I have a coworker who despite speaking fluent English, speaks a completely different language than the rest of us. She latches onto “vocab words” and will misuse them like there is no tomorrow. The best way I can describe it is, it is like she learns what a pear is for the first time and every other bulbus fruit – peaches, applies, plums, etc. – are all called pears. No amount of correcting or asking for clarification will make her stop calling everything a pear.

To complicate the matter, she will also refuse to listen and/or read, and goes into things halfcocked despite having all the information in front of her.

Most of my coworkers still try, but I have taken the approach of taking her quite literally. If she asks for a pear, I hand her a pear. I don’t care that she actually meant an apricot and we both know it but she cannot do a thing about it.

I get this strange text from her.

Coworker: Hi. I got an alert from [IT Person]. I want to know how much memory you have. Also ask how many [Coworker #2] and [Intern] has.

Now, I know her pretty well that I know she isn’t talking about RAM like a normal human being. She just thinks it sounds techy and is going with it. I also know that said IT Person doesn’t give a crap about our computer specs. He manages our server. The alert she got was about us running out of space on it (again) and asking if we should purchase another internal hard-drive.

Still, I decide to be quite evil.

Me: Hi. We all have 16 GB of memory.

Coworker: So few?

Me: Yep!

Coworker: OK. I will tell [It Person].

Later IT Person asked me why I had told her we had 16 GB of space and I showed him the texts. He rolled his eyes and walked away.

I could’ve saved her the trouble and asked her to send me the email, but then I would’ve had to have a back and forth of me telling her she needs to go to purchasing and her telling me she will while expecting for ME to do it. This way is a whole lot less painless for me. Even if I am the jerk.

I work for a start-up where the owner means well and has big ambitious but often doesn’t follow through on his promises. It is expounded by his VP who also talks big but never delivers. The best example of this is when I started my internship, I was promised stock immediately if they decided to hire me. A year later, I got the job! Where I was once more promised stock options… Three and a half years after that, the only mention of stock is when they think I am annoyed at their management practices.

I am also a huge integral part of the company and know where literally all the skeletons are kept. If I go, the wheel of the ship stops working and they cannot steer in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

There is one guy, Greg, who they have been stringing along for three years promising him a full-time job with benefits whenever we are financially stable. He is a large part of why the start-up took off and became profitable. He mostly stays because he has had a working relationship in some capacity with the owner of the company for the past sixteen years. If I am the motor, he is the hull of the ship. If he goes, everyone drowns.

After being jerked around for the better part of two years, being promised benefits, stock, etc. along with being severally underpaid as a contractor, he finally gets fed-up and finds another job. And too late, the owner (verbally) matches his salary.

The VP comes in to talk to me about it. This woman, to put it nicely, is bullsh*t walking. You can only believe 10% of whatever comes out of her mouth. The other thing you should know about the VP is she is known for being stingy and trying to divert funds to her own paycheck.

Unprompted, she starts going on and on about how it wasn’t her fault that Greg is leaving. It is between Greg and the owner. The owner was promising him things he shouldn’t have been. Greg made assumptions about what he “entitled” to out of this job. Trying to get a read on my headspace. Basically forcing the blame on anyone but herself and implying heavily that wanting a full-time employment with benefits is overreaching. Again, this man has 16 years of experience and a PhD and is being paid worse than me with a Bachelor’s!

Now, I had known Greg was considering leaving for a few months now when another coworker casually mentioned a recruiter from a client had contacted her and he seemed to consider it. Greg had also told me as soon as the paperwork had come in the week prior that he was leaving with a lovely salary bump of three times more than his current salary and actual vacation time! I was thrilled for him, obviously.

So I was cool as a cucumber and not at all worried about the direction of the start-up. She went back and reported to the owner, as I found out later, that I was fine. What neither of them realized was I was already quitting to pursue my Master’s (something Greg also knew) after being stagnant.

tl;dr Compensate your employees accordingly and treat them with respect, if you want them to stay.

