I work in an office building owned by a moderately sized tech company. In our employee café, we have two vending machines that have some operational issues. The machine doesn’t seem capable of doing math properly and will commonly say you have “Insufficient Credits” after buying a single $1.00 drink, even though you are pre-authorized for $5 when you swipe your card. This makes it rather hard to get more than one drink if you are trying to get something for yourself and your coworkers.

One day, I walk in just in time to witness [Employee #1] at the vending machine.

Employee #1: “NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON!”

She slams her forehead into the machine, I assume not knowing how thick the glass is. This causes her to fall backward. She ends up hitting a low bench and falling backward over it, taking out the bench, several potted plants, a rather large Christmas decoration, and one of the table-and-chair sets. She sighs, lying in the results of the chaos, and I walk up. 

Me: “Are you using the machine?”

Employee #1: “Oh, no. Please, go ahead.”

Me: “Do you need help?”

Employee #1: “I’m good down here.”

Me: “Do you need… mental help?”

Employee #1: “Don’t we all?”

Me: “What did the machine do to you?”

Employee #1: “I swiped for $5 and got one bottle of water. Then, it said I had insufficient credits to get another one. Then, I swiped again, and it went into cash-only mode, so I put a dollar in it, but apparently, when you use cash, there’s a fifty-cent upcharge. And then, it wouldn’t give me my dollar back.”

Me: “Ah.”

Employee #1: “Yeah.”

Me: “How has the rest of your day been? Been okay?”

Employee #1: “Absolute bulls***.”

She proceeds to tell me about her day, project deadlines, a manager who needs a foot up his a**, bad clients, and unhelpful IT representatives, as we clean up the mess she made and I evaluate her for injuries. 

Apparently, her manager has been overloading her. Every time someone can’t finish something or he doesn’t trust them to do it, he forces it on her with no extension of deadlines and no increase in compensation. As a result, her work quality and speed have obviously dropped, and that same manager is now threatening to demote her, fire her, or cut her pay.

She says she demanded that everyone take back their work and that the load be redistributed, but the manager replied, “That’s not within the goals of the department,” and, “Your coworkers are comfortable where they are; it would be unfair to increase their workloads.” She says it’s possible that he is playing favorites, and when she called him out on it, he threatened to fire her again. 

Somewhere around the end of her story, another employee comes in and goes to the vending machine. 

Employee #2: “Hey! Free dollar!”

He takes a dollar out of the bill accepter. We have no idea when it was dispensed. 

Me: “Oh, that’s hers!” *Gesturing to [Employee #1]*

Employee #2: “Finders keepers!” *Laughs*

Employee #1: “Is that what [Secretary] said when she stole you from your wife?”

There is dead silence in the room. [Employee #2] is very much still happily married. He silently returns the dollar to [Employee #1] and leaves the room without even buying his drink. 

Me: “Who the h*** was that?”

Employee #1: “That was my manager.”

Me: “Oh. Oh, no.”

Employee #1: “God, that felt good. I’m going to go up there and quit. F*** this place.”

I have no idea what happened when [Employee #1] went upstairs, but she didn’t quit. Rumor has it that she went up to her office, decided, “F*** it,” and phoned the owner of the company. He was shocked to learn about her gripes.

The owner then went to [Employee #1]’s manager’s manager, and they looked into everything together. Whatever they found triggered an investigation that spread throughout the company and led to a restructuring.

[Employee #1] is now in her previous manager’s position, and ever since her promotion, the second-floor employees have all been much happier. The owner of the company is now also around more, switching from a nearly pure work-from-home schedule to being in the building four out of his five working days. 

The vending machines are still there, though. 

I never got to ask [Employee #1] why she shouted, “Neil deGrasse Tyson!” before headbutting the machine, but I have a meeting with her soon, so maybe it will come up.

I worked at a popular lingerie store as a security guard. It was a small store in a mall: one room with some changing rooms in the back and a stock area for employees. At the end of the day, there were just three people working: an employee, a manager, and me.

One day, after closing up, we were filing out when the alarm went off on one of the employees.

Employee: “I must have accidentally stuck one of the security tags in my pocket. I’ll be right back.”

