My mother shared this story with me. I’m ten years old, and she’s in the shower when the phone rings with a scam call. Before she can even start to get out of the shower, I answer the phone.

Me: “Hello?”

Mom: “[My Name], don’t play with the phone! Bring it here!”

Me: “Oh, sorry, mister. My mom says to give her the phone.”

Scammer: “Oh, okay, kid. I’ll hold on.”

On my way toward the bathroom, I trip and fall, cutting my leg on a decorative piece of furniture that marks itself for the garbage as it happens. As soon as I see the blood, I start crying.

Me: “Mom, help! I’m bleeding!”

Mom: “Oh, s***! Hold on!”

Scammer: “Kid! Hey, kid, can you hear me?”

Trying not to cry, I pick up the phone.

Me: “I’m sorry, mister…”

Scammer: “You said you’re bleeding? Can you touch where it’s coming from?”

Me: “Yes, but it hurts when I touch it!”

Scammer: “I know, but it’s gonna hurt more if you let it keep bleeding. You gotta hold against it and be strong. Can you do that for me?”

Me: “Okay, mister…”

I press my hands against the cut, crying out as I do. My mom soon comes out with a towel around her body and something to wrap the cut with. Once she’s sure I’m okay, she picks up the phone.

Mom: “I’m so sorry. What is it you needed?”

Scammer: “Um… I’m calling about…”

Mom: “Yes?”

Scammer: “I’m gonna be honest with you. This was supposed to be a scam call, but after I got your kid hurt, I think I’m gonna go tell this job to go f*** itself. You take care of your kid.”

He hung up.

Mom was understandably surprised — more so when I told her about what the scammer had said while she was coming to help.

I personally am baffled that ten-year-old me managed to make a scammer quit his job by answering the phone when I wasn’t allowed to.

I met my best friend online. I live in Oregon; she lives in Canada. We had been friends for over eight years when I decided I wanted to visit her. When I got there, she let me use her room while she slept on the couch.

Now, I need to mention that she is a Star Wars fanatic; she has figures, posters, kitchen utensils, clothes… lots of it. Which is fine.

In the middle of the night, I woke up and saw a man standing at the foot of the bed. My heart was pounding. I was thinking about my family and how my mother had worried about me getting killed or kidnapped, and I kept thinking, “It’s my first time going anywhere without my family, I’m in another country, and I’m going to get killed because my mom was right!”

I lay there, tense and afraid, waiting for the man to attack… and then a car drove by, light flashed into the room, and I saw…

…that it was a giant cardboard cutout of Darth Vader.

My friend has not let me live it down, and it’s been ten years.

I have never been creative, so despite enjoying most of school, I had a tough time with creative writing assignments. One year, we had a short story assigned that was especially big — ten to twenty pages — and worth an especially large portion of that semester’s final mark. I was unable to think up even a bad idea, never mind a good one.

Then, the Sunday before it was due, I awoke having had a dream with a full plot that would work fine for the short story! I wrote it all down. A teenage girl’s sassy new boyfriend killed all their school bullies, but then, other kids who had previously seemed chill became bullies. In the end, our protagonist realised that killing a**holes could never make the world a better place since there is an almost infinite supply of a**holes.

Monday arrived, but the teacher announced an extra week was being given since many kids were having trouble getting their stories done on time.

So, a few of us who had our stories ready swapped them to read. (This being the 1990s, it was all on paper.) My friend read my story.

Me: “I had terrible writer’s block, but then, like a miracle, this came to me in a dream!”

Friend: “Naw, dude. That wasn’t out of your subconscious.”

Me: “Of course it was.”

Friend: “No, that was the plot of the last movie you saw. How could you forget?!” *Laughing* “We rented it like three weeks ago. Heathers? You thought Christian Slater was cute?”

Me: “Oh. My. God. You’re right! What have I done?! This is plagiarism!”

I was a good kid who got good marks easily, so I had never even for a moment considered cheating before. But I had no other story idea with which to redo the assignment. Eventually, I convinced myself it was morally acceptable because I had written it in my own words, with plot events of my choice, not copied something verbatim, and I had not stolen the idea intentionally. So, I handed it in.

A few days later, I was summoned with my mother to a meeting with the principal, Language Arts teacher, and even the school counselor. I thought for sure I was going to jail for plagiarism!

But as the meeting unfolded, I realised they had no idea! Not one of the adults in the meeting was cool enough to be aware of one of the biggest movies of the previous year! What are the odds? They believed it was 100% my idea, and they were scared I was going to go on a murder spree!

I figured it better to be thought a psycho than a cheater, so I kept the truth to myself. Instead, I defended myself by pointing out that the moral of the story was that killing bad guys does no good, so despite the preceding murder rampage, the story was an argument for pacifism. They bought it and life moved on.

It still makes me laugh to remember all those worried faces, holding me personally to blame for the creepy plot of a successful Hollywood movie. I guess it’s lucky I didn’t steal an even scarier story like “Carrie”, or I’d still be in therapy!

I work as an insurance agent in British Columbia. In British Columbia, you have to go through the government to get car insurance. However, I work at an agency, so we’re basically a middleman; I don’t actually work for the government.

A guy walks in and tosses his papers on the counter.

Customer: “Three months [insurance].”

Strike one for tossing papers disrespectfully.

