I bought a pint of  Häagen-Dazs ice cream at the supermarket. As the cashier rang it up, I asked, “How do you pronounce that?”

Speaking slowly and distinctly, he said, “Four dollars and seventy-nine cents.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I decided to grab a burger at a drive-thru. There were no cars in sight, so I rolled up to the pay window. “We’re still serving breakfast. And you have to order at the speaker,” the clerk scolded.

I drove all the way around the building to the squawk box and ordered a breakfast sandwich. “I’m sorry,” she said, “we are now serving lunch.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------

In some quarters, bookstores may be considered dinosaurs, but odd customers are evergreen, as these requests to bookstore clerks prove.

"Can you tell me who the author of Shakespeare is?"

"I’m looking for a book, but I only know the title, not the author. It’s called Dante’s Inferno."

"I definitely don’t want nonfiction. I like autobiographies and history."

"Do you have Shakespeare in English?"

-----------------------------------------------------------

A customer walked into our store looking for Christmas lights. I showed her our top brand, but—wanting to make sure each bulb worked—she asked me to take them out of the box and plug them in. I did, and each one lit up.

"Great," she said.

I carefully placed the string of lights back in the box. But as I handed them to her, she looked alarmed.

"I don’t want this box," she said abruptly. "It’s been opened."

|