(I decide to go get fast food and bring my dog with me. The line is pretty long and I’m closer to the white SUV in front of me than I normally would be. Usually my dog sits very calmly in the back seat, but for whatever reason, she picks that afternoon to sneak up behind me and lick the back of my ear. This startles me into taking my foot off the brake, and given how little space there is between me and the SUV, I end up rolling into her bumper. Given how slowly I am moving, my car barely taps her vehicle. I immediately roll down my window and start apologizing, and figure she will pull out of line so we can exchange insurance. Instead, she turns off her car, blocking the entire line, and gets out of her car to start screaming at me.)

Woman: “What the f***?! You smashed into my car! What is f****** wrong with you?! I felt my entire body jerking; I think you injured my back! I’m calling the police!”

(The woman holds up the entire line while calling the police. Since both our windows are down, I get to hear her conversation with 911.)

Woman: “Hello, yes? I want to report a car accident. The car behind me rammed into my car and completely destroyed my bumper! My car is completely destroyed, and I think I am injured, as well! My whole body hurts; my back and neck are in agony!”

(She continues to rant at the emergency operator, and seems to reluctantly answer some questions. At some point the operator must advise her to move her vehicle if possible, because she ends the call by rolling her eyes and finally pulling into a parking spot. I pull into a spot nearby. Lo and behold, the only damage done to her car is a small dent that’s MAYBE an inch long. After shrieking at somebody on the phone for a while — her window is rolled up now and I can only judge from body language — she gets out of her car and taps on my window.)

Woman: “Give me your info!”

Me: *figuring her theatrics are because she intends to scam her way into a big insurance pay-out* “I think it would be better for both of us if we wait for the police.”

Woman: “FINE!”

(The woman then proceeds to make a big show of photographing the “damage” and glaring at me. After a few minutes, thanks to her exaggerations, two police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck all arrive on the scene, anticipating a totaled vehicle and injured passenger. Instead they find her very uninjured and moving energetically around her car taking pictures of a tiny dent from a thousand angles. One of the firemen actually looks around as if he’s worried they came to the wrong place. After a few seconds of confusion, however, I get to enjoy watching nine emergency workers go from baffled to PISSED. She must pick up on their mood, because she starts to defensively whine about “back and neck pain” and, in a laughable attempt to legitimize her “injuries,” asks the paramedic for “a heating pad.”)

Paramedic: *leveling her with the iciest glare I’ve seen in some time* “We don’t carry things like that, ma’am; we’re equipped to handle emergencies.”

(At that point, two police officers talk to us separately. After some questions to get all the facts, I get to give my side of things at last.)

Officer: “Were you at fault?”

Me: “Yes, but I was in the drive-thru. My foot wasn’t even on the accelerator. I was going maybe three miles per hour. I barely tapped her car; in fact, I’m pretty sure the only reason there is any damage at all is because my licence plate is bent, so the corner dented her bumper. There is absolutely no way I could have injured her, and frankly I’d like it on record that I think she is attempting to make a fraudulent insurance claim.”

(I’m pretty worked up at this attempt to scam me, and so I can’t blame the officer for chuckling at my “on the record” comment. She tells me to take a deep breath, and patiently explains that with so little damage this is a civil matter and I’m better off taking a lot of pictures and warning my insurance company. She does smile and promise to be “thorough” in her report, which I assume is cop speak for “call her a lunatic who wastes emergency resources.” I do what the officer advises and warn my insurance. A few weeks later, I see that they pay her out only $750 for repairs, which is absolutely fair; I did still damage her car, however slightly. I show the letter to my father later that week since he works in insurance and has been a huge help during the process.)

Dad: “You know, I bet if she’d been calm and just asked for you info like a normal person, she’d have gotten a couple thousand out of the deal, maybe even a free rental car for the day it was in the shop. But since she kicked up such a fuss, they must have had one of their people go out and actually appraise the damage. People like that are always their own worst enemy.”

At the café where I work, we don’t have a tip jar, but if a customer chooses to give the cashier a tip, we’re allowed to accept it. It’s a dumb corporate policy, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

Generally, what most of us do is divvy up whatever we get with whomever else is working with us; that is to say, if I get fifty cents and only have one other coworker on the floor, he gets a quarter and I get a quarter. But this isn’t an official policy, and if someone chooses to keep all the tips that they get, there’s nothing anyone else can do about it. It’s not very good form, in my opinion, but if that’s the choice that someone makes, no one gets too bothered by it. And it’s pretty much expected that if someone doesn’t share their tips, no one else is going to share with that person; it’s a trade-off.

I have one coworker who not only doesn’t share his tips, but also loudly announces to the rest of us whenever he gets a good tip. He’s even gone so far as to wave a handful of change in my face at the end of his shifts. Although no one gets too bothered by someone choosing not to share, this guy being so “in your face” about the whole thing has always rubbed me the wrong way.

I was on the register when one of our regulars came up, and said that he paid with his card almost every time he came through, but that he wanted us all to know how much he appreciated our hard work. And then he handed me sixty dollars.