(This is a story about my aunt. She and my uncle live in the wild area of Indiana. Most of the neighbors stay out of each other’s way and are very polite. Not this one neighbor. She is known in the area as Crazy Mary. One day, she and my aunt get into a fight. What about, you ask? A skunk. Crazy Mary had a skunk she found in the woods, with the scent glands still in place, that had been making the whole area around my aunt’s house smell bad.)

Crazy Mary: Well that’s just stupid! If you’re such an animal hater, then here! You take him! Maybe it will show you some respect for animals!

(She then proceeds to THROW THE SKUNK at [Aunt]. It is also worth noting that my aunt and uncle have two very large and very sweet dogs that my aunt and uncle do a very good job taking care of.)

My Aunt: Listen, [Crazy Mary], what you are doing is animal abuse first and foremost! Secondly, when is it EVER okay to throw an animal at another person? I hope the poor little guy is okay after his traumatic event with you.

(The skunk never actually touched [Aunt], it hit the ground a few feet in front of her and skittered away into the woods, but it was certainly an interesting story to tell later!)

When I was halfway through high school, the drama department’s costume and prop room had to be entirely cleaned out for a campus move. One of the teachers overseeing it was my literature teacher, but since she could not oversee everything at once, a few things—such as props swiped from the discard pile—escaped her notice.

One morning before class started, she opened the closet door next to her desk to hang up her coat and screamed loud enough to startle everyone in the room. Several people ran over to ask if she was all right before they realized that she was laughing. Why? Because someone had snuck a creepy baby doll with a half-shattered face from the pile of discarded props and hung it up in the closet so it looked like it was staring at whoever opened it.

After she stopped laughing, the creepy doll was proudly hung up above the whiteboard, where it stayed for the rest of the semester. She was very disappointed when the doll got lost during the campus move.

I am a big softie when it comes to animals, so much that I literally cry when I see an animal in distress or a dead one. I am also very clumsy and have injured myself in weird ways over the years, however the following instance takes the cake.

My partner comes home to tell me that there is a mouse sitting in front of our flat. We live on the third floor and our neighbours from above are young and boisterous, so I, being a softie, decide to go and get the mouse to at least hide in the cellar if I can’t get it to leave the house.

Things go wrong when my partner decides to keep the door open and look at what I do. The mouse finds its way into our flat and runs straight into our cat. You think you know where this is going, but you’re wrong. Our cat is lazy and a very bad hunter, after less than two minutes of half hearted pursuit the mouse finds a hiding spot and our cat decides she isn’t that interested.

That still leaves us with a mouse in our kitchen. The kitchen is small but long with cabinets on both sides that are not connected to the floor, as we inherited it from the previous tenant. So the mouse has plenty of opportunities to hide. In the end it took us three hours to get it out of the kitchen, at which point it hid in the bathroom. However the bathroom does not have any cabinets or hiding places. In the end I finally manage to catch the mouse (while our cat complained because we weren’t paying attention to her). I am wearing gloves, but the mouse being a mouse and also very scared bites my hand directly through the glove, and doesn’t let go until I release it on the house stairs outside. My fingers are bleeding and I start freaking out because a wild animal bit me.

I wash the wound with water, put on a band aid, but it’s still bleeding. So I decide to call a non emergency help number to ask them for medical advice (something that has been introduced in Germany to help people find the appropriate care without calling 112). After having a laugh, the doctor at the other end tells me to go to the Notaufnahme (emergency room). So at midnight my partner drivers me across town, so that I can tell a young doctor and a young nurse that I’m there because my cat is useless and could they please look at the bite.

My tetanus shot is recent, so it’s a fairly low risk, but I still get a round of antibiotics prescribed. Because of my intolerance to an antibiotic doctors prescribe for a lot of stuff, I need to get a specific one. Luckily, one of the two emergency pharmacies open that night is right near our flat, so I’m thinking, I can get it there and go to sleep….but, of course, this had to go wrong, too.

Because, as the very friendly pharmacist explained, this specific antibiotic is rare and they get it once or twice a year. He is very kind and calls the other pharmacy to ask if they have it – and they do! So we drive there… Again back to the hospital and about a kilometer more after it, in the opposite direction of our home.

We got home at 2 a.m. At least I saw the mouse and it was heading away.