I have a common English name (like John Smith) that has led to some interesting stories over the years. To avoid confusion, and for security, I always use my middle initial when signing legal documents, i.e., John B. Smith instead of John Smith, or my full name, John [Middle Name] Smith.

Story #1: I am driving home from work and listening to the news on the radio.

Announcer: “Breaking news! John Smith who lives in [My City] has just won a groundbreaking legal decision in his favor.”

By the time I get home fifteen minutes later, I have sixteen messages on my answering machine from reporters for ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, etc. I don’t respond to the messages and let them figure it out.

Story #2: I get a bill from a collection agency wanting me to pay $8,000 for some jewelry that “I” recently bought in San Francisco. I live 400 miles away in Los Angeles and haven’t been to San Francisco in two years. I ignore the bill because it is not my debt.

What follows next are more bills demanding payment and threatening phone calls from the collection agency. 

Collection Agency #1: “We know it is you, and you’d better pay us, or we will destroy your credit rating! How about we settle for $6,000?”

At one point, the agency wants me to verify my SSN (my US government ID number) with what they have in their records, BUT I have to tell them my SSN FIRST to see if it matches. (Not happening!)

Every time I tell them “No!”, the settlement price drops until it is down to $1,000. I call a lawyer to see what my options are. He tells me to just pay it or else they will ruin my credit rating.

Me: “Your advice is to just pay them the $1,000 so they will leave me alone? That sounds like extortion to me.”

I ignored my lawyer’s STUPID advice. I never gave that collection agency a dime, and my credit rating didn’t suffer.

Story #3: Another collection agency contacts me about a $20,000 bank loan that is in default. Again, this is not my debt but a fraudulent loan taken out in my very common name. My legal signature always includes my middle initial, (John B. Smith). This loan was taken out by a person using the name John Smith, who lived in a different city than me.

On the phone with the agency representative, I ask him to show me some proof that it is my signature on the loan papers. His reply makes me laugh because he acts like that’s a VERY unusual request.

Collection Agency #2: “You want to see your signature on the loan papers? I don’t have access to those documents.”

I eventually got three copies of the checks written on the loan, and you didn’t have to be a handwriting expert to figure out that they were written by three different people. Not one of them matched my writing or my signature.

I didn’t pay that agency $20,000, and my credit rating never suffered.

When [Friend] told me this story, I just HAD to get her permission to share it. She gave it, so here we go. Fair warning: I fear the number of IQ points that may be lost in reading this.

[Friend] started dating [Idiot] about two years before this incident. Things seemed to be going all right between them. She told me he was a bit of a derp and sometimes incredibly oblivious to some things. He couldn’t pick up subtle cues, and even suggestions flew over his head with about a mile of airspace between his skull and the suggestion. She originally chalked it up to him being on the autism spectrum, as she has a few other friends who have similar problems picking up cues. So, she just switched her behavior from “talking to neurotypical” to “talking to neurodivergent”, and the bumps smoothed out for a while.

All was well and good.

Then, the talk of taking the relationship seriously came up — marriage, becoming a family, etc.

And that’s when the relationship began to die.

[Idiot] announced that he wanted to DNA test [Friend]’s kids to make sure they were his — the kids who were five and three when [Friend] and [Idiot] started dating.

[Friend] said she had to come to a full stop in the conversation for several seconds while her brain rebooted.

Friend: “They’re not your kids. You know they’re not. My ex-husband and I had them together before I ever met you.”

Idiot: “Yeah, and now that we’re getting married, they’ll become mine. I just want to DNA test them to be sure of it.”

Friend: “Let me see if I understand this. Do you… Do you actually think my children’s DNA will… change… to become biologically yours?”

Idiot: “Obviously. I just want the confirmation on paper, is all.”

There was a long conversation about how DNA didn’t work that way, with his rebuttal that adopting them would make them BECOME his. Then, there had to be a conversation about how becoming his children would only happen on paper, and in the legal system. She had to explain that, no, the children would NOT magically transform into his own biological children once the paperwork was filled out. He kept insisting that EVERYBODY said the kids became theirs once adoption happened. She explained the concept of “adopted children are loved just as much as if they were biological”, and that was what that meant. He insisted that everything pointed to kids BECOMING “theirs.”

[Friend]’s mom eventually had to become involved to back [Friend] up. His DAD had to become involved to back [Friend] up. A few books had to get involved to back [Friend] up.

[Idiot] was furious! He couldn’t understand why people would EVER adopt a kid if the kid didn’t “become” the actual, biological child of the people who took them in. He went on about how stupid and selfish it was for kids to retain the DNA of the sperm or egg donor! How could any kid who wanted to be adopted REFUSE to change one little thing so they could have parents?! “DNA doesn’t work that way” is a bulls*** excuse!