I begin to do my job, which unfortunately involves lots of simple questions I legally have to ask. These involve, “Are you driving it the most?” and going through coverages. Typically, I apologize for doing it because I know it’s annoying, but I try to be as fast and polite as possible.

I begin to ask my questions.

Me: “Are you still the principal operator?”

Customer: “Yep.”

Me: “Still driving it—”

Customer: “Yup.”

Me: “—driving it the most?”

Customer: “Yup.”

Me: “And are you—”

Customer: “Yap!“

Strike two. I say f*** it and just cut to the chase.

Me: “Sir, it is $198 to renew your insurance.”

This is fairly cheap for three months.

Customer: “What?! How much was it last time?”

I look at the papers.

Me: “Sir, your insurance went up eight dollars.”

I don’t think this is a big deal, but he starts losing his s***, wondering why the insurance corporation of British Columbia is personally victimizing him by charging eight dollars more. I explain that their rates increased a few months ago, and it affected everybody. That doesn’t cut it though; he is furious.

I gather his documents and ask him to sign, and he rips them from my hands.

Customer: “Which one of the documents goes to ICBC?”

That means the government.

Me: “None of them do; they stay in our office.”

He ignored me and began to write something on our copy of the paperwork, and at that point, I’d just had it with the guy. He stormed out as I sarcastically wished him a fantastic day.

I immediately read what he wrote: “RIP OFF!” in all caps across the page.

I felt better after reading his comments. At least he thought he was making a difference anyhoo.

The bookstore where I work once suffered from a plague of preachers. You know the ones: religious pamphlets left on the shelves, at the checkout, and next to the inventory look-up computer, and offered up to other customers along with a spiel about the Grace of God. Our manager wouldn’t have any of it and chased them out whenever he caught them leaving things about… which, unfortunately, became increasingly less often as they started to realize we were onto them. Corporate was adamant that we couldn’t remove people from the store if we didn’t catch them in their problematic behaviour, previous offenses be d***ed, and we resigned ourselves to shooing them out if we caught them and removing all this scrap whenever we didn’t.

Until we hired [New Guy].

[New Guy] introduced himself as “the biggest nerd you will ever meet” to all of his coworkers. He didn’t socialize much with his coworkers even on a slow day, but we’d often find him on his breaks reading books, watching anime, or playing games — proper video games, not smartphone downloads. He also had some admirable voice imitations, his most proud of which was a growling Liam O’Brien impersonation that was honestly jarring compared to his usual high-pitched pleasantry.

One day, he found one of those pamphlets and assumed it was misplaced by someone who had decided against it. He sought me out and asked where it was supposed to be, and I told him about our problem.

New Guy: “That’s a thing? I thought religious nuts like that were a myth! Hey, [Manager], am I scheduled for tomorrow?”

Manager: “I don’t think so, why?”

The next day, [New Guy] approached the opening shift manager in a hooded robe and mask that made him unrecognizable. He had a giant bag of pamphlets that looked WAY too well-done to have been made overnight, all featuring religious teachings… of various fictional religions. There were stories about the Church of Martel, the Fabula Nova Crystallis creation mythos, inferred teachings of Hylia and the Golden Goddesses, some fanfic writer’s doctrine of Arceus worship, and what looked like half the Hierarchy of Laguna, just as a start.

With management’s permission, [New Guy] found a comfy seat with his bag and waited. Eventually, someone noticed a left-behind pamphlet and recognized one of our problem visitors, and we signalled him to [New Guy] while he was on his way out. The preacher went white as a sheet when this masked stranger in a dark robe came up to him on his way out and spoke to him in an intimidating baritone.

New Guy: “Greetings, friend. Do you have a moment to spare?”

Preacher: “Um… Yes, what is it?”

New Guy: *Drawing out a pamphlet* “I am come to share the teachings of the goddess Etro. Please, take this, and listen to—”

Preacher: “I… No, thank you, I shouldn’t.”

New Guy: “Please, I insist. Surely a man of your generousness would not be opposed to such faithful discourse? If you do not have time, then at least accept this, that you might peruse Her teachings on your own time.”

Preacher: “I don’t see why I should—”

New Guy: “No? But did I not see you earlier leaving teachings of your own for others to see? Surely you should take no issue with receiving a gift such as this?”

The preacher stammered an excuse I couldn’t make out as [New Guy] took his hand and set the pamphlet into it, and then he fled the store, leaving [New Guy] to retake his seat.

The rest of the day — and the next day, because he had that one off, too — [New Guy] waited for us to inform him of our problem visitors and greeted each one with a pamphlet in hand. Some of them acted too polite to flee, and he’d go on a spiel — quiet enough not to trouble the other customers — about whatever belief he’d drawn for that encounter. Others tried to give him h*** for it, decrying his faith as worthless next to their own, and we were able to forcibly remove them from the store for their disruptive behaviour.

Our plague receded for a few days after that, and we all bought [New Guy] a drink for his effort. When they started back up, [New Guy] showed up on his next day off in the robe and mask again and had his pamphlets at the ready. When it seemed like the preachers might have figured out his schedule, another coworker offered to contribute with her own faux-religious garments and mask, and [New Guy] gave her his bag of pamphlets to distribute if the need should arise.

We’re currently going on five months of preacher-free work, but [New Guy]’s bag of pamphlets is sitting behind the front desk, just in case.

This story is part of our Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

Read the next Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) story!

Read the Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!