Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Yes, that's what I meant to say. Series can be a singular (like a series of one magazine), but in the series of Babysitter's Club books, one book is not called a serie!

Actually, series is the singular, and serieses's is the plural.

LIES

don't forget the postrophe!

(actually this conversation is hurting my head since in portuguese series does have different singular and plural form- a serie, as series.)

Oh my glob.

I have this client who approached me last year wanting a bunch of stuff we don't offer. She just approached me again... asking for the same stuff. And was surprised we don't offer it.

Sorry lady, even playing field for all my looney clients.

My favorite is when people walk into the coffee shop and ask, "Are you open?"
No. We unlocked the doors, turned on the lights, and planted a couple fake customers at tables just to fork with you.

Equally wonderful:
Customer holding menu that says "Menu" at the top: "Is this your menu?"
Me, in my head: "No, we keep another business's menu here just to fork with you.

This is totally me. Internal dialogue sometimes just comes out of my mouth. Pretty much any time I have to speak to someone in public, I say something and immediately think "probably TMI." And I'm actually kind of smart! Just awkward.

Maybe they have that issue too.

I'm so guilty of doing this. Usually I'll call a place to see if they're open, and if they answer the phone it's pretty obvious that they are. Then I have a ridiculously weird conversation with the employee, with plenty of "Um"s and "Err"s and "Oh, wrong number, sorry!"s.

nothing wrong with a cheery "just calling to see if you're open! thanks!". i mean, on the phone there's no way you could know until the phone gets picked up.

I always say, "How late are you open?"

That way I sound legit.

I just start crying.

I never minded when people asked if we were open because the most infuriating thing was people coming in at 5:01 when we closed at 5:00 and were just serving our last customers and the managers wouldn't allow us to say "actually it's 5:01 so fork right off, please" so we had to say something like "we close at 5" and they'd go "well what time is it?" and we'd go "five" and they'd be all "perfect, I'll be one second!" and then we have to wait around for them to finish their stupid shopping.

I kind of like when people ask dorkily obvious questions because I know I've asked my share of dorkily obvious questions in my time. My favorites at the bookstore are:

When I ask a customer if they'd like a bag with their purchase, and they respond with "Yeah, if you've got one." (Ok, not technically a question, but I always feel the urge to say "I wouldn't offer it if I didn't have it.")

and... "Do you work here?" when I'm up on a ladder putting away a stack of books. ("No, I just really can't stand untidy bookstores.")

ditto.

I always ask obvious questions. Just a couple of weeks ago, I asked an obvious question and said "D'oh!" to the salesgirl after answering it myself. She pretended to be amused, at least.

This isn't store-related, but I'm always asking for the time when either there's a clock right in front of me, or my phone's in my hand.

People come up to our farm (which has a open/closed sign at the bottom of a hill/gravel road that people always speed up and ruin the orchard but that's another complaint) and tell me "did you all know your sign says closed?". Yes, I do. Because we are closed. Some lady borderline-yelled at me because she had a brochure from five years ago that said we were open later.

I was a very special customer yesterday. I called Candle Cafe to ask if they were open.

Somebody came to the shelter and donated an open bag of dog food that had expired in 2007 and an open box of dog biscuits that expired in '08. Their dog had died 5 years ago. We also had a different person try to donate a filthy, half-eaten rawhide bone. DEAR EVERYONE: We do not want your trash. Just throw it the fork away!

(Still not as bad as the bag of old underwear that someone gave us years ago.)

.......old underwear??

well, yeah. dogs love that. mine did, anyway.

I have to defend this very specialness, since I called a place to ask the same thing last week and even though someone answered, they weren't opening for another two hours. Maybe it's irritating to employees, but I shall defend my right to call before going all they way there to have to turn around.

Probably donated with the intent that they could be used as rags.

This is one thing I don't use for rags but I know people who do. I know, they're clean, you can bleach them, but there is something about dusting an end table with a scrap of tighty whities that I can't do.

I work at a bookstore and people call all the time before we open, usually to find out our hours. I don't mind at all. I do get slightly irritated when they have complicated questions before we open. I often lie and say our computers aren't booted up yet and to call back when we open.

I could see doing that in your own home but I wouldn't donate my underwear to anyone but myself!