I worked at a nationwide check printing company. One Monday morning, a “special meeting” was announced by the plant manager. Eighty-plus employees were ushered into a meeting room before we went to our workstations.

This is shortened version of [Plant Manager]’s super vague speech.

Plant Manager: “Good morning, everyone. I know that you are wondering what this impromptu meeting is all about. Getting straight to the point, something has happened, and if you know anything about this, please see me after the meeting.”

Employees: “Huh? ‘Something’ like what? What in particular?”

Plant Manager: “I can’t tell you anything more than that! See me if you know anything about this ‘event’.”

Every coworker I talked to was clueless about the very odd “Something Happened” meeting.

A week later, we learned what the meeting was all about. Fraudulent cashier’s checks were showing up across the US. (A cashier’s check is a check drawn from the bank’s own corporate account. They are as good as cash, but they are ONLY printed for banks.) Our company had several printing locations, but all of the fraudulent checks were printed at the plant where I worked.

My company “hired” two “new employees” — aka FBI agents. It didn’t take long for the “new employees” to figure out what was happening.

[Coworker #1], an order taker, would enter a false cashier check order for a bank that my company did business with. [Coworker #2], a mail room worker, would simply steal the package before it was shipped out.

No one at the “Something Happened” meeting knew anything about the crime spree because it was a two-person crime gang. Mr. and Mrs. [Coworker #1 and #2] were not at that meeting. They had been arrested when they showed up for work that Monday.

Their plan was brilliant in its simplicity but short on traceability.

When I was in college, my roommate and I decided to drive over to his parents’ house for a few hours. On the way, the state was working on bridges and overpasses in an area. They funneled all traffic into a single-lane (instead of two) cattle chute each way and kept it that way for some distance, rather than deal with multiple merges.

We were in the middle of that, chugging along at the posted speed limit with my roommate driving, and a cream Cadillac whipped up behind us, tailgating ferociously. We got off that bridge, and the Caddy dove out through the barrier barrels, scattering them all over, flipped us off as he passed, and swerved back in, scattering more barrels.

Roommate: *Muttering* “Why is there never a cop—”

Then, he suddenly jerked up, looking in the mirror. We dropped out the end of the cattle chute, we pulled to the right, and four or five cops whipped past on our left.

A few miles down the road, there was the cream Caddie again, surrounded by cops and cop cars, with the driver out performing a field sobriety check.

Apparently, he failed, because when we came through on our way back several hours later, the cops were gone, but the Cadillac was still there.

I’m interviewing for a job. Honestly, it’s not going well. I’m nervous and keep falling on my face, and it feels like the skills they want from me are not the skills I advertise on my resume.

Finally, the interviewer asks me rather bluntly:

Interviewer: “Hey… Do you do any drugs?”

Me: “Uh. No. Why?”

Interviewer: “I just… I don’t think you’ll fit in well here. We all do drugs.”

Me: “Oh. Okay. Uh… thanks for the interview?”

I stood up awkwardly. The interviewer just watched me. And I left.

The whole interaction weirded me out so much that I didn’t even consider calling the police about it until months later. By the time I considered it, I couldn’t find any proof that the company was still in business.

Some years ago, the first summer after I bought my house, I was cleaning up the messes the previous owner had left. Among other things, he had burned a lot of things he wanted to get rid of without regard for whether it would actually BURN. I wound up making a half-inch (12-mm) screen to separate the ashes from the noncombustible residue. The metal (mostly iron and steel) went in the recycle bin, and the rest got bagged to take to the transfer station (rubbish tip). I wound up with a lot of glass fiber from where he’d burned fiberglass things.

When I got the job done, I loaded all of the bags into the pick-up (I’d kept them under cover until then), stretched a spiderweb-style net over the load, and headed off to the transfer station.

When I got there, there was a short line, which struck me as unusual. After a moment, I parked, leaving the engine idling, and rolled the window down so I’d be ready to speak to the clerk… and heard some man loudly swearing a blue streak.

Man: “I’m not going to pay no f****** fine!”

Oh, no.

I waited a minute or two longer and then shut the engine off because this was going to take a while.

So, there I sat reading while I waited for this to settle out. The clerk warned the jerk at least three times that if he didn’t pay, she was going to have to call the sheriff. I’m pretty sure she had already called because soon, a deputy drove up.

By this time, the line was backed out onto the main road in both directions.

The deputy parked and walked across to talk to the man, who swore a bunch more. The deputy ordered him to pay the $10 solid-waste fine for an unsecured load… and then wrote the jerk a $175 traffic ticket for an unsecured load! (The $10 was an administrative fine, not a traffic violation.) I’m pretty sure the deputy threatened to arrest the jerk and haul him into jail, too.

So, instead of paying $10, the jerk paid $185 and got a ticket on his record. (The $10 fine isn’t reported to the state.)

The car between us went into the transfer station, and I pulled up. The clerk looked in the back of the truck and flinched. Then, I realized what was wrong.

Me: “Yeah, the net doesn’t show very well, does it?”

I had a black spiderweb net stretched over black plastic garbage bags in a pick-up with a black bed liner. I’d not thought about the lack of contrast.

The clerk stepped out a little further to look more closely, noted my information, and waved me in.

When I came back out, the jerk and the deputy were still there. I wonder if the deputy had something more in mind or was just going to hang around so the jerk couldn’t dump-and-dash, since transfer stations charge by weight, so you pay on the way out.

While on a cruise, I book a tour of a historic site. After everyone boards the bus, the tour guide tells us that in his country it is required by law to wear seat belts. We buckle up and he checks to make sure we are all wearing the belts. One tourist near me has decided not to wear his.

Guide: “You need to buckle your seat belt.”

Tourist: “I am not wearing the belt.”

Guide: “Maybe you misunderstand me. It isn’t the cruise line recommending you wear your seat belt or the tour company recommending you wear the seat belt. It is the law of my country. I am not asking you to wear it; I am saying you have to.”

Tourist: “No, I’m not using the belt. I don’t want to.”

Guide: “Our driver cannot legally go on the roads if anyone doesn’t have the belt on, so you have two options. You can either buckle up and come see the ruins with us, or you can get off the bus and stay at the port. Your choice.”

Tourist: “I don’t have to wear a seat belt in my home country, so I’m not going to wear one here.”

 Guide: “Are we in your home country?”

Tourist: “No.”

Guide: “Then your country’s laws don’t apply here. Either buckle up or get off the bus.”

The man did buckle up, but he spent the whole ride talking angrily with his wife. I don’t know what exactly he was saying as it was in a different language, but the tourist got increasingly louder as the trip went on. He was so angry that, once we got to the site, he didn’t go on the tour; he just sat at the entrance.

His wife came with us on the tour, though, and she seemed like she had a great time. It’s a shame he ruined his day over a little safety thing like a seat belt.

If you thought this tourist was bad check out these 13 Cringeworthy True Stories About Tourists Who Have Absolutely No Clue!