Back in the late 1990s, a brand new multiplex opened in a major city near me. At the time, this was quite exciting since we had few of these around, and it was apparently looking to be some kind of local hotspot with different bars, restaurants, and nightclubs all under one roof.

By chance, I won some free tickets to the first-ever screening at the theatre, which was for one of the “Free Willy” movies. My dad, my sister, and my friend were all able to go as we had four free tickets. I wasn’t massively excited about the film, but it was still pretty cool.

When we arrived, the place certainly looked new and impressive, and we got some free popcorn to boot. There were a number of families in attendance, and everyone looked happy.

Then, the strangest thing happened when the movie started. Literally five seconds into the movie, the curtain suddenly went down and the house lights came up! Everyone in the cinema sat there perplexed at what was happening.

A woman in a business suit suddenly appeared and made an announcement. 

Woman: “Ladies and gentlemen, that is probably the shortest movie we will ever show here at [Cinema], but unfortunately, due to problems with our license, we are unable to show this movie this afternoon.”

There was very confused silence from all in attendance! 

Woman: “We have some free tickets for everyone for a future screening, and we do apologize!”

Everyone filed out and got their tickets, looking bemused and baffled by this whole ordeal. In the end, it worked out okay because I wasn’t bothered about not seeing the movie, and we got to use the tickets for a better film later on. Afterward, my dad took us to see “Men In Black”, which we were more excited to see! 

It was an opening I won’t forget because it still confuses me. What the h*** were they doing? Why did they wait until the opening credits just to stop the movie if they could’ve just cancelled or rescheduled beforehand? The cinema is still going and is very popular, but that botched opening left them with egg on their face!

Many years ago, I temped at a recruitment agency that specialised in support positions that required security clearance. This could be anything from a security guard for a government building to a senior administrator for MI5.

I had been hired for a few months to effectively screen the person who would be doing the job I had been hired as a temp for, except she was going to be a recruitment manager, so she’d have a few more duties that I wasn’t qualified for. I was chosen as a stopgap because I already had full security checks from a previous position working in a school and extensive admin experience.

The new hire couldn’t start until everything came back clean. This included running an extended criminal check, as well as calling for references from all previous employers. Let me tell you, getting references from twenty-plus years ago can be a time-consuming pain in the backside.

Her criminal check came back clean. However, her employment references were… problematic. Any references where she had indicated management experience either had no record of her working for that company or no record of her working there in a management position. A few references were for companies that had long since closed, so there was no way to confirm either way. Still, I soldiered on through the references.

During this time, the new hire came by the office a few times to drop off necessary documentation such as photo ID and to do some training. While she was in, I asked her if she had gone by any other names, thinking this might explain why some employers had no record of her working there. Perhaps I was just giving them the wrong name. She looked down her nose at me and told me no in the most condescending way possible. “Okay,” I thought, and got back to work, grateful I wouldn’t be working alongside her.

I was having difficulty locating the correct information for one of her more recent employers, so I decided to see if she had a Facebook account that might confirm the right details — many people list where they’ve worked, after all.

That’s when I discovered that she was writing nasty comments about various people in the office on her public Facebook profile. She wrote that I was a “fat cow” who was deliberately dragging my feet on getting her references so I could steal her job. She also called my manager a “perv”, and she said she would report him for sexual harassment when she started to “put him in his place”.

But the worst part was that she had managed to sneak photos of some staff and had added nasty captions. She managed to take a picture of me while I was nibbling on some food at my desk and wrote the caption “porky”. On a photo she had snuck of my manager, she had written the caption “panty sniffer”.

Aside from the malicious nature of the photos, taking any photos in our office was strictly forbidden. Cameras and mobile phones were banned from the office because we dealt with a lot of confidential contracts. Phones were taken at reception and put in secured lockers to be collected either when you went to lunch or when you went home. The receptionists were pretty on the ball about this, so I have no idea how she managed to sneak a phone in.

But the icing on the proverbial cake was that she regularly complained about how long it was taking because she was going travelling in nine months. Every day I “dragged my heels”, I was “stealing” money she needed for her travels. That explained her attitude with me.

In her interview, this woman had not mentioned anything about her planned travels. In fact, she had said she was looking for something long-term and expressed an interest in helping the company grow. It became clear that what the woman really wanted was to grow her bank balance with this high-paying job, so she lied through her teeth about having management experience.

