I’m sitting at a bus stop outside a popular shopping centre, waiting for my bus. A well-dressed woman with a somewhat sour expression struts up, examines my clothing, and apparently decides that I am good enough for her to sit next to. Before I can say anything or even nod, she starts grumbling under her breath about the homeless in the area and how every teenager these days is doing drugs, trying to catch my eye. I need to get this bus, so it’s not like I can get away.

It takes five minutes for a suitable target to cross her path. It’s a teenage boy dressed in black jeans, a graphic tee, and platform boots. He’s wearing a wallet chain — probably what catches the woman’s eye — and carrying a plain white paper bag.

Woman: “Kids these days! Look at him!” *Spotting his tidy Padawan braid* “And with hair like that!”

Teen: “…ma’am?”

Woman: “What’s in that bag, huh? Drugs? You look the type.”

The teen blinks, looks down at his bag, and then looks back up at her.

Teen: “What?”

Woman: “You heard me!”

He reaches into the bag and holds up a maki roll.

Teen: “…ma’am, this is sushi.”

I have never seen someone turn so red so fast. I hope he enjoyed that sushi.

I’m a cashier at a small supermarket with that serves a small area of diverse people, although our main clientele is generally older folk.

I’m male-to-female trans but very early in my journey. I keep my hair long and my beard shaved, I have adopted a neutral name, and I have been practicing keeping my voice in a higher register. Mask mandates have also been a godsend because my large mask covers up my stubble really well.

We all wear the same, loose-fitting uniforms made up of a thermal T-shirt, hard-wearing denims, steel-toed boots, and a baggy fleece. It can be hard to tell someone’s gender at a glance even if they present strongly one way or the other.

I’ve just finished scanning through a rather large shop for an older woman who’s spent most of the transaction fussing with her purse and the order of the items in her trolley. As I’m giving her the total and asking if she has a loyalty card, my voice slips back into a lower register briefly. The woman turns and squints at me through her glasses for a moment, muttering something before turning back around to fuss with her trolley again.

Me: “Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Do you have a loyalty card with us?”

Customer: “No, I don’t… [unintelligible].”

Me: “I didn’t quite catch that last bit, sorry?”

Customer: “You know you’ll never be a man, right?”

I’m briefly stunned into silence.

Me: “Pardon?”

Customer: “You can wear baggy clothes and put on a deep voice, but you’ll never be a man. I don’t know why you [slur]s even try. It’s disgusting.”

After another pause to see if she’s being serious, I break and burst into tears laughing. Tapping the manager pager, I compose myself.

Me: “You know, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, right?”

The customer blinked a few times, trying to figure out what I was on about.

Me: “I had no idea I passed that convincingly that someone would mistake me for a trans man.”

My manager rounded the corner and paused at the register behind me to listen in.

Customer: “Why are you laughing?”

Me: “This is the first time I’ve ever had someone be hateful toward me in person for being transgender. And you got it the wrong way round.”

The customer squints at me again, seeming unsure of what to say about this shocking turn of events.

I glance over my shoulder to see my manager leaning over the conveyer belt behind me and laughing as well.

Me: “[Manager], do you want to take this customer? I don’t serve bigots.”

Manager: “I’ll do you one better.”

He turns to the customer and smiles.

Manager: “Please leave the store; we are refusing you service.”

Realising she is out of options and having made a complete fool of herself, the customer splutters something incomprehensible and shuffles off.

Manager: “Want to take five and get all the laughing done in the staff room?”

Me: “Gladly. Then I’ll put away this unpaid shopping.”

My manager and I swapped places, and I wheeled the full trolley up to the back of the store, laughing all the way.

I worked at this dive bar in Vilnius that opened at 8:00 pm and closed in the wee hours of the morning, usually when public transport started running. It was quite a werewolf’s haunt past midnight. The types of shenanigans that went on there could fill a book, but this one was about an early opening because it was cleaning day. (It’s a dive, so no surprise the hygiene standards were low.)

