The factory I work at is across the road from a chocolate factory. They sometimes sell the misshapen or nearly-out-of-date chocolates for cheap in their onsite shop.

I find a massive box of near-date chocolate for a crazy cheap price. I bring it back to work only to forget to take it home with me. I’m kicking myself all night, but I hope that as it’s a plain box and on my desk, no one will open it.

I get to my desk and it’s missing, I ask around hoping someone saw something.

No luck, until:

Coworker #1: “Oh, yeah, [Coworker #2] was sniffing around it. The way he was acting, I thought it was his.”

Me: “Oh, great. I hope he hasn’t helped himself.”

Coworker #1: “Oh, no. This was at the end of the day, and he cycles to work. He couldn’t have taken it home. He was acting a bit weird, now I think about it. I think he took it that way.”

Me: “Wait, where is [Coworker #2]?”

It turned out that [Coworker #2] had a home emergency and wasn’t in. I started to search in the direction I was pointed. I eventually found the box deliberately hidden under a load of rags on a shelf, right above a heater. The whole box was ruined. I’m guessing he was hoping to get in early and take the box from its hiding place but never got the chance.

I complained, and [Coworker #2] was told to pay me what I spent or face action. He kept forgetting, so he got written up. He still wouldn’t pay me so I complained again. He aggressively threw some money at me, double what I lost, and refused to even look at me. Win-win.

A man swaggers through the front doors of our bookstore

Mr. Porsche: “I have a book put on hold under [Mr. Porsche].”

Me: *After searching* “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t seem to find it.”

Mr. Porsche: “I called here ten minutes ago and the lady said she had it in her hand.”

I call the information desk, because sometimes the hold doesn’t actually make it across the thirty feet of floor space to the registers where holds are. There are no holds waiting for a trip to Registers. No one remembers talking to a [Mr. Porsche]. No one recalls handling a book of that title.

Mr. Porsche: *Getting agitated* “I called here and the lady had it in her hand! She said it would be under [Mr. Porsche]! Her name was [Employee].”

Me: “Er, we don’t have an [Employee] working at our store. Are you sure you called us and not in [Other City starting with the same letter] or [Competitor] bookstore? They’re right next to our number in the phonebook.”

Mr. Porsche: “NO! I CALLED HERE! Hurry up and find my f****** book! My Porsche is parked in front of your store doors! I’m blocking three cars in, so just hurry the f*** up!”

I’m stunned. Some people!

Me: “Sir, I highly advise you to park your car, legally, in our parking lot rather than risk a ticket. Security patrols every few minutes.”

Mr. Porsche: “I don’t want my Porsche to get a door ding, so hurry up and find my book!”

I struggle not to knock my own head off with an epic facepalm. I search book by book in our holds, but there’s nothing under his name. Nothing even similar to his name. No titles even remotely close to the title he claims is on hold.

He’s getting louder and more aggressive, banging his hands on the desk, and insisting that he is not wrong, he did call our store, that [Employee] does in fact work here, and I [expletive] need to [expletive] hurry the [expletive] up.

An Info Desk employee comes over to tell him that 1) they have searched for the title and not found it in our database, confirming that he didn’t call us because we literally don’t even carry that book, and 2) that the book is indeed on hold at [Competitor], two miles down the road.

Insert rant to the effect of: Wrong! Info Person is a liar, so “this b****” (meaning me) needs to hurry up and find it, because we’re a bookstore; therefore, we carry books, and it has to be here and he’s not moving until—

Cue the beeping of a tow truck outside our doors.

Mr. Porsche: “S***!”

He bolted out the door and a yelling fight ensued between [Mr. Porsche], security — who happened to be writing [Mr. Porsche] a ticket — and the tow truck driver.

[Mr. Porsche] returned several days later to scream at our managers because it was OUR fault that his illegally parked Porsche incurred a ticket and nearly got towed away. He was subsequently trespassed and banned by the police due to his stubborn refusal to a) stop swearing, b) stop screaming at the top of his lungs, and c) stop becoming aggressive and violent by using hardback books as missiles.