I informed my manager of this, emailing him screenshots of her posts. The woman was marched into my manager’s office, where he not only told her we were rescinding our offer of employment, but he made her delete all the photos from her phone and Facebook while he watched. He warned her that if he saw any photos of this office or its employees on social media, he would be taking legal action.

In response, the woman posted rant after rant on her — still public — Facebook profile saying we had discriminated against her and that my manager tried to feel her up and then fired her, she claimed that I lied to make her look bad, and she also claimed my manager was racist and that’s why he terminated her. Both my manager and this woman were white, for the record.

I reported it to my manager, who called her and told her that unless she took down those posts, she would be sued for libel. The posts were taken down within the hour, and passive-aggressive posts about freedom of speech and how “you can’t say anything without people getting offended” posts replaced them. And she still didn’t make her profile private. Go figure.

I’d been renting my flat for six years when this happened. I’d been stung by s***ty landlords in the past, so I was relieved to find that my current landlord was a stand-up guy. Because my landlord travelled a lot for business, he used a property management service to ensure stuff got done.

The letting agent he had been using for years shut down because the guy running it retired, so my landlord found another company. As part of taking over, an agent from the new company came to do an inspection. No biggie. I kept the house in tip-top condition, and I’d never had any issues before. 

The agent looked around and saw that my furniture was a little battered. Most of it was bought secondhand, and I’d had it for years, so naturally, there was wear and tear. 

The agent started listing the damage to the furniture. I thought that was odd.

Me: “Yeah, it’s not in the best condition, but it’s my furniture, so it’s not a problem.”

Agent: “You’re going to have to pay to replace it all.”

Me: “Why? It’s my furniture. The place was rented unfurnished. This is all my stuff. It doesn’t belong to the landlord.”

Agent: *Smiling smugly* “The moment you bring anything into the property, it becomes property of the landlord.”

Me: “That’s not how that works.”

The agent huffed and continued nitpicking everything he could before leaving. 

A few days later, I got a letter stating that they were going to take my entire deposit to pay for the damage to the furniture. My furniture.

As I said before, I had been royally screwed over in the past by scummy landlords, so I knew my rights as a tenant and where to look in my tenancy agreement, etc. I researched this, and naturally, none of what the agent was trying to do was remotely legal.

I sent them a letter, highlighting the relevant parts of the tenancy agreement and the law, including that my deposit was protected so they couldn’t touch it until I moved out. They then tried sending me a bill and threatened legal action if I didn’t pay, but again, I reiterated that this wasn’t legal and cited the relevant laws and regulations.

The agent was obviously determined to get at my deposit and so kept coming at me with a bunch of bogus claims to extort money from me.

1. They claimed that they had evidence that I had a dog which my tenancy forbade. For one, my tenancy does not forbid them; I just have to ask my landlord’s permission before getting any pets. Also, I do not have a dog as I have allergies.
2. They claimed that I was illegally sub-letting. I wasn’t.
3. They tried to get me to pay for a fence that had been blown down during storm winds — claiming that had I ripped this fence out of the ground maliciously — a fence that the building freeholder was actually responsible for, not my landlord. So, even if I had damaged the fence, the letting agent wouldn’t be who I paid to fix the damage.
4. They claimed that I had let the flat become mould damaged. Again, not true.

It went on and on with him trying to make bogus claims. Each time, I demanded to speak to the landlord, but the agent refused to give me any of his details, claiming the landlord knew about this and was sick of me “abusing his property.”

He’d try to bully me with threats of eviction for non-compliance, and I’d just hit him with the laws that said he couldn’t do that. I thought he would eventually get bored and stop when he saw I wouldn’t cave in. He didn’t. After months of constant harassment, constant fighting, and documenting everything — including taking photos of the state of my flat every single day out of paranoia — I was burnt out. Enough was enough.

I needed to contact my landlord directly, but I’d lost his number a few years ago when I got a new phone. I’d never had any issues before and so foolishly never thought to get the details again. The only thing I had to go by was my landlord’s full name on the tenancy agreement and the address of his place of work. It took me a while, but I eventually managed to get his work email address.

