I’ve just been hired as a translator for this company. We agreed on 35,000 baht per month (Thai baht currency). Today is my payday, and they pay me 4,000 baht.

Me: “Why is my pay so low?”

Office Manager: “Because you’re on probation.”

Me: “That’s not stated in the contract, and you did not tell me any of this when hiring me. So, on my probation period, I only get 300 baht (10 USD) a day for my eight hours of work?”

I double-checked the contract, and it also didn’t say anything about me deleting all the work I had done for them: translated contracts, loans, etc.

I deleted every f****** file I’d translated, some due for the government and for viewing the next day or the day after. I deleted them all, I formatted the computer — they didn’t have cloud storage, so nothing was saved online — and I f***ed off.

They called me and asked me to come back to the office the next day so they could “explain” the reason they only gave me 300 a day, and they said they’d like their files back, pretty please.

I didn’t go.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Abuse & Death

I work in a large aquarium. We have several pools with goldfish and other species. We sometimes get kids, and even adults, who want to touch the fish. One day, I see a little boy grab the tail of a goldfish and pull it out of the water.

Me: “Please put that back in the water.”

The boy just stares at me. Thinking he might not understand me, I gently take the fish and put it back in the water. The boy then grabs a different fish.

Me: “Please don’t grab the fish like that. You could really hurt them. Now put him back in the water.”

The boy blew a raspberry at me and then took off with the fish.

Sighing, I called my manager over and told her what was going on. She sent security to find the boy and the fish.

A few minutes later, security radio’d that they’d found the boy and his mother, who was insisting that her son was an angel and had done nothing wrong, even when the boy put the fish in his mouth. His mother shrieked and slapped the fish away, where it landed hard on the cold concrete. I picked up the fish and security took the extremely misbehaved boy and his crazy mother away and banned them for life.

Unfortunately, the fish died, and we installed video cameras the next week.

My company delivers food for local restaurants. We’re a small company; we pay good salaries, social insurance, etc. Our most popular places are pizza joints, but today, this ABSOLUTE GEM of a human ordered from an Indian restaurant. He demanded free samosas and threatened to cancel his order if he didn’t get them. Naturally, the Indian place said no. He bombed me with so many emails, calling me a whore, saying that Indians are useless, calling the restaurant staff racial slurs, and so on.

After I told him they said no the first time, he ordered again an hour later with a note, and the following exchange of emails ensues.

Customer: “Hi. Need free samosas or please cancel, thanks.”

Me: “You’re still not getting free samosas, and I’ve declined your order as requested.”

Customer: “Tell those rude, ignorant little f*****s that they don’t get many customers these days, so they should be f****** grateful! If not, I won’t order again, [slur] scum! And please deliver my message exactly like that.”

Me: “Hi, [Customer]. I absolutely will not be relaying your racist messages to them. In fact, I have sent out my whole flock of messenger pigeons to gather my army of Indian and Pakistani warriors, and tonight we shall feast on samosas in your honor. Have a great evening. [My Name].”

I deleted his account and told him not to contact us again. He was the first customer I’ve ever banned. Also, we’re in Thailand, so the owner of the restaurant is Thai and all of the staff are Thai and Burmese. Now, I’m just hoping that he posts a review somewhere so I can screenshot all of his racist bulls***.

(Rather embarrassingly, I am the customer in this story. My boyfriend and I are traveling in South East Asia and are staying one night in Bangkok before flying to Hong Kong. Unfortunately, we can’t remember the exact name of the hotel we’ve booked and can’t find anywhere in the airport to get Wi-Fi or access the Internet and look it up, so I go to the tourist information office.)

Me: “Excuse me, my boyfriend and I are booked into a hotel but we can’t quite remember the name. It’s the ‘Something’ Riverview, but I’m not sure exactly.”

Lady: *behind the desk* “Okay, do you know which street it’s on?”

Me: “No.”

Lady: “Do you know where in the city it is?”

Me: “Not exactly.”

Lady: “Do you know how many stars it has?”

Me: *turning beet red by this point* “Sorry, no.”

Lady: “Ma’am, I apologise, but do you know anything? There are hundreds of hotels in Bangkok!”

(Fortunately, another lady in the office looked up a list of names that roughly matched Riverview and I recognised one straight away. After that, they booked us a taxi to take us there!)

Having grown up in a well-developed country, crossing the road is probably the least of our worries due to the abundance of traffic lights, zebra crossings, and pedestrian bridges. Recently, my family went for a vacation to Bangkok, Thailand as a group of eight people. Being a dense city area, the traffic is pretty nightmarish there. Around our hotel, to get to the other side of the main road will require you to either jaywalk or to walk a long distance to the overhead transit system and cross its bridge.

We saw what appeared to be a traffic light for pedestrians, and crossed the first half normally. The main road was quite wide and crossing it would require us to pass through two traffic lights, with each stopping cars flowing from a certain direction. Reaching the other half, we realized that the traffic light was either broken or disused, as it remained red — or didn’t even turn on at all; I can’t remember the details. So, we were stuck in the middle of the road, and it was difficult for us to cross as a large group and with all the cars moving at a pretty fast speed. I recalled us getting stuck there for at least a solid two minutes.

A motorcyclist saw eight of us, looking like lost tourists wanting to cross the road, and stopped for us in the middle lane — it was a three-lane road — and motioned for the cars to stop, as well. Surprisingly, the cars at the other lanes stopped, and he gestured for us to cross, which we did quickly and gratefully.

While this might seem like a small gesture, the kindness of the Thais did impress me significantly. While I had seen roads in other countries which were as “messy” as this one, this is definitely the first time I had seen someone stopping just to allow us jaywalkers to cross, even though they did not have to.