I need some batteries, which are kept behind the counter so no one steals them.

Me: “Some AA batteries, please.”

The cashier’s eyes actually water up with tears as he gets them for me.

Cashier: “Thank you for treating me like a human being.”

Poor guy. I can only imagine the day he had.

I’m a Registered Veterinary Technician running my own pet sitting and dog walking business. I’m on day two of a three-day overnight pet sit at a breeder’s home with cats and dogs and it’s a long weekend for Easter. There are currently three six-and-a-half-week-old kittens running about creating havoc and general kitten mischief.

I have to drive back into town to care for my own pets and take a quick shower. Shortly after returning to the client’s home, I hear faint distressed meowing coming from down the hallway. I go to investigate, opening some of the bedrooms to check to make sure I didn’t lock a kitten in when letting the dogs in and out of their rooms.

I get to the master bedroom and find a bunch of the cats peeking under the bed, and the meowing is coming from underneath it. I get down and look and find one of the kittens wrapped up in some fabric that had been torn from the bottom of the box spring. I reach under to try to unwrap her, but she’s halfway under and I can barely reach or see her and it feels like the fabric is wrapped around a leg. I crawl back out and rush to the kitchen to grab a pair of scissors to try to cut her out with.

On my way back, I hear her give one more strained cry and fall silent. I rush over to the side of the bed and get down, ready to reach back under, only to be face to face with an angry hissing momma cat. Fearing more for the kitten than myself, I plead with her not to scratch my face and reach under. The kitten has gone limp. In a panic, I realize that there is no way I am going to be able to maneuver the scissors to cut the fabric and instead grab a handful of the fabric close to the boxspring and pull. I don’t know if it’s adrenaline or if the fabric is just frayed enough, but I manage to rip the fabric from the bed and pull the kitten out.

She’s still not moving or breathing, and I see that the fabric is wrapped tightly around her little neck. I manage to get the scissors between the fabric and cut it. Even with the fabric removed from her neck, she still is not breathing, and I begin CPR and mouth to mouth. After a minute of compressions and breaths, she starts coughing and moving sluggishly. I scoop her up and rush to put her in a carrier while getting the emergency vet number and also trying to reach my client over the phone.

We don’t have an emergency vet that stays open up here; instead, the clinics rotate who is on call each day and you have to wait for them to call you back. While waiting, I keep monitoring the kitten, and she slowly starts to move around and be aware of her surroundings.

Finally, after twenty minutes, the vet calls me back and we go through an assessment over the phone to determine if I should bring her in. By then, the kitten is acting as if nothing happened beyond being a bit quiet, and it is decided that she will be okay.

And that is how I saved the life of a six-and-a-half-week-old kitten by knowing how to perform CPR on pets. Happy Pet First Aid Month, everyone! If you have pets, please consider enrolling in a class that will teach you Pet CPR and First Aid; you never know when it may save a tiny life.

This story is part of our Feel Good roundup for April 2021!

Read the next Feel Good roundup for April 2021 story!

Read the Feel Good roundup for April 2021!

This happened over ten years ago. I worked in a call centre. We had a coworker whose son used to be the Operations Manager at our call centre. Why is he no longer the Ops Manager, and in fact no longer employed there at all?

[Son] was not liked at all. He was smug, superior, and dismissive of everyone at or below his level in the call centre. His mother used the fact that her son was the Ops Manager to bully people. If you scored well when you were having a call monitored, you could earn a bonus. She scared all the supervisors into always giving her the bonus, even on days when she didn’t really deserve it.

One day, [Son] needed to speak to one of our supervisors. He called out to her, “[Supervisor #1].” She ignored him. He called out again, “[SUPERVISOR #1].” She continued to ignore him.

[Supervisor #1] had an ample chest, and when she crossed her arms, they tended to rest on top of her chest, so seeing her arms crossed, [Son] took his pencil and turned it around with the eraser end out and poked [Supervisor #1] in the side of her chest just under her arms. “[SUPERVISOR #1]!” 

Up until that point, the company had never made us watch anti-workplace harassment videos, which included a segment on how to recognize sexual harassment and what to do if there’s sexual harassment in your workplace. Because of what [Son] did to [Supervisor #1], we all then had to spend one day watching that series of videos and signing forms stating we understood what we just watched and agreeing to abide by the anti-harassment rules. [Son] was, of course, fired for sexual harassment.

Since her son was fired, [Coworker #1] had far less power, but she was still d***ed intimidating and some supervisors remained afraid of her and gave her high marks anyway, whether she earned them or not. She was bitter about [Son] being fired like that and made it clear all the time.

One day in my phone cubicle section, where a group of people on the phones would be managed under one supervisor, I got to sit with a really lovely lady we’ll call [Coworker #2]. She was funny, intelligent, and really nice. She had brought a bag of hard candies to work and went up and down our cubicle section, laying a piece of sanitary, individually-wrapped candy at every station so that every person would start their shift with a little bit of happiness. She made sure to give a piece of candy to our supervisor, [Supervisor #2], too. She then went to her locker to go put the candy away and get ready for work.

