Let's start off with a few of my own customer stories...

How do you spell literate?

A year or two back, I went into work on a Saturday, to use one of the computers. As I was sitting there, trying desperately to mind my own business, a young woman came in. I'll skip the usual business of trying to figure out what software, what platform, how to log in... The point is, she had a resumé on disk and needed to make one small change before printing it out. She wanted to, um, make it say somewhere on it that, like, she could, you know, use a computer.

Fine, whatever. So the person working that day helps her along, and they decide that the best way to do this is add a line under the Skills heading just saying 'Computer literate'. So he shows her how to use the keyboard, and work the return key. He turns away to work on something else. 'Um, excuse me'. He turns back to her to give her a hand. 'How do you spell literate'?

Okay, at this point in the story, most people have rolled their eyes, and are walking away shaking their heads.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL...

So he spells it out for her. She asks again. He spells again. This goes back and forth three or four times. Finally, she looks up and says, 'Sorry, L-I-G- what'?

The Finger

One summer a few years ago, I was working the overnight shift at a 24 hour drive-thru. Up until about four or five o'clock every morning, almost all of our customers were drunk. Usually, the driver was somewhat sober, but it seemed every car contained at least a few pissed-out-of-their-trees teenagers and twenty-somethings, About five, we started getting the early risers.

We had one customer come through every morning, and he was always obnoxious. One morning though he pulled up to the window, and demanded, 'Call the police!' I wasn't sure what he was talking about, since I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, well, aside from one rude old man yelling at me to call the police, that is.

'I beg your pardon', I said somewhat hesitantly.

'I told you to call the police!' I asked him why. 'To take out the trash', he declared. I must have looked a bit confused (gee, go figure), because he finally decided to elaborate. He pointed to three guys across the parking lot. They apparently were what he was calling trash. I asked him what they had done. 'They gave me the finger', he said, as if it were the most offensive crime he could think of: up there with child prostitution and ritual murder. I tried to explain that I was sorry it had happened, but I still couldn't call the police. He screeched out of the drive-thru and didn't come back for months.

A few days later, I talked to the three guys he was referring to. It seems he pulled into the parking lot and started yelling and swearing at them. One of them responded by giving him the finger.

The funniest part came when I told my mother. 'The finger? Where did they get it? Was it a real finger? Was it in a box?'