I emailed him and explained what was going on, including sending him scanned copies of the letters I was being sent. Less than an hour later, he called me saying he had no idea any of this was happening, and he assured me that he had not okayed ANY of it. He promised he would deal with it.

A few days later, my landlord called back and explained what had happened. It turns out that the agent who had been hassling me was actually the owner of the letting agents. He was also my landlord’s nephew. His nephew had opened his new business when my landlord was looking for a new letting agent, so he decided to help his nephew out by signing up for his property management services.

The problem was that his nephew knew nothing about property management. He told everyone he had been taking courses, but he hadn’t. While you don’t necessarily need to pass a course to open or work as a letting agent, you do need to know what you are doing, and his nephew didn’t know the first thing about property management, let alone rental laws.

The whole time his nephew had been hassling me, he kept his uncle in the dark, telling him everything was fine. No wonder he refused to give me any of his details. My guess is he was trying to siphon my deposit for himself.

My landlord apologised profusely and assured me that he would make this right. And he did, by immediately firing his nephew and hiring a new property management company. He gave me all his contact details and told me to call him if I ever had any problems. I made sure I saved those details in as many places as possible.

I’ve worked with several rescue dogs over the years and have had a lot of negative experiences with other dog owners, especially working with reactive dogs. When I started a business working with dogs, I braced for these experiences to become commonplace.

They have not. I have a few complaints about some of the owners I have worked with, but this little story isn’t about those.

I am out with my favourite dog, an incredibly friendly, energetic, and happy cocker spaniel who I’ll call Miss Fluff. I’ve taken Miss Fluff to a park and she’s desperate for me to get the ball out and play with her. She’s glued to my feet as I do so — it’s a ball on a rope — and neither of us see the newcomer come around the corner until he’s joined her: a lovely, big chocolate lab, curious about the ball. Miss Fluff doesn’t care about him, only the ball.

The owners turn the corner, see us, and IMMEDIATELY call him off. He listens, but I call over that she’s friendly and they give him permission to come back over.

Me: “Will he chase the ball if I throw it for her?”

Miss Fluff is positively vibrating with excitement.

Owner: “Oh, yes. We’ll get out of your hair; don’t worry.”

Me: “Well, I was wondering if we should let them have a little race?”

Owner: “Oh, he’ll win. He’s much bigger than her and he loves to play fetch!”

So, to find out, I threw the ball. It went soaring across the field and Miss Fluff was after it like a shot, the lab hard on her tail. It was close, but she snatched the ball up ahead of him! The lab was having none of it, and he grabbed the end of the rope, and they happily ran back carrying it together.

The other owner and I laughed and agreed to call it a draw, before he went on and the lab obediently followed when called. Sadly, I’ve never seen them again in that area, but the memory still makes me smile, and moments like that have made up for the more inconsiderate and inattentive owners!

This story is part of our Feel Good roundup for September 2020!

Read the next Feel Good roundup story!

Read the Feel Good roundup for September 2020!

This story takes place when I’m maybe ten years old. My family is financially quite comfortable, especially my grandmother, who has come down from halfway up the country to visit. My brother and I have been taken by my mother, stepfather, and grandmother to a country pub, and when crossing the car park, I find a £5 note.

I am incredibly excited because we don’t get pocket money or the chance to get money for chores. Five pounds wasn’t much even about twenty-five years ago, but it is a big deal to me. In my excitement, I trustingly announce aloud what I have found.

Stepfather: *Demanding* “Hand over that fiver! I’ll hand it over at the bar.”

I’m initially reluctant.

Stepfather: “Whoever dropped it might really need it and it should be given back if possible.”

I understand this; after all, if it made me so happy to find it, so how sad must the person who lost it be? And how happy would they be to get it back? I’m sad not to keep it but hope it makes the owner happy.

My mother and grandmother claim a table outside while my stepfather goes inside to buy drinks and my brother and I go to check out the play area. When my stepfather comes back out with drinks, he announces, not intending for me to hear:

Stepfather: “This round is thanks to [My Name]!”

Looking back now, with the benefit of much greater awareness of what my parents were like and a lot less naivety, I would be shocked if it ever crossed his mind to hand it in at the bar. No, he saw that a child who had never had money of their own had found a little and decided it should be his, instead.