In the café that day, I had two other coworkers on the floor with me. One of them has always shared his tips with me. The other one was the hoarder I mentioned earlier. So, instead of handing out a twenty to each of them, I opened the register, broke one of the bills, and gave the sharing coworker $30, keeping the other $30 for myself.

My coworker whined. He begged. He complained to our manager. But what I had done was completely in line with our store’s policy. My coworker cornered me after my shift, got very close in my personal space, grabbed my wrist so tightly that it left a mark, and asked me what he’d ever done to deserve me “acting like a stuck-up c***.”

I was going to be mature(ish) about this. I was planning on giving him $10 and then reminding him that that’s a bigger percent than he’s ever given me. But after he called me that? I let him have it.

And then, I filed a harassment complaint with my manager. Turns out, I was not the first person he’d gotten physical with.

My coworker is now my former coworker.

(I work in a traffic court and am visiting with people to determine what they want to do on their tickets. I call the name of a defendant who has a ticket for parking in a handicap parking space. As the man approaches, I see that he is elderly and walks slowly. Usually that means he had a tag to hang from the rear-view mirror, authorizing him to park in the handicap space, but it had fallen down, or he had just failed to put it up. Those tickets can be easily dismissed if the person just shows the tag at court.)

Me: “Good morning, sir. I see you have a handicap parking ticket. Do you have a handicap tag?”

Defendant: “Yep.”

(He digs into his paperwork and begins pulling out the blue plastic hang-tag.)

Me: “Ah, did you just not have it up at the time?”

Defendant: *handing me the tag* “No, I had it up the whole time. Don’t know why they gave me a ticket.”

(This is unusual, but it only takes a quick glance at the tag to see what the problem is.)

Me: “Sir, this tag expired in 2007.”

Defendant: *very matter-of-factly* “Yep.”

Me: “Well, it’s no wonder they gave you a ticket, then.”

Defendant: “That was my father’s. It came with the car I got from him when he passed away.”

(Who knows how long he’d been parking in handicapped spaces based on his father’s tag. I asked if he had or needed one of his own, but he said it’d “be more bother” go to a doctor to get his own tag than to just pay the $500 ticket, which is what he did.)

(I am working on the patio at large restaurant. It doesn’t close early like most places, and I get a woman by herself later in the evening. She looks like she may be homeless, but when I greet her she is very nice, so I don’t judge.)

Customer: “I’ll have a glass of red wine, a New York strip cooked medium with a loaded baked potato, and a cup of French onion soup. I’ll also take the salad, with bleu cheese dressing.”

Me: “Absolutely, ma’am. I’ll be right out with your wine. Would you like water, as well?”

Customer: “Yes, thank you. Such a pleasant young man!”

(Everything goes smoothly, her drinks and food come out in a timely fashion, and there is no issue. She orders another glass of wine after the meal, and midway through I ask her if I can bring her anything else. She says no, and I tell her I’ll be right back with the bill. She immediately sets her glass down and walks into the restaurant from the patio with me. I stop at the POS to print her check and notice that she is heading for the door.)

Me: “Ma’am? I’ve got your check right here.”

Customer: “Oh, I’m not going to pay. I have no money, and since you are so nice you can buy me dinner. Have a good night!”

Me: *to the hostess* “Lock the doors and call the police, now.” *to customer* “Lady, I’m not paying for your fifty-dollar meal. If you said you were hungry and had no money, I would have bought you a burger or something. I’m not paying for your steak and wine. The police are on their way.”

Customer: “How dare you?! You will give me what I want! I’m not poor; I just don’t have my purse! I will pay for this tomorrow; I am in a hurry!”

(She then suddenly sprinted towards the doors. They normally swing out, and she would have gotten away, but I told the hostess to lock them. The lady ran full speed into the door and smashed her face against it, bloodying her nose. When the police came, we found out that she was a homeless lady who did this somewhere in town every couple of months. She even tried to press charges against me for kidnapping, claiming I locked her in the restaurant so that I could take her home with me at the end of the night. That was my last serving job.)

This happened years ago, when my father was a child. My grandfather told me the story.

One day, after a family outing, my grandparents and their children arrived home to discover that someone had broken into their house and stolen various items. A local teenager was soon identified as the likely culprit after his father turned him in to the police. The father had noticed that his son was suddenly in possession of several items that didn’t seem to belong to him, and the police quickly realized that these items matched the description of some of the things stolen from my grandparents’ home. As such, my grandparents were asked to testify against him in court. At this point the young man had not yet formally confessed, but it was expected that he would be found guilty based on his possession of the stolen items.

During the court proceedings, the judge asked my grandparents to describe the items that had been stolen. They listed off several items, including one particular item that was missing from the refrigerator: an expensive cake from a famous bakery. However, upon hearing my grandmother mention a chocolate cake, the young burglar loudly objected, “The cake wasn’t chocolate! It was strawberry!”

He was found guilty.