And I had so naively thought that bookstores would be the calmer option in the world of retail.

I run a store selling things like buttons, stickers, and shirts. I frequently set up at conventions, and typically, I bring a friend to help me run my booth. At this particular event, I’ve left my friend in charge while I run to get us food. When I come back, a woman is arguing with my friend.

Customer: “No, you have to give me my money!”

Friend: “Ma’am, I’m not the booth owner—”

Me: “Woah, what’s going on?”

Customer: “Butt out, b****!”

Friend: “Ma’am, that’s the owner and artist.”

The woman turns to me.

Customer: “I want a refund. I got one of your s***ty shirts and it fell apart before I could get home!”

I’m already suspicious, since I use pretty high-quality shirts, and I haven’t seen this woman before.

Me: “Did you get a receipt?”

Customer: “No, I paid cash!”

Me: “That’s okay, I record all my cash sales, too. Do you know which shirt you got and about when?”

Customer: “It was this one, and I bought it when the vendor hall opened today!”

She points to a design I have on display. I immediately cross my arms and look right at her.

Me: “Ma’am, it’s probably best you leave.”

Customer: “What?! I want my refund!”

Me: “You’re not getting s*** from me. Take your scam and leave.”

Customer: “I want my f****** refund!”

Me: “I’m not refunding you for something you never bought!”

Customer: “How do you know I didn’t buy it?!”

Me: “Because that design is brand-new and hasn’t had any sales yet.”

The woman starts SCREECHING and reaches for me. I dodge her and go and hide behind my table. She then starts to rip apart my display board of buttons.

Me: “MA’AM! I’M CALLING SECURITY!”

Other Person: “No need.”

I looked, and one of my booth neighbors had already brought security over. He had seen her arguing with my friend and got a weird feeling, so he went ahead and grabbed security. They were only going to kick her out, but she started screaming at them and trying to assault them. She ended up arrested.

Luckily, only a couple of buttons were damaged, and not bad enough to take off my display. I offered my booth neighbor a free shirt as a thank you… and he chose the design the woman claimed to have bought.

My girlfriend’s mother is the worst bigot I have ever had the misfortune to meet. She is a Japanese Christian, straight, cisgender female; she looks down on homosexuality, refuses to believe that bisexuality is a thing, scorns transgender people, denounces any non-Christian belief as sinful, believes in sexual abstinence before marriage, thinks any relationship that is not exclusive is not a relationship, and insists on traditional gender roles. Pretty much the only nice thing I can say about her is that she doesn’t seem to be racist; I’m a black male, and I’ve never heard her scorn me for that. The family moved here to Canada while the kids were in middle school, and I met my girlfriend in high school.

Chris Rock once said, “Whoever you hate will end up in your family.” Well, my girlfriend’s family is the embodiment of that quote, and thanks to those prejudices, her mother is no longer a welcome part of the family. Her father, bless the man, divorced her and got custody of the kids after it turned out their own children weren’t exempt from her bigotry.

My girlfriend is the fourth of five children; twin sisters, a brother, her, and her younger sister. One of the twins is a lesbian, the other is trans, the brother is very effeminate, and the youngest sister is bisexual and is currently in a polyamorous relationship with her boyfriend and girlfriend. All of them have been sexually active since they came of age; currently, only the brother is married.

As for my girlfriend… Well, she’s not comfortable with the fact that she basically conforms to her mother’s beliefs. She and I have a largely non-sexual relationship, and I’m built like a brute, which means I tend to do a lot of the heavy lifting — both figuratively and literally. We currently live together but do not have plans to get married, and I’m ashamed to say that I’m not as good a cook as she is. I’m trying to learn, I swear!

Her mother goes out of her way to drop in on us every so often, acting civil while making not-so-subtle insults toward her other children under the pretext of “visiting her daughter like a good mother should”. Having been raised to show respect when you receive respect, I’m unfortunately too cowardly to try and push back against her, given that she doesn’t insult us.

Then, one fateful day, she happens to stop by while we’re watching an anime together. We watch with Japanese audio and English subtitles, and we happen to pause the episode while a certain name is on the screen; during a lull in the conversation, I notice the name and ask my girlfriend about it.

