I am dealing with cancelling a contract for a customer over the phone. Everything goes perfectly and the customer is very polite. 

Me: “Well, sir, the contract is cancelled. I can email you the cancellation letter, or would you rather have it through post?”

Customer: “Email, please.”

Me: “All right, let’s check if we have your email on file.”

I notice that the email address contains one of the most common surnames in the Netherlands. The customer I have on the phone has an Arabic surname.

Me: “Sir, do we have the right email address on file? It says it’s [address].”

The customer becomes silent for a second. He sounds a bit… sad or embarrassed; I can’t be sure. 

Customer: “Eh, yes, that email address is correct. I’ve had it for ten years now. It’s just… whenever I emailed a company with my real last name, I never got invited for an interview. Since I started using this email address, I’ve gotten invited to several interviews and landed a good-paying job.”

I swallow the words I actually want to say. 

Me: “I completely understand, sir; no need to explain. I just sent the letter.”

I heard a “ding” through the line and the customer said he’d received the proof. We ended the conversation. I had heard before that a lot of companies won’t invite people with a foreign name, but this was the first time I’d met someone who’d had this happen to him. My first response would have been outrage — not to the customer, but to society as a whole.

I get a call from a customer saying she can’t use her debit card. We offer overdraft privilege, a set amount of money that someone can overdraft and we still pay it, and while she is overdrawn by a few dollars, she indeed does have enough overdraft privilege to cover her purchase. After looking further, I see it’s only partial, meaning we don’t authorize debit card transactions, only automatic bill pays and checks.

Me: “After looking further into your account, I see that you only have partial privileges and can not use a debit card while overdrafted.”

Customer: “I’m supposed to have full privilege.”

Me: “Not a problem. I’d be happy to update it to full so you—”

The customer cuts me off, screaming, and I don’t get a single word of it besides “f***” a few times and rapid honking of a car horn.

Me: “Ma’am, in order to complete your request, I will have to ask you to stop using profanity.”

Customer: “YOU, F****** [RACIAL SLUR]!”

Me: “Oooookay, hanging up now.” *Click*

I checked the notes on her account and saw at least twenty calls from that SAME DAY that all said some variation of, “Employee hung up due to customer using racial slurs.” Wow.

My brother has always been money-hungry. He buys expensive shoes and outfits and is constantly asking my parents for more allowance so he can buy them. My parents usually say no because they can’t spare that much money every month, as they’re saving for other things. As a result, he takes it upon himself to “advise” them on money they “could free up,” often by arguing my other siblings, my parents, and me down until we cave and say we don’t want something or change the budget.

My brother and I are weeding the cracks in the driveway. Just prior, he was arguing with my mom because she was saving money for “stupid things” instead of buying him Jordans.

Brother: “How come you never date any guys? [Friend] asked you out and you turned him down.”

Me: “I didn’t like him that way. Besides, he and I weren’t right for each other.”

Brother: “Do you like any guys at all?”

Me: “I mean… not really? I don’t really get crushes and such.”

Brother: “Are you a lesbian? You are, aren’t you?”

Me: “No—”

Brother: “You are! I’m telling Mom!”

At this, I start to get scared. My family and I are Catholic, and while I support the LGBTQ+ community, my family isn’t quite so supportive of that. I could get in some very awkward situations if he told my mom that. 

Me: “No, I’m not a lesbian! Knock it off!”

He continues to pressure me to “tell him the truth” and starts to get up to tell my mom.

Me: “[Brother], I’m not lesbian; I’m ace! Stop! I don’t like anyone that way!”

I’m aroace, but I didn’t know the term aromantic at the time.

Brother: “So you’re just immature, then. Why don’t you like d**k? You just haven’t met the right guy yet.”

Keep in mind that this kid is over two years younger than me; he has no business calling me immature.

Me: “Yeah, yeah, just don’t tell Mom. I want to tell her on my own terms.”

Brother: “You need to tell her soon. She’s saving money for your wedding!”

Me: “O…kay? I’ll tell her when I’m ready. Just promise not to tell her?”

Brother: “Fine, whatever. You should tell her tomorrow, though.”

