Life’s rough, ain’t it? When I open MY movie theater, nobody will be allowed ANYTHING - no candy wrappers to rustle, no pocketsful of change to rattle, no digital watches that might beep every hour.
Seroiusly, if you gave me shit for checking my phone (on vibrate, no ringer), I’d tell you to go fuck yourself. You want me to leave it on instead? If you like, I can call this person back right now, instead of waiting until the movie is over, or heading to the lobby.
Joe
A few years ago I was doing research at the public records office in London. During a break I was sitting in the canteen minding my own business when I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of a group of three women sitting at the table next to mine.
I heard one of them ask what a (not present) friend was studying, “Irish history”, she stated, “What history?” another replied in a sneering voice. They then proceeded to laugh uproariously and entertain themselves with a number of disparaging comments.
I listened for a bit, finished my lunch, stood up and spoke to the women in my thick Irish accent, “Careful ladies, your ignorance is showing”, before walking away but not before seeing at least one of them going a pleasant shade of red with embarrassment.
Ireland 1 - England 0 
btw put me down as someone else who is surprised to learn that responding with ‘No problem’ could be considered offensive to some people!
Every word in the English language can be used in a figurative sense. Every word, including ‘literally’. I can call a big man “Tiny,” I can say I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, I can say you look like a million bucks, and I can say it’s literally a thousand degrees outside today.
Here are mine that I’ve always been inordinately proud of:
At a big loud party full of rednecks, someone started in on a racist joke. I stood up, said, “I’m not listening to this,” and left the room. I stood obviously in the doorway with my back to the group and when the joke was over, came back in and sat down. I did the same thing several times to my ex-father-in-law, only not as rudely. I just got up when he started, and pretended to go to the bathroom or something.
In college I had to take a course at another college in the same city to fulfill my graduation requirements. I went to a small liberal arts college, this was a state university. There were probably at least 100 people in the class in an auditorium, and the teacher was this flaky 30-something guy who probably got off on how well he could rap with the students. :dubious:
Anyway, these morons, the students, would all start whispering, “get him talking about Russia! Get him off the subject!” (The class was European Political Systems, a political science class, and he was inordinately proud of his Year in Russia or whatever.) One day I was heartily sick of this. I had to borrow a car and drive down to this class twice a week and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to get the material. So one day he asked a question, people started in with Russia, and eventually I stuck up my hand. I answered the question that he’d asked 10 minutes earlier (which was on-topic) and then said, “And now I’d appreciate it if you stick to the subject matter at hand.”
A bunch of “Ooooooooo’s” greeted this, and I just glared at them.
This went on for a solid 10 to 15 minutes I’d say, and then finally I couldn’t take it any more. I walked ahead to where she was standing and said, “Ma’am, can I take your purchases for you? I’ll be glad to hold them for you, but right now you need to tend to your daughter. She needs you.”
I literally said that. She stared at me for several seconds and then comprehension set in. I forget what she said back, but whatever the words, “screw you” is what she meant. I just returned to my place in line, where several of the other women said, “thank you!” and “that poor little girl!” The good news is, a couple minutes later she did in fact take the poor little thing outside.
When I was first married I was underweight, but not freakishly so. My MIL’s biddy friends all used to say things like “Oh, you so skinny,” and “When you gonna put on some weight?” I suffered in embarrassed silence. Flash forward a few decades and I am decidedly no longer underweight. The biddies say, “Remember when we used to tell you that you was too skinny?” I replied, “Yes, and you always hurt my feelings when you did that. And now that I’m 50 pounds overweight, you’ve managed to do it again.” Embarrassed silence ensued.
You go girl.
I think “you’re welcome” is probably more polite, but I have no problem with “no problem.” My mom, however, thinks it’s a horrible expression. I have no idea why.
The rest of your anecdotes I am fully behind, but in this case, after the mother took the poor little thing outside, it seems likely that she was just going to have to come back inside with a child that still hasn’t had a nap/lunch/whatever, and wait in the extremely long line to buy her uniforms, just as everyone else was doing. And if she had a similarly long drive ahead of her, she might have felt she didn’t have many options other than to deal with a screaming toddler. I mean, in most situations, yes, I fully agree, you should take your screaming child out of the situation when you are in public. But if you’ve driven over an hour to the one store that sells the uniforms you need for school next week, your options seem somewhat limited.
Edit: Well, one option would have been for everyone else to let her go first, since she had a child that was clearly in distress and needed to make purchases.
To a bunch of loud, drunken, shirtless rednecks at an outdoor concert: “Hey, could you guys park it? None of us can see through you.”
They did.
The lady sitting next to me looked at me and said, “Cojones.” 
