For months, every time I visit my friend in a rather nice neighborhood, I’ve seen this car on an empty street with a basketball hoop in the trunk. I mean that the hoop is mounted in the trunk with the trunk lid removed, and it’s standing vertically at regulation height.

Yesterday, I finally asked my friend the story.

A local dad put up a basketball hoop on the street (it’s an undeveloped dead-end street), so his kids could shoot some hoops — safely, since there was zero traffic on this road. At the end of the dead-end street is a fence bordering a trailer park. The man in the trailer on the other side of the fence reported the hoop, and the police had to get the dad to take it down.

Annoyed that this guy was preventing his kids from playing basketball, the dad bought a car for a few hundred dollars and had the shop down the road weld the basketball hoop into the trunk. There aren’t any parking rules for that street except that a vehicle can’t remain in one place for more than fourteen days. So, every fourteen days, the dad moves the car to the other side of the street. The car still runs — barely — and there’s a mechanic/gas station across the street if he needs one.

Many folks in the neighborhood now come to shoot hoops nightly. The police have left a handful of towing notices on the car, but they have since stopped responding to complaints about its presence. So, it seems the basketball car is here to stay!

I was supposed to pick up my husband at a game store after a “Magic: The Gathering” tournament. Unfortunately, the competition ran long, and due to some confusion with the messaging, I didn’t get the notice until I had already arrived to pick him up and learned it would be another thirty minutes to an hour before he was done. I had my ten-month-old daughter with me.

The game store also does game nights where anyone can come in to play games, so the store was filled with people playing all kinds of board games that evening. In particular, there were three just sitting down at a table before me: a husband and wife and a third man.

Man: “We’re just starting a game that’s supposed to only be thirty minutes long, if you want to join us while you wait.”

Me: “Oh, thanks, but I don’t know the rules.”

Man: “It’s new to all of us, so you could learn with us.”

Me: “That’s a tempting offer, but I doubt [Daughter] would let me sit still that long.”

Wife: “Oh, I don’t think that would be a problem.”

The wife was grinning at her husband as she said this as if it were some inside joke.

Husband: “It would be fine if you just didn’t want to join us, but if you did, we wouldn’t mind your joining. We would all understand if you were a bit distracted because of your daughter; it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Man: “Worse case, if she gets really fussy, you could just drop out; the game still works with three players if you have to leave early.”

Me: “Okay, if you’re sure you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on that, though I doubt she’ll let me finish a game.”

Wife: “Please, we’d love to have you. Maybe I’ll have a better chance of winning now.”

At this, [Man] scooted over one seat, allowing me to sit down so my daughter’s stroller could sit against the empty side of the table where I could reach her. [Wife] was sitting opposite from me, and thus on the other side of my stroller. She turned to her husband and said in an amused-sounding voice:

Wife: “So, I’m guessing we’re trading seats, huh?”

Husband: *To me* “Would you mind if I played a little with your daughter in the stroller?”

Me: “Um, no, I guess not.”

Wife: “Seat swap it is. My master plan to defeat you all has begun!”

My daughter does NOT like being left alone in her stroller; I was certain I would get at best ten minutes before she was too fussy. What I hadn’t anticipated was [Husband] spending the entire game playing with her. Peekaboo, itsy-bitsy spider, tickling, you name it, he did all the baby classics, and my daughter was giggling along with every moment of it.

He seemed to treat the game as secondary to playing with my daughter. He ignored the game board until his turn, and then he would quickly glance at the board and make his play so that each of his turns was as long or slightly shorter than the turns of those who were paying attention to the game. For her part, my daughter seemed a little offended that her new playmate kept disappearing to take a turn every few minutes, but eventually, she caught on that he would be back to play with her soon enough and so tolerated the turn breaks.

The embarrassing part was that, despite his seeming to treat our board game as an afterthought, [Husband] still beat the three of us by a decent margin.

Wife: “Oh, come on! I go out of the way to set up the perfect distraction for you, and you still beat us! You really should let your poor wife win a game one of these days just for the novelty of it, you know!”

It seems [Husband] adored kids and volunteered with them, was a godfather, and was quite eager to start trying for their own kids in a year. Apparently, everyone at the table except me already anticipated that he would spend the entire game playing with and distracting my daughter for me.

Though, it is fairly embarrassing that even distracted he trounced the three of us.

This is one of those “last day” stories where I can say something without real consequences for my job. I’ve had some remarkably well-behaved customers all day, so I think I might be able to get away without needing to say something.

And then, she turns up.

Customer: “I want a six-top by the window, and don’t tell me you can’t do it because I used to be a waitress and I know that you can.”

Wow, straight away, she’s looking for a fight. However, the table she wants is actually available, albeit having just been cleaned so there are no glasses or menus set up yet. I get her group seated there with no issues.

Customer: “You know, hun, it’s bad form of you not to give us waters when we sit.”

Me: “I was just about to get those for you, along with some menus.”

I get the menus and a large jug of water and place them in the middle of the table. As soon as I am about to leave to get the glasses, the woman says to me:

Customer: *Condescending* “You know, hun, I’ll be needing a glass for that water.”

