I’m flying across the USA from the west coast to the east. It’s a large plane and fairly full. I’m in economy class. I‘m relaxing in an aisle seat when I see a man across the aisle take out some sort of toolkit. My first thought upon seeing it is, “How did he get that past the TSA?” He then begins to disassemble his seat.

Bothered, I stand and turn to him.

Me: “What are you doing?”

Passenger: “I pressed the ‘call stewardess’ button an hour ago, and she has not shown up yet, so I’m going to disassemble the passenger section until she gets here. Maybe that will make her hurry.”

Disturbed by this answer, I started walking forward along the aisle until I found a steward. Maybe it’s sexist, but I had a feeling that I shouldn’t send a woman to confront this man.

The steward jogged energetically to our section and confronted the man.

What followed was an argument about how the man in question had been abusing the usage of the “call stewardess” button and they had stopped responding as a result, and the man insisted that it was bad customer service and that there was nothing wrong with looking so long as he didn’t touch. Eventually, the steward walked away, and the man went right back to disassembling, so I went to fetch the steward again.

The plane wound up making an unscheduled landing in flyover county, and some burly officers escorted the dissembler off of the plane. Then, we had to sit and wait until a maintenance crew could board the plane and put back together what the man had taken apart.

Eventually, we made it to our destination only five hours late.

I work in a coffee shop. We have retractable Sharpies to mark the cups with. A guy comes in looking very business-like and orders five drinks.

Customer: “Can I borrow your marker so I can write people’s names on the drinks?”

Fair enough, people do this all the time, but when I hand him the marker, the look of pure confusion on his face is undeniable.

Me: *Thinking* “Poor guy probably forgot whose is whose.”

I went on making the drinks, and a few seconds later he handed the marker back to me in THREE PIECES. I just held out my hand and accepted the broken pen with what must have looked like the most dumbfounded gawk on my face. He didn’t know how to use a retractable Sharpie and broke it in the attempt to figure it out. Must have been a manager.

I play the part of weld engineer for one of my jobs, as well as filling in as a welder, and have been doing this for better than thirty years. I was on a secured job site over the New Year’s holiday for an emergency repair, and as getting off-site to grab a meal is hard, I dropped half of my fridge into a cooler before leaving the house.

When a meal break came up, I grabbed a skillet-sized scrap of steel, clamped it to a work stand, gave it a quick cleaning with a grinder, and set up a torch under it. My crew was looking at me like the fool that I am, but when I pulled a half-pack of ham and three eggs out of my cooler and dropped them on the “skillet”, they perked up.

A few minutes later, I had a great breakfast, and my crew learned something about resourcefulness.

I was in a bad accident, and with part of the settlement money, I was able to get a new car. The higher-set and heated seat made a huge difference in my permanent injuries.

After a year of driving the new car with no issues, I’m coming home late one night, and as I turn at the light, the car stutters a little, just for a second. It seems okay, so I continue home.

Turning onto the road before mine, there’s a steep hill with a sharp curve that has a barrier on one side and a rock hill on the other. It’s hard to see who’s coming and going; at night, you have to watch for headlights. As I start up this hill, the car sputters again, the headlights dim, it slows to five mph with my foot to the floor, and caution/error lights are all over my dash. I have two choices: try to get up the hill and make it home, or take a chance rolling back to where I can pull off. If I stop on the hill, I WILL get hit. I decide to keep going, and I do make it home.

I call the dealership in the morning, and they tow my car in. They have it for two days.

Mechanic: “It was a computer issue. We’ve cleared the codes, and you’re good to go.”

I get the car back and it runs fine… for a week.

I’m heading to the dentist, and I’m in a turn lane waiting for the light to change. The light goes green, I go to turn left, and the car dies. There’s no sputter and no warning; it just shuts off. Thankfully, I am still in the turn lane so I’m not blocking traffic, just those behind me.

Flashers on, I call the dealership to get a tow and I’m told it will be two hours. I try to restart (putting the car in park to do so) but it doesn’t even attempt to turn over. So, I’m in my car, flashers on, blocking the turn lane, it’s ninety-five degrees, and I’m trying to wave people around me to cut down on how many cuss me out for blocking the turn lane.

A couple of people offer to push my car across the road, but it’s not exactly safe, plus there’s another issue. Two police officers pull up to see what the problem is. They’re super nice and offer to get me safely across the street to the gas station on the corner. The problem: my car will NOT shift out of park. The brake won’t depress at all.

One of the officers takes a good five minutes to finally get it down enough to shift into neutral, and he pushes it by hand into the gas station parking lot while the other officer blocks traffic. They make sure I’m good and have my phone, and they head out. The tow truck finally arrives, and my mom picks me up and runs me home.

Two days later, the service manager calls me, sounding beyond confused.

Service Manager: “We found the problem. One of the main wires in the wiring harness wasn’t actually connected. It was just touching what it should have been secured to. It has been like that since it was built. I cannot understand how you’ve driven the car for a year before having issues. It shouldn’t have worked at all!”

I guess my saving grace was how little I drive. In two years, I’ve put less than 15,000 miles on it.

The service manager asked if he could bring in service managers from some other locations to see it since, as far as he knew, that issue hadn’t been seen before. I was fine with it, but it’s still funny thinking about how confused the guy sounded when he called me.

It’s about an hour from closing, and I am working the drive-thru and the front register at the same time — not uncommon on a weeknight.

A customer comes in and places her order. She’s a nice enough woman, in her sixties, I think. I ring it up, take her money, and tell her I’ll be right back while her food is prepared and hand her her cup to get a soda.

I come back after the guy preparing it says it’s done, and she’s gone. I assume she’s in the bathroom. I wait a little while and start wiping things down. I look toward the drive-thru window, and the customer is there in her car, staring into the drive-thru.

I open the window.

Me: “Did you forget your meal and leave, ma’am?”

Customer: “No. This is the pick-up window, isn’t it?”

I hand her her food and she offers me the empty cup.

Customer: “Diet Coke, please.”