[Employee] ran back to the employee section of the store and came out a couple of minutes later. He went through the door again, and the alarm went off again. 

Joking around, I lifted the bottom of his pant leg a couple of inches with my toe.

Me: “You stealing something?”

As I lifted his pant leg, I suddenly realized that he was wearing pantyhose under his pants. To each their own, but it was certainly unusual behavior. I lifted the pant leg a little further and saw that there was lingerie stuffed into the pantyhose. 

The manager took over from there, but when all was said and done, [Employee] was trying to sneak out over forty pieces of lingerie stuffed in pantyhose under his pants.

When I was in elementary school in the mid-1990s, my friend lived in the upstairs portion of a duplex that was owned by the woman who lived downstairs. She was the definition of the neighbor from Hell. She constantly called them about being too noisy or lied about what they were doing. She would call the parents at work to complain about the kids ([Friend] had two siblings), which hilariously backfired a few times when the kids were at sports practice after school or something and the parents called her out for lying. 

I went to their house a number of times and witnessed that the slightest noise resulted in [Neighbor] banging on the ceiling with a broom. They knew that previous tenants hadn’t lasted long, and their theory was that [Neighbor] was purposely awful in order to drive people out of the house, which meant breaking their lease, meaning she could keep their deposit.

I wasn’t there for the glorious final straw, but I wish I had been.

[Friend]’s mom was pulling a casserole out of the oven when the dish slipped out of her hand and hit the floor. The dish shattered, which splashed hot casserole on Mom’s feet and legs and caused some of the glass to cut her. There was an immediate banging from the floor below, at which point [Friend]’s dad had had it. He told the kids to start stomping and don’t stop. [Friend] told me they stomped throughout the house for twenty minutes straight (surely an exaggeration, but you get the idea) and had a lot of fun doing so. 

When Dad finally told them to stop, he went downstairs and told [Neighbor] what had happened with the casserole dish and that her reaction was unacceptable. Instead of coming to check on them after hearing such a big crash and someone yelling in pain, her banging on the ceiling was irrational. He told her that from then on, if she ever did it again, he was going to tell the kids to start stomping again.

She was good for a couple of days, and then she banged again, which started the stomping, after which Dad went downstairs and told her he wasn’t joking; it WOULD happen every… single… time.

Apparently, they had stomped so hard and for so long that they had shaken the popcorn off the ceiling. Popcorn ceilings were pretty popular in houses built in the 1970s, and I know from experience that the stuff is a nightmare to clean up.

At some point shortly after that, [Neighbor]’s son came to visit, and she must have complained to him. The son went to talk to the family and apologized, basically saying:

Neighbor’s Son: “I know my mom is awful and that you guys aren’t bad. You’re actually much better than other tenants we’ve had. I have talked to her, and she will not bother you anymore.”

After that, the relationship didn’t become friendly, but it at least became strained ignorance of each other, which was better than what it had been.

I’m driving a school bus full of high school students, covering for a coworker who’s out sick. As I glance in the student mirror, I see two students throwing something. (Spoiler, for those concerned: it ends up NOT being any sort of bodily fluid or other human excreta.)

I pull the bus over to the shoulder of the road, turn off the engine, and take the keys out of the ignition so I can walk back to where they’re sitting to investigate. As I’m doing this, I see another student touch her hair and remark in a disgusted tone that this has happened “again”. 

I can now see that she’s using her hands to wipe MAYONNAISE out of her hair. I grab a roll of shop towels (essentially very thick paper towels — all our buses have some on board) and give her a few as I walk to the students who threw it. I hand the roll to them.

Me: “I am not moving this bus until you clean up the mayonnaise from the seats and floor.”

One student sighs and reaches for the towels, but the other scoffs at me.

Student #2: “Really? You’re serious?”

Me: *Still holding out the towels* “Yes. I didn’t think I’d have to tell high schoolers not to throw condiments on the school bus, but here we are. You need to clean up your mess, and I’m not moving the bus until you do. I’m paid by the hour; take your time.”

The other student looks like he is about to argue further, but the rest of the school bus quickly shuts him down with calls of, “Come on, I want to get home!” and, “You shouldn’t have done that anyway!” and so on.