He ranted and raved, and right in front of his own parents, he told her that if her kids weren’t going to become his kids, then the marriage wasn’t going to happen.

He told her that he would give them all a week to change their minds and agree to be his biological kids. He said that WHEN they stopped being selfish, and WHEN the DNA test proved it, he would take the kids in.

Friend: *To me* “And that’s how the relationship ended.”

Me: “Uhhhh, wait. Hang on. Was he just looking for an excuse to break it off? Did he just get cold feet, or want to date around some more, or…?”

Friend: “Nope. He really is just that stupid. His mom called me on the sly and very gently suggested that I just break it off with [Idiot], because no matter how much she and his dad talk to him, he’s adamant about it. He’s even saying that he will never date a woman with kids from here on out unless they agree to change their DNA to become his if the relationship becomes serious.”

So, [Friend] is single again, having dodged a tactical nuke.

For the record, the father of [Friend]’s kids is still fully in the kids’ lives, has full parental rights, and has 50/50 custody, so adoption wasn’t even on the table. It just didn’t come up in the conversation due to the stupidity of the DNA topic taking over [Friend]’s brain space.

I work for a temp agency, doing very boring tasks. One of the people who started at the same time as me already wants to leave again. He has been thinking about what he could be doing instead for a few days now.

Then, I get a text from him.

Coworker: “Do you know anything about apprenticeships? I need some help.”

Me: “A bit. What do you want to know?”

Coworker: “I think I want to be a kindergarten teacher. I love working with children, and I think I could be really good at it. I’ve done some research, and there are a few jobs I could apply to.”

Me: “Sounds good.”

Coworker: “Yeah. But I don’t know… They all say that you are required to have completed a three-year apprenticeship to apply. And I’ve done that. Do you think that’s enough?”

Me: “It should be. What exactly did you do in your apprenticeship?”

Coworker: “Body painter.”

I just stare at the screen for a minute, grateful that he hasn’t asked me this in person and he can’t see my face now. I don’t know how to react. What I WANT to say is, “Are you serious?! What do you think childcare entails that PAINTING CARS would prepare you for?!”

What I eventually type is a little more diplomatic.

Me: “I think they want you to have completed a three-year apprenticeship in childcare or something similar, so they know you have experience.”

Coworker: “Oh. Hm. D***. Then I don’t know.”

Please don’t work with kids.

I am working at a computer repair store when a woman brings her daughter in with their new MacBook.

Customer: “It’s defective. We need a replacement.”

Me: “What’s the nature of the defect?”

Customer: “It’s making loud noises.”

I turn the computer on, and she freaks out.

Customer: “There! I can hear the noise!”

Me: “That’s the CD drive spinning.”

These are the days with optical drives and MS Office on CD.

Customer: “What do you mean, it’s spinning?! I’ve never heard of that before; this computer needs to be silent!”

I used to work in a copy shop. We offered typesetting services through the use of our extraordinarily expensive Macintosh II and LaserWriter IIntx laser printer (quite the rarity in those days). Resumés were very common; I would type at least a dozen resumés every week.

A woman came in to have her resumé set. At first, I thought she was just a little off, but by the time she left, I was convinced she was off her meds.

Her source material (normally a sheet or two of handwritten or typewritten paper) was in a brown paper lunch bag and was written in several different pen colors across about a dozen scraps of paper, including a tissue and what looked like a wax paper wrapping from a sandwich.

I asked her to put it in order for me and she got very irritated with me, as if I didn’t understand something so obvious. It took her more than half an hour to select a typeface, and ultimately, she selected a very sci-fi headline font.

I tried to convince her to go with something more traditional but stopped after she threatened to call the police for “violating her rights”. I decided to just give her what she wanted and let the chips fall where they may.

I took her information and payment and she left. I called the owner and told him what happened, and he agreed that I should just do the resumé as she wanted it. It took me about a half-hour to figure out her handwriting and turn it into the two-page epic monologue that was her resumé.

Setting the font made the thing virtually illegible. When she came back the next day, she spent over an hour at the counter proofreading it; she would giggle like a school girl every few minutes, hold the proof paper up at different angles and under different lights, and I swear at one point she even smelled the paper. She paid the balance and left.

About four months later she returned to the shop (wearing, I swear, bedroom slippers) screeching like a banshee that we had ripped her off and that she was going to call the police and sue us because it was our fault her resumé wasn’t getting her a job. I told her to have her attorney contact the owner at the store’s address, gave her a business card, and apologized if she felt ripped off. She left the store in a huff, and we never heard from her again.