(I am putting my groceries on the belt at the grocery store on New Year’s Eve. I only have about six items but have three more items to put on the belt. A woman steps into line behind me and starts unloading her cart. I move her items back on the belt to finish placing my order on the belt. She apologizes and I nod, turning back to the cashier as she checks me out.)

Customer: *clearly agitated* “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

(I turn to look at her, unaware that she’d been talking to me prior to this.)

Customer: “You can’t be mad that people make mistakes. You’re crazy. What the h*** is your problem?”

Me: *genuinely confused* “I don’t think I said anything to you.”

Customer: “You gave me a dirty look! What is your problem? People can’t make a mistake?!”

(She continues to rant as the cashier nervously gives me my total which I need to ask her to repeat. As I’m ignoring the woman behind me, she’s becoming more agitated and her volume is increasing. Once I pay, I turn back to her and smile as brightly as I can.)

Me: “You have a very happy new year.”

Customer: “You need to calm the F*** DOWN! WHAT THE F*** IS YOUR PROBLEM?!”

(I mouthed “good luck” to the bagger and the customer continued to yell at me as I walked away.)

This story is part of the New Year’s Eve roundup!

Read the next New Year’s Eve roundup story!

Read the New Year’s Eve roundup!

I’m happy to help customers, and thrilled when one remembers my name and wants my assistance each time they visit the store, but there needs to be a line drawn somewhere! The other day, an older gentleman comes in and asks for help finding something in our sales flyer. I show him where it was, he thanks me, and he is on his way.

Later he asks me to show him where something else is. I do, he thanks me, and walks away again. This happens two or three more times. The whole time there are four or five other team members on the floor with nothing in specific to do, yet he is convinced I am his guy. At one point I go in the back room, clearly marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, and he pushes his cart right through and wants me to look something up for him.

A few minutes after that I am helping two customers at once when he comes up and interrupts them to say he wants me to take him to another part of the store and answer some questions. After a while I don’t hear from him and assume he has checked out and left. I have to go to the bathroom.

While I am standing at the urinal I hear the door bang open. I look in the mirror and there he is, propping the bathroom door open so everyone who walks past, in our clothing department, can see me standing there with a look of shock on my face as I pee. He walks over right next to me.

“Are you almost done? I’ve got some questions over in the car batteries!”

I am autistic and because of this have always come off as… odd. Odd enough most people don’t want to hire me.

I am in the job centre to look at the jobs available so I can apply when a man walks over and starts talking to me. I try to be polite as he insists on continuing to talk until finally he says “I’m from [Local Church] group.c

I smile and say that I’m not interested, leafing through the information pages of the jobs. Finally, he comments on my accent.

I am English born and raised, but my autism has given me a strong northern American accent. I explain that to him, making a joke about it making me unique like I always do even as I feel myself wilting inside. I find social interaction exhausting.

The next thing I know, the man puts his hand on my shoulder and says “I am so sorry to hear that!” Like I have a terminal disease and I only have three days to live. And I am panicking because I hate being touched and he’s looking me straight in the eyes as he says this. “But one day the lord will help you.”

And that’s when I grabbed my stuff and ran out of the building still carrying the paper. Never went back and ended up being signed off work from stress.

This story is part of our Autism roundup!

Want to read the next story? Click here!

Want to read the roundup? Click here!

(I am reading emails on my iPad while my four-year-old daughter plays in front of me. She suddenly stops and stares at me quizzically for a moment, before saying:)

Daughter: “Mommy, when you die, can I have your skin?”

Me: “Uh…”

(Thankfully, it turned out she was referring to my iPad cover, which was a bright shade of purple, her favorite! Still worried that she’s thinking of my death, though!)

This story is part of our Creepy Kids roundup!

Read the next Creepy Kids roundup story!

Read the Creepy Kids roundup!

After my freshman year of college, I sublet a friend’s room for the summer, in an apartment on the ground floor, to be closer to my job. I share the apartment with her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend. We all get along really well, spend time together whenever we feel like it, etc.

The week I move in, they warn me about a neighbor across the hall they call the “Random Rock Band Guy.” Apparently he had a habit of playing Rock Band at odd hours, but mentioning the noise to the apartment manager had apparently not been helpful.

About two weeks later, I’m sound asleep on a weeknight, when around three am there’s a blast of music so loud you can hear it throughout our apartment. I stumble to the front door and open it a bit to peek out. Across the hall, the door is wide open, and Random Rock Band Guy is sitting there in nothing but his boxers and a backwards hat, banging away on the drum set that comes with the game. I stare for a minute before locking the door and crawling back into bed.

Since he isn’t actually harming anyone, and the Rock Band playing is so sporadic, there isn’t really much the manager was willing to do about it.

It isn’t until I am about to move out at the end of the summer that I think of playing some kind of retaliation music whenever he starts up.

It didn’t work.