A man came into our store and tried to steal some items, but he got caught by security. Management confiscated the items and let him leave, and they didn’t do anything else.
The man changed shirts, walked back inside, and stole the items again.
This time, he escaped security.
I’m a woman in my early thirties and have been driving for over seventeen years. I have a pretty good driving record, only getting pulled over four times.
The second time I got pulled over was when I was twenty-one. I had finished work late one Saturday night and was driving home. The route I was on went through a business district, which was absolutely dead. I hadn’t seen another car for at least ten minutes. I was driving a fifteen-year-old car my mom had bought about three weeks prior.
I saw lights flashing behind me, so I pulled over. Two state troopers got out. One came to talk to me. The other one walked around the car, shining his flashlight in my car. The second trooper never spoke to me.
Trooper: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
Me: “Honestly, no.”
Trooper: “You were doing twenty-six in a twenty-five.”
I was stunned into silence.
Trooper: “License and registration.”
I handed over both. He looked them over.
Trooper: “This car is registered to [Mom]. Who is that?”
Me: “That’s my mom.”
Trooper: “You have different last names.”
Me: “[Mom] is my mom. The car is registered to the same address that’s on my license.”
He was clearly unhappy to let it go.
Trooper: “This car has paper plates.”
Me: “Yeah, my mom just bought it a few weeks ago.”
Trooper: “They expire on [date four days from now].”
Me: “Yes.”
Trooper: “Why don’t you have real plates?”
Me: “My mom ordered vanity plates. They haven’t come yet.”
Trooper: “Why are you out this late at night?”
Me: “I worked until close at 11:00 pm at [Workplace], and cleanup took about forty-five minutes to finish. I’m headed home.”
The trooper went to the back of the car to talk to his colleague for a few minutes. Then, they went back to the cruiser, I assume to run my information. Finally, the trooper came back to the window and gave me my license and the registration back.
Trooper: “You’re free to go. Watch your speed.”
Me: “Okay, will do, sir.”
I think they were just bored, and that’s why they pulled me over. The whole thing last nearly twenty minutes.
By the way, the vanity plate arrived in the mail the following Monday, two days before the paper plates expired.
Related:
What Was The Point Of That?
More Time At The Fishing Hole Might Help With That Road Rage
Back in the late 1980s, my (young teen) boys were visiting their grandparents for a few days. One afternoon, the boys came home from the pool a little early, before my folks got home from work. They couldn’t remember where the spare key was hidden, but they knew the backdoor was usually unlocked, so they climbed the backyard fence and got in.
Unfortunately, a neighbor who didn’t know the boys saw this and called the cops. The cops, happily, just sensibly knocked on the door and asked the boys their side of the story.
[Son] knew just what to do to prove he was house legal. He led the cops into my dad’s study and fired up the shiny IBM PC, and then he accessed a favorite BulletinBoardSystem site.
Son: “See, I know the password. I couldn’t know it if Grandpa didn’t tell it to me.”
The cops decided this was acceptable. Either that or they looked at the walls PAPERED with family photos and saw these same boyish faces in at least a couple dozen frames.
I’m a cop. My supervisor informs us that there’s been a big problem with people buying, selling, and using drugs in an underground parking lot and asks us to proactively patrol the area to try and stop it.
I drive through the lot the next day and find a vehicle with registration that’s expired by three years and from a city several hundred miles away. Since no one is around, I have the vehicle towed.
A couple of days later, I’m at a car accident and run into the same tow truck driver.
Me: “Hey, did anyone come to get that car we towed out of the underground lot the other day?”
Tow Truck Driver: “Oh, yeah, a lady came and got it. And she was really, really, really pissed that the car got towed. She said she moved here from [City several hundred miles away] but never updated her address, so she never got any renewal notices.”
Me: “And let me guess. Somehow that was our fault, right?”
Tow Truck Driver: “Yeah, how’d you know?”
Me: “Nobody ever takes responsibility.”
Tow Truck Driver: “She threatened a lawsuit.”
It’s been two years and I have yet to hear of this lawsuit.
Content Warning: Animal Death
I worked at an aquarium store that was near the big airport in my city. I got a call one day from an airline worker.
Airline Worker: “We have what appears to be someone’s live fish in transport, and the containers are leaking.”
Long story short, upon opening the containers, they found that many of the fish were protected exotics caught illegally in Hawaii.
My shop ended up housing them for a bit while we waited for the appropriate officials to intervene.
The gross part came a few days later. The stress of transport and being in broken, leaking bags with little oxygen was rough on the animals, and within a week or so, the (not endangered, thankfully) snails and other invertebrates began to die off, despite the best efforts of the store workers.
We had to freeze and keep the bodies as evidence to show to fish and wildlife, so I spent the evening one night fishing dead snails and tube worms out of the tank and carefully placing them in plastic bags for the freezer. The smell was overwhelmingly horrible. It made no difference whether I breathed through my nose or my mouth, so I had to stop periodically to run off the back loading dock and breathe fresh air.
It’s been years since that incident, but my barometer for bad smells has shifted ever since. I can deal with garbage and dog poo and rotted food with no problem because absolutely nothing compares to that.