Me: “Kagutsuchi? What does that name mean?”

Girlfriend: “It’s the Shinto god of fire.”

Me: “Huh. I’ve always been curious about Shinto gods.”

Mother: “Why on earth would you be interested in that sort of heresy?”

Me: “Because they come up a lot in games I play. I’m always looking up what a name means, but when it turns up something like ‘sun goddess,’ I go, ‘Oh, that’s an entire creation myth,’ and I go back to my game.”

Mother: “Good.”

Me: “No, not good. I shouldn’t be so ignorant of other peoples’ beliefs. I just know that if I start reading about it, I’m gonna keep reading about it until my battery is dead and I lose all my progress. One of these days, I need to sit down and actually read some of that stuff.”

Girlfriend: “Maybe not on your own. I could help teach you. I know a lot about the traditional Shinto stories.”

Mother: *Suddenly outraged* “I can’t f****** believe this!”

Me: “What? You can’t believe that people actually want to know about different cultures and beliefs?”

Mother: “You’re just freaks like all the rest!” *Points at [Girlfriend]* “I was so glad you were sane, and it turns out you’ve been learning all that bulls***!”

Girlfriend: “You want to talk about bulls***?! You’ve been treating [Brother] and all my sisters like monsters! What’s wrong with accepting them for who they are?!”

Mother: “I didn’t have children so I could be surrounded by a bunch of [homophobic slur]s and heretics!”

Me: “Then, clearly, you didn’t want a family!”

Mother: “What did you just say?!”

Me: “Your children aren’t items! You don’t get to decide how they live their lives, what they believe in, or who they love! If you want to dictate what sort of people they are and who they associate with, you don’t want a family. You want an inventory!”

Mother: “You dare?!”

Me: “You’re d*** right, I dare! I’ve had to listen to you b**** about your children every time you’ve come in here, and you already make me sick! I can’t even imagine what sort of h***ish suffering you’ve inflicted on your children in whatever time you spent in the same household with them! If you’re going to scorn your daughter for even knowing about a belief other than your own, I’m done putting up with your bigotry!”

Mother: “I won’t let you—”

Girlfriend: “You don’t get to ‘let’ us do anything! I made myself put up with you when you would act nice toward us, but now I realize how stupid I was to even entertain your bigotry! We’re human beings, living our own lives, and you have no right to decide what we believe in or what kind of life we live! Now GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

That last statement had a force to it like I’d never heard out of her before, and [Mother] was left sputtering for a moment before she fled from the building. As the door closed, the adrenaline wore off, and we sat back down and hugged one another, recovering a bit from the aftershocks.

The make-light mood of the episode we were watching was not something we wanted to partake in after that encounter, so we turned the TV off, and my girlfriend spent the rest of the day teaching me about some of the Shinto gods. That was the last time her mother ever came by our place.

This story is part of our Best Of October 2021 roundup!

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After working for a designer for over six months at an unpaid internship, I finally had to tell her that I could no longer work without a paycheck. We set up a meeting in which we discussed details about working for her at certain one-night events and receiving pay for the event itself.

After three weeks of my emails going ignored, she finally emails me back a day or two before the event:

Designer “Sorry, my boyfriend’s wife died and we were taking care of him for the last three weeks. I couldn’t email you.”

I reply, gently:

Me: “Business is business and I need info on the details of the event and how much I was being paid for it in order to help.”

I hear nothing from her until the afternoon of the event:

Designer: “Hey, be here for the event at 5 pm, okay?.”

I call her to discuss payment with her (because I was not going to work an event for free, especially after she was notorious for borrowing money from me and never paying me back), and she says:

Designer: “Hey! I have a great idea! In return for working tonight, I’ll give you sample pieces of fabric I’m not using and you can take them home and make your own clothes since I know you can’t afford to buy them right now. Then, we can put my label on them and sell them and I’ll give you 10% commission!”

I politely told her that I could not help her out at the event because I needed to be paid in US Dollars.

Her boyfriend called me back to yell at me about how ungrateful I was being.