Allow me to whisk you away to a strange world where doctors and lawyers are out to get you. I wish this was a fictional encounter; While I am paraphrasing, this conversation did take place.
A woman approaches me as any normal customer would.
“There are people that pose as doctors and lawyers and social workers, and they follow me, but they’re not really those people,” she exclaims in a slightly panicking voice. “I’ll call the cops on you if you’re with them. You’re not with them are you? I need security or something. Those people follow me everywhere and harass me!”
“…uh huh,” I stupidly respond in place of running.
“They say that I harass others, but I don’t! Really they’re the ones who are harassing me! And sometimes they try to illegally drug me! They try to give me the drugs. I’ll call the cops! They follow me and harass me!”
“Oh, wow,” I reply.
“One time during therapy they slipped drugs into my foods. They won’t leave me alone,” she continues. “They follow me around pretending to be doctors and lawyers, and they try to drug me!”
“Wow, that’s terrible.”
“Do you want the proof I have? I can show you papers I have with their signatures on it! The signatures of my family! It shows what’s happening!” She pulls out some slips from pieces of registered mail. “I won’t actually show you their names, of course!” And of course, they’re not proof of anything except that she had some mail.
“Yeah and they won’t leave me alone. They chase me and try to drug me!”
“That’s really terrible.”
“They even tried to poison me. Is my drink poisoned?” She holds out her drink from our cafe to me. “Can you check it for poison?”
“I don’t really know how to do that, but it looks okay to me.”
“Maybe you could get security for me.”
“Um, I could call a manager,” I reply. “But I can’t really call security.”
“No, no, I don’t like bothering people. You know what I mean? I don’t want to make people go out of their way or anything.” Yeah, sure you don’t.
“Well, I don’t mind calling my manager.”
“Can you just assure me that my drink is poison? Can you assure me?”
“I don’t think there’s any poison in your drink.”
“But can you assure me?! Can you promise me that no one slipped any drugs or poison in my drink? Can you assure me? There aren’t any drugs? Can you assure me?”
“I can assure you I didn’t. I don’t see how anyone could have reached your drink, and the people in our cafe wouldn’t do that to your drink,” I reply.
She looks a little relieved. “Okay, thanks. But if I find drugs or poison in my drink, I’ll call the police! And I’ll sue you! I’ll call the police! If there’s poison, I’ll call the police!” She seems to repeat herself a lot. “I’m going to go sit down in the cafe and enjoy my coffee, but I’m going to call the police if you try to follow me or drug me or poison me!”
“…Okay.”
She finally walks away.
And she had a horrible camel toe.