I’m a Goth with piercings, tattoos, multicoloured hair — all of it. I also collect skulls. I have glass skulls, pottery skulls, and plastic ones. I also have real animal skulls — ethically sourced! — which I paint various colours and hang on my walls. My workmates know this. 

I also have a garden — which I did not plant and largely ignore — that has pink roses and other flowers in it. I have to cut back some of it one day as it is growing over the path. I remember that [Coworker #1] loves pink roses, so I make her a bouquet of what I cut back. She loves it and puts it in a jar on her desk.

[Coworker #2] sees it.

Coworker #2: “Where did you get that bouquet?”

Coworker #1: “[My Name] gave it to me from their garden.”

[Coworker #2] turns to me in absolute incredulity.

Coworker #2: “You have pretty things?!”

My grandmother was born in the Netherlands in the 1920s, and during WW2 she rolled into the resistance. Eventually, she was saved from the firing squad by a German commander, who heard about the fall of Hitler and didn’t see the point of killing the condemned people in front of him. My grandmother faced more misfortune in her life, like an abusive husband who left her right after the birth of my father. Eventually, she married again to a good man and lived a good life, until her sister and her husband died. Ever since, she’s been alone, even though we visit her often.

In her early eighties, she looks like the stereotypical fragile grandmother living alone at home.

One day, the doorbell rings and my grandmother answers the door. She sees a woman she has never seen before.

Grandmother: “Yes?”

Woman: “I new here. I come drink coffee.”

The woman’s Dutch is broken. My grandmother comes from the era that when someone new moves into the street, you invite that person in for coffee and cookies. However, this woman is very distinctive-looking and my grandmother doesn’t recognize her; she also didn’t notice anybody moving recently.

Grandmother: “You moved here?”

Woman: “Yes, I moved here. I new. I come drink coffee.”

Grandmother: “Where did you move?”

Woman: “I moved there.”

She points somewhere to the right.

Woman: “I come drink coffee!”

The woman suddenly pushes herself forward, trying to pass my grandmother. However, my grandmother grabs the lady by the arm, swings her around, and literally kicks her out of her home! The woman hits the city light in front of my grandmother’s home quite hard and then looks up, scared.

Grandmother: “If you moved over there, then go drink coffee over there!”

My grandmother slammed the door closed. When she told us this story, we referred her to the news and a new scam thieves tried: the one the lady tried to pull. She didn’t expect my grandmother to still have a fighting spirit inside her!

My grandmother is now in her nineties, and even though her body is not that feisty anymore, her mind still is. And if someone wanted to push themselves inside her home again, she would kick them out once more!

I work in the front-end area, in cashiering and customer service, of a major retailer. Between my various health conditions — notably being autistic and having PTSD — most of my relatives have been very surprised at just how well I handle myself with customers. It’s been stated that I “have such a way with customers” that it’s been pretty easy to get accommodations I need from management to keep me from walking away from either position — moreso the customer service desk, which I almost did. (That was more because of the overload of information involved in some of the money service tasks.)

One instance lately really stands out as a testimony to this.

I spot a customer walking over to the customer service desk with his daughter, who I’d guess to be either pre-teen or teen. She is already looking very embarrassed before they even get to me — a great sign there.

The customer slams his receipt down onto the counter with such force that I end up jumping slightly due to the sound being one of my minor triggers.

Customer: “That girl at the register charged me twice for this item, and it wasn’t at the sale price! I don’t want it at all now because of this trouble! And I know she has to have done it wrong because look how high my receipt total is!”

I take a deep breath and skim the receipt for the vital information.

Me: “Okay, sir. I can see right here—”

I point to the particular spot on the receipt where there are three lines, all with the same item: one at a high positive value, one at a lower positive value, and one at a high negative value.

Me: “—that the reason it appears to have been rung up twice is that she rang it up at the scanned value, price-corrected it, and then voided the scanned value. That’s what each of these lines indicates.”

The customer huffs and then raises his voice.

Customer: “Then why is my total so high?!”

Me: *Calmly* “Okay, let’s take a look at your receipt. I’m going to round off the numbers to make it faster; it’ll be close enough for an estimate, right? So, what we have here is—” *goes through line by line* “—and with the tax, it comes out to about [final number].”

The customer looks perplexed for a moment, grumbles something under his breath, takes a breath, and raises his voice to a yell.