It was just me and [Supervisor #2] when [Coworker #1] walked up, and I saw she would be in our section. I secretly groaned. [Coworker #1] picked up the piece of candy at her desk and her eyes grew wide. She then suddenly barked out, “Who did this?!” waving the candy menacingly. I gave her an “I don’t know” face and looked away. There was no one else at our section yet and [Coworker #2] was still back at her locker, so [Coworker #1] marched up to [Supervisor #2].

Coworker #1: “Who did this?!”

Supervisor #2: “Who did what, [Coworker #1]?”

Coworker #1: “Who put candy at my desk?!”

Supervisor #2: “I don’t know, [Coworker #1]. I wasn’t here when it happened.”

He knew better than to say anything or [Coworker #1] would go on a rampage after [Coworker #2].

Me: “There’s a piece of candy at every desk. I don’t think someone was trying to bother you.”

[Coworker #1] narrowed her eyes at me and then ignored me.

Coworker #1: *To [Supervisor #2]* “This had better not happen again! Do you hear me?!”

She then threw the candy away in the trashcan under [Supervisor #2]’s desk and went off to the bathroom, out of sight. In that time, [Coworker #2] came back to the section and my face was nearly splitting in half from trying to hide my laughter. She asked what was so funny and I filled her in entirely on [Coworker #1]’s reaction. [Coworker #2] got this evil, Grinch-like smile on her face, took the piece of candy she meant to keep for herself, placed it on [Coworker #1]’s desk where the original piece had been placed, and waited, schooling her expression to be everyday-bored like most of us had while working there.

More people had begun to show up in our section, so it wasn’t really obvious who put the candy back on [Coworker #1]’s desk. When [Coworker #1] came back, her eyes popped out of her head so widely I’m surprised they didn’t push her glasses off of her face. She picked up the new candy piece, SHAKING WITH RAGE. She marched right up to [Supervisor #2] and began barking at him louder while waving the candy right in his face.

Coworker #1: “You know what this is, [Supervisor #2]? Do you know. What. This. Is?!”

Supervisor #2: “No, [Coworker #1]. What is it?”

Coworker #1: “This!” *Shakes it more violently* “This is sexual harassment!”

[Coworker #2] and I were about to DIE but we kept our faces straight as best we could. [Coworker #1] had so focused her anger on [Supervisor #2] that she didn’t even notice us anyway.

Supervisor #2: “No, [Coworker #1], this is not sexual harassment; it’s a piece of candy.”

Coworker #1: “No! It is sexual harassment!”

[Supervisor #2] had had enough by this point.

Supervisor #2: “You either need to sit down, [Coworker #1], or you can go home and we will mark you as a no-show, but this stops now.”

She finally shut up, sat down, and got ready to work, but she grumbled the whole rest of the day.

[Coworker #2] and I had the best break time ever that day, secretly snickering about all that.

It’s about a year into the major global health crisis and two of my coworkers and I are on a break. One of them is very conspiracy-minded about the whole crisis.

Coworker #1: “Yeah, it’s kind of weird that the pharmacy’s shelves are filled with cold and flu medication.”

Coworker #2: “What do you mean?”

Coworker #1: “Well, it’s obvious that no one’s buying it right now, what with [crisis] and stuff.”

Me: “Or the staff is just stocking the shelves.”

Coworker #1: “No, no. People aren’t getting colds right now; it’s all [crisis], instead.”

Me: “Or the measures we’re taking are helping reduce the number of colds.”

Coworker #1: “That’s not it at all. All colds are being listed as [crisis], so people aren’t buying cold medication.”

I just looked at my other coworker and wandered off to find something to do.

It’s a super busy Valentine’s Day night. There is a small gap in reservations for one spot, and an old couple who is looking for a seat asks if they can sit until my next reservation comes. They seem sweet enough, and I get them settled with their coffee and tea and get their appetizer going.

The man starts to complain about the vent above them blowing cold air.

Customer: *Yelling* “Why would you purposely put on the AC when I am here?!”

Because our restaurant is part of a larger building with many other stores inside, we don’t have control over the temperature of the restaurant. And when there are a lot of people in the building, it tends to automatically switch to cold air as a safety mechanism for making sure the cooks in the kitchen and the servers running around don’t get overheated.

Me: “I don’t have the power to fix this problem; however, I would be more than happy to speak to my general manager to see if there’s anything they can do.”

He talked to them and explained the predicament, and the angry man yelled at me again when the manager left. His wife agreed that it was chilly but tried to tell me to just ignore her husband, who was still yelling at me.

Twenty minutes later, their main meal came out, and the man was red in the face. He said his meal tasted fine but that he would not be leaving the reserved booth that I had graciously let him sit in until the heating problem was fixed.

I got my other manager to talk to him, and they ended up comping an appetizer for him. His wife begrudgingly made him leave just in time for my next table to arrive.