I used to serve samples in grocery stores, traveling between a few different locations. I was a vendor; I did not work for the store.

One day, a girl, maybe five years old, came up to my stand with tears streaming down her face.

Girl: “I can’t find my mommy.”

Me: “Oh! Okay, sweetie. Let’s go see if we can call her. What’s your name?”

Girl: “[Girl].”

Me: “You can call me [My Name]. Can I hold your hand?”

Girl: “Can you carry me?”

Me: “Uh… okay.”

I closed and locked the stand, leaving nothing out. I picked the girl up and we went to customer service. From there, an associate made an announcement about a missing mommy (not using the child’s name). A [Store] manager came up and played with the girl while we waited.

Within minutes, the girl’s mom came running. It turns out they went to the bathroom together and the girl left, thinking her mom had already left. Once they were reunited, the [Store] manager pulled me aside.

Manager: “Where did you find her?”

Me: “She found me at my cart.”

Manager: “So, you just walked over here?”

Me: “Yeah, I thought—”

Manager: “And you left your food unattended.”

Me: “No, I was—”

Manager: “You left [Store] open to a huge liability. What if someone with an allergy approached and took a sample? What if a child found a knife?”

Me: “I didn’t—”

Manager: “I don’t want you in this store. I’ll be talking to [My Company] management. Go clean up. No, I’ll go with you and escort you out of the store.”

The manager followed me back to my stand.

Manager: “This is exactly what I’m talking about. Where are your samples?”

I unlock the cabinet, showing everything stored away.

Me: “I didn’t leave anything.”

Manager: “You still left [Store] at risk.”

Me: “How?”

Manager: “Just get out. I’ll take care of this.”

I left, calling my boss on the drive. She assured me that I had done nothing wrong and that she would do her best to not send me to that store again.

Later on, I found out that the store manager called my manager and told her that I left the cart unattended to talk to customer service, conveniently leaving out the part about the lost child and how I had locked everything up.

I never went back to that store, not even to go shopping.

When I was in elementary school, my parents split up. In order to make ends meet, my mother took a new job that required her to leave the house at 5:00 am. Since I was quite stubborn and independent, I simply asked for an alarm clock and proceeded to get myself ready and out of the house on time on my own.

For the most part, this worked well. My mother called our house at the time I needed to be up, we chatted for a few moments, and I got ready and went to school.

When the phone rang one morning, I leaped out of bed. Unfortunately, my nightshirt snagged on the bedpost and I faceplanted onto the floor, chin first. It hurt like h*** and I dashed to the phone crying. 

While talking to my mother about what had happened, I wiped my tears on my purple nightshirt. Some got on my hand, and to my surprise, the liquid was red instead of clear. Since we didn’t have a cordless phone, I told my mother I’d call her back and went to the closest mirror to inspect my face. To my horror, my chin had a gaping cut. After informing my mother about this, I got dressed and waited for her to pick me up and take me to the hospital.

Of course, I needed stitches. Unfortunately for the whole ER, I was terrified of needles, and the doctor tried to give me the anaesthetic in a — to my eyes — gigantic syringe as big as my arm which, due to the nature of the injury, approached my face way too close for comfort. 

After a few minutes of screaming, my mother took me to the hospital shop in order to calm me down. She bought me a small plushie under the condition that I would have to be brave and let the doctor stitch me up.

When we returned to the ER, rinse and repeat the screaming. The doctor was so fed up that she proposed to stitch me up without anaesthetic. Content to be spared the gigantic syringe, I consented.

The doctor spread a cloth over my face and started stitching. I clutched my new plushie and let the doctor stitch me up without fussing, since the cloth prevented me from seeing anything.

Of course, the doctor could have picked up the syringe again instead of the needle. Maybe she was just so fed up that she wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible (I wouldn’t blame her) or she was waiting for me to relent and ask for the anaesthetic. But since I was as stubborn as any ten-year-old could be, I got three stitches without anaesthetic, and twenty years later, I still have a small scar on my chin.

I never wore that nightshirt again.

There I was, a pizza guy in my twenties, making my runs while contemplating just how worthwhile it was to throw my life away for minimum wage, having thoroughly had it with the world as a whole, and in the sort of mood where I would gladly fistfight God himself over the slightest inconvenience.

It was all business as usual. I arrived at the house. I got out of the car, went up to the door, and rang the bell. It was all so pathetically normal. And I was wholly unprepared for what was to happen next.

The door flew open. Behind it stood a child, no more than eight years old if I were to guess. But this boy was far from innocent. His hands moved in a flash, executing signs in rapid sequence. His eyes burned bright with fighting spirit. His shrill voice cried out:

Child: “FIREBALL JUTSU!”

I was devastated. A lowly genin like me could never withstand such a flawlessly executed Katon no Jutsu — not without extensive training and chakra cultivation. From that single attack, with a cry of pain, I fell to my knees, defeated. The superior ninja eagerly took his plunder and vanished without a trace.

But before I could leave, he returned, in his hand an offering of money. His clan leaders had already paid his debts, but it seemed he hadn’t been informed, so I told him:

Me: “The Uchiha clan already took care of it.”

With a smile as bright as the rising sun, he threw down a smoke bomb and disappeared to start his next mission. And with that, I withdrew, wondering how I would ever recover from such a crippling defeat.

I used to love “Bring Your Kid To Work” Day because it gave me the perfect opportunity to gently tease the college-educated adults I work with. I would deliberately take the paper out of the printer, for instance, and watch a bunch of eight- to ten-year-olds get super excited.

Child #1: “Miss! Miss! There’s a red light on the printer!”

Child #2: “What’s wrong with it? Maybe it says.”

Child #3: “Look, the screen says it’s out of paper!”

Child #4: “Is there more paper? Look, here it is!”

Child #5: “Let’s make sure it’s the right size.”

Child #6: “Look, the screen has directions for putting it in!”

I would let them refill the machine, and afterward, I’d tell them that a number of their parents had trouble doing exactly the same thing. Those parents would come to me in a panic because the machine had a red light, ignoring the clear error message and directions on the screen. The kids adored this, and it also happens to be true!

A kid comes up to the customer service counter.

Kid: “I want to return this.”

He slides across a Game Boy Advance game.

Me: “What’s the problem with it?”

Kid: “I finished it.”