Customer: “WELL—”

The customer suddenly stops. He has leaned up to loom over me. That’s hard to do at our respective heights; I’m 5’6″ and he is 5’9″ at best. He now just kind of stares down at me for a long moment. After a long pause, he speaks again, this time in a softer, gentler tone.

Customer: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be yelling at you; this isn’t your fault. Look, my daughter decided this wasn’t the right item after all. Would you be able to help us return it?”

I nod with a polite smile.

Me: “Of course, sir. I’ll just scan the receipt and run it through our returns.”

I go through the process swiftly.

Me: “Ah, I can even return it directly to your card if you’d like?”

Customer: “Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.”

He makes a slight gesture towards the PTSD medical tag I’m wearing.

Customer: “PTSD is a rough one, isn’t it?”

Me: *Without looking up from the screen* “I mostly wear it because I’ve had some really bad panic attacks at past jobs, where others were caught off-guard. One instance involved some plates being broken, and the only reason I was brought down from it readily was that the sous chef recognized what I was going through. I don’t want others to suffer for something I can’t control, you know?”

I hand him back his receipt, plus the one for his return.

Me: “There you are! Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

Customer: “No, no. Thank you so much! Happy Easter, and God bless.”

His daughter stares in disbelief between the two of us as they go. My manager, who started quietly making her way over when she heard his brief yelling, also stares as I recount the entire thing per her request.

Manager: “He’s lucky it was you and not me; I would’ve refused him service after the first time he raised his voice at me. You handled that really well!”

One day, my partner and I had some time to kill in the city center of Hereford. We didn’t really know [Shop], so we decided to go inside just to see what kind of shop it was.

It turned out that the shop was fundraising for Sports Relief. Sports Relief supports the most vulnerable people in the UK and Africa, such as children who have to act as carers for their parents, women’s shelters, cancer patients, etc. The charity has much support in Britain, and as such, we had already donated through our children’s schools. Also, the fundraising in the shop was a lottery where you could win sports-related prizes, and I had no interest whatsoever in winning tickets for football, rugby, basket, or tennis matches.

However, the young female clerk who was selling the lottery tickets had not only been forced into (I didn’t ask, but nobody would do that voluntarily) a Bananas In Pyjamas outfit that must have been unpleasantly hot, but when there were no customers who wanted to buy lottery tickets, she had to be on an exercise bike. I felt sorry for her, so I decided to buy one single lottery ticket. Then, I asked a lot of questions about the charity, even though I already knew most of the answers, just so that she could get a nice, long break from that d*** bike.

Weeks passed. Of course, I forgot all about the lottery ticket. Then, somebody called me to tell me I had won a prize. When they told me it was from the Sports Relief lottery, I sort of sighed inside, but I had won a half-day canoe trip on the river Wye, which is something we usually try to do every year, anyway.

Sometimes Karma does work. We had a great day on the river.

I work in a restaurant. I had no more than four hours of sleep last night despite going to bed at 20:00 (8:00 pm). I arrive at work at open — 06:00 — get changed slowly, and start slowly cleaning the things that need to be cleaned during open. I’m vaguely wondering who I’m supposed to be opening with and when they’re going to arrive. I’m moving very slowly because I’m so tired.

I get done with the first half and get ready to mop. I check the time and it’s 06:35, so whoever’s supposed to work with me is very late. I look at the rota to check who was supposed to be on with me… and I’m on my own. That is, I was purposely scheduled to do this on my own.

Cue panic since I’ve got just over an hour to sort the defrost, which I’ve never done before but have vaguely heard about. I’m also panicking because I can’t find things in the freezer, panicking because I don’t know how to count the food, and just panicking in general because I’m on my own and haven’t seen another person since I walked into the staff-only area.

Later, I’m nowhere near done with the defrost but notice that the fryers aren’t set up yet. Then, I notice that nothing is on except the fridges. The fryers have an “ON” button, so I press it. They light up and the display reads “OFF”, so now I’m really panicking. I go to see (again) if there’s anyone in the corridor, notice that the time is now 07:50 or so, and panic more because I have ten minutes left before food starts being ordered.

Finally, I find a manager who helps turn things on, and a coworker comes in at 08:00 and says she’ll finish sorting the defrost.

The grills never turned on and I don’t think my coworker ever did finish the defrost.

Either way, I felt like I was going to hyperventilate and then throw up and then collapse, and I felt like that until my break. After my break, I was just tired and had a stomachache. Then, I splashed hot oil onto my thumb, which still stings.

That was a fun day.