I am newly eighteen, so at my doctor’s office, I have to fill out new paperwork — confidentiality and whatever they make you do. I’m a short, very light-skinned girl with bright blonde hair which is naturally dark brown but I dye it. My mother is from Cuba and her father is from Spain, so I am 50% Latina and Hispanic. I definitely don’t look it, which isn’t normally a problem. It’s more like a fun trivia tidbit about me.

On one of the papers I am filling out, it asks if I am Hispanic/Latina. I check yes, because I am. I give the nurse the paperwork and wait in the room for a doctor. I can hear some nurses outside the door in the office area talking rather loudly.

Nurse #1: “She’s got blonde hair and blue eyes — perfect Aryan. I think she checked the wrong box.”

Nurse #2: “Change it for her. Obviously, she got it wrong.”

Nurse #1: “Maybe she’s trying to scam us. One of those people begging to be oppressed.”

For the record, I have deep brown eyes, not blue. But I’m very upset about the conversation I’m hearing. My ethnicity is not for them to decide or discuss, and my patient records are supposed to be confidential, not talked about in front of or to anyone.

The nurse comes back in and hands me the clipboard.

Nurse #1: “I think you marked that wrong — the Hispanic/Latina question.”

Me: “Uh, I am both Hispanic and Latina. I’m Cuban and Spanish.”

Nurse #1: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Are you sure you should be gossiping about your patients’ medical files to other nurses and whoever else can hear right in front of the door?”

She left without another word. I’ve considered switching from that office for a while, but I don’t go enough for it to be a huge problem. I’m still bothered by this incident, though.

I had a group of four teenage boys come in right as the lunch rush was beginning. They were laughing and joking with each other, which made it hard to get their actual orders put in, and led to the line backing up as they took up my register. Finally, I got all of their orders in the system.

Me: “Okay, your price is [Price]. Cash or card?”

The kid who had been the spokesman for the group had turned back towards his group, and all four of them started walking away at that point.

Me: “Sir? Sir! Kid, you still need to pay!”

Nothing. All four of them just wandered off to go sit at a table.

Me: *To the kitchen* “Cancel the order.”

I cancelled it out in the system and then moved on to handle the next customer. We got through the line and everything had died down somewhat, and then one of the teens came up.

Teen: “Hey! Where’s our food?”

Me: “You never paid, so we never made it.”

Teen: “We pay afterward.”

Me: “No, you pay now or you don’t get food.”

He made a face at me and stormed back to the table. They continued to sit around, glaring up at the registers every so often, before they went over to the condiment counter and made a mess with the sauces and knocked over a stack of trays, and then they all stomped out.

We’re having a sale. A woman comes in from the other side of town because she was told we have an item advertised in that weekend’s flyer. It turns out that we don’t. This woman goes into a full meltdown, screaming at me, and finally demanding I get a manager.

The manager stands and listens to her scream at him for wasting her time and “making her drive all the way across town for nothing” for nearly ten minutes before he loses his patience.

He pulls out his wallet, gets a five-dollar bill, folds it up, and tucks it neatly into her coat pocket.

Manager: “There. Now your gas is paid for. Have a great day.”

The customer just goggled silently, mouth opening and closing like a fish as the manager walked away, and I had to duck behind some shelves to keep from laughing in the woman’s face.

The bank I work for is always attempting to cut costs and implementing strange new policies to catch people out. Every year around bonus and pay evaluation time, a slew of people are always “let go” due to infractions. We are always led to believe that the infractions are so serious that legal and the police are involved.

Rumblings are starting around our department of staff having to have meetings about their behaviour and stats while on calls. I’ve seen the best of our call center in tears as he was absolutely cut down by a team from human resources for referring to someone as “Ms.” instead of “Mrs.”

As we are a bank, security questions are essential, BUT all answers are input by human beings, and sometimes things are just wrong.

One fateful day, I am called into a meeting with three managers and two human resources people to answer for my indiscretion.

Human Resources: “On Monday [date] you had [Customer] call in, and you had to ask him the identity questions. He answered three questions correctly and the last one incorrectly, and yet you granted him access to his account details. Can you tell us why?”

Me: “Can I review the call transcript?”

This is provided to me, and I can see that the last question I asked him was to verify his email address. When entering it in person, someone had transposed two letters in the domain of the email address.

Me: “It’s an obvious spelling mistake.”

Manager: “Yes, but you can’t prove that”

Me: “Well, I can, and I did by using the notes. The previous calls all note that there was a spelling error in the email address. The branch had been notified of the issue, too, and I left my own notes and details to the branch to fix it.”

Manager: “Well, it’s not good enough. This is reason enough for us to terminate you, on top of your excessive sick leave.”

Me: “Wait, what? What excessive sick leave? And why is this being brought up in front of managers who are not my direct reports?”

The human resources people blanch and provide me with the documents… where I have one day more than my entitlement, after the head manager’s kids came in with pinkeye and gave it to 75% of the staff, including me.

Me: “This looks like a blatant attempt to get rid of me. Can I have a break for five minutes?”

Human Resources: “It won’t help you, but go ahead.”

Unfortunately for them, the union rep is on my team and is able to come back into the meeting with me in under two minutes flat. I bring the union rep up to date in front of the managers and human resources. He is getting angrier and angrier as the details are provided to him and the managers and human resources are becoming more and more concerned.

Human Resources: “Look, why don’t you two discuss this while we have a meeting for five minutes and discuss our options?”

All the managers and human resources skedaddle, and the union rep is livid. It’s the tenth meeting in a fortnight he’s been brought into. After ten minutes, only the human resources reps come back, the managers having something else to do very suddenly.

Human Resources: “Well, we’ve decided that we’ll let you stay only if you forfeit your yearly bonus for the next two to five years and attend vigorous retraining at a 25% pay decrease.”

I looked at the rep and walked out. I quit immediately. The rep was so incensed that he and the union brought action against the bank, but by that stage, I was so over it I didn’t care!

My uncle has “views” on the topic of tattoos and piercings. Specifically, he believes that they are ugly, gaudy, unnecessary, and that anyone who gets them is a vain idiot. He is very vocal in expressing these views, much to the annoyance of the rest of our family.

I have accepted an offer to attend college at a fairly well-known liberal arts college, which convinces my uncle that I’m going to get “inked up” and come home a hoodlum, etc. He tries to convince my parents that they should bar me from going, but they are both very supportive of me and so ignore his “advice.”

After my first semester, I come home for Thanksgiving and our extended family is all there, including [Uncle]. That leads to this moment in the middle of our living room.

Uncle: “All right, [My Name]. Let’s go check you out.”

Me: “What?”

Uncle: *Standing up* “Come on. I’m going to make sure you’ve been keeping your skin clean.”

Mom: *Walking in* “Excuse you?!”

My uncle starts to launch into his typical rant about tattoos and how “no niece of his” is going to mess herself up with them. My mom turns around, lifts up the back of her shirt, pulls down the hem of her jeans, and reveals a small butterfly tattoo on her lower back, which I (and most of the family, apparently) had no idea was there.

Mom: “You can kiss my a** if you think you are going to go anywhere with my daughter to ‘check her’ for tattoos.”

[Uncle] exploded, ranting and shouting. He ended up hauled out of the house bodily and thrown onto the lawn, giving my dad and younger brother some bruises in the process. After some of the things he said then and in the next couple of weeks, most of our family has cut ties with him, with only our grandma (his mother) still keeping in actual contact with him.