My neighbour was a lovely lady but a bit short on the grey matter. Her husband was a minor diplomat, so she was, I guess, used to a degree of luxury with servants to do the work. One day I was digging potatoes in my back garden, and she looked over the fence and asked what I was doing. I explained.

Neighbour: “You aren’t going to eat them, are you?”

Me: “Er… yes.”

Neighbour: “But they’re all dirty; they’ve been in the ground!”

I didn’t offer to share them with her.

I work for a telecoms engineering company installing new lines and whatnot. The law is no loud work is allowed to start on a workday (Monday-Friday) before 8 AM. That’s a bit early for some people, but hey ho, I do the loud stuff last.

Get to my first job at 8 AM, do some routing and run some preliminary cables around the outside of the house. I’m installing a new line to the flat in a house, upstairs. Before I even get out my drills and hammer, this curtain twitcher on the ground floor keeps looking at me, and every time I look, the curtain moves back. Oh great. I’ve been here before.

It comes to doing the drilling, and I drill a perfect hole into the building, no blowback, no crumbling brick… absolute knocker of a hole if I say so myself.

I start tacking the cables outside against the building and BAM! The front door opens. It’s now 8 45 AM.

Curtain Twitcher: “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?”

Me: “I’m just putting some cables up.”

Curtain Twitcher: “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT TIME IT IS!?”

Me: “About nine-ish?”

Curtain Twitcher: “I WAS SLEEPING! What on earth do you think you are doing at this time in the morning?”

Me: “Sorry, mate, but it’s a weekday. Work starts at eight, and I’ve got a job to do.”

I tried ignoring him at this point because this does happen a lot and I’m not exactly customer service, so I don’t have to put up with it. If they want to complain, they can go to the council or my company.

Curtain Twitcher: “You need my permission to do that!”

Me: “Nope.”

Curtain Twitcher: “What do you mean no!? It’s on my property!”

Me: *Pointing at the dozens of other wires.* “I don’t need permission to put another infrastructure connection over anywhere that already has infrastructure cables on it.

Curtain Twitcher: “I’m going to speak to your manager! Give me his number!”

Me: “Nope, can’t.”

Curtain Twitcher: “Excuse me!?”

Me: “Data Protection Act.”

Curtain Twitcher: “Why does—”

Me: “It’s an internal number. You can call [Company] if you like, but I can’t give you any numbers of any personnel.”

Curtain Twitcher: “RIGHT!”

He slammed his door shut, and I continued my work and finished. I went up to my customer and said:

Me: “Sorry, I think I p***ed off your downstairs neighbour.”

Customer: “Oh, don’t worry, he’s an a*se. He’s been knocking on my door every week about my bins being out for too long after they’ve been collected. Classic Darren.”

This has been paraphrased a lot from the half-hour conversation I had with the guy for efficiency’s sake, and to make me look a bit more competent at arguing. I actually love the fact I can be short with people. I worked retail, and “the customer is always right” is soul-destroying.

Never heard anything back from it, either.

My neighbor is packing up a lot of items onto his pickup truck.

Me: “Going on a trip?”

Neighbor: “Got a spot at the local yard sale.”

Me: “Oh.”

Neighbor: “You always have a lot of stuff in your garage. You should come sell some of it too.”

Me: “I used to go to that yard sale a lot, but I never really sold anything. Most of the customers just use yard sales as a social thing. They’re not really shopping.”

Neighbor: “Maybe you just had it all priced too high.”

Me: “I was gonna swing by the yard sale anyway, so I’ll say hi. Let me show you something when I do.”

Neighbor: “Sure.”

A couple hours later I find my neighbor’s spot, and he agrees to let me man his table for a few minutes to show him something. 

Customers would come along pick up a picture frame or something, look at it and ask:

Customer: “How much?”

Me: “A dollar.”

They would look at it for a few more minutes and then put it down and walk away.

A few minutes later another customer picked up the picture frame and asked:

Next Customer: “How much?”

Me: “One cent.”

This customer still looked at it for another minute before putting it down and walking away.

Me: *To my neighbor.* “About 90% of the people are here to socialize and browse, not shop. Good luck, though!”

I bought a novelty mug from him for fifty cents and said goodbye. When I saw him the next day, he told me he’d sold a total of five items, totalling three dollars, including my sale.

I work for a courier. I’m on the call with a customer who was expecting their package today.

Me: “Ma’am, it looks like the package was left with your next-door neighbor, as you weren’t at home. Your instructions on your account said we could do that.”

Customer: “Yes, I know that already. I got the text from you guys.”

Me: “I see. Is there an issue with the delivery?”

Customer: “Yes! When are you going to come back and deliver it to me?!”

Me: “It’s already been delivered, ma’am. It’s with your neighbor right now.”

Customer: “Wait, you expect me to go and knock on my neighbor’s door myself instead of you getting the delivery driver to come back and get it and deliver it to me?!”

Me: “…yes. That is usually what that means.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! You’re so lazy!” *Click.*

She can’t go to the house next door, but we’re the lazy ones?

My stepmom owned a couple of hot dog stands. Every summer, she catered an outdoor movie night event for the community. It’s an all-day event. When I was in college, they asked me to help out and gave me the money they got paid, so I could have some money for school.

The morning of the event, I got to my dad’s house and started helping him load the hot dog cart onto the back of his truck. All of a sudden, this SUV starts speeding down the alley. My dad narrowly avoided getting hit, but as the SUV passed, it took out the driver’s side mirror of my dad’s truck. The SUV then stops a few houses down, and the guy jumps out and runs into a house.

My dad and I both looked at each other, really confused, and then went to check out the damage. The mirror was hanging off, so we had to figure out how to tape it back on because we needed it to make the hour-and-a-half-long drive to the event.

After a few minutes, the guy from the SUV comes back out and walks towards us. My dad was pretty angry and looked ready to confront him. The guy stops right in front of the mirror, looks at it, turns to us, and says:

Guy: “I’m so sorry. I was about to s*** myself.”

I could barely hold back my laughter, and although my dad was still visibly p***ed off, I could tell he thought it was funny too.

The guy ended up paying for the mirror, but the whole thing was such a weird interaction, and I’m sure he remembers the day he took out a mirror when he almost s*** his pants.