Foolishly, I thought that was the end of it. But the next day, my mom took me up to a fast food place and got us a snack. While we were eating, she asked me if I was okay, because, “Your brother said you were… a plant?” Turns out he had, in arguing that she should spend the savings she’d set aside for my future wedding, completely outed me to my mom, and she outed me to my dad. I then had to endure conversations of “Maybe you should be a nun,” “Stop making terms up,” “You’ll grow into it; you’re just a late bloomer,” and, “In order to get married you need to have sex in your marriage.”

And that’s the story of how my brother outed me for shoes! And he didn’t even get them, because my parents don’t believe I’m ace and still set aside funds for my wedding every month.

I work at a major hospital known for its trauma services and recovery care. I am a rather small female and currently the only female working as a repair technician. Our duties are to repair all of the hospital’s equipment from pumps to call systems and even the beds.

I have been out for a week on vacation. On my first day back, I get a call from our ICU recovery unit about a non-functioning bed. The nurse tells me that this is the third time someone has come out to look at this bed and they couldn’t find anything wrong.

I push a replacement bed up to the room — just in case they need to swap the patient out — and decide to take one last look before going that far. In the room is an elderly couple in which the husband is recovering from a stroke. Sitting next to the bed is his wife. 

Husband: “They sent us a girl this time? If the two guys that were here before couldn’t find the problem, how is she going to?”

Wife: “Just let her look and be quiet.”

Me: “Just humor me and let me look at a few things. It shouldn’t be more than a minute.”

Husband: “You’re not going to find anything.”

I bend down and take a look at the battery. The battery indicator is showing that the battery is completely dead. I look behind the bed and realize that the bed isn’t plugged in, so the entire time, the bed has been running on battery power and not recharging. I plug it back in and suddenly the bed starts working. Where the wife was sitting, she could see everything I did to “fix” the broken bed. 

Husband: “How did you do that? The men couldn’t figure it out. I don’t believe you were able to fix it that fast when the men couldn’t.”

Wife: “Maybe they should have sent the girl out the first time and they would have learned you need to plug things in to get them to work.”

Husband: “…”

They ended up being a super nice couple in the end and I visited them every day until the husband was released. They even sent my boss a glowing review and told them to hire more girls to actually fix things.

Related:
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 10
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 9
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 8
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 7
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 6

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

Read the next Best Of March 2021 roundup story!

Read the Best Of March 2021 roundup!

I work at a gas station next to an interstate with a terrible coworker. It is important to the story to say that this employee is black, and this is her weapon to wield with abandon.

This story is a common occurrence over a period of several months.

Me: “Hey, [Employee], I just finished [task #1] and [task #2]. I’m off to [task #3]. Will you do [task #4], please?”

Employee: “Oh, so you make the black employee do all the work! This isn’t the plantation days! You’re just being racist!”

Me: “No, I’m giving you a task because that is literally one of your jobs, and you’ve been sitting there filing your nails for twenty minutes.”

Employee: “I have a better idea. How about you do that while I man the registers?” 

Me: “Because you work under me, not the other way around, and if you’re not going to get a lick of work done, you might as well go home!”

She then usually storms into the back, and then she’ll parade out with a smug expression and huffily plant herself back in the same spot she has been in.

A few minutes later, I usually get pulled into the back by the shift leader and the store manager. I explain the situation. The cameras are checked, complete with audio. The store manager gives a halfhearted shrug and sends me back out. Then, I go back to my tasks.

The employee then smirks at me.

Employee: “So what did they say to you about your racism?”

Me: “Nothing.”

Employee: “Nothing?!”

Me: “Yep. Not a thing.”

Then, she sat and fumed silently.

The store manager never addressed either report. I have enough imagination to have at least ONE guess as to why her behavior was never addressed, but no proof.

Finally, after several similar interactions, [Employee] got angry that I was not being reprimanded, despite her many “reports.”

She stormed back into the back and I could hear her yelling at the store manager through the closed door! She actually demanded that I be fired immediately, in so many words. Customers could hear her and asked what was going on.

She finally slammed open the office door and stormed out of the store entirely; the manager got fed up and told her to clock out and leave.

She ended up quitting a day later, citing the store manager being racist to “believe the white employee over the black one!” Never mind that her behavior was recorded on audio and video.

To everyone’s utter disgust, she reapplied for the job within a year, and despite everyone’s objections, the manager hired her again. Her behavior hadn’t changed. It took everyone on staff threatening to walk out, leaving the store manager alone with her with literally no other staff on payroll, before he fired her permanently three months after her return.