There were some locals sitting at the bar. They were a thuggy-looking bunch, but they were always polite, and one of them nearly always beat me at chess, so we called them our “Elite thugs”. They wouldn’t drink much; they just liked hanging around from time to time. Later, some “tourist” — our name for people who come to check the bar out once and then never return — popped in and the evening continued. He sat at the bar and seemed friendly enough so we had various conversations, with him doing most of the talking.

Not long after that, one of the regulars showed up and joined us at the bar. He was a young guy (but legal, no worries), and he mostly kept to himself as he was not much of a drinker. The problems started when the “tourist” and the young guy got to talking, and after a few minutes, the conversation went downhill.

Tourist: “Yeah, I like this place. A real f****** bar. Not like those f** joints they have nowadays.”

Young Guy: “What’s wrong with f**s?”

The tourist looked like he’d been slapped with a wet rag.

Tourist: “You’re not a f**, are you?”

Young Guy: “Um… I’m gay, yeah.”

The tourist went ballistic. He started cussing at guy, hurling expletives, and listing an entire adult website’s worth of intimate homosexual acts. I’ll never know how these people know so much about this stuff.

I piped in.

Me: “Listen, bud, I’ve known this guy for a year, and I’ve heard more about homosexual sex s*** from you in thirty seconds than I’ve ever heard from him in a year I’ve known him. How about you go for a smoke and never come back, huh?”

That didn’t stop there, as the tourist started ripping at me with all the expletives in his — admittedly — quite expansive dictionary. The elites clearly got sick of this moron and soon chimed in. All four of ’em.

Elites: “You have a problem with [Young Guy]?

Tourist: “But he’s a f**!”

Elites: “We know he’s a f**. He’s our f**. We know him. We don’t know you!“

The tourist looked at me like I was supposed to stand up for him or something. Too dense.

Me: “It’s about time for that smoke, pal.”

After looking around one more time, the tourist cursed under his breath and darted out of the bar. We ask people to pay in advance, of course, so no problem there.

The young guy and I thanked the elite thugs for a timely intervention.

Me: “Beer, gents?”

Elites: “Nah. Peace and quiet are good enough. What a p***k.”

Thankfully, the tourist stayed “tourist” and never showed his face again. He probably went to some other joint to complain about f**s; the guy seemed like a pro at that stuff.

The all-time most unrealistic demand I ever heard was from a coworker. She said the same thing to me, other coworkers, Human Resources, and management, and she honestly believed she was in the right.

Her demand?

Coworker: “I cannot be around people who take psychiatric medications. That stuff turns you violent. So, for my own safety, anyone taking them cannot work near me. This is a matter of health and safety, and you have to accommodate me.”

She got right up to threatening legal action if her demands were not met. After a month of this, management said:

Management: “Yeah, you’re still in your probation period, and this job obviously isn’t suitable for your ‘needs’, so bye-bye.”

And thus she was fired. At least she didn’t have to work with us “crazy people” anymore!

My girlfriend and I have been living together for five years, but our families don’t know we are gay and think we are just roommates and good friends. [Girlfriend] recently proposed to me and I accepted, and we had to tell our parents.

[Girlfriend] went first and it could not have gone any worse. Her mom locked herself in the bathroom as her dad yelled and accused me of corrupting his daughter. He told her he never wanted to see her again.

I didn’t want to tell my parents after that because my dad is very old-fashioned.

Me: “Dad, I have something to tell you. [Girlfriend] and I are gay and we are planning to get married.”

My dad walked over to my girlfriend.

Dad: “Congratulations. I’ve always wanted another daughter. But hopefully, you’re not as big of a pain in the rear as this one was.”

My bear of a dad hugged us both and told [Girlfriend] that if her dad didn’t come around, he’d walk us both down the aisle. When I asked him why he was so accepting, he said:

Dad: “I don’t really get being gay, but you love who you love.”

This story is part of our Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

Read the next Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) story!

Read the Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!