Almost fifteen years ago, I lived in an apartment that could have been better managed by a pair of monkeys. Any type of maintenance request would take weeks and would have to be redone multiple times as it was either done incorrectly or they would state it was done but never came by to fix it in the first place.

I lived on the second (top) floor and started to hear some strange sounds in the crawl space in what would be an attic if there was one. I took a look in the maintenance hatch and came face to face with a duck!

There was a duck in my ceiling!

I contacted maintenance to let them know.

Me: “There must be a hole somewhere. A duck has taken up residence and is making a bunch of noise. Can you please fix the hole and remove the duck?”

They didn’t believe me. I sent over photos of the duck — and now a whole nest and a second duck. They finally opened a ticket.

I came home from work and it seemed that they had come over while I was gone. They had taken one of my boxes of personal belongings from the closet, dumped everything out on the bed, and left a note that they had taken the duck out from the “attic”.

I took a look in the hatch and there were two very angry ducks.

I called maintenance, a bit upset at this point.

Maintenance: “We removed the duck.”

Me: “Did you patch up whatever hole they’re coming in from? No? Because they’re back. Why did you use one of my personal boxes to remove a duck if you were not going to remove the way they were getting in?”

During this whole time of living with the ducks in my ceiling, I kind of got used to the noise, but when I would have friends over they would notice it. I would just say that they were my new neighbors upstairs and that I had called the front office multiple times about the noise.

My smarter friends would quickly figure out that I was on the top floor — so how did I have upstairs neighbors? My other friends, well… it was fun to clue them in on it later.

Maintenance never patched the hole.

A while later, I had itty-bitty little ducklings jumping off the roof onto the ground giving me a minor heart attack. All of them made it down safe, but it was a scary two or three hours or so while Mom and Dad tried to get them to come down, and I was disappointed in my fire department as they didn’t want to come out and help.

I moved out to another apartment in the same place to finish out my contract, with no moving fees due to the duck issue.

I was at the mailbox one day, and I saw a lady getting her mail from my old apartment.

Me: “How’s the duck issue going?”

She about blew up complaining about the noise and how maintenance used her good comforter to try to wrangle the ducks.

I don’t miss that place.

I work in a small family-owned computer repair store in my hometown. A man walks into the shop with a PC.

Customer: “It doesn’t turn on.”

Our tech offers to do a diagnostic on the machine for a small fee, but the owner turns her down.

Customer: “I need it working so I can retrieve some pictures. Please do whatever you need to do to make that happen.”

After we clarify with the customer that we have his permission to start work with no parameters and have him sign the necessary documentation, he leaves and the PC goes to the back.

We are in a bit of a dead season for repairs, so the tech happily starts work on the computer immediately while I continue my duties of cleaning up the shop.

Tech #1: “Can you bring the air gun down? I think we’ll need it.”

Tech #2: “Mmmhmmm.”

Tech #1: “All right, he stated that it doesn’t turn on at all, so I’m going to start with the power supply.”

Tech #2: “All right.”

As soon as they removed the side panel of the computer, all I could hear was screaming, and that isn’t a normal thing from either of the technicians on duty. These are computer repair techs; they have seen some very strange and concerning things on people’s computers.

I immediately moved to the shop to find spiders, spiders everywhere, hundreds of spiders crawling out of this PC sitting on the work bench.

The lead tech grabbed a trash bag, enveloped the entire PC in it, spiders and all, tied it shut, and literally pitched the machine out the front door where it hit the ground with a loud DUNK! and slid into the bushes of the mall.

The technician then called the customer on the phone and explained what had happened and where he could find his PC if he wanted it back. She also offered a free hard drive recovery and backup should he bring the PC back minus its eight-legged tenants so he could have his photos.

Apparently, the pictures weren’t all that important because, after we retrieved the machine and set it nicely outside the shop for pickup, it sat there for several days before disappearing.

When I worked in a print shop, I was the only person in the office. I often had people treat me like a therapist, and of course, I was trapped.

This woman came in to have a bunch of scraps of paper copied — torn notebook pages, scratch paper, ripped sticky notes, things like that. As I was copying everything and meticulously spreading them out to her liking, she started telling me why she needed these copies.

I wish I could remember it all, but she told me a convoluted story about how the young new pastor at her church was sweet on a married woman, caused a divorce, and then was flaunting his new bride.

Apparently, this customer was the organist and she knew something secret about the affair, and someone was trying to keep her quiet by stealing her organ music in hopes that she would leave. She had apparently confronted several people, but no one would listen to her, and she was laughed out of the church.

She later went to the pastor’s home and punched him in the face. The reason she needed all these notes was to use as “evidence” in her trial that she was actually the victim.

Folks. She talked to me for four hours. Four. And no, I never got her name.

I am closing the theater at night when my floor staff and I walk upstairs from the manager’s office. We see a stranger in the concessions stand. As we approach him, I let him know he is not allowed in staff areas and that he has to be wearing a mask.

As I ask him to leave a restricted area, he gets irate that we are not open and able to give him his refill. Mind you, we locked our doors almost two hours ago, so the last films are already quite a ways in, and we have already cleaned our soda towers (taken the nozzles off and cleaned them).

I am not sure how he got into our concessions stand, but he seemingly had no trouble putting the soda nozzle back on. He goes out through our employee door saying we should be working so he can get his refill. Then, he goes into the men’s restroom before going back to his film.

My general manager is not there to ask him to leave the building but lets me know later that I can refuse refill service to the man if I see him again. I absolutely will let him know service is not being offered to him, as well.

Bottom line, the customer is not always right nor do they have any authority to go into employee spaces. And when we are closed, we do not have any responsibility to assist them.

About ten years ago, I am walking down the food aisle of my place of employment: a pharmacy with a corner store attached.

I see this lady leaning forward into the shelves. She is looking behind soup cans and then behind boxed goods. Having worked retail for many years, I recognize this search pattern: the “I had my keys in my hand and put them down to grab an item” maneuver.

I saunter over and hit her with my prerecorded:

Me: “Can I help you?”

Unexpectedly, she looks up at me and then stands up.

Customer: “Yes! Where are your bags of ice?”

I’m dumbstruck for a moment, but then my brain hops back on track. I walk her over to the freezer and open the glass door that has cruelly hidden the bags of ice beyond it.

She stands there for a second, blank-faced and looking at me, not the freezer. I then glide my hand through space as if she has just won a new car on a game show, gesturing down to the ice bags.

Then, her bulb flickers on.

Customer: “Oh! Thank you! I would have never found them.”

Well… at least she admits it.