Me: “Oh, man! And here I was hoping you’d be absorbing it via osmosis.”

Customer: *Now angry* “What did you say to me?!”

Me: “Whatever I want, ma’am. You know, hun, I have been a waitress here for over ten years, and today is my last day. Do you want to test me?”

The customer stared me straight in the eyes and saw that I was not offering her a fight she could win today. She sat there and ate her meal in aggravated silence.

It is a nice sunny day, and a coworker and I are both working our busy patio. I have just brought a table their round of drinks when I hear a bell ringing noise that I haven’t heard before, but I think nothing of it.

I go to the kitchen and get some plates. As I bring them out, the bell ringing continues more vigorously than before. My coworker comes up to me.

Coworker: “Uh… I think the lady at your six-top wants your attention.”

We both look over, and one of my customers is ringing an actual bell, glaring in my direction. This woman has bought her own bell to get my attention instead of actually using her words.

Me: *To my coworker* “That’s a new one.*

Coworker: “Can I try something?”

Me: “Uh… sure?”

My coworker gets her phone out of her apron and loads a specific niche app inspired by a single scene from a famous fantasy show.

The customer angrily rattles her bell again, but then my coworker flies over to her and shakes her phone in a similar manner.

The app, detecting this motion, makes its own bell-ringing sound and shouts out the word:

Phone: “Shame!”

Some other diners giggle.

Customer: “I just wanted your attention!”

Coworker: “We have basic language comprehension skills, ma’am. Please do not use a bell to summon a server; it is considered disrespectful.”

Customer: “I need my water refilled!”

My coworker looked at me, and I nodded and brought them a refilled carafe of water. When I returned, the bell was noticeably missing and it looked like the other diners at the woman’s table had given her a stern talking-to based on the body language and how silent she was now being.

Gotta love my coworker’s “I don’t give a s***” attitude.

One day at work, a drainpipe above our office starts leaking, dripping vinegary water into the office. We have to hastily cover the computers, printers, etc. We call facilities to have them fix it and replace the damaged ceiling tiles.

The next day, it’s dripping in an adjacent area. Repeat for the next several weeks.

Since they haven’t replaced the ceiling tiles yet, we can see that they’ve just applied a pipe bandage, which obviously isn’t working.

One day, the plumber is there while I’m still there, so I drift over to talk to him. 

Me: “What’s going on?”

Plumber “Well, the copper pipe is all eaten up. I don’t know why. It’s like they’re draining acid through it!”

Me: “Um, yeah, they are. That’s the drain for the photo darkroom, and they dump the chemicals at the end of the day. The developer and fixer are saved to be reprocessed to recover the silver, but the stop bath is just dumped. And the stop bath is diluted glacial acetic acid…”

Plumber: “Oh…”

Me: “And if I recall correctly, all of the copper acetates are water-soluble… so the pipe is dissolving.”

Another week later, I talk to the plumber again.

Plumber: “My management is insisting it’s not that bad and refusing to replace the pipe.”

Me: “Okay. What additional forms do I need to submit to escalate this complaint?”

He tells me, adding that it won’t work.

Me: “It’s all in how you write it up.”

The next day, he sends me the forms through the in-plant mail, and I spend a bit of time working out the wording. Then, I fill the form out on a typewriter (we don’t have very many PCs at the time) and have my manager submit it. I don’t think he reads it because he is already pretty frustrated and wants the problem fixed. (Remember, we’re about a month into this ordeal.)

This was late in the week. When we arrive on Monday morning, even more tiles are down, and there’s a stack of sawn-up copper pipes in a corner and a brand-spanking-new heavy-guage gray PVC pipe in its place.

Ha!

That evening, they remove the sawn-up copper… and no more leaks.

On Tuesday, my boss calls me into a meeting with his boss. They’re looking at a copy of the form I had him submit.

My Boss: “[My Name], it’s not that we don’t appreciate you getting this fixed, but you can’t lie to get it fixed!”

Me: “I did not lie. Read that carefully, and point to one thing I said that is not true.”

My Boss: “This part about hazardous waste!”

Me: “That’s not what I said. I said, ‘Leakage of acid process waste creating hazardous conditions,’ which is not the same. Corrosion damage to energized electronic equipment is liable to cause fires, which are definitely hazardous, and the spillage was also creating a significant slip hazard.”

My Boss: “Um…”

They read through it again.

My Boss: “Um. No, you didn’t say anything untrue, but you know they didn’t read it that way.”

Me: “Their lack of reading comprehension is not my problem. And I shouldn’t have needed to do that to get a leaking pipe fixed. Explaining it to the plumber should have been enough, but it wasn’t. Actually, his report on the conditions discovered should have been enough — and it wasn’t. On the other hand…”

I gesture at the new pipe above the ceiling.

My boss looks at his boss, who is nodding.

His Boss: “Just don’t do it again… unless it’s necessary. And maybe tell us first if it is.”

My boss looks a bit embarrassed.

My Boss: “[My Name] gave it to me to submit, and I’ll admit I didn’t look that closely because I wanted it fixed, not patched.”