It’s the late 2000s, and some friends and I have saved up for a trip backpacking around various parts of Europe for a month of our summer break. We’ve just arrived in Barcelona, checked into our hostel, it’s getting late, so we decide to see where there is to eat that’s within walking distance.

I should note, two of us speak Spanish, two don’t.

We find our way to a hole-in-the-wall place advertising tapas and wine and decide to poke our heads in and look at a menu, but we immediately have to leave – it’s FILLED with smoke, and one of my friends has asthma.

Some regular steps out into the road to ask us what’s wrong, and the two of us who know Spanish explain about the asthma problem and he says:

Regular: “Oh, but I come here all the time and know the owners – I bet they’d let you eat in the back room, let me ask!”

The “back room” quickly proves to be a living room, belonging to the family that owns the place. It is, indeed, smoke-free, so we sit down and ask for a menu. One of the owners says with a smile:

Owner: “There’s no menu. We just have things.”

We order a bottle of the house wine, and they proceed to show us a sequence of tapas and serve us whichever ones we like, and go out into the main area with whichever ones we decline. The wine arrives, and one of my friends, who’s just completed a wine certification course back home in the States, says:

Friend: “This is the best sparkling wine I’ve ever had.”

At that, two people drop their forks. One says:

Other Friend: “Guys, I think this is a scam where they charge you some inordinate amount, and we need to get out now before the bill gets any worse.”

On the next round, they top us up with some sausage we had enjoyed earlier, and I flag them down and ask about the bill.

Staff Member: “Oh, don’t worry!”

He hurriedly leaves. Now we’re worrying even more, frankly.

The next time she enters, I explain:

Me: “We are students, we don’t have a lot of money; we will happily pay what we need to pay, but it would help us be less worried if we can see the prices.”

Staff Member: “Thirty euros.”

That one didn’t need translating.

Other Friend: “Thirty euros each?”

Staff Member: “No. Thirty euros, total.”

The other Spanish speaker at the table, the one who had taken the wine class, says”

Friend: “Good, and how much for the wine?”

Staff Member: “Thirty euros… for the food and the wine.”

Then she served us the next course of tapas.

And that is the finest hospitality I’ve enjoyed anywhere on the planet. 

In the years since then, we’ve all racked our brains and searched Google Maps to try to find exactly where that place is, so we might recommend it to others. Unfortunately, we have never been able to. I hope they’re still around after all this time.

I’m the author of this story. I thought I would share what happened to me on the way back.

For context: as a result of injuries I picked up playing field hockey in school, I developed arthritis in my knees and hips in my twenties. Because of this, if I sit for a long time, I can get painfully stiff, so if I’m on a long journey, I carry a walking cane so that I can get moving again.

On the journey out, despite the screwdriver shenanigans I highlighted in the last story, the cane raised not an eyebrow, despite being folded up and in my hand luggage.

A week later, flying back from Spain to the UK? A totally different story.

The Spanish baggage check found my cane… and wouldn’t allow it on the plane. I was told that it would have to be checked into the hold. I tried to argue with the security guy (yes, it was a guy) that it was a medical aid and that I would need it to help me get off the plane, but my Spanish was limited, or his English was, or he just didn’t listen. So, I had no choice but to get it labelled up and put into the hold. Our luggage had already been loaded; it had to go in loose. I resigned myself to never seeing it again and to a painful disembarkation in the UK.

I rejoined my wife’s family and went back through security. My bag was checked and cleared, I walked through the metal detector… and set it off. Up came an associate with a wand, which she waved over me. It pinged at my hip. Great. In my annoyance over the cane, I’d forgotten to take my keys out of my pocket. I muttered an apology and was about to take them out when, suddenly, the security person who had originally objected to the cane came rushing over, waving his arms and shouting in Spanish. “Brilliant,” I thought. “I’m in trouble, and I’m about to be refused boarding.”

Imagine my surprise when, instead, we were escorted through security to the departure lounge and fast-tracked through boarding! My brother-in-law, whose Spanish is better than mine, asked me:

Brother-In-Law: “Why do they think you have an artificial leg?”

Yes, folks, because I’d kicked up a fuss about my walking cane, and because something at hip height had set off their metal detector, Spanish security assumed — didn’t ask, just assumed — that I was wearing a prosthetic. I didn’t mind. It got us onto the plane first!

Then, at the other end, when we arrived in the UK, two very nice stewardesses were waiting with a wheelchair to take me off the plane!

Oh, and I did see the cane again — when we went through to get the luggage, it was one of the first things off the plane.

Related:
Airport Absurdity And Screwdriver Security Shenanigans

My brother is a professor at the University of Barcelona, and he teaches European Union Law, replacing a retiring professor who, according to the faculty, had slipped into a predictable pattern.

My brother didn’t really put much weight to this, until, when grading the written exam papers, he noticed that six different people had given the same exact wrong answer, all of them about a different section of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. He was baffled, so of course, when one such student asked for a meeting with him, he decided to get the bottom of this mystery.

