman who knows her children’s material. 

As I’m checking out books to her, one of the little girls in her gaggle of geese (no older than five) asks:

Little Girl: “Can I have something?”

I’m assuming she means a sticker or a treat, so I give her one of our coloring bookmarks. The rest of the kiddos follow her example, and suddenly I’m a bookmark dealer.

At the end of the interaction, I’m about to move on to the next patron when the (maybe) five-year-old says to me:

Little Girl: “Miss Librarian, thank you for being at the library today!”

My heart has never been so warmed.