I had a client come into my office to deal with her brother’s estate. Her brother, unmarried and childless, had known he was terminal for almost a year before he died. He chose to spend that year applying for as many credit cards as he could and maxing them all out. Amazingly, he got credit cards for four major banks and managed to rack up more than $50,000.00 in debt before he died. He had maybe $10,000.00 in savings that he had kept as a cushion to make sure the debt collectors didn’t come after him until it was too late.

The first thing I did was assure the sister that no one was responsible for her brother’s debts except his estate. After that, I gave her the options.

Option A was the technically correct way to handle the estate: contact all the banks, get them to agree to take a ratable percentage of the remaining assets, and pay them out. This could take months and would cost a lot of money.

Option B was not technically the correct way to handle it but it was easier: contact the banks, tell them that the sister had resigned as estate trustee and no one was replacing her, and ask them not to contact her.

She obviously went with Option B. With no one in charge of the estate, the banks couldn’t even attempt to collect on the debt, and there was no way to go through legal channels to collect the money that would not cost ten times the money owed.

Do I have sympathy for the banks? Nope.

Police came and pulled a student out of my class, much to the interest of his classmates. He was informed that he was needed at his home immediately but was given no other information. The cops loaded the boy into the back of the cruiser, while his classmates looked on, and they went to the boy’s house.

When they arrived, this was the scene that greeted him. A group of cops was standing at the gate to the backyard, one with his sidearm drawn and pointing into the backyard. The boy was brought forward and he saw two men sitting in the tree in the backyard with his dog at the base watching them and growling softly.

Apparently, one of the men, actually a teenager, had hopped the fence and broken into the house and then proceeded to help himself to whatever took his fancy. As the burglar started to exit the house, a big white dog came charging out, barking at full volume, charging the teen into the backyard and up the tree. The dog had managed to close his jaws on the rear pocket of the teen’s jeans and turn out the entire panel; his wallet was located in this panel.

The dog heard the cops approaching as they responded to a neighbor reporting the break-in and had slunk back into his ambush spot. The cops saw the teen in the tree and one jumped the fence to arrest him. Out came the dog again, barking at full volume. The officer ended up in the same tree as the teen.

The other officers were trying to decide what to do when, as it’s a small town, one was sent to collect the boy from school. The officer with the drawn sidearm was getting set to “end the situation” when the boy appeared. The boy was asked to control the situation, which he did. He walked into the backyard and called the dog to his side. The dog looked over his shoulder, wagged his tail at seeing his owner, and turned back to continue growling at the men in the tree, all the while scooting backward toward the boy.

When the dog reached the boy, he was sent into the garage where the boy closed the door behind him. He turned to the cops and asked, “What’s the problem?”

The teen was arrested and hauled off and the cops, impressed with the display, actually offered to buy the dog. It seems the dog would let you enter but wouldn’t let you leave.

It’s the grand opening of a new store in the chain, about forty miles from my store. All the bigwigs are there, as well as most of the store managers from my district.

I got a text this morning from my manager, asking me to resend an email to the district manager because the system was down when he tried to send it last night.

The email went something like this.

Manager: “I’m taking the weekend off. Having personal issues. Please apply my personal time. If this is a big deal, consider it my two-week notice.”

Thing is, he is due at the new store tomorrow to help with the grand opening. It should be no surprise that the district manager is furious. I get a call from her later that morning saying that [Other Store Manager] will be coming and I am to help him however I can.

Then, things take a new turn.

[Other Store Manager] shows up and asks for the last two months worth of credit signature slips. Surprised, as I only thought he was going to help cover the store, I show him where to find them.

As it turns out, when the manager buys gasoline, he manually enters the credit card number and then scribbles on the slip. I asked him about it last month, and he told me it was a company card from his “other job” that he has permission to use.

Well, apparently, he didn’t have permission.

After [Other Store Manager] gathers all the slips and compares them to a valid slip where the card was scanned by the cardholder, he calls the district manager, who comes in and calls the police.

Turns out [Manager] is on probation for theft and immediately started stealing again as soon as he got this job.

The district manager changes the safe combination and the office PC password and re-keys the security tape box. 

We now have orders to call the police if [Manager] comes into the store. I kind of doubt he will, though, as I suspect that he got wind of something stirring over this and just disappeared — by the barest skin of his teeth, apparently.