Both boys get the mess cleaned up in a couple of minutes — using all the towels in the process — and put the dirty towels in the bus trash can. When they’re back in their seats, I start the bus and get everyone home. I hear a few students commenting that they’re surprised I was actually watching their behavior, and they are relieved that I’m not putting up with nonsense.

I also drive that same route the following morning. When the two students who threw the mayonnaise get on, I greet them with a smile.

Me: “Good morning! Is all food securely stored in your backpack?”

Students: *Resigned* “Yes.”

Me: “Fantastic. Thank you. I brought two new rolls of shop towels. I assume I won’t have to give you any, though.”

They behaved for me. I hope they continued to when their regular driver returned!

Related:
A Big Mayo No No, Part 9
A Big Mayo No No, Part 8
A Big Mayo No No, Part 7
A Big Mayo No No, Part 6
A Big Mayo No No, Part 5

I tend to notice very tiny sounds that most other people miss. It is mostly annoying since I can get distracted by the oven turning off in another room. But it came in handy one time.

I am out camping with my girlfriend and a couple of friends when I notice that something is off. I perk my head, shush everyone else chatting around the campfire, and listen intently.

Girlfriend: “What is it?”

Me: “I hear something.”

Friend #1: “What? A bird?”

Me: “Um… A voice in the wind?”

Friend #2: *Snickers* “A voice in the wind? What have I told you about accepting strange rings from old men?”

Me: *Giggles* “Yeah, but… it sounds like crying. Like a sobbing child?”

Everyone listens, but only I hear it. 

Friend #1: “It could be a fox? They sound like crying children sometimes.”

Me: “No… No, I can’t tell you why, but… it sounds like a child? Look, I have to check it out. You know how I am.”

Girlfriend: “Of course! I’ll come with you.”

We head off in the direction I think it’s coming from. My girlfriend starts to hear it after a couple of hundred meters. She runs back to tell the others. We all head off in that direction, the jokes about evil forest goblins and hulders that want to kill us all dying off quickly. Since it is June in the north of Sweden, it is light even at night, so it is easy to find the way, but we are constantly attacked by swarms of mosquitos. But the sound gets louder.

We find a little girl, probably aged four or five covered in mosquito bites, sitting on a stump. She is wearing one shoe and a pretty dress that is tattered, stained, and torn up. She is bawling her eyes out and looks at us with great fright. I rush over and pick her up.

Me: “Hey, hey, there, there. What are you doing here?”

She sniffles. 

Me: “You seem lost. Are you?”

Girl: *With a tiny nod* “Yes.”

Me: “Poor thing! Let’s help you get home.”

We carried her back to camp, asked her name, told her ours, put her in a sleeping bag next to a new campfire, and gave her a mug of hot chocolate and a sandwich. She quickly fell asleep with a tiny smile. We called the police, meanwhile, to tell them that we’d found her, and we gave them GPS coordinates to our position. The girl’s parents called us, and we decided to meet next to a road the next morning since it wasn’t easy to get to us and we were several hours from the road.

We carried the girl out of the forest the next morning and handed her over to the most grateful parents I have ever seen. They were beside themselves with relief. The police took a statement, and then they all headed off to a hospital to make sure everything was all right. The girl had developed a fever, probably due to all the mosquito bites, and was obviously a bit dehydrated and hungry. The parents got in touch later and invited us to a fika (a Swedish custom) to properly thank us and fill us in on what had happened.

The girl had slunk away during a family party next to the forest to look at a pretty bird and followed it a bit deeper into the woods. Then, she stepped on a viper on her way back — but it didn’t bite her. She panicked and ran randomly until she got completely lost. She had probably been lost for at least ten hours, she had lost her shoe in a mire, and she had accidentally wandered very far away from civilization — the only direction that had literally no other humans for dozens of kilometers.

The girl was completely fine now, after about two weeks, and had drawn a little picture of us in the forest that still hangs on my fridge. She was very afraid of the woods now, but she and her dad would go camping in a glen close to the house to make her feel safe again. I’m still friends with the family, and we visit each other from time to time.

I still think about what might’ve happened if I hadn’t followed my instinct to check on the voice in the wind.