Brother: “Ah, Mr. [Student], are you here to talk about your exam?”

Student: *Looking indignant.* “Yes, I am perplexed by my failing grade, and I would like an explanation.”

Browsing through the papers, he finds the student’s paper, and immediately points at the section that confused him:

Brother: “Well, let us start with this question, which was about how the articles in question were about the protection of free enterprise, but you claimed said articles were about EU employee harassment compensation instead.”

Student: *Looking stumped.* “Wait, what? Really? That’s not what the notes said!”

Brother: “May I see the notes, if you have them here with you?”

He did, and he discovered the previous retiring professor was very predictable in his exam questions. He literally proposed the same exact six questions year after year, and the students were now relying on a list of pre-packaged answers to pass.

With this mystery solved, he explained the shell-shocked, and a little bit daft, student the truth, and from that point onward he made sure to mention his exams weren’t going to have eternally-repeating questions, no matter what the notes sold on campus claimed.

I’ve worked in an office-type job for a few years now. I mostly handle assistant admin tasks, although I sometimes also work on “field jobs”.

My supervisor, and partner, ended up retiring a bit early due to health reasons, and they hired a new person to fill that vacancy. The new guy did pretty well. They had a decent understanding of the field, and whatever they didn’t know outright, they picked up fairly quickly when instructed. Their only issue was personal space.

I am color-blind. No, I don’t see everything as grey, but I have difficulties separating certain colors from each other. It’s the one thing I bring up during those “tell an interesting fact about yourself” talks, and so the new hire knew this. However, it was still very personal, and it made me feel vulnerable.

A week or so after the new hire started, I stepped out of the office for a quick personal call. When I came back, I realized something was wrong with my computer. Obviously, I could see that something was going on, but I had major trouble reading what was on the screen.

At this point, my new coworker started laughing. It turned out that they had thought to “prank” me for forgetting to lock out my computer. How? By changing the colours of my interface to something I couldn’t recognize — not just changing the wallpaper or something, but by literally pointing out my disability and making me unable to do my job.

I couldn’t handle it. I started crying and basically had a panic attack. The next I remember, I was in a manager’s office, probably after trying to explain what happened. I don’t remember much else besides that they told me to go home and call them once I felt better.

When I got back, the new hire was nowhere to be seen. We might not have the ADA, but we have some officials that take care of people with disabilities.

The summer before my last year of college, I sign up with a temp agency to make some extra pocket money. I make it very clear that I’m still in college and I’m only interested in working during holidays or weekends. I’m not desperate for money and I’m not putting my education in jeopardy over temp work for minimum wage.

Three weeks before the start of the academic year, I’m sent to work in a warehouse. What’s meant to only last a couple of days ends up becoming open-ended — not permanent as I’m still working through the temp agency — but when my contact at the agency calls me to let me know, I remind her that I’m only available until [last Friday before term starts].

The place is dysfunctional.

Example #1: Despite being a warehouse for a major Spanish clothes brand, there’s zero security. No one checks our bags (which we just pile up wherever we like or carry with us) and there are no cameras. Personally, I find this brand’s clothes ugly, especially those for men, and I seriously wonder whether that’s their deterrent.

Example #2: Zero security extends to control over who comes in or leaves. A guy disappears halfway through a shift and reappears a day or two later.

Manager: “Hey, did you leave early the other day?” 

Employee: “Oh, I had a doctor’s appointment.”

Manager: “Okay. Let me know next time.”

Example #3: Another guy disappears halfway through a shift. A couple of days later, I hear the manager say:

Manager: “Hey, didn’t we hire one more guy?”

I just show up every day on time and go about my duties at a reasonable pace, which means I’m soon detected as the “responsible temp” and I’m “promoted” regularly. After a couple of days, they start asking me to do slightly more complex stuff than moving boxes around. By the end of my second week, I’m doing admin rather than manual work.

On my last day, I say goodbye to the people I’ve worked most closely with and disappear into the night to enjoy my last weekend before classes restart.

The following Monday, while I’m on campus, I look at my phone and I have missed calls from the temp agency and a text from my dad, saying the agency called home. This is all like thirty minutes after my shift would have started if I’d continued working there.

I call the agency.

Agency Rep: “Why are you not at work?”

Me: “I told you I would only be available until [last Friday].”

Agency Rep: “But since you were doing so well, we thought you’d stay! They really liked you!”

Sure, like I’m going to choose a minimum-wage temp job that could be terminated at any time with zero notice over completing my final year of university education.

The thing that surprised me the most is that I’d seen guys just vanish from the warehouse and no one seemed to notice until a day or two later, whereas within half an hour of me not showing up, they’d even called my dad. If I was such an essential worker after only three weeks, maybe they could have tried negotiating with me and offering to work around my schedule rather than expecting me to just keep showing up. It probably wouldn’t have worked — I soon found part-time work in my field — but at least I could have stayed another week or two while they found a replacement.