It is a quiet day in the motor claims department of a major British insurance company. A telephone call comes through from a customer.

Customer #1: *Clearly agitated* “Hello, I’ve run into a lamp-post on [Road] in Glasgow, and the lamp-post has fallen over.”

Me: “Thank you, sir. And were any other vehicles involved?”

Customer #1: “No, just mine.”

Me: “Thank you, we’ll just take a few details.”

I proceed to take the normal details for the customer, and the call ends normally. Seconds later, the phone rings again. It’s another customer, of course.

Customer #2: “Hello, I’m on [Road] in Glasgow and some d*** fool has run into a lamp-post and knocked it over on my car and three other cars!”

And this is why you don’t lie to your insurance company.

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I was in the US Navy and my ship was moored in Sicily for several days. I purchased several good brands of Cuban cigars in [Sicilian Town], and I was also carrying two or three brands of cigars from Honduras and the Dominican Republic — two other countries which produced stellar cigars. I regularly shared my smokes with my shipmates, both to share the fun and to make sure I didn’t accidentally bring contraband Cuban cigars back to the ship.

My small group of c-workers and I preferred eating and drinking in quiet, so we were trying to avoid the bars and restaurants close to the ship; American sailors are notoriously boisterous on liberty in foreign ports. We made our way far down the waterfront in [Small Sicilian Town] and stopped at a small restaurant for dinner. We chose to eat in the outdoor café area because it was a lovely evening and so we could smoke after dinner. I handed cigars out to my friends and we enjoyed some coffee and cigars in Sicily. It was an amazing night, made possible by the US Navy.

A local customer who’d been eating in the outdoor area asked me a question as we smoked. I thought he was complaining about the cigars, so I apologized and we all started to get up and leave. He waved us back to our seats with a smile, then pointed at the cigars and asked more questions. I was still having trouble with the accent — the wine I’d had with dinner probably wasn’t helping — but I definitely understood one word: “Cubano”. I guessed he was asking if we were smoking Cuban cigars, so I sat and spent the best part of a half-hour trying to communicate. With a great deal of gesturing and my poor grasp of Italian, I finally managed to tell the gentleman I had Cuban, Dominican, and Honduran cigars, and offered him one of the Cubans. He really appreciated this gesture, introduced himself, and walked with us when we left the restaurant for a nearby bar.

We sat at a corner table away from the door and ordered the usual round of beer and liquor almost all sailors indulge in. We spent most of the evening talking and smoking and drinking at this bar, which had relatively few other customers. We were joined by a couple of very pretty local women after a bit, which understandably brightened our mood. One of the young ladies spoke decent English, which made it easier to communicate with our new friend.

With the woman acting as interpreter, I drunkenly held forth on the merits of various cigar brands and showed off a couple of varieties I had in my jacket pocket. I offered [Gentleman] one particular Honduran smoke which I was particularly fond of, and he was pleased and impressed, lighting up and smoking it with pleasure. As we went to settle up with the bartender, [Gentleman] waved us away and said, through the English-speaking young lady, that he would take care of it. The bartender wished us a good night in several languages as we departed. The gentleman and the young ladies waved goodbye as we walked back toward the ship.

The next morning, I was told to report to the Command Master Chief’s office. Confused and not a little curious, I went to CMC’s office and was surprised to find my shipmates from the night before also waiting. We were hustled into the office and found the CMC talking to a local police officer, who I later learned was a member of the Carabinieri, Italy’s national police force. This did not bode well.

The Carabinieri wanted to question us because we’d been reported as being in the company of a known criminal. It turns out that [Gentleman] was a prominent figure in the local mafia, and the restaurant where we’d eaten was a known hangout for the mob. We were all pretty blown away by this news, and we freely told CMC and the Carabinieri officer everything we could remember. He eventually decided we had just been stupid and drunk, and not part of some nefarious criminal enterprise.

Our chain-of-command was extremely unhappy with us, and that restaurant was declared “Off-Limits” to all sailors for the duration of our stay. My friends and I were restricted to the ship for the rest of that port visit, and we spent a lot of that time writing reports about that evening for the ship’s security officer.

All future visits to foreign ports saw my friends and me sticking close to the ship, no matter how loud and obnoxious our shipmates were.