I’m in a tabletop roleplaying group with three other people; the DM (Dungeon Master) and another guy are old friends of mine, while the third one is a newcomer to the group. 

The DM is having a big birthday party and invites all of us; [Old Friend’s Fiancée] and his sister are also friends of the DM’s, so they’re invited too. [Old Friend], [Fiancée], and [Sister] arrive together.

Every time [Newcomer] is in Fiancée’s orbit, whether [Old Friend] is there or not, he starts flirting with her. He’s not being aggressive or rude, but he’s clearly trying to impress her. She’s a very polite person, and I think [Old Friend] finds it more funny than anything, so neither of them shuts him down entirely, but I’m baffled at why this guy thinks he has a shot with a woman who’s engaged, especially right in front of her partner.

Finally, he and I are in the kitchen with no one else around.

Me: “Dude, why do you keep hitting on [Fiancée]?”

Newcomer: “What? I’m not!”

Me: “Yes, you are.”

Newcomer: “I’ve barely talked to [Fiancée].”

Me: “You’ve been talking to her non-stop!”

Newcomer: “No, I’ve been talking to [Sister].”

Me: “…the one wearing the green shirt?”

Newcomer: “Yeah, of course.”

Me: “[Newcomer]. That is not [Sister]. That is [Fiancée].”

Newcomer: “What? No way!”

Now, at this point, if he’d said the confusion was because [Old Friend] and [Fiancée] look more alike (both have blue eyes and dark hair, while [Sister] has hazel eyes and dyes her hair red), or even just that he’d just gotten them mixed up when they came in together, I would chalk it up to a humourous misunderstanding. Instead, he comes out with:

Newcomer: “But she’s really hot! I assumed she was his sister and the other one was his fiancée because there’s no way he could pull someone like her. [Sister] is definitely more in his league.”

Me: “…Are you saying he should be marrying his sister?”

Newcomer: “No, just that it would make more sense for him to be with someone with looks like hers, you know, not a pretty girl.”

Bear in mind, this guy isn’t exactly winning any beauty contests himself, and as should be obvious, he’s not oozing with charm, either. It’s one thing to have an opinion about someone’s looks, and another to just casually say that you think two people are unattractive and thus unworthy of being with an attractive person. 

Unsurprisingly, more unappealing things about him came out over time, and he was not invited to play in our next campaign or to any more parties.

I work in a Lego store. A customer approaches the counter and drops a small Duplo set on the counter.

Customer: “I’d like to return this.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll need to radio a manager. Could you tell me what was wrong with it?”

Customer: “I bought this for my nephew in New York. His daddy is a firefighter there. But I never realized that the little man in this set is black. I don’t want my nephew learning that DEI is okay.”

The customer looks around the store and then at me.

Customer: “I’m sure out of everyone here you can understand.”

Then I realized that she approached me because I’m the only Caucasian employee in the store, and she thought I would relate to her bigotry. 

Sadly, because of store policy (return window, plus receipt), I had to accept the return, but I engaged with her as little as possible.

I’m a network engineer at a military base. Another engineer is showing me some networking equipment someone on the other side of the country will be altering while I act as his hands and eyes on site.

I’m somewhat short for a man (5’5″ or 165cm), and sometimes my coworker likes to joke about it. He is 6’3″ or 190cm.

Coworker: “Oh look, you can see fiber lights in the ports. That will be the ports you need to connect when they’re ready.”

At first, I think he’s talking about the lights under the ports that only light up when cables are plugged into them.

Me: “Lights? There are no lights; nothing is connected to them.”

Coworker: “No! There are fiber lights in the ports; you can’t see them?”

Me: *Looking up at the ports.* “No, I can’t see any lights at all.”

Coworker: *Visibly annoyed.* “What do you mean? How can you not see those lights coming out of the ports?”

I realize the problem and give a sigh. I wordlessly walk across the room.

Coworker: “Hey, where are you going?”

I grab a step stool and carry it back over to the equipment cabinet, and I can tell my coworker is starting to realize the problem.

I step on the stool and am able to see the red lights inside the ports.

Me: *Weary glare to coworker.* “Okay, I can see them now.”

Coworker: *Laughing.* “Oh…”

I’m in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Due to some quirk in the public transport connections, I have arrived half an hour early, so I am passing the time by playing a game on my Switch.

A mom and her young son are sitting across from me. The son (maybe about six or seven years old at most) runs over to me, stares at the Switch for a moment, and then tries to snatch it out of my hand. I yank it back, out of his reach.

Me: “Uh! Excuse me, but no!”

Look, some kids can be impulsive, and I know others have some behavioural issues, so I am not angry or judgmental at this point, but I am looking over to the mother, so that she can do something appropriate. 

She does not do anything appropriate.

Mother: “You do not get to tell my son ‘no’!”

Me: “I don’t know if you just saw, but he tried to take my game console out of my hands.”

Mother: “Well, of course he did! He’s a little boy, and you’re a grown a** woman still playing little kiddie toys. Pathetic.”

I pause a moment, trying to parse those words of sheer audacity. I’m shaken out of it by the little boy trying to grab my switch AGAIN.

Me: “Look, please just tell your son to go back to sitting next to you.”

Mother: “Not likely, with you showing off your shiny expensive game thing in front of his face! It’s cruel!”

Me: “It’s also cruel to raise a boy to think he can have anything he wants just by grabbing it.”

Suddenly, the boy kicks me in the shins.

Me: “Ow! Okay, that does it—”

Mother: “Look, b****! I—”

The older gent sitting in the waiting room with us leans forward, interrupts the mother, and speaks to the little boy in a deep voice, somehow booming but not loud.

Old Man: “Hey, boy! I was naughty in this waiting room once. I tried to take something that didn’t belong to me. You know what the doctor does to naughty boys in his waiting room?”

Within half a second of stating that, he reached into his eye, and… pulled it out. He has a fake eye (Glass? Polymer? Doesn’t matter) and is now holding it out in front of his face.

Old Man: “The doctor said if I misbehaved again, he’d take the other eye. Snip snip.”

The boy immediately starts crying, but at least he runs back to his mother. I’m laughing my a** off, and the mother is calling us both monsters. The doctor and a patient step out of the office to see this commotion.

Doctor: *To the old man.* “Oh, Patrick… not again…”

A woman walks up to the customer service desk and holds out a pen. It doesn’t look like a super-cheap pen, but it doesn’t seem expensive or precious either.

Customer: “I found this. I wanted to put it in the lost and found.”

Me: “Oh, thanks!”

I take the pen and the customer looks at me expectantly.

Me: “Can I help you with anything else, ma’am?”

Customer: “Aren’t you going to thank me for my honesty?”

Me: “I did, ma’am. Thank you very much for handing in the pen.”

Customer: “My friend handed in a wallet here one time, and she got a 10% discount for her honesty.”

Me: “Ah. We used to do that, unofficially. Then we had some customers wise up and start bringing in old wallets and unused items from their home to pretend it was something they’d found in the store and then started demanding the discount. So, that’s another nice thing we can’t have because people ruined it.”

Customer: “Oh…”

I smile and go back to my work when I notice the customer is still standing there.

Me: “Was there anything else, ma’am?”

Customer: “Can I have my pen back?”