I once heard somebody explain (it may have been on the Dope, I’m not sure) that having someone say “no problem” implies the possibility that what you did could have been a problem, but that on this instance it wasn’t and that one should never even imply that doing one’s job could be a problem. I personally think that’s an absurd explanation, but it’s what I’ve heard.
A number of years ago, I stopped at a gas station that had a single unisex restroom. It was occupied, so I waited for it to be available. After a couple of minutes, a young man walked out. I walked in, and the toilet hadn’t been flushed. I walked right back out, and called to the guy, “Excuse me. You need to come back here and flush the toilet!” He gave me a stunned look, then came back and did as he was asked.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was out with a few friends. Towards the end of the night, we ended up at a bar with some DJ playing some music.
A couple of the girls started dancing, enjoying themselves, and then a guy just sort of comes up and tries to dance with them, a little too close. They move away from him, and he walks away…but then comes back a little later and tries again. He was getting VERY close, essentially trying to get them to “grind” against him. He was sort of half-stumbling, not really dancing, so we all just laughed a bit at the silly drunk not taking the hint as they moved away again. Then another guy comes over and tries the same thing, so they just leave the dance floor and get a drink for a while.
I notice that the two guys seem to be friends…they also just leave the floor as soon as the girls do, and talk with each other for a bit. Maybe ten minutes later the girls dance again, this time they got a couple friends to dance with them, hoping this time the guys wouldn’t try again…well, they did.
They both came over, and no matter how the girls positioned themselves with their friends, they guys would try to grind against someone. A couple other guys with us were still just smiling and laughing at it all, thinking it was still kind of funny, but they were way past silly drunk and well into creepy drunk at this point. I’m generally the least confrontational person I know, but since it was clear the girls were too shy (and perhaps a bit frightened,) and the other guys we were with were a combination of too drunk or clueless to care, I finally just said to one of them,
“Hey, would you mind dancing somewhere else?”
He sort of slurs something, I didn’t make it out, and he kept trying to dance, so I repeat myself while pushing him back as gently as I could and added on,
“Look, buddy, they clearly have no interest in dancing with you…find somewhere or someone else to dance with, ok?”
At this point he gives me a sort of death stare, and again tries to protest, mumbling something about just having a good time, and who am I to tell him what to do. Well, the time for being polite to the creeper was over. My final words were:
“Get out of here right now! You’re creepy as shit, and ruining everyone’s good time! Go back to your little dark corner with your friend before I get the bouncer!”
He did go back to his little corner, but him and his creeper friend were giving me the death stare all night.
“no problem” has always sounded condescending to me. I don’t like it.
However, it has become widespread in its usage. There’s no stopping it, and we might as well assume that its meaning has now changed to make it an acceptable and appropriate response to “Thank you.”
Oh! I just remembered one. I was a receptionist at an ad agency back in the early '80s. My boss walked by with a client, and I overheard the boss refer to “some faggot.” I reached up from my desk, grabbed Boss’s necktie, yanked him down, and said, “Don’t you *ever *use that word again.”
Boss said, “Yes, ma’am!” And client said, as they were leaving, “Where the *hell *did you get that receptionist?!”
He was a pretty good boss.
snort
I went to the most recent Star Trek movie (which, BTW, probably has Roddenberry rolling in his grave) when it first came out.
There were two trekkies sitting behind me, holding a conversation over this and that of Trekkdom while the movie was playing. They ignored a few annoyed glances from me, so I finally turned around, put my knees on my seat, folded my arms across the back of the seat, and stared at both of them with an expression of intense interest.
They stopped talking, and looked at me kind of blankly. I looked back at them for a second, then said - in a VERY LOUD VOICE: “well, your conversation is obviously much more important and more relevant than any of our (with a sweep of the arm to encompass everyone else) need to listen to the movie, so I thought I’d just JOIN IN!”
They didn’t say a thing for the rest of the show.
I wanted to say “No Problem” to some lady who bought something at my store and said “Thank you”. So I did. Then she got all bent out of shape. So I short changed her.
I think she was with someone and she allowed the friend to make the purchases. But, you know I spied on her after she went outside to see what would happen. She did calm the child down. I believe there might have been juice or food involved; it’s been a while ago. She might have been from out of town, like I was, sure, or from Louisville where the store is; that’s where most of the Catholic schools are in this state. Anybody that stands there while their child screams in clear agony is perpetrating abuse, IMHO. I’ve never seen a child that worked up. It was making every mother in the place practically lactate in distress, believe me. I can’t believe she was immune to her own child screaming in so tortured a manner!
I called out my economics teacher in high school during class and basically told him he was the worst kind of teacher and a glaring example of everything that’s wrong with the education system.
Can I have a sentence in which ‘or’ is used in its figurative sense, please?
Do you know what